They looked at the two approaching white men with suspicion, nostrils flaring, but held their ground.
'You the man?' the man asked.
Ness knew what the question meant and answered it by opening his coat to reveal his gold 'City of Cleveland-Director of Public Safety' badge, which he'd pinned to his suitcoat lapel before leaving the office.
The man raised an eyebrow and cocked his head. 'You the man.'
Then without being told, he raised his hands, and Curry patted him down.
Curry looked at Ness. 'Clean.'
The girl, attractive and wide-eyed if a little hard, said, 'You're Eliot Ness?'
'Yes,' Ness said, moving up the rickety steps. 'If you'll excuse us, please…'
And he moved past them, Curry on his heels. The back door opened directly onto a good-size kitchen, where aromatic pots steamed on a coal-burning stove. A heavy-set black woman in her fifties in an apron over a house dress was tending the pots, while at a beer bottle-littered kitchen table two black men in shirtsleeves and shoulder holsters sat playing cards.
'Guns on the table and not a sound,' Ness said quietly.
The two men froze for a moment, then dropped their cards before them, and carefully withdrew their revolvers, setting them on the table like a cautious bet they were making.
Curry collected the guns, dropping one each in an overcoat pocket; then he had the men stand, cuffed them together, and cuffed one of them to a water pipe near a Hoosier cabinet.
Ness did not wait while Curry did this, but went on up the back stairs, which were to the left of the door as you came in. The narrow, dark stairway rose to a small landing.
He knocked sharply, said 'Police,' and then kicked the door open.
A dozen people, all but one of whom were colored, were in the center of the large, largely unfurnished room, gathered around a big wooden table where eleven adding machines were being used to tally up the day's take. Adding-machine tape curled in snakelike coils on the table. On the floor nearby were two steel trunks brimming with thousands of betting slips. A short fat safe squatted in one corner.
They all seemed stunned by Ness's presence, their fingers still poised at their adding machines. All but the white man-Frank Hogey-were seated. A generally well-dressed lot, ten men and two women, they were essentially accountants and Ness-who had worn no gun to the raid-felt no threat from them.
'Stay right where you are,' Ness said. 'Nobody's leaving.'
Hogey, a genial, stocky, balding man in his early forties, wearing a brown suit, a red tie loose around his neck, said, 'There'll be no trouble, Ness. Don't worry. My boys behave.'
At that moment, a razor-thin man in tortoise-shell glasses and a natty suit and tie bolted from the table and headed for the door, pushing past Ness, who reached out and grabbed him by one arm. The guy swung at Ness, and Ness ducked, losing his grip on him.
'Now, Junior,' Hogey was saying in the background.
Junior, his eyes wide behind the glasses, reached under his shoulder under his coat and came back with a snubnose. 38.
'I ain't goin' back to jail, Mr. Hogey. Not for you nor nobody.'
With Junior's eyes on Hogey, it seemed a good time to grab that gun, which Ness started to do, when Junior turned his gaze back on Ness and pointed the gun forcefully, meaningfully at the detective.
'Back off,' Junior said.
And he backed out of the room out onto the landing.
Then, for no apparent reason, framed in the doorway, still facing them, Junior crumpled to the floor and lost his balance and slid down the back stairs, clatteringly.
Curry stepped in from the landing. He'd been standing to one side of the door out there. His face was bloodless. He was holding his revolver by the barrel, having used the butt to club Junior.
'I hope I didn't kill him,' Curry said.
Ness smiled gently. 'Why don't you check and see. And get Moeller and the rookies up here. We've got some arrests to make.'
Then Ness turned to Hogey and said, 'Why don't you open that nice little safe over in the comer, Frank? Let's see what your take was today…'
The take had been twenty-five thousand dollars.
In the papers it would be called, accurately, 'the biggest haul in Cleveland history against the numbers racket.'
And policy king Frank Hogey had been nailed but good; caught on the premises with evidence to spare.
In an interrogation room at Central Police Station, Ness spoke to Hogey about this and more.
'We have you, Frank.'
Hogey, seated in a hard wood chair, one leg crossed casually across the knee of the other, said cheerfully, 'It would seem so.'
'You're going to jail.'
'Possibly.'
'Unless, of course, you don't want to go to jail.'
'Ness. Spit it out. What are you trying to say?'
Ness shrugged. 'I'm saying that you used to be your own boss. You used to be the most powerful policy king of the east side.'
'I still am.'
'No. You're a glorified stooge, and not all that glorified. You're a traffic cop between the Italians and the coloreds. And you know it.'
The mask of geniality slipped a bit; his cheek twitched and he said, 'I do all right.'
'You could do better.'
Hogey's face showed no interest.
Ness pressed on anyway. 'You testify against Lombardi and Scalise, and I'll arrange immunity for you. On this charge, and on anything else that comes out in the numbers investigation.'
Hogey's eyes glazed over. 'I don't think so.'
'Why don't you think it over, Frank. Talk to your lawyer about it.'
He snorted a laugh. 'You're dreaming. Ness. Nobody's gonna stool on the Mayfield boys. You ain't gonna get no help on this. You're all alone.'
'Frank, you're wrong. When people start talking, and I start putting the 'boys' away, you're going to wish you'd gotten on my team while there was still time.'
'I don't think so. Who's gonna talk? Hell, you can't get to me and I'm white, for Christ's sake. You think the jigs are gonna talk to you?'
Hogey began to laugh. His laughter bounced off the walls of the small interrogation room.
'See you in court, Frank,' Ness said, but Hogey only laughed more.
Ness closed the door on the cubicle and nodded to the cop on duty to haul Hogey to the lock-up.
He met Curry in the hallway.
'Any luck?' he asked Curry, who had been interrogating the Negroes arrested on the raid.
'None,' Curry said. 'Oh, that guy who made a run for it-Junior-he had an outstanding burglary rap; broke his collarbone, incidentally. How about you? You have any luck with Hogey?'
'I'd have done better,' Ness said with a sigh, 'betting a buck on the numbers.'
It was now nearing ten. Ness decided it was time to think about supper. That might remove the gnawing feeling in his gut.
But somehow he didn't think it would.
CHAPTER 7
Past midnight, on a Thursday night, in a black business district on Carnegie, not far from the east side
