BULLET PROOF (Eliot Ness) Read online

  REASON TO KILL

  "I think Big Jim and Little Jim were behind it," Wild said.

  "Yeah," Ness said. "The two Jims. And I'd bet a year's pay that Harry Gibson, their out-of-work, one-man goon squad, is wielding that tommy gun for "em."

  Wild lit up another Lucky. "What will you do?"

  "All I can do is put them in jail," Ness said, digging his hands into his topcoat pockets. "Or hope they resist arrest when I come to pick them up."

  "So you have a reason to kill them?"

  Ness smiled faintly. "I already have a reason," he said. "It's an excuse I'm looking for."

  Eliot Ness novels by Max Allan Collins:

  The Dark City

  Butcher’s Dozen

  Bullet Proof

  Murder by the Numbers

  BULLET

  PROOF

  AN

  ELIOT NESS

  MYSTERY

  MAX ALLAN COLLINS

  SPEAKING VOLUMES, LLC

  NAPLES, FLORIDA

  2011

  BULLET PROOF

  Copyright © 1989 by MAX ALLAN COLLINS

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  ISBN 978-1-61232-033-5

  This novel is dedicated to the memory of

  my friend and Dick Tracy collaborator

  John Locher

  1961-1986

  This is a novel based upon events in the life of Eliot Ness. Although the historical incidents in this novel are portrayed more or less accurately (as much as the passage of time, and contradictory source material, will allow), fact, speculation, and fiction are freely mixed here; historical personages exist side by side with composite characters and wholly fictional ones—all of whom act and speak at the author's whim.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  TWO

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  THREE

  CHAPTER 20

  A Tip of the Fedora

  ONE

  July 27-September 13, 1937

  CHAPTER 1

  Eliot Ness stepped out on the balcony of his office and surveyed the angry mob below, facing what was any public official's worst nightmare with an expression as placid as a priest's.

  Despite the sweltering late afternoon, they swarmed the City Hall sidewalk, perhaps fifteen hundred men and women, strikers from the steel mills, many with their wives in tow, children too, jammed together tighter than their anger. A banner said: THE POLICE CAN'T BREAK THIS STRIKE! Another said: BRING ON YOUR MILITIA! Someone spotted Ness, out on his perch, and a wave of outrage rolled across an already turbulent sea of humanity.

  Ness nodded at them and smiled faintly, waving, popelike, as if the booing had been cheers, then ducked back inside. His smile disappeared; the sound of displeasure behind him—muffled now as he shut the balcony doors—did not.

  Cleveland's Director of Public Safety was, at thirty-four, the youngest such officer in any major city in the United States. But right now he felt anything but young. He moved to one of the conference tables that took up most of the floor space of his ample office, a masculine room of dark wood and pebbled glass, where three men stood, their eyes on him like magnets on metal. He sat on the edge of the table, his casual posture at odds with his crisply tailored, double-breasted brown suit with its green-and-yellow striped knit tie and flourish of a tan silk breast-pocket handkerchief. His boyish face seemed devoid of any thought or emotion, save for an inch-long crease between his dark eyebrows.

  Earlier today more than one thousand steel strikers, blocking entrances to Republic Steel's Corrigan-McKinney plant in the industrial Flats, had done battle with one hundred reserves from the Cleveland police department. Bricks had flown, billy clubs flailed.

  Ness brushed a comma of dark hair off his forehead and said, "I'd like a complete status report."

  The three men pulled their eyes off Ness and bounced worried glances off each other.

  One of the men was Chief of Police George Matowitz, a heavy-set six-footer in his mid-fifties with a wide, florid face, tiny blue eyes darting behind wire-frame glasses; the chief's uniform was, as usual, freshly pressed, his silver badge gleaming on his broad chest.

  "How can you send my boys out there without guns?" Matowitz said, more confused than angry. "I've got two men in the hospital."

  "How many strikers are in the hospital?"

  "Six," Matowitz said, shrugging.

  Until Ness came along a year and a half ago and began shaking up the police department, weeding out the rotten apples, raising the qualifications for cops, ending the patronage system, Matowitz had been riding his desk, waiting for retirement. Not a corrupt cop, in fact known for his doggedness and bravery in his younger days as a detective, Matowitz had for years been content to look the other way while high-ranking officers made themselves rich and the department a joke.

  But ever since Ness rattled his cage, Chief Matowitz had been taking a more active role; if less than a go-getter, he had been more than cooperative.

  He reminded Ness of that fact: "I've backed you all the way, Mr. Ness. Through hell and high water . . . your policies aren't exactly prized by every cop on the department, you know."

  "They're not alone," Ness said, nodding toward the murmur of disapproval beyond the balcony doors. Smiling faintly again, he added, "I guess the honeymoon is over."

  "Hell," Robert Chamberlin said wryly, thumbs looped in his vest pockets, "I'm beginning to question the marriage."

  A lanky but broad-shouldered man in his late thirties, Chamberlin was the safety director's executive assistant, a lawyer handpicked by Ness to handle both administrative and investigative duties. His oblong, sharp-featured face was dominated by a shovel jaw and a tiny black mustache, and his dark hair was slicked back on a high forehead.

