restaurant, and Jack Whitehall, and the shooting on the High-Level Bridge.'
Gibson's eyes were jumpy; he began to sputter. 'Prove it, big man. Who's gonna testify against me? Did you see me?'
'We've got witnesses who'll testify, Harry. But we won't need them. We went through your apartment this afternoon. We had a search warrant. We went through your garage. We found the gun, Harry. We've got the gun. And now we've got you.'
Gibson grabbed the coffee cup off his desk and hurled its contents in Ness's face; the sting of alcohol hit Ness's eyes, and he rubbed them dry with a coat sleeve while with his other hand yanking the thirty-eight from the shoulder holster.
But when he could see again, it was in time only to glimpse Gibson hightail it around the corner of a wall of crated, racked sheet glass.
Ness followed, but as he rounded the corner, he stopped short before running headlong into a dolly loaded with glass, left there to trip him up by Gibson, who he could see sprinting down the aisle, amazingly fast for a big man.
'Stop or I'll shoot,' Ness yelled, and Harry didn't, and Ness did.
The bullet missed Harry, hitting just behind him, the shot echoing through the warehouse, all but drowning out the crash of the plate glass it spiderwebbed. Workers were scrambling for the loading dock area and those big garage doors.
Gibson ducked around another corner.
This time Ness doubled back around, so as not to run into any more traps. But when he entered the aisle, he found it empty. He crawled through a space between the crates in the metal rack that was the aisle's left wall and entered the next aisle, the final one on that side of the building. But no Harry.
Down at the end of the aisle was a ladder on wheels. Perhaps if he climbed up on that, he'd have a vantage point from which he could spot Gibson. He knew if Gibson made for any one of the exits, the men outside would nail the bastard. No need to panic.
Ness moved quickly down the aisle, not quite running, not wanting to make that much noise, and when he heard the scraping sound above him, he pulled back. The sheets of glass rained down and shattered before him, ricocheting off the cement, hitting the floor like a clumsy waitress spilling all the dishes in the world.
But he'd covered his face, and none of the large fragments had flown to find him, and he fired upward, to the sound of more breaking glass, and of Gibson up above, scrambling.
Ness turned the corner to see that another of the ladders on wheels was standing in this aisle, mid-way, almost close enough for Gibson-up on the second level, standing in a half-empty bin-to reach out and pull over. He was stretching out a hand for it when Ness called out.
'Hold it, Harry!'
And Harry, looking toward Ness, who was aiming the revolver up at him, lost his balance.
He pitched into the metal ladder, which scooted away on its wheels as Gibson careened off and tumbled backward and landed, hard, on his back, on the multiple edges of roped, upright sheets of glass below. His mouth opened to cry out, but no cry ever emerged.
He was pinned there, the massive sharp edge of stacked glass poking through him like the point of a giant's sword. He wriggled, caught like a bug, but he seemed dead already-perhaps these were death spasms. Ness, feeling as detached as a surgeon, stood looking up at the dangling, impaled Gibson. Blood soaked the denim shirt and dripped heavily to the cement floor. Eyes open, head tilted to one side, body slack, chest pierced, Harry Gibson had found a way to beat the murder rap.
Ness went to the nearest exit and opened the door. An anxious Albert Curry stepped inside.
'I heard the shots. Are you okay?'
'Yes,' Ness said. 'Go round everybody up and come in the front way.'
Soon his crew was around him, standing in the aisle looking up at the punctured Gibson.
'That's a new one,' Will Garner said, uncharacteristically impressed. 'How did you manage it?'
'I didn't want him dead,' Ness said.
'Sure you did,' Garner said, shotgun cradled in his arms. 'You would have rather it been in an electric chair, is all.'
'We needed that son of a bitch,' Ness said.
Curry nodded glumly. 'Without him, the link to McFate and Caldwell is gone.'
'Unless maybe we can find whoever was driving for him,' Savage said, 'the night he shot up your car on the bridge.'
'We don't have any leads on the driver,' Ness said grimly. 'None at all.'
Chamberlin put a hand on Ness's shoulder; the smile under the tiny mustache was kind, reassuring. 'Eliot- let's look at the bright side: a murderer is dead. And after the work you've done-we've all done, these past four months-you've got plenty to go to the grand jury with, on racketeering and extortion charges.'
Ness was nodding. 'You're right. It's time to put those bastards out of business, and behind bars, where they damn well belong.'
Everyone nodded. The sound of Gibson's dripping blood seemed to make it unanimous.
CHAPTER 19
On the Monday just prior to Christmas, in the union headquarters in the six-story building on East Seventeenth Street, little holiday cheer was in evidence.
In the outer office, where Big Jim Caldwell's attractive brunette secretary sat typing, a small fir trimmed with tinsel and red and green electric lights was perched upon a small table, but there were no gifts under the tree.
And in Big Jim's office there was no tree, no tinsel, no cheer whatsoever. On this occasion it was Big Jim who was pacing, while Little Jim sat behind his partner's desk, drinking whiskey from a water glass. Anger clenched Caldwell's round face; McFate slouched in the chair, with an even more doleful expression than usual.
'I feel so goddamn helpless,' Caldwell said.
McFate said nothing.
Caldwell stopped and gestured with two open hands. 'There's got to be some way to stop this thing.'
McFate shrugged.
Caldwell paced. He knew McFate would have nothing trenchant to contribute, but he couldn't keep his frustration inside; he had to voice it.
But he knew, too, that McFate's silence was an appropriate response. There had been nothing that could be done to squelch the grand-jury inquiry. It had been too sweeping a probe, with more than one hundred witnesses called, including the two Jims themselves. How do you intimidate that many witnesses? How do you even keep track of them? For that matter, with the secrecy that Ness and Prosecutor Cullitan had imposed, how could you know how a witness had testified? You couldn't tell the betrayers from the faithful without a scorecard-and there were no fucking scorecards!
Then Little Jim surprised Caldwell and spoke up.
'If they get an indictment,' Little Jim said, swirling whiskey in his glass, 'that means a jury trial. No more of this behind-closed-doors grand-jury shit. No more ban on reporters. We'll know what's going on. We'll know who to bribe and who to put the fear of God in.'
Caldwell stopped pacing. He put his hands on his hips and smiled. 'You know, you're right, bucko. It's too late to worry about the grand jury. It's spilt milk. But we can show Ness and Cullitan that their tactics won't work in a real trial in an old-fashioned American open courtroom.'
'If there even is a trial,' McFate said, forcing a small smile onto his dour face. 'I don't think Ness's got enough evidence to get an indictment. That grand jury's been meeting for over a month, and nothing's come of it.'
'On that count I'm afraid you're wrong, boyo,' Caldwell said, shaking his head. 'They've talked to over one hundred witnesses.'
'That just backs me up, lad. They wouldn't have to work so hard if something was really turning up. Do you really think somebody like Vernon Gordon is going to spill? He's still paying off, isn't he, to the window washers
