MURDER BY THE NUMBERS (Eliot Ness) Page 14

  Katzi was the only colored reporter in Cleveland; true, he was basically just a stringer, writing vignettes for the editorial pages of the News. But it was a singular distinction none-the-less, and he was currently working on the WPA writers project, writing the history of Cleveland for the Ohio guidebook.

  Ness edged into the final row of seats at the rear of the theater; Katzi followed and Wild followed him. The three men sat and Wild asked Katzi if it was okay to smoke in here.

  "It is if you offer me one," Katzi said, and Wild did.

  Wild lit Katzi's Lucky, and asked, "How's the WPA writing comin'?"

  "Beats diggin' sewers for 'em," he said. "Last year this time, I was dredging creeks in the snow and ice, out in the suburbs. As WPA gigs go, this one's a plum."

  "You going to write a paragraph on Karamu in the guidebook?"

  "Naw. I'm doin' a little piece on it for Howard."

  N. R. Howard was the editor of the News.

  Wild lit his own Lucky. "How's the prison novel comin'?"

  "Done. Showin' it around, without much luck. So, Samuel. Is that why you wanted to get together? To ask me about my career? Oh, hey, thanks for the gloves, man. I'm makin' a livin' writing, but just barely. A buck a piece for these damn 'vignettes' don't go very far."

  Wild reached in his coat pocket and withdrew a ten-dollar bill. "How far will this go?"

  Katzi grinned, his eyes flickered. "The meter is runnin'."

  Ness said, "Was Clifford Willis a dirty cop?"

  Katzi shifted in his seat and grinned lazily at the safety director. "That depends on how you define dirty."

  "Why don't you define it for me, then."

  "In your way of thinking, Willis was dirty. Where I come from, the numbers is a part of the way things are, and so is paying off a cop for protection. But, yeah. He was on the pad, to the numbers racketeers."

  "Scalise and Lombardi, you mean."

  Katzi blew out smoke; up on the stage the actors were emoting, their voices echoing like an insistent conscience.

  "That's recent history," Katzi said, with an easy smile.

  "Go back a few years, when the Emperor opened his first policy house. Before that, Rufus Murphy had the only policy house in Cleveland, the Green House. He made sweet money, Rufus did—that illiterate son-of-a-bitch sent his daughter to school in Paris."

  Ness was listening politely, but Wild could tell he wanted Katzi to get to the heart of things.

  But Katzi was a storyteller and couldn't be hurried. "So Emperor Rushing, who was running gambling houses up till then, sent for a pal in Chicago name of Cateye, who knew the policy racket, and they opened up the Tijuana House. After the Emperor opened his house and was real successful, a lot of colored hustlers, gamblers, pimps, club owners, businessmen got in on the act and opened houses of their own. The policy racket was booming."

  "Which means," Ness said, "the cops working the Negro district went on the take."

  "It sure does. And Willis was working that beat as a patrolman."

  Ness sighed. "What about Toussaint Johnson?"

  "What about him?"

  "Was he on the pad?"

  Katzi's eyes narrowed shrewdly. "I understand Toussaint is workin' with you these days."

  "That's right."

  "So do you really want to know the answer to that question?"

  Ness said nothing. Then he nodded.

  "Well," Katzi said, with a big grin, "I don't think I'll answer it, anyway. Toussaint is a hell of a guy—and I can tell you this, he is not on the pad, today. He hates those Italian mobsters like fire hates water. He is not on the pad. You dig? You understand?"

  "Yes," Ness said.

  "But Willis was," Wild said. "On the pad."

  Katzi nodded emphatically. "When policy was booming, and the alky mob got Repeal dropped in their ugly laps, that's when Black Sam and Little Angelo muscled in."

  "Did you witness any of that?" Ness asked, quickly.

  "No. I was in the pen at the time. When I went inside, Rufus, the Emperor, and Johnny C. were on top of the world. When I come out a couple years ago, they were dead, turned stooge, and retired, respectively. And Willis was on the Scalise and Lombardi payroll."

  "I see."

  Katzi laughed; it was mellow. "You know, you were the best thing that ever happened to Willis."

  "Me?" Ness said, shocked.

  "Willis was a patrolman, remember. He had a taste of the take, but nothin' major, mind you. When you come in back in '35 like a big brass band, you shook things up by transferring cops from one precinct to another, all over town."

  "Right," said Ness, somewhat defensively. "That upset crooked apple carts all over the city."

  "Sure it did. It was smart. Hey, I'm not bein' critical, Mr. Ness. And a whole lot of those transfers you made were big cheeses. Officers—captains and lieutenants and sergeants and detectives. Am I right?"

