Actually, she wouldn't be. She was used to his long and odd hours; and she was in fact deep asleep and didn't wake when he crawled into bed. He didn't tell her about the machine-gunning till the next morning, over breakfast, and even then didn't tell her that he'd been in the line of fire or in any danger at all, for that matter. He told her less, in fact, than he'd told the two rookie cops.
This was business, after all. And the fear, tears, and anger of the night before needed to be kept to himself. Not forgotten, never forgotten; but tucked away. The most important order of business was business. Was getting his restaurant put back together.
Shortly after ten that morning, Vernon Gordon, in a well-tailored blue suit with a blue-and-white tie snug at his throat, looking nothing at all like a man who the night before had recoiled under a table while gunfire chewed up the world above him, entered the third-floor offices of the union headquarters in a turn-of-the-century, six-story brick building on East Seventeenth Street. He walked without a word past an attractive young brunette secretary who was doing the morning filing (of her nails) at a reception desk in the small, sparsely furnished waiting room, and entered a large, sparsely furnished office where Big Jim Caldwell sat with feet up on a desk as he read the sports section of the morning paper. He was smoking a cigar.
As if at military attention, Gordon stood across the desk from Caldwell, who barely glanced up from the paper. The fat little man in shirt-sleeves said, not unpleasantly, 'Good morning, Mr. Gordon. Paper says you suffered some vandalism last evening. Dirty shame.'
'How much?' Gordon asked coldly.
Half hidden behind the papers, Caldwell said, 'As terrible as these lawless vandals are, I feel sure they didn't realize you were in the restaurant. I'm sure no one would have wanted you to come to harm.'
'How much?'
Looking up from the paper, smiling slightly around his cigar, the round-faced Caldwell said, 'The other day I gave you advice and you didn't listen. A shame.'
'How much?'
He folded the paper and placed it gently across his generous lap. 'You see, as it turned out, you could've used that bulletproof glass.'
'How much?'
'You should take this opportunity to put some in. Bulletproof glass, I mean.'
'How much?'
Caldwell, his expression blandly pleasant, shrugged. 'Same as before.'
'You already got fifteen hundred out of me. And the window washers union fee.'
'That covers work-and plate glass-from days past. We're discussing the present, right now, and the future. You have a remodeling job to do, and you're going to need carpenters, glaziers, the whole megillah. You need the unions I control. You need me.' He gestured to himself with a pudgy hand, two fingers of which now held the cigar. 'And I need two thousand dollars.'
'I should turn your fat ass over to the cops.'
Caldwell's expression remained pleasant, but it was as hard and transparent as the plate glass he peddled. 'I'm sure that would give you a certain satisfaction. The question is, would it replace the satisfaction of successfully opening your new restaurant? Because without me in your corner, you're out of fucking business, laddie-buck.'
Gordon contained his rage; he stood, as if frozen, and said, 'I'll have the money for you this afternoon. In cash.'
Caldwell unfolded the paper, lifted it off his lap. 'Good. Give me a call, and we'll arrange a drop. Little Jim'll pick it up. And I'll see to it that you get your bulletproof glass.'
Gordon raised a cautionary finger. 'I view this as a business expense. I'm putting up with it as such. Push me one step beyond this point and I'll consider you a bad investment. I will see your fat ass in jail, and it will give me considerably more than just a 'certain' satisfaction.'
Caldwell smiled like a cherub. 'You've made your point. We understand each other.' He raised the paper, blocking his face from Gordon's view.
But Gordon figured the cherubic smile was gone when the voice from behind the paper said: 'Don't come here again Union headquarters is for union members only,'
'What a pity I can't belong to such an elite club,' Gordon said, and stalked out.
CHAPTER 9
Ness stood in the midst of the wreckage of the Gordon's restaurant on Playhouse Square, hat pushed back, hands on his hips, face tightened into a mask of disgust. Sunlight streamed through the rows of yawning metal mouths where plate glass had been, sun glinting and bouncing off their jagged teeth.
'Chicago typewriter wrote this,' Will Garner said, pointing to the patterns of bullet holes in the woodwork, the plaster. The big Indian in a brown suit was slowly prowling the shard-strewn, rubble-filled dining room.
Detective Albert Curry, tagging along after Ness, seemed shaken. He had apparently never seen the damage a machine gun could do.
'We've had broken windows before,' Curry said, 'but nothing like this. This goes beyond vandalism into sheer…'
He searched for a sufficient word.
'Gangsterism,' Ness filled in flatly. 'This is extortion in the true, time-honored Black Hand tradition. This is how the Mafia got its start, gentlemen.'
'We aren't dealing with the Mafia, surely,' Curry said with a nervous smile. 'This is labor racketeering, pure and simple.'
'It's labor racketeering, all right,' Ness said, kneeling, picking up several blunted. 45 slugs and dropping them into an evidence envelope. 'But it's not pure and it's not simple.'
Garner said, 'I think Mr. Gordon's arrived.'
Ness stood and watched as Vernon Gordon, wearing a blue suit and a scowl, stepped inside his shot-out front doors and heaved a sigh.
'I thought I'd covered this last night,' Gordon said impatiently, not meeting the eyes of Ness or Curry or Garner. 'I gave a full statement to the two officers.'
Ness walked over, glass fragments fragmenting further under his feet, and smiled tightly at Gordon and said, 'Good morning. Vern.'
The two men knew each other socially, at the country club, at various business and fraternal associations around town; they were less than friends, but hardly strangers.
'Sorry, Eliot,' Gordon said with a quick smile, still not meeting Ness's gaze. 'Afraid I'm a little testy this morning.'
'I can well understand why.'
He gestured with both hands, indicating his ravaged restaurant. 'But, frankly, I have a lot to do-obviously. I've said all I have to regarding this… accident.'
'Accident? Why, did somebody accidentally fire off a few hundred rounds of forty-five caliber ammunition your way? That's a hell of an accident, Vern.'
'Eliot, I have things to attend to.'
'You sure as hell do. You need to attend to the bastards responsible. And I'm here to offer my help in that regard.'
Gordon sighed, and he smiled again, wearily. 'I'm grateful. But I'm afraid there's nothing either of us can do.'
'Why don't you tell me about your union troubles, Vern.'
'I don't have any union troubles, Eliot.' He sighed again, adding, almost to himself, 'Not now.'
'I see. Then you've talked to Caldwell and/or McFate already this morning.'
Gordon said nothing.
Ness gestured with a fist. 'You can help me put those venal bastards away. This episode goes way beyond anything they've pulled to date. Firing off machine guns in the city streets is not going to endear the public-or a
