Angelo posted Greene on the stairwell door. He sent Berns to the other end of the hall, cautioning both men not to create a crossfire if any gunplay broke out. Then Ange led the Keenans down the hallway to room 514. Harry, like Ange, was hauling a tin tool kit. Carefully, quietly, both men set their tool kits on the floor, snapped them open, and withdrew guns. Harry took out two nine-millimeter Brownings, kept one, and gave one to his skeletal brother Sam; Ange held his Colts, the. 45 and the. 38, in either hand, a regular two-gun plumber. With nods, he positioned Harry and Sam on either side of the door, their backs to the cement wall.
Whispering, just mouthing the words really, he told them, 'Follow me.'
Then Ange raised his foot and kicked the door in with one try, knocking the fucker off its hinges.
He bulled through, into a barely furnished living room, and, seeing a figure in a chair by a window with its back turned, he began shooting with both hands. Harry and Sam Keenan burst into the room and followed Ange's lead, bullets chewing up the sparse second-hand furnishings and punching holes in newly plastered walls and shattering the glass of windows that overlooked the grassy courtyard. The sound bounced off the hard plastered walls, flattening but not muting it; the din was deafening. The air filled with cordite and smoke and powdered plaster from the walls.
It was all over in a matter of seconds.
The three men stood flat-footed for a moment, watching the store-window dummy in the English suit tumble out of the chair, shot to shit.
From an adjoining room at left, possibly the kitchen, Eliot Ness emerged, with his own. 38 in hand; from a room at the right, possibly a bedroom, Toussaint Johnson came out with a shiny silver revolver in either hand. Angelo was not the only two-gun cowboy in this corral.
'Just drop them,' Ness said.
'I know you,' Johnson said, his eyes narrowing, his nostrils flaring, pointing accusingly first at Sam and then at Harry Keenan with each of the silver weapons.
At once Angelo and the two Keenans knew exactly who Johnson was and what he meant: That this was the Negro detective who had been at the scene of the murder of Rufus Murphy; the man who had in fact pursued Sam Keenan through Murphy's backyard on that violent night in 1933. In a flash all three men knew that they were facing the black cop whose friend they had killed.
So nobody dropped their gun.
Instead the Keenans stepped forward to fire at Johnson, faces taut with desperation, but Johnson beat them to it; he was screaming with rage as he fixed both those silver revolvers simultaneously, aiming one at Harry and one at Sam, who were on either side of the stunned Angelo, punching a hole through the chest of Sam and another through the forehead of Harry, whose head came apart like a melon. Out of the comer of Ange's left eye he saw most of the inside of Harry's head go splat against the wall, like a mudball flung by a kid, a bloody gray mess sliding down the plaster wall.
Ange turned tail and ran.
But in the hall, down at their respective ends, both Greene and Berns were in the custody of workmen-or cops dressed as workmen, anyway.
There was nothing else Ange could do: He shot Greene in the head and the cop had a dead guy in his arms and brains in his face when Ange rushed past, rocketing down the stairs.
'Scalise'
The voice echoing down the stairwell was one he recognized: that fucker Ness. Ange kept running; three steps at a time. Behind him he could hear the sound of somebody hurtling down the stairs, the footsteps on top of each other, applause-like.
That fucker Ness.
He could stop and shoot it out, but better to get outside, where there were nigger babies playing and the cops wouldn't dare shoot. His heart was pounding against his chest when he reached the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. Ness was right behind him, a flight behind him-but if he could get through the lobby, shoot his way through if there were cops there, to the outside, to the truck or even to where he could run between buildings and out to the street, take a hostage if he had to, some little darkie he could haul around like a rag doll, then he was home free…
The lobby was still empty and he ran out into the cool afternoon, a gun in either hand, and something hit him in the chest. He stopped dead in his tracks.
Literally.
Will Garner, dressed like a carpenter, stood over Angelo's corpse, smoke curling out his revolver's barrel.
Ness was out the door a moment later, and knelt over the body, felt for a pulse in the neck. Sighed and stood.
'Right through the pump,' Ness said.
'I know,' Garner said blandly.
Toussaint Johnson bolted out the door, stopped dead in his tracks-figuratively-and looked down at Angelo's body.
'Who nailed him?' Johnson said, emotionlessly.
Ness nodded toward Garner.
'Nice goin',' Johnson said. To Ness he said, 'Sorry it got out of hand up there.'
'Not your fault,' Ness said, putting his own gun back in its shoulder holster. 'They called it, not us.'
Johnson gestured upward with a thumb. 'Those boys I drilled upstairs-they're the triggers who hit Rufus Murphy, years ago. I recognized the skinny one.'
'The Keenan brothers,' Ness said, nodding. 'Purple Gang. Done a lot of freelance work over the years, including a hand in the St. Valentine's Day job, if rumor's right.'
'No shit,' Johnson said. He put his silver guns away and yawned. 'I could use a meal 'bout now.'
Ness just looked at him. Albert Curry, dressed in work clothes, came walking up, had a look at the corpse and smiled tightly.
'Rest for the wicked after all,' Curry said, quietly.
'Come on, fellas,' Johnson said. He grinned at Ness. 'I'm buyin'. Who's for gumbo?'
CHAPTER 18
Eliot Ness spent the morning of the first of May-a beautiful, sunny Monday-cooped up in court. And he didn't mind one bit.
Judge Hurd, presiding in the criminal branch of Common Pleas Court, refused to lower the $50,000-per-man bond under which the policy racketeers were being held at County Jail-except for Willie 'the Emperor' Rushing, of course, who rated $150,000. The various attorneys for the various defendants reiterated their mutual contention that the size of the bail was unconstitutional. But Judge Hurd completely backed up Judge Walther, who on Saturday had set the bail when the suspects to a man pleaded not guilty to extorting money by force from numbers-game operators.
All of that was first thing Monday morning; by mid-morning Ness was in another courtroom, watching the arraignment of Frank Hogey, the white policy king whose sleazy smugness had finally evaporated, Hogey, dressed in an expensively tailored suit but nervous, his hands twitching, lips trembling, listened glumly as his lawyer spoke on his behalf.
A less reliable judge than Hurd or Walther had slapped Hogey on the wrist with a fine, when Ness had made that big numbers haul the previous year. Today would be different.
Hogey, who'd been vacationing at Hot Springs, Arkansas, had surrendered himself over the weekend, at Central Jail, where he demanded to see Ness. The safety director, relaxing at his boathouse with Ev MacMillan, declined to drive into the city, but agreed to speak to Hogey on the phone.
'Mr. Ness,' Hogey said, his desperation unhidden. 'Couldn't we work something out? You said something about immunity, if I testified
