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  Murder by numbers

  ( Eliot Ness - 4 )

  Max Allan Collins

  Max Allan Collins

  Murder by numbers

  PROLOGUE

  MARCH 7, 1933

  CHAPTER 1

  Toussaint Johnson, a big loose-limbed man in a baggy light brown suit, the dark brown band of a shoulder holster cutting under a blood-red tie across a cobalt-blue shirt, looked headless in the black night. That was how black he was. Under a misshapen charcoal fedora, his kinky hair was cut back to the scalp and his face had a harsh, angular, African look; his dark-brown eyes, under deceptively sleepy hoods, were as piercing as a well-placed gunshot.

  Johnson, a detective working out of the so-called "Roaring" Third Precinct on Cleveland's east side, was ambling across 89th Street, having left his Chevy in the parking lot of the Antioch Baptist Church up the block. It was a pleasant, cool Monday night, approaching ten o'clock, and he was on his way to see Rufus Murphy, the numbers king.

  Fifty-five years old, fat and sassy, Rufus Murphy lived in a well-tended three-story yellow wood-frame house on the east side of this residential street. The Negroes who lived around here, on the edge of the white working-class neighborhood known as Hough, were primarily professionals-doctors, lawyers, teachers-but then Murphy was a professional of sorts himself.

  The numbers game-actually games, namely "policy" and "clearing house," known derisively in some quarters as "the nigger pool"-was big business in the black ghetto of Cleveland. Both policy and clearing house were illegal lottery games, the former based on a drawing of numbered balls from a rotating drum, the latter on the daily stock exchange numbers in the newspaper.

  An army of collectors, known more commonly as runners, solicited players among the denizens of black Cleveland, middle class and poverty stricken alike, giving them slips with their chosen numbers, keeping duplicate slips. Working for ten percent of what they collected, and tips from winners, the runners turned in their slips and cash to a controller. Each controller had charge of fifty or so runners, and kept five percent of the day's haul before turning the balance over to an operator, or "king," like Rufus Murphy, who was one of the Big Four numbers kings in the city.

  In black Cleveland, Murphy was anything but a criminal. Affable, approachable Murphy was a symbol of financial stability in the midst of the Depression. He owned taverns, restaurants, and a food market; he provided backing for other Negro entrepreneurs; he was a patron of local charities, setting up college scholarships for outstanding Negro students. Ministers, civic leaders, and politicians had reason to smile upon Rufus Murphy, whose pocketbook, after all, smiled on them. He-like the numbers game-was a community institution.

  In a few short years, Toussaint Johnson had become an institution in the Roaring Third, himself. Johnson was one of the city's three black detectives-out of a dozen colored cops total-and was tougher than a nickel steak and honest as a mother's love. He carried a custom-made nickel-plated. 38 with a six-inch barrel under either arm; it was said that a man once fainted at the sight of the shiny cannons. Thirty-four years old, Johnson was murder on purse snatchers, burglars, con men, and muggers; he was bloody murder on any whites working any racket on the black streets.

  He crossed the long, gently sloping lawn, past the neatly trimmed shrubbery hugging Murphy's house and went to the side door near the freestanding two-car garage at the end of a paved drive. He knocked once, sharp and hard, like a rifle shot. He waited. He did not knock again.

  Finally the door opened and Rufus Murphy, all five-foot-eight and two-hundred-fifty pounds of him, stood in the doorway. Murphy's freckled brown face was split in a wide smile in which several gold teeth winked; his head was round as a cantaloupe and just as bald. He was wearing a white apron over a dark green silk shirt, its sleeves rolled up to expose brown arms above catcher's-mitt hands on which several massive gold, diamond-set rings resided, including one bearing a garish Elks Lodge insignia; his pants were a shiny olive gabardine above square-toed yellow pigskin Florsheim bluchers.

  Spreading his arms like a pudgy messiah, Murphy said, 'Toussaint, my man, come in, come in…"

  He opened the door and Johnson lumbered in, taking off his hat.

  "Smells mighty fine," the detective said, glancing around the large modem red-and-white kitchen. Several pots and pans were steaming on the stove, but the enamel-topped table, partly covered by a red-and-white checkered cloth, was already set for two with two covered serving dishes and an overflowing platter of cornbread.