  "Of course you are," Ness said, trying to mask his confusion, not terribly well. "That's where the power was. We had a crooked department within the real department, in those days. They had their own structure, their own 'chief.' "

  "I know. You sent a whole bunch of those high-ranking boys to the pen, including their chief. Hell—I met some of 'em there, and you'll be glad to know it was no picnic for 'em."

  Now Ness smiled. "I'm not sorry to hear that, no." The smile faded. "But you still haven't said exactly how it is I'm 'the best thing that ever happened' to the late patrolman Willis."

  "You transferred all the big boys outa the Roarin' Third," Katzi said, with a matter-of-fact shrug. "Who did you think was gonna move up into position? A patrolman like Willis, who was on the pad already, and still working the Roaring Third! The new higher-ranking boys were afraid to take a piece of that action, with you in town, throwing crooked captains and the like in the clink."

  Ness was nodding. "So Willis, a relatively little fish, fell through the cracks of the system. And became a bigger fish because he was in the right place at the right time."

  "That's the story, Mr. Ness. And you know, a crook has no morals. He'll work for anybody, if they got the dough."

  "What are you saying?"

  Katzi blew out blue smoke, shrugged, smiled one-sidely. "The reason why Willis was killed was he went against Lombardi and Scalise."

  "In what way?"

  "You know that killing over at the Elite Cabaret, a while back?"

  "Of course."

  "Well, what do you know about it, exactly?"

  Ness seemed on the verge of irritation; he didn't like a snitch who asked questions. "We know that it represents the Mayfield Road gang chasing that Pittsburgh bunch out of the city. Scaring them off Lombardi and Scalise's turf. And we suspect Scalise himself murdered those men."

  "That's the word on the street on the subject," Katzi confirmed. "But can you prove it?"

  "We traced a bloody coat from the alley of the Elite to a haberdashery where Scalise has done business—but we couldn't find a clerk to admit making the sale, or a sales slip either."

  "Five'll get you ten," Katzi said, "Scalise killed Willis, too. Personally."

  "What makes you say that?"

  Katzi shrugged again. "Scalise is meaner than a drunk snake. He likes hurtin' people. He likes killin' people. Everybody in the Roaring Third knows that."

  Ness had an intense expression. "And why would he've killed Willis, his own man, a cop he had in his own pocket?"

  "That's what I been telling you, Mr. Ness. Few months back, Willis did business with the Pittsburgh boys."

  Ness looked sharply at Wild; there was the motive. At last. There was the motive.

  "Word on the street," Katzi was saying, "is that the Pittsburgh outfit offered Willis more than Scalise and Lombardi were payin', if he'd help 'em move in. And he did. And he dead."

  Ness digested that, then asked, "Why'd they wait so long to pay Willis back for his betrayal?"

  "How should I know? Maybe to keep you from putting two and two together. Mayb
e to make Willis sweat some before they chilled him. Maybe to line up a new cop fixer, first. Hell, you're the detective."

  Ness thought about that.

  Katzi crushed his cigarette under his heel on the theater floor. "Think you can put those mother-raping dago bastards away, Mr. Ness?"

  "Oh yes," Ness said.

  "Good. I got no love for 'em, myself."

  "Why's that?" Wild asked. Katzi didn't seem to him the sort of guy who would give a damn one way or the other.

  "Oh, they killed my cousin a few years ago," he said, casually. "One of the independent policy operators they rubbed out."

  "What was his name?" Ness asked.

  "Willie Wiggens," Katzi said, emotionlessly.

  Ness looked at Katzi long and hard.

  Then he said, "Thank you, Katzi," and shook the man's hand again. Any irritation had vanished; bare gratitude had taken its place. He dug into his topcoat pocket. "Here's a little more for you."

  He handed Katzi a fin and the smoothly affable Negro took it gladly.

  "If there's anything else I can do for you," Ness said, "let me know. Information like this is greatly appreciated."

  "Well, you can put a word in for me with the parole board," Katzi said, as they all stood, and moved out into the aisle. "I'd like to get my citizenship restored and put the past behind me."

  "That's an admirable goal," Ness said. "I'll see what I can do."

  "Appreciate it. But I got no delusions about the past going away altogether."

  "I know what you mean," Ness said, with a glum smile. The past had, after all, caught up with him today.

  Wild nodded and smiled to Katzi, who said, "See you in the funny papers, Samuel," and sauntered down the aisle and took a closer seat, watching the rehearsal, where deep voices boomed.

  Out in the gently blowing snow, the wind nipping at them, Wild said to Ness, "How's that for a source?"

  "Goddamn good," Ness admitted. "But it frustrates me that I had to come here to get it."

  "Hey, come on. Using stoolies is what police work is all about."

  "Maybe. But I hate like hell to have to get from a stoolie information that my own men are keeping from me."

