'I'm just washing the dishes,' Mrs. Whitehall said, with a quick smile and a nervous gesture toward the kitchen, a blur of white visible through an archway. 'We eat in two shifts around here, you see. The girls eat around six, and I feed Jack around eight, or whenever he gets home.'
Ness returned her smile, saying, 'Goes with the territory.' The hours from five in the afternoon till eight at night were key to a union organizer like Whitehall, who had to approach prospective members after they'd got off work.
'Jack will be with you in a moment,' she said. 'If you'll excuse me…'
'Certainly.'
'Please make yourself comfortable,' she said, gesturing to the overstuffed couch. He sat. She gave him one more quick smile and disappeared, with his hat in her hand, into the kitchen.
Ness got up and wandered about the living room. He picked up a Shirley Temple doll from the floor and placed it gently on a table. He bent to examine the titles in a waist-high glass-and-wood bookcase along one wall; the authors ranged from Lenin and Trotsky to Edna Ferber and Sinclair Lewis.
The slightly muffled sound of a flushing toilet signaled the imminent arrival of the man of the house. Ness wandered back toward the couch but did not sit. When Jack Whitehall entered the living room, all six foot four and two hundred pounds of him, he gave Ness a stern look, but Ness smiled pleasantly at him and Whitehall suddenly laughed.
'You bastard,' Whitehall said, not without affection. 'You got your nerve. Sit the hell down.'
Ness sat the hell down.
So did Whitehall, in the overstuffed chair. Dark-haired, white-complected Whitehall, his white shirt-sleeves rolled up, sweat stains under his arms, looked every bit the roughneck he was reputed to be in local union circles; jaw like a shovel, nose lumpy from innumerable breaks, ears cauliflowered, eyes lidded, he looked like a brute. But under the sleepy, sullen hoods of his eyes, something glittered. Something alert. Something intelligent.
'It was your idea, Jack, to meet at your home.'
He had a drink of his beer. He didn't ask Ness if he wanted one. He didn't offer a hand to be shaked. He only offered the following pronouncement: 'I'm not going to go sneaking around to see you, Ness. People would get the wrong idea. You come to my house, you're just a cop giving an honest union guy a bad time.'
'I'm not here to give you a bad time, Jack.'
Whitehall's scowl returned; he gestured menacingly with a massive, callused hand. 'You sure as hell gave the union a bad time at Republic Steel. You don't have much of a memory, for a guy that worked a factory job.'
'I did the union a favor at Republic Steel. They're at the bargaining table now.'
Whitehall slammed the beer bottle down on the Liberty magazine. 'Bullshit. I see the papers. I see the society columns. You're thick with those high-hat bastards. With those'-Whitehall seemed about to utter something truly distasteful-'captains of industry.'
'I hold a high public office, Jack. I have to deal with all sorts of people in my line of work.'
Whitehall sneered, gestured to himself archly. 'Even low-life types like me?'
Ness glanced around the room. 'I'd say you're doing pretty well. I'd say you haven't worked a factory job yourself in some while.'
Whitehall bristled. 'Maybe not. But I'm a good god-damn closer to what the man on the line is thinking and feeling and wanting than some half-assed, so-called public ser-'
'Jack. Don't look for an argument where there isn't one.'
'Look, Ness-'
'It used to be Eliot-or 'kid.' Has it been that long?'
Whitehall tried to maintain his scowl, but it dropped away like the mask it partially was, and he grinned, and shook his head. 'I guess maybe it has been.'
Fifteen years ago, back in Chicago, Whitehall and Ness had worked together at the Pullman plant; Whitehall, a few years older than Ness, working class through and through, had been preaching communism and unionism even then. Ness, son of a small businessman, had no interest in unions, felt that a guy could better himself if he worked hard, if he excelled.
'I always liked you, Eliot,' Whitehall said, his tone warmer now. 'But you were full of shit even then. All you could think about was how to get ahead. You never stopped to ask yourself: How can we make things better for everybody?'
'I put myself in charge of me, Jack, and everybody else in charge of themselves.'
'You think it's that simple, huh?'
'Pretty much.'
Whitehall shook his head, heaved a sigh. 'Well, it worked for you, all right. You ended up in the front office, and then before long you were off to college. And now look at you. Young man on the move. On his way up. What's next? Mayor?'
Ness shook his head no. 'I like being a cop, Jack.'
Whitehall smirked. 'You would.'
'It's a profession like any other.'
'Not hardly. Why did you pick it, Eliot?'
Ness shrugged. 'It seemed wide open to me. Most of my peers were going into the business world. Law enforcement seemed backward. A field just waiting for somebody to take a more modern approach.'
'You saw an opening and you took it.'
'That's right.'
Whitehall sighed again, wearily. 'A leader like you, it's a goddamn shame. We could've used you.'
'I don't like being used.'
'Tell that to your pals at the country club.'
'You really do want to argue, don't you, Jack?'
'We just don't see eye to eye on things, Eliot.'
'I'm not against your cause, Jack. I just don't choose to make it mine. But I did help you recently. That much you have to grant me.'
Whitehall smiled slowly. The hooded eyes seemed amused, and warmer. 'The food terminal, you mean.'
'Yes. We've gotten rid of Gibson and his goons. That leaves the door wide open for you and your Teamsters.'
He was nodding. 'Yeah, it does. And we'll walk right in.'
'You see an opening and you'll take it. So say thank you, Jack.'
'Thank you, Eliot.'
'I'll be damned if you don't sound like you mean it.'
'I'll be damned if I don't. But you didn't ask for this meeting to talk about the food terminal, did you?'
'Only to say that I expect the Teamsters to act like a real union at the terminal, and not a goon squad. If you do, we'll step right back in and shut you down quicker than you can say Harry Gibson.'
Whitehall's eyes had turned cold again; he seemed offended. 'We're not goddamn extortionists.'
'No. But your strong-arm tactics are well-known. You've been up on a lot of charges, Jack.'
Whitehall shrugged. 'I'm up on one now.'
'A serious one.'
'A serious one. Assault to kill. A goddamn trumped-up charge and you know it.'
'I don't think it's trumped up. I wish it were.'
Whitehall and two of his cronies had been involved in a disturbance at a polling place during the last election. A uniformed cop had tried to break it up, and Whitehall had put the slug on the cop and taken his revolver away.
'You have a reputation for using strong-arm tactics, for being Cleveland labor's bad boy. You were a chief suspect in that coal-company office bombing. You did ninety days after you tipped over a furniture truck and beat up its driver.'
Whitehall said nothing.
'I understand the Teamsters District Council president has put you on notice: you're to be on your good behavior from here on out, or you'll be out.'
Whitehall blew air through his nose like an angry bull. 'The rank and file will never let that happen. The day