  "I sent Mamie to bed," Rufus said, referring to his wife of twenty-odd years, an ex-showgirl who was pleasantly plump now. He seemed proud of himself. "I cooked this mahse'f."

  "I hear you was the best cook the Santa Fe Railroad ever had," Johnson conceded with a mild smile.

  Rufus gestured for Johnson to sit down, which the detective did. The pudgy numbers boss uncovered the dishes and said, "He'p yourself, son," and Johnson filled his plate with well-seasoned boiled collard greens, okra, and pig's feet from the larger of the two dishes, and steaming black-eyed peas from the other, then speared a hunk of cornbread off the platter.

  From the refrigerator Rufus got two sweating bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, opened them both, gave one to Johnson. Rufus immediately drained his beer, then popped himself open another.

  The two men sat and ate and drank in silence for several minutes.

  "Done yourself proud, Mr. Murphy."

  "Rufus, son. After all these years, ain't we friends enough for first names?"

  Johnson swallowed a slimy bite of okra, savoring it before saying, "This is business. Your hospitality is 'preciated. But first names ain't for business."

  Rufus sighed. His muddy brown eyes were bloodshot. He wiped a piece of cornbread through his black-eyed peas and munched it almost absently, saying, with his mouth full, "So it's a business call, then?"

  "You know why I asked to see you."

  "It ain't payday, is it?"

  "That unkind, Mr. Murphy. And uncalled for."

  Rufus shook his head; he seemed sad. "You're right. Sure I know why you're here. But maybe I'm not a worryin' man like you is, Toussaint."

  "I'm not worried, Mr. Murphy. It ain't my feet that's to the fire."

  The features of Rufus's face clenched like a fist. "The great 'Two-Gun' Toussaint, afraid of some goddamn dago pissant bastards… it ain't like you."

  Johnson didn't flinch at the insult. He said, "I ain't afraid. And I ain't worried. But you ought to be."

  Last week, a quartet of white hoodlums, led by Little Angelo Scalise himself, broke up a Murphy-backed policy drawing, brandishing revolvers, confiscating the small drum-shaped container and its seventy-eight consecutively numbered balls, terrorizing the handful of hired help and the hundred or more patrons.

  "Tell your fat boss," Little Angelo had said, "he can get his equipment back by seein' Black Sal."

  Black Sal was white. Or dago white, anyway: Salvatore Lombardi, one of the big boys of the Mayfield Road mob, who controlled bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution everywhere in Cleveland but the black ghetto.

  "So fuckin' what?" Rufus said, talking through the fog of the steaming dishes between them. "Little Angelo and his tally goons been making ugly noises for months. Nothing come of it. This ain't their side of town. They don't understand it."

  "They don't got to understand nothin'. All they got to do is get rid of you and hire some willin' niggers."

  Rufus stood up and slammed his hand flat on the table; the dishes rattled. "They ain't gettin' rid of me. I ain't goin' nowhere!"

  "When the big bell rings," Johnson said calmly, nibbling at a piece of pig's foot, "all our black asses is up for grabs."

  Rufus
was trembling; whether with rage or fear, Johnson couldn't tell. "What are you sayin'? They gon' try and kill old Rufus?" His laugh was as harsh as it was unconvincing. "Bunch of candy-ass paddies gon' come to my part of town and play that game?"

  "Why not? Mr. Murphy. Please. Sit down. Enjoy this fine feast you made. I ain't the enemy."

  Rufus swallowed, seeming embarrassed suddenly, and he sighed and sat. "What are they doin' here, anyway? The numbers ain't their game. It ain't never been a white man's game."

  "I don't know about that. My mama said the Spanish conjured it."

  "The Spanish ain't white."

  A smile cracked Johnson's African mask of a face. "Whiter than us, but so what? The wops are movin' in. Prohibition is yesterday. Today it's a new racket they need." Johnson chuckled. "Ever since the income-tax boys took notice of your pal Holstein in Harlem, the world knows just how high off the hog you policy kings is livin'."

  A forgotten piece of cornbread in his hand, Rufus studied his half-eaten plate of collard greens, okra, and pig's feet like a gypsy lady trying to divine a winning number from her crystal ball. Without looking up, he said, "They sent me a message."