  On the way back, Ness looked over, from behind the wheel of his sedan, and said, "Is that fellow a good writer?"

  "Better than I am," Wild said with a smirk.

  "I ought to read something of his. What's his real name?"

  "Himes," Wild said. "Chester Himes."

  "I'll try to remember that," Ness said.

  "Remember him to the parole board," Wild said, "if you're really interested."

  Ness nodded.

  But Wild could see that the safety director was already lost in other thoughts. Thoughts of Lombardi and Scalise, and a police department that even after all of Ness's efforts and successes in cleaning it up remained a fortress of self-interest.

  THREE

  APRIL 25-MAY 1, 1939

  CHAPTER 14

  Ness was behind the wheel of a black unmarked Ford sedan—but not the one with the familiar-around-town EN-1 license plate: No calling card was required or desired on this excursion.

  It was shortly after midnight on a pleasantly cool Tuesday in April; the moon was a shining silver-white plate that reflected on the hood of the sedan as Ness eased into a parking space just down the street from his destination. Jammed in the car with him were two plainclothes men and two uniformed. He checked his watch.

  Two minutes.

  The apartment building was just north of Case Western Reserve, overlooking the vast garden that was Rockefeller Park, on Ansel Avenue. A five-story graystone with terra cotta trim, the building had a uniformed doorman and, one would think, well-to-do or anyway well-off tenants.

  One of those tenants was Willie "the Emperor" Rushing, one-time policy king, current front man for the Mayfield Road gang. Undoubtedly one of the few Negro residents of this obviously predominantly white neighborhood.

  Ness was leading one of five squads that were about to simultaneously attack key numbers-racket figures. Two months ago he had delivered to Prosecutor Cullitan a document as thick as a popular novel; that document detailed the evidence and gathered the statements of seventy witnesses against twenty-three members of the Mayfield Road mob—including Salvatore Lombardi and Angelo Scalise.

  After interviewing the witnesses himself, Cullitan had gone forward. For the last two weeks, those seventy witnesses paraded secretly through the Grand Jury room, with no press coverage and no apparent leaks to the mob; and tomorrow the indictments were to come down, naming all twenty-three defendants.

  It was going so well it made Ness uneasy.

  "We're taking no chances," Ness had told the startled group of detectives who without advance warning had been summoned (from home, in many instances) to the safety director's office at City Hall, for an eleven P.M. meeting. "We're not giving these bastards any opportunity to take a powder."

  Pointing at a wall map of Greater Cleveland, with appropriate pins stuck in twenty-three positions, he explained that there would be five unmarked cars with twenty-five men divided between them. Around the table sat Moeller, Curry, Chamberlin, Garner, and Toussaint Johnson.

  "It'll be a mass round-up," Ness said, with a tight smile. "We'll hit the first five targets at the precise same moment—synchronizing by police radio. Five minutes after each raid goes down, a paddy wagon will roll up in front and you'll load 'er up with bad guys."

  "Sounds simple," Garner said, wetting the end of a fresh fat cheap cigar. "Any special charge? Never heard of arresting crooks the day before indictments were voted."

  "Jail them as suspicious characters and hold them for investigation," Ness said. "That's good enough for Prosecutor Cullitan, and it's good enough for me."

  One team would hit the Central-Scovill district; that would be led by Moeller with Curry and Johnson lending support. Two teams, led by Chamberlin and Garner respectively, would head for Cleveland Heights, where (among others) Lombardi himself lived. Detectives Powers and Allen, who had already been dispatched, would hit the far northeast side of Cleveland. Ness himself would hit three targets, two of them clustered together at East 90th and East 93rd, and another just north of that on Ansel.

  It frustrated Ness that he couldn't be in on the collar of Lombardi and Scalise, personally; but realistically, as the leader of this mass offensive, Ness could not head up one of the outlying teams. He needed to be able to round up his quota of suspects quickly, and get to Central Station to supervise the booking and questioning of everybody else's prisoners, as well as his own, as they were hauled in.

  But when Chamberlin paused while lighting up his pipe to ask the safety director why he wasn't claiming the Lombardi/Scalise collar for himself, Ness offered a different excuse.

  "I'm an old Chicago boy," Ness said, smiling a little. "To me Cleveland Heights is all hills and winding roads. Even with a driver, I'd feel lost. You'll do a better job. Bob."

  Albert Curry seemed stuck somewhere between confused and annoyed as he said, "Why are you putting Moeller and Johnson and me on the same team?"

  "Two reasons," Ness said. "You're hitting the heart of the ghetto—it's going to be unpredictable and precarious down there. Obviously, Detective Johnson will be a great asset in that neighborhood, and Sergeant Moeller is an old hand at raids of this sort."

  "This won't be my first raid, either," Curry said, obviously a bit offended that he wasn't