'Boyo-look. We took extreme measures with Mr. Vernon Gordon. They were necessary, and I think they'll in future make our efforts with other downtown merchants go even quicker, even smoother. But right now the newspapers are engaging in some nasty speculation. About us.'
'They're all but goddamn coming out and saying we did it!'
'Well, we did.'
'Like hell! I was home in bed, asleep with my missus!'
'Bucko, we had it done. And that is a fact.'
Big Jim shrugged. 'Well, sure. We had it done. Of course we had it done. We should sue the bastards for slander!'
Caldwell put a hand on his partner's shoulder, patted it in a there-there fashion. 'It's libel, only it isn't libel when it's true, and so we're not going to make a bad situation worse by acknowledging those accusations.'
'It's that bastard Wild. He's in Ness's pocket.'
'So he is. But the other papers have picked up on it as well. We're the top-billed act of the editorial pages these days.'
'And now we got goddamn cops trailing us all over town! Trailing me home! It's embarrassing! I'm a goddamn family man.'
'I know you are, lad. As am I. But there's no harm done by this attention.'
'No harm! How are we expected to do business when-'
Caldwell frowned, shook his head no, vigorously. 'We aren't going to do any business. Not any new business. Now's not a good time for that, anyway, not with a press spotlight on us. And we'll have our regular payoffs picked up by people we trust. Harry Gibson needs something to do with his hands.'
'I thought you gave him a job at your glass warehouse.'
'I did. But he can use that as a place to work out of.'
Now Little Jim was the one shaking his head no. 'I don't like getting too many people involved. I like to keep the business end to just the two of us.'
Caldwell shrugged with one shoulder. 'Gibson's already involved.'
'Well, he's an all right ghee,' Little Jim admitted. 'But let's not pass out too many invites to the party.'
'Agreed,' Caldwell said, nodding.
'Far as I'm concerned,' Little Jim went on, 'we got two uninvited guests already, all the time.'
He was referring to the two cops who were constantly on their tails.
'Actually,' said Caldwell, 'I think there's six of 'em-three shifts of two. Think of the money we're costing the taxpayers. After a week or so of lawful activities, we might point out to some reporter-and I don't mean Sam Wild- that Mr. Ness is wasting precious tax dollars.'
Now Little Jim began to smile, a little. 'You mean, we use the cops hanging onto us to show that we're not doing anything wrong.'
Big Jim nodded. 'That's exactly right-not doing anything but going about union business, upright moral representatives of the working man.'
'Will the papers run that?'
'Sure they will. They need a new story every day. That story about us being bad boys will be old before you know it. Eliot Ness is a big shot in the papers, but remember-the next day they wrap fish in 'im.'
That made Little Jim laugh. That was a good one.
'Besides,' Caldwell said, grabbing his derby, 'we can have a little fun with our chaperons.'
'Fun?'
'Just follow me,' Caldwell said, grinning, pausing only to relight his cigar before swaggering out of the union offices and heading for the street.
And for the better part of a week Big Jim, and Little Jim, too, indeed had fun with their police retinue.
The boys made a habit of taking long drives in the country, in a new Buick owned by the union (but used by Big Jim-a matching Buick owned by the union was Little Jim's to use). The cops were driving old clunkers and had trouble keeping up with the sleek, powerful sedans. Big Jim would step on the gas and take the car to the edge of the speed limit, over rough, bumpy backroads, making the cops work to keep up, their buggies shimmying and shaking and rattling. Sometimes the two Jims would lose their escorts and have to pull over to the side of the road and wait, or slow to a gawking Sunday driver's pace, till Cleveland's finest caught up.
Similar hijinks marked their in-town pleasure driving. Big Jim would take it easy, then round a corner and slip into an alley before the cops had made the turn; then Big Jim would wait for them to go by, pull in behind the shadows and honk, startling and embarrassing them.
It was good for a laugh, for a while. But Little Jim got sick of it quickly, and, finally, after almost a week of it, so did Big Jim.
And now, at the beginning of another day that held as its only prospect driving aimlessly around the Cleveland area with cop magnets stuck to their asses, Big Jim was the one pacing around the union office, while Little Jim sat glumly behind the desk, frustration and boredom eating at him.
'I thought they'd give it up by now,' Caldwell said. He was smoking a cigar again, but puffing nervously at it, like the smokestack of a train engine taking a steep grade.
'And the papers haven't taken the bait,' Little Jim said.
Big Jim shook his head side to side in bewilderment. 'I thought they would. I really thought they would. Us leading those jerks on wild goose chases out in the sticks, that's good stuff. They oughta use it, goddamn it.'
Dour Little Jim leaned his long face on one hand, elbow propped against the uncluttered desktop. 'Why should they? You plant the story in a few reporters' ears, but how do they know it's for real? They got to see it with their own eyes.'
And now Big Jim stopped in his tracks and grinned. He pointed with the stubby cigar at his partner, like he was aiming a projectile. 'You, my friend, are more than just a pretty face.'
'Huh?'
'You gave me an idea. You gave me one hell of an idea.'
The chunky Caldwell fired himself at the desk like a cannonball. His charge was so quick it took McFate aback.
'You're gonna love this,' Caldwell said, grinning like a demented cherub. 'You're gonna just love it.'
Little Jim would reserve judgment on that, but he watched, spellbound, as his associate whirled into action, making one phone call after another.
Shortly before noon, just hours and a flurry of activity later, Big Jim Caldwell and Little Jim McFate walked out into the glorious, sunny August day. One would think they had stepped not out of a six-story brick building, but a bandbox. They were dressed in black silk top hats that reflected the sunlight, striped trousers and swallow-tailed coats, vests with white piping, and Ascot ties snugged under wing collars. Their black shoes, peeking out from under pearl-gray spats, outshone the sun. Both carried gold-crowned walking sticks like scepters. They looked as grand as two petty crooks decked out in rental attire could ever hope to look.
Grander.
Parked at the curb were two glistening black Packard touring cars, their tops down; a colored chauffeur in uniform stood at attention, holding open the rear door of the first of the two Packards. Big Jim gestured regally for Little Jim to enter first. Little Jim did, and Big Jim followed, and the chauffeur shut the door with a satisfying metallic chunk and took his position behind the wheel.
The second Packard, directly behind the first, was filled with a small but formally dressed musical group: a trumpet, a trombone, a clarinet, and a snare drum. The colored chauffeur of the second car had a glazed, wide-eyed look, like a black comedian in the movies. But his eyes were no wider, his expression no more glazed, than that of the two plainclothes police officers in the car parked in front of union headquarters, taking all of this in.
Little Jim recognized the cop in the rider's seat as Albert Curry, one of the safety director's dicks. Neither he nor Big Jim knew the name of the other one, a big dark fellow who looked like an Indian, but they had come to know his face well. He and Curry had been their day-shift companions since the first day of the surveillance.
'Driver,' Caldwell said, 'let the parade begin.'
And the first Packard pulled away from the curb, the second one slowly falling in line, with the two cops trailing after in their clunker of a black Ford sedan.
'You know,' Caldwell said, smiling almost sweetly, leaning his head so close to his partner their top hats