  Johnson looked up from his food, sharply. "What sort of message?"

  Rufus got up, got himself another beer, opened it, drank half of it in one gulp, then sat again and winced as he said, "Frank Hogey sent one of his boys over to see me."

  Hogey was the only white among black Cleveland's four policy kings. Most of his staff was colored.

  With a weary shake of the head, his eyes glittering with anger, Rufus said, "Hogey's gonna go in with Lombardi. As a partner. I been offered the same deal."

  "Which is what?"

  "Black Sal gets twenty-five percent."

  "For doin' what?"

  "For doin' nothin'?" Rufus squeezed the piece of cornbread in his hand and yellow fragments of it popped from his sudden fist like teeth. "Hunky bastards. Why should I?"

  Johnson shrugged. "Make a counter offer, why don't you? Offer 'em ten percent."

  "Why the fuck should I?"

  "They got the power, man. They got City Hall sewed up tighter than Dick's hatband. They got all them white cops in their pocket and more tally torpedoes than Carter's got pills."

  "What the hell am I payin' you for?"

  Johnson looked at him coldly. "I give you what protection I can. I can't protect you against the will of God and I can't protect you against this."

  Rufus was almost sputtering now. "What the hell does Councilman Raney have to say about it?"

  "He says you better play along."

  "Shit, man! They got Raney in their pocket, too? Shit."

  This disparagement of Councilman Eustice Raney made Johnson bristle. Raney was Johnson's political godfather. The two men had both served in the 372nd Regiment in the Great War; every man in the 372nd was black, and every one had either been killed or wounded in the Argonne in September 1918. Raney, a successful lawyer who became the city's first Negro assistant police prosecutor in 1924, had been good to Johnson and other survivors of the 372nd.

  "You know better than that," Johnson said, in sharp reply to Murphy questioning the councilman's loyalty. "But Raney's one of three black sailors sittin' in a stone white boat. They got some pull in the Republican party, 'cause of the colored vote, yes; but do you really think three colored councilmen can do doodley-squat when the Mayfield Road mob is in the game?"

  Rufus rubbed his face with a cloth napkin, which he wadded up and discarded contemptuously; a tip of the napkin found its way into the pot of greens, okra, and pig's feet.

  He pushed away from the table, stood, and said, "It's all talk. Them guineas ain't gonna find the Roarin' Third open to white folks. Let 'em try to muscle in. We'll send 'em all back to Murray Hill with their pale asses bloody and drag-gin'."

  Johnson had finished his food. He took a final swig of the Pabst, which was still cold. The conversation, and the meal, had been brief.

  The detective rose and said, "I wish I could help, Mr. Murphy. I truly do."

  Rufus warmed to that and came around and put a hand on the taller man's shoulder; he squeezed. "You a good friend, Toussaint. I know you always do your best."

  The cop's hard features went momentarily soft; he felt something tender for this fat little man who'd done so much for him and the community.

  He said, "I'm givin' you good advice, Mr. Murphy. Accommodate these white boys. Render under Caesar that which is his and you'll stay a king yo'self."

  Rufus sighed and smiled and shook his head sadly, "I stopped servin' white folks a long time ago, son, when I quit the Santa Fe."

  "You still in the United States, though," Johnson reminded him, gently, as they stood near the door.

  The fat policy king laughed softly and patted the younger man on the back. "What's your hurry? Mamie made some pecan pie yesterday; they's a couple slabs left."

  "No thanks, Mr. Murphy."

  "For Christsakes, will you call me Rufus! Business talk is over."

  Johnson smiled; it was a surprisingly warm smile for such a hard- and cold-looking man. "Sure, Rufus. I'll see you next week. Payday."

  Rufus smiled on one side of his face. "You never miss a one of those, do you, son? Here, I'll walk you out."

  The night had gotten colder; the sky was as black as shutting your eyes. Johnson folded his arms and gathered himself in. But Rufus seemed to drink the chill in like another cold beer. They moved slowly down the gentle slope of Murphy's driveway, the small fat man gesturing as they walked and talked.

  "White folks think the policy game is gambling," Rufus said, laughing softly. "But we knows better."

  "We do?"

