Rosato like a priest about to offer the host.
'I'm not going to kill you,' Angelo said pleasantly. 'Not tonight. If you're still in town tomorrow, you'll be deader than shit. Deader than your boys, deader than that nigger fink over there.'
Rosato's whole face was trembling. 'What… what do you want?'
'I want you to get the fuck outa Cleveland, what do you think I want, goombah? You wanna come back with some soldiers and play war, well, us second-generation pussies would just think that's dandy. That's the 'American way,' ain't it? Elsewise, all I wanna see is the ass-end of ya.'
'What… what about… this?' Rosato's wide eyes made reference to the trio of bleeding corpses nearby.
Angelo shrugged. 'A couple of Pittsburgh racketeers, who was far from home and in over their heads, got in a knife fight with a nigger policy runner. No big deal.'
Rosato was shaking like a showgirl's behind; it was funny to Angelo. Funnier than fucking hell.
'We play this any different,' Angelo said, 'and the papers are gonna be full of gang-war bullshit, and Ness will be on all our asses. I got enough shit from that son-of-a-bitch already, so just go. Okay? Go.'
Rosato, tentatively, rose. Angelo pulled the man's torn suitcoat back up around his shoulders, brushed him off as if he were Rosato's valet.
'Next time you're in town,' Angelo said, walking him out of the alley, an arm around the stunned Rosato's shoulders, 'stop by Murray Hill and pay us your respects.'
Rosato nodded numbly. He said, 'I… better go in and get our coats.'
'Yeah. You do that. The trains run all night, you know. I wouldn't waste no time. Shine killing or not, the cops might want to talk to you. Better to be missing.'
Angelo walked him back into the smoky bar. The jukebox was playing some honey-suckle blues number and couples were dancing close. Close hell, Angelo thought; they're fucking, standing up. What was the world coming to?
He watched Rosato, tail tucked between his legs, collect the topcoats at the coatcheck window. Angelo's own topcoat was ruined; it was out in the alley, stuffed in one of the garbage cans, with Leroy Simmons's blood all over it.
When Rosato had ducked back out into the night, Angelo strutted over to the bar where Freddy Douglass was nervously drinking one Tom Collins after another.
Angelo put a hand on Freddy's shoulder and said, 'Step out into the alley with me, son.'
'Why, Mr. Scalise?'
'There's something I want you to see.'
Angelo didn't intend to kill Freddy. This was for purposes of education.
And to get the word spread about who owned the east side. Cousin Sal was right: It was important to be respected.
CHAPTER 8
'Eliot,' Mayor Burton said somberly, 'this is a matter of politics.'
Ness hated to hear the mayor say that.
What had endeared the mayor to him-from their first meeting over two years ago, in this same lavish, high- ceilinged office hung with huge tapestries of the Western Reserve's Indian days-was Burton's pledge that Ness would be given 'a free hand, without political interference.'
Even so, there had been an element of politics in Ness's job from day one. Burton had run only nominally as a Republican, stressing his status as an independent, and his city council was badly factionalized. Ness had been brought in, amidst much press fanfare about the 'G-man who got Capone,' to clean up the corrupt police department-and he had to do it quickly enough to embarrass budgetary support out of that surly city council. And he had, and it had worked.
But Ness had made his lack of interest in politics, even his contempt for it, clear to Burton. And Burton had promised that no investigation would be tainted by political considerations.
And the Mayor, who as the years and elections went by had become less and less independent and more and more aligned with the Republican party, had at times become impatient with his apolitical safety director. When Ness threw his Burton-cultivated publicity value behind Frank Cullitan, a Democrat, running for re-election as county prosecutor, Burton said not a negative word. The mayor knew what a valuable ally Cullitan was to Ness; but Ness knew that this had nonetheless been an embarrassment to Burton.
Still, neither the mayor nor his safety director could ignore certain political realities. Hard times and tight budgets had made it necessary to create a slush fund to help support Ness's investigative work-a slush fund created by prominent merchants and industrialists and other city fathers.
On a few instances, these financial 'angels' had presented Burton and Ness with a bill they dared not leave unpaid- notably last summer, hushing up the identity of the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run to keep from embarrassing a prominent Cleveland family. Ness had gone along with this, but had felt compromised ever since.
Nonetheless, Ness had great respect for Burton. A sturdy, wedge-shaped man in his early fifties, Burton had a broad brow and regular features and prematurely white hair; he cared little about his personal appearance and even now wore a fairly rumpled, off-the-rack charcoal suit and wrinkled blue tie. His dark-circled eyes gave him a vaguely unhealthy, even sinister look, but his smile was winning.
Lawyer, war hero, family man, Burton was a hell of a good mayor, and a hell of a good man. But he was becoming a hell of a politician, too, and that disappointed Ness.
'I understand this fellow Hollis came to see you,' Burton said.
'Yes he did.'
'And he offered to help you in your numbers racket investigation?'
'That's right.'
'And you turned him down.'
Ness shifted in the hard wood chair. 'I didn't make a deal with him, if you call that 'turning him down.' He wanted an assurance from me that I'd allow the numbers racket to flourish on the east side, once it was back in Negro hands.'
Burton thought that over; his black eyebrows under the white hair made for a sterner look than he possibly intended. But that look made Ness uncomfortable.
Nervously, Burton plucked a big black Havana from a wooden humidor on his massive oak desk; he fired up the cigar and waved it like a wand. 'Well, what's your goal? To stamp out the numbers racket, or to dismantle the Mayfield Road gang?'
'The latter,' Ness shrugged. 'I'm not naive enough to think that the numbers racket is ever going to disappear from the Negro district.'
'There are those,' Burton said calmly, 'who feel the numbers are a harmless diversion for a people who can use some hope in their lives. Betting a penny or two seems innocuous enough.'
This line of reasoning bored Ness, who said, 'I'm not interested in the morality or immorality of gambling.'
Burton pointed with the cigar. 'You're only interested in controlling the criminal element that illegal gambling necessarily attracts.'
'Right.'
'Just as you were never a supporter of Prohibition, when you were the country's most celebrated Prohibition agent. You were merely upholding the law, and attempting to curb the criminal gangs.'
'Right. I'm not exactly a teetotaler myself, as you well know. Is there a point you're making that's eluding me, Your Honor?'
Burton sighed. 'It's simply this: You know and I know that if we get rid of the Mayfield Road gang's influence over the numbers racket, we're not going to make a top priority out of cracking down on the Negro racketeers that take over.'
'Well…'
