'Mr. Caldwell. Mr. McFate. If you have anything to do with the labor movement, that fact hasn't come to my attention as yet. And I've been examining your activities rather closely, gentlemen.'
'Bring on your investigations,' Caldwell said derisively, 'bring on your indictments. You're bluffing. You haven't got a thing on us.'
Ness said nothing; he just smiled blandly at the two disheveled men.
'Go ahead,' McFate said, stepping forward ominously. 'Do your worst, big shot.'
'You boys have courage coming up here,' Ness said. 'I'll give you that.'
'It's not courage,' Caldwell said. 'It's conviction. You're just part of the national attack on all labor by the moneyed interests, trying to weaken the movement by attacking aggressive leadership like us.'
'Why don't you save the bullshit for the rank and file,' Ness said coldly. 'Although I doubt very many of them are buying it these days. Maybe you can find a paper to peddle it to.'
Caldwell moved dangerously close to Ness. The stocky man's eyes were hard behind the wire-framed glasses. He said, 'If you attack us like this again, pally, we'll stop you. Whatever it takes.'
McFate said, 'We'll stop you, you little prick.'
'Boys,' Ness said, going to his side door, opening it, and gesturing gently with one hand for them to make use of the exit, 'haven't you heard about people in glass houses?'
They had no answer to that.
Gathering what remained of their dignity, but leaving a good deal of the smell behind, Big Jim and Little Jim stormed out. Ness shut the door hard on them-but not so hard as to break the pebbled glass. He'd hate like hell to have to replace it right now.
CHAPTER 12
Sam Wild was nervous.
He wasn't a nervous man by disposition. In fact, he took most everything in stride; when you'd worked as many beats as he had, from politics to police, from four-alarm fires to auto fatalities, not much of anything shook you.
Tonight, he was shaking. Gently, but shaking, the match with which he was lighting his Lucky Strike trembling as if in a breeze, only there wasn't a breeze. It was a night (just after ten P.M.) as hot and dry as the back room of a bakery. The reporter was parked on East Seventeenth in a Chevy sedan that belonged to his paper, waiting for Jack Whitehall, the hard-nosed Teamster organizer who, it turned out, was a friend of Ness.
Of all things, of all people. Wild wondered if the day would ever come when Mr. Eliot Ness would run out of surprises for him. This time it was a real corker: the black sheep of the Cleveland labor scene turns out to be an old co-worker of the safety director's from a South Side Chicago factory. This one just about topped 'em all.
Over the past few days he and Whitehall had met several times in a saloon near the food terminal, where Whitehall had a major organizing effort under way. Whitehall had told Wild about the blacklist.
'So who's on this list, anyway?' Wild had asked.
'Stores that haven't cooperated with Caldwell and McFate,' Whitehall said. 'Businesses that aren't paying tribute to Caldwell's window washers union.'
'So we're talking about windows that are going to get smashed.'
'And windows that have already been smashed. Nobody on the blacklist can buy glass in the city of Cleveland- not till they come to terms with Big Jim and Little Jim.'
'And Ness says a copy of this list would make his case.'
'That's right. Only he doesn't know any legal way to get his hands on a copy.'
Which, of course, was where Wild and Whitehall came in.
Wild smiled and sucked his Lucky, his third since he'd parked here. Without even coming out and asking, the safety director had relegated his dirty work to a member of the Fourth Estate and a representative of the local labor movement. Didn't that just about take the fucking cake.
And now here Wild sat, just down the block from the narrow six-story brick building where, on the third floor, Big Jim and Little Jim kept their union headquarters. At first he'd argued against ransacking Caldwell's office for the list.
'It'd be easier to pull one of 'em out of a glass-company office,' Wild had said. 'Those places are warehouse affairs, in industrial areas with easy access. You could probably walk right in during business hours, find a place to hide, and wait till-'
'No,' Whitehall had said flatly. 'The list would turn up missing and there'd be a stink. At the union there's gonna be multiple copies. There's got to be, 'cause Caldwell's giving the list to all the glass companies in town, and to whatever goon or goons are doing his window smashing for him. And then he's got to update it, periodically.'
'So,' Wild said, reluctantly seeing the logic of it, 'you figure there's a stack of 'em someplace in Caldwell's office. We could grab one off the stack, and nobody'd be the wiser. It'd never be missed.'
'Right.'
Their objective, then, was the union headquarters in that nondescript six-story office building, one of many on the fringes of the downtown, the kind of marginal facility that thrived on mail-order companies, low-rent shysters, and abortionists. There would be no night watchman, and should be little trouble breaking in. Your classic lead-pipe cinch.
Only there was one major hitch: the building, on East Seventeenth near Payne, was about a block and a half from the Central Police Station. Cop cars were constantly cutting down Seventeenth from Payne to get to Euclid. An all-night, white-tile, one-arm restaurant in the next building, just across the alley, was frequented by a heavy police clientele. You couldn't find more cops this side of a Saint Paddy Day's parade.
So. In doing the unspoken bidding of the safety director-who, if his two friends were caught in the act, would no doubt profess disappointment in their lack of moral turpitude-Wild was preparing to burglarize a building within spitting distance of half the boys in blue in the city of Cleveland. What a dandy idea.
'Ready?'
Wild damn near dropped his Lucky in his lap, like to burn his nuts off. He hadn't seen or heard Whitehall approach. Now he looked over and the lantern-jawed, sleepy-eyed roughneck was framed in the car's open window on the rider's side. The bastard even seemed faintly amused.
'Sure,' Wild said, with a nasty little smirk. 'I'm always ready to risk my ass, and my paper's reputation, for the sake of unionism and Eliot fuckin' Ness.'
'Come on, then.'
Wild slipped out of the car and joined Whitehall on the sidewalk. Whitehall was wearing dark trousers and a dark blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up on bulging biceps. Wild was wearing dark clothing himself, which was a change for him. But you don't wear white seersucker on burglaries.
The two men, both tall, Wild as lean as Whitehall was brawny, did not exactly make an inconspicuous pair as they walked down the deserted sidewalk along the busy street past the thriving, cop-filled one-arm joint. Several cops exited the restaurant, heading back to the Central Station on foot just as Wild and Whitehall were strolling by, but paid them no notice.
When the cops had rounded the corner, Whitehall and Wild ducked into the alley. From behind a garbage can, Whitehall withdrew a tool belt, which he slung around his waist; he tucked a pair of padded work gloves behind the tool belt. Then, standing fairly near the side of the building where the union headquarters was housed, Whitehall crouched, his feet planted firmly under him, and locked his hands together, palms up, and said, 'Here.'
'Where?'
Whitehall glowered and looked up sharply.
Above was the fire escape, which ran across the entire side wall of the building, forming black metal mesh Z's, ending a flight above the alley.
'Oh,' Wild said, and put a foot in Whitehall's hands and allowed himself to be boosted to where he could pull down the counterbalanced fire escape stairs. As they swung down under Wild's grasp, Whitehall dodged out of the way, but reached out as he did to brace the stairs, so they didn't clang to the alley floor.
