'I think we can give you a list of merchants,' Ness said, 'who might be willing to talk off the record.'
'Yeah, that'd be something, anyway,' Wild said reflectively, blowing out smoke. 'We could do a nice big expose on the 'boys.' That might build some nice public pressure.'
'Worth a try,' Ness said. 'You can get the names from Detective Curry.'
'Any other ideas? We dissipated denizens of the Fourth Estate need all the help we can get from our public officials.'
'Go around and see Jack Whitehall,' Ness said casually.
Both Garner and Curry looked sharply, with some surprise, at their boss.
'The Teamster?' Wild asked, equally surprised. 'That thug?'
'He's no angel,' Ness said, 'but unlike Caldwell and McFate, his goals are rooted in something more than just making a buck. He really believes in the union ideals. He's no shakedown artist, and I've heard he resents the two Jims.'
'Are you serious?' Wild asked, smiling, eyes narrowed, thinking Ness might be stringing him along.
'Give it a try,' Ness said, with a little shrug.
Wild lifted his eyebrows and put them back down. 'Oh-kay,' he said.
The reporter and Curry sat and put their heads together for a few minutes as the young detective gave Wild a list of merchants, with words of guidance on each.
Then the lanky reporter rose, stretched, yawned, and pitched his spent cigarette to the glass-littered floor.
'See you in church, kids,' he said, and ambled out.
'Do you trust him?' Garner asked. The Indian was watching Wild's departing back through the row of windowless windows, as if considering whether or not to put an arrow or maybe a tomahawk between the reporter's shoulder blades.
'Yes, Will, I trust him,' Ness said. 'So should you.'
Garner shrugged, smiled a little. 'Okay. I trust him.'
Curry said, 'What's the next step? Do we keep at the merchants?'
'Not just now. Let's let some of that public pressure Mr. Wild mentioned build up some. I have another assignment for the two of you.'
They looked at him expectantly.
'We know that Caldwell and McFate handle almost every aspect of their shakedowns themselves. Certainly they make all the initial contacts themselves, and take the payoffs.'
'A small circle,' Garner said, nodding.
'Let's widen that circle some,' Ness said, with a nasty smile. 'Let's put a twenty-four-hour watch on Big Jim and Little Jim. I'll get several more shifts of two-man teams, assigned 'round the clock.'
'And, what?' Curry asked. 'Try to catch them in the act?'
'No. I want you to make no pretense of hiding your presence. Get on their fat butts and stay there. Our goal here is deterrence, not surveillance. From now on, Mr. Caldwell and Mr. McFate will be chaperoned by the city- they'll have their own private police escort.'
'I like it,' Garner said, the thinnest of smiles on his bronze face.
'But we can't catch them at something that they aren't doing anymore,' Curry said, confused.
'We don't need them to commit any new crimes,' Ness said. 'They committed plenty already. We'll keep working on Vern Gordon and other potential witnesses, both here in Cleveland and outside the city as well. I'll be building a case, gentleman, while you keep on theirs.'
The three men exchanged smiles and rose and exited the restaurant into a sunny morning just as a contractor, several carpenters, painters, and plasterers were unloading trucks out front.
CHAPTER 10
Little Jim McFate, after a week of it, was not amused.
He wasn't known for his sense of humor, anyway; in fact, Big Jim often kidded him about being such a gloomy Gus. But Little Jim knew that the labor racket was a serious one; that when you were organizing, you had to paint a black picture of what life without unions was like. That when you were running a shakedown, for instance, you had to make the mark believe you really would break his legs. And then you really had to break them, if it come to that.
Nothing funny about it. He hadn't got to this exalted position by being some half-assed prankster. Like when he formed the protective association for the barbers of Cleveland, where he clipped the barbers for dues while elevating and fixing prices. You had to be tough, sharp, and taken seriously, to pull off that kind of scam.
So Little Jim's no-nonsense manner had come in handy, over the years. But he liked a good time as much as the next fellow. The workers he represented-painters, carpenters, glaziers, and the rest-thought he was swell. They knew he was a down-to-earth guy who would sell you the shirt off his back and gladly hoist a few with you.
And it wasn't like he didn't enjoy a good laugh-he liked 'Jiggs and Maggie' in the funnies, and Laurel and Hardy at the movies, although the dirty stories you heard in bars made him uncomfortable. He was a family man, after all. A husband. A father.
He had fond memories of his own childhood, though memories of his father, who died when Jim was six, were few. Pop, a carpenter, had worked himself to death trying to support the McFate brood. Growing up on the West Side, in a working-class neighborhood, Little Jim learned early on that there were goddamn few opportunities to make it out, to make it big. He watched his older brothers work their tails off, getting cheated out of good wages by the factories where they toiled, and swore it would never happen to him.
Real wealth, he could see, came not from hard work, but from theft. Some thieves were thieves; some were mob guys; while others were robber barons, or bankers. And Little Jim had learned, also, early on, that there would never be an opening for him on a steel mill's board of directors, or at a bank.
When he got back from the war, he got a painting crew going, and noticed that not only his business, but all business, was booming. Consequently, unions seemed like a place where some good could be done, and some money could be made. He signed a lot of painters up for the local, and put together a really nice con on the side, selling permits to home owners who wanted to paint their own homes. If a home owner didn't buy a permit, Little Jim would wait till the house was painted and then splash stain all over it.
That con, after years of moneymaking, finally got shut down last year, when Little Jim's front man got nailed by the safety director's dicks. But it was sweet while it lasted.
So, anyway, it wasn't like Little Jim McFate had no sense of humor.
And when this goddamn thing had first begun, he'd even allowed Big Jim to convince him it was a big joke.
'They're following us around, everywheres we go,' Little Jim had said after a full day of it, two days after the Gordon's restaurant shooting. He was pacing around Big Jim's office at union headquarters on East Seventeenth Street.
Caldwell had his feet on the desk and his hands behind his head, elbows flaring out, a big grin on his face and a big cigar in his grin.
'Laddie-buck,' Caldwell said, eyes twinkling like a goddamn pixie's, 'the great Mr. Eliot Ness has gone and done us an honor.'
'An honor?' Little Jim halted his pacing.
'He's put us under police protection. To make sure no harm comes our way.'
'Judas priest, man. How can you take this so lightly?'
Big Jim swung his feet off the desk; he flicked ashes off his cigar into an ashtray that was one of the few objects on the desk. There were no papers or anything else to indicate work was ever done on that smooth oak surface.
'I don't take it lightly,' he said, standing, strolling over to McFate. 'But we're the subject of some very bad press right now. We can use this police attention to our betterment.'
'To our betterment? What in the hell-'