  "The objective of this job," Ness told his assistant gently, "isn't winning popularity contests."

  "Isn't it, Eliot?" Chamberlin asked, not so gently. "I'd say your popularity in this city has a great bearing on what you can get away with."

  The other two men said nothing; Chamberlin was, after all, the only one of them who was comfortable calling the safety director by his first name.

  "Go on," Ness said.

  "You've got a good reputation in this town. People know you aren't afraid to throw crooked cops in jail, or to buck the local politicos. You kick doors down and collar bad guys; you—"

  "Make your point, Bob."

  "The point is, nobody's dead yet. Look at what's happening in strikes in other cities right now. I think you can keep the violence here down to a minimum, but you need to get into the game personally."

  "Go out there to Corrigan-McKinney myself, you mean."

  "Exactly."

  "Then you approve of my directive."

  "Limiting our boys to nightsticks and tear gas? No guns? You're damned right I approve."

  Matowitz was shaking his head like a bear ducking bees. "No, no, no," he said. "You have to take a stand. You got to side with our boys."

  "And which side are our boys on, Chief?"

  "Well . . . we got to back Republic Steel, Mr. Ness."

  "Not the strikers? Aren't they citi
zens?"

  "Well, of course they are. But they're citizen's breaking the law!"

  "Albert," Ness said, turning to the third man, "did you look into that union-hall incident?"

  "Yes, I did," Albert Curry said. "And it's vandalism, all right."

  Curry, a pale, cherubic man in his late twenties, was a detective assigned to the safety director's office. He represented, to Ness, the sort of young, honest, well-trained, idealistic officer that Cleveland, and every big city, needed, if police departments were to be dragged screaming and kicking into the twentieth century.

  "Then the steel workers' headquarters really was turned upside down, as their people say?"

  "Oh yes," Curry said. "Broken windows, smashed dishes, overturned tables, cracked chairs, shattered lamps—"

  "And they didn't do it themselves, obviously."

  "No. They say it was 'hired gangsters and company police.'"

  "If that's true," Ness said, gazing significantly at Matowitz, "then Republic's breaking the law, too."

  "I don't know the facts," Matowitz said, reddening, "but I can understand a company hiring on a little outside help for security reasons."

  "Security is one thing," Ness said. "Goons are another."

  "If you're intending to take the side of the strikers—"

  "I intend to take the side of the city," Ness said. He checked his watch. "If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I have a meeting with the mayor."

  Curry and Chamberlin nodded and took seats at one of the conference tables; but Matowitz trailed along after Ness, saying, "It's going to be very dangerous, when night falls. You have to let me arm my boys."

  "No," Ness said. Their footsteps echoed off the marble floor of the open hallway beyond the railing of which rose the City Hall atrium. Standing at attention, just outside the mayor's office, were eight uniformed, armed police officers. Ness glanced at Matowitz, looking for an explanation.

  "I've appointed these men the Mayor's Guard. In a situation this dangerous, I thought it wise to—"

  "They're not needed, Chief." Ness turned to the cops and said, "Go downstairs. You can keep an eye on the entrances, if you like, but don't go out on the street. You'd just incite a riot."

  "What in hell do you call what's going on out there now?" Matowitz said huffily, gesturing toward the outside.

  "I call it a peaceful assemblage, but we could turn it into a riot if we wanted to. Do you want to, Chief?"

  "Well . . . of course not."

  Ness put his hand on Matowitz's shoulder. "I know it's hard to have your own in the hospital. But don't forget: that's largely what those people out there are upset about, themselves."

  Matowitz sighed and stayed out in the hall, going to the railing to watch his Mayor's Guard disperse below, while Ness moved through the outer office, getting a nod from the mayor's male secretary to go on in.

  Harold Burton was an unpretentious sort of man to be working out of an office called, aptly, the Tapestry Room. Five huge tapestries depicting the Indian days of the Western Reserve draped the finely detailed, oak-paneled walls; the ceiling was high and ornately-sculptured plaster; a massive wood-and-stone fireplace provided a mantel for a multitude of framed family photos. Burton was, after all, a homey sort, devoted to his wife and children, a man who looked more like a farmer than a big-city mayor.

  A powerfully built, wedge-shaped man of fifty years and medium height, Burton's broad brow and regular features were made memorable only by dark-circled eyes; he looked almost haunted today, and, typically, borderline disheveled: his brown suit rumpled his dark tie food-stained.

  He stood behind his desk, gesturing for his safety director to sit in one of four chairs opposite him; then the mayor sat as well, saying, "We're going to be joined in about five minutes by representatives of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. Any objection?"

  "None," Ness said. He sat slightly slumped in the chair, legs crossed, ankle on knee.

  "You've held the violence to a minimum thus far," said Burton, "and you're to be commended. But I'm afraid if we can't get these fellas to listen to reason, we're in for some bloodshed."

  "There doesn't have to be."

  "There already has been. Eight people in the hospital."

  "And they may have company, before the days out. But there's not going to be any snooting."

  Burton nodded slowly. "No guns. You think your people can control the situation that way?"