  "It's a religion, son." Even in the dark Murphy's gold teeth gleamed. "It's mystery. It's lucky numbers. It's hot numbers. It's taking the numbers offa the license plates of a car that done rear-ended you. It's the number off your streetcar transfer that suddenly stares up at you and says play me, I is the one. It's asking a chile for a number… children are lucky, ya know, they're best ones to give you winnin' gigs." He stopped and laughed heartily, hands on his hips, as merry a king as Ole King Cole. Then he extended an arm and spread the fingers of one big hand, as if assaying his dominion. "It's a dream you have at night, it's the dream book that tells you what the dream means in the mornin', it's gypsy fortune tellers, it's the date the President died…"

  Johnson smiled a little, amused despite himself. "You love it, don't you, Rufus?"

  "The numbers is a way of life," Rufus said, smiling, but serious. "And it ain't got a blessed motherfuckin' thing to do with white men."

  "Money," said Johnson, dispensing some folk wisdom of his own, "attracts whites like flies on shit. That is the surest bet in town, Rufus."

  Rufus shook his head, but his smile didn't disappear. "You got no poetry in your soul, Toussaint. You got your papa's business head, but you ain't got a drop of your mama's poetry."

  "Maybe so." Johnson put on his hat, tipped it. "Goodnight, Rufus."

  "Good-night, son."

  The policy king began to trudge up the gentle incline of his paved driveway, while Johnson paused for the easy flow of traffic to let him cross. He stepped onto the opposite sidewalk, glancing back with affection at the fat little policy king, who was approaching the bushes near his garage.

  An explosion of flame burst from the bushes, like a bizarre blossom, and Murphy's left arm flew off his body and smacked against the side of the garage, the hand slapping the wood. Then the limb dropped to the cement like a log. Blood geysered and Murphy tottered, like a wind-up toy winding down, and turned questioningly, drunkenly toward the bushes, covering insufficiently with his right hand the bloody fountain spraying from his shattered left shoulder where his arm had been, and a dark shape rose from behind the shrubs and the second shotgun blast blew a hole in Rufus Murphy's chest and knocked him down, flat on his back.

  Toussaint Johnson, the instant he'd seen the blossom of gunfire and heard the shotgun's roar, ha
d crossed his hands before him and yanked the twin silver revolvers from his shoulder holsters. His usually impassive face became another face, one of bulging eyes and flaring nostrils and a huge hole of a mouth. Screaming in wordless rage, he bolted across the street and up the lawn and began firing, one gun at a time, like something out of a Western movie, blowing the night apart with his gunfire. Rufus was falling, but the assassin had already leaped from behind the bushes and was cutting through the space between the house and the garage into the backyard.

  Johnson did not pause at Murphy's staring lifeless body, though it was jerking from reflex and spraying blood, speckling Johnson as he ran past, the detective nearly slipping in the already pooled blood. The assassin, thin as a blade, was knifing through the short backyard to the driveway of the adjacent house behind, where another vehicle waited, a black Ford sedan; both the assassin and the driver were white, that much Toussaint, even in the dark, on the run, could tell. Dressed in black, black fedora pulled down, the assassin carried the shotgun in his left hand like a relay racer's baton, and now twisted around to shoot a right-hand revolver at Toussaint, who hit the dirt, bullets flying overhead, crunching into the wood of the house behind. He went to return fire but the assassin was climbing into the rider's side of the sedan and the door shut just as Toussaint's next three thunderous shots puckered the metal door.

  The car squealed away and was kicking up gravel as it made its turn toward the street by the time Toussaint was standing in the drive, ready to fire again.

  He had missed the license plate, but earlier had caught a glimpse of the man's white face, a ghostly white male witch of a face with a pointed chin and a thin sharp nose; the pulled-down fedora obscured the rest.

  Behind him he heard screaming.

  A woman screaming. Mamie, Toussaint thought. Rufus's wife, wakened by the gunfire.

  He ran back to Murphy, and indeed his dead friend was in the arms of his beautiful portly widow, her white nightgown a blotter of crimson from the still-flowing blood. Toussaint stood helpless in the drive, the two fabled silver revolvers loose in the hands of his dangling arms, pointing impotently, limply down.