  "Yes."

  "I know someone who disagrees."

  "And who would that be?"

  "Girdler."

  Ness laughed mirthlessly. "Republic's chairman. When did Mr. Girdler make this observation?"

  "Not five minutes ago." Burton gestured to one of several phones on his desk. "He didn't come calling, he called... he declined to go wading through the thousand or two folks expressing their discontent out on our sidewalk."

  "What was Girdler's complaint, exactly?"

  "That we're too soft. That you are too soft."

  "Oh really. Excuse me if I bust out crying."

  Burton grinned as he withdrew a big black Havana from a plain wooden box on his desk; he lit up the cigar, puffing, enjoying it like a hungry man would a banquet, and said, "He thinks it's insane for your men to go into battle unarmed."

  "Maybe I don't particularly crave a battle."

  His grin settling into a vaguely sarcastic smile, Burton gestured with his cigar and said, "He wants to bring in the National Guard. He's been talking to Governor Davey."

  "Really. I would think that would be your prerogative."

  "I would think the same."

  "And are you?"

  "Going to call in the militia? No. Not as long as things stay under control."

  Ness straightened in the chair. "There are people on both sides who would like to see this escalate into a war, you know."

  The intercom on Burton's desk buzzed, and his secretary informed him of the arrival of the SWOC representatives.

  "Send them in," Burton said, reluctantly putting out his cigar.

  Three men entered. One of them, a stocky, world-weary man of perhaps forty, wore a suit and tie; the other two wore work shirts and slacks, one of them lean, hawk-faced, dark, the other burly, square-headed, fair. The latter two, the working men, glanced dourly about the high-ceilinged, ostentatious chamber as if wondering whether to feel intimidation or mistrust. All three planted themselves just behind the chairs opposite Burton's desk, putting a wall between them and Burton and Ness, who stood to greet them.

  "I'm George Owens," the stocky man said, gesturing to a hand-painted tie with a sunset on it. His voice was rough and so were his features, gray eyes squinting skeptically out of pouches of flesh. "I'm from the national office of the SWOC. John L. Lewis himself sent me in to advise and counsel these men."

  Republic Steel would characterize Owens as an "outside agitator," Ness knew; and perhaps he was.

  Burton said, "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Owens," and extended his hand.

  Owens swallowed carefully, like the food-taster for an unpopular king, then stepped forward, past the barricade of the chairs, and shook Burton's hand.

  "This is Eliot Ness," Burton said, "the Director of Public Safety."

  "Mr. Owens," Ness said, and nodded, and offered his hand.

  Owens shook it, firmly, looking at Ness with open suspicion. The hand was rough from manual labor, Ness noted; this meant Owens was not an attorney, which was a relief.

  "These gentlemen represent the local strike committee," Owens said. 'Alex Ballin and Harold Selby."

  The two men stepped around the chairs, awkwardly, to shake hands with Ness and Burton, and then Burton asked them to sit down. Ballin, the hawk-faced one seemed ill at ease and said little, though he was obviously bubbling with anger. Selby was less stoic, but just as angry.

  "We want to know," Owens said, "whether your administration is on the side of Republic Steel, or intends to be fair to its citizens who are trying to protect their rights to their jo
bs."

  "The latter, of course," Burton said.

  Owens paid no attention to that, pressing on. "We demand an immediate investigation of Republic Steel for importing strike breakers. We demand that the police department shut down Corrigan-McKinney because Republic Steel has violated the law."

  "No," Burton said flatly. "I have no right to do that."

  Selby, sitting forward, biting off words, said, "Republic is importing scabs from Pennsylvania, Canada, and God-knows-where. Is that fair?"

  "Certainly not," Burton said. "But I'm powerless to prevent that. Personally, I think the work should go to Clevelanders. . . but I doubt you feel much brotherly love toward our local 'scabs,' either."

  Selby was almost shouting now. "Your cops destroyed our picket tent this morning, smashed a radio—"

  Burton held two fingers in the air and said, "I have two police officers in the hospital." Then he raised three fingers on either hand. "You have six strikers similarly indisposed. What do you propose we do to keep the casualties at this level?"

  "You attacked us!" Selby said.

  Owens patted the air hard, a gesture at once calming and impatient, and Selby's lips tightened into a line; then Owens looked sharply at Burton and said, "Your cops waded into our pickets with billy clubs. Pushed our people off the picket line, forced them down Broadway, way the hell away from the plant entrances."

  Ness said, "Strikers were hurling bricks at trucks and cars taking non-strikers into the plant. My understanding is that a mounted police officer rode into the crowd, going after a picket brandishing a brick, and was knocked off his horse. That's when the other officers 'waded' in."

  Hawk-faced Ballin spoke up: "Those bricks were thrown by men planted among us by the company."

  Ness raised an eyebrow. "My assistant, Robert Chamberlin, was down there this morning. He was threatened by strikers with bricks; and they were local people. This violence cuts both ways, gentlemen."

  "What do you propose to do about it?" Owens said coldly.

  "Anyone throwing bricks at cars will be arrested," Ness said, shrugging. "If it's somebody the company planted, then I guess we'll find out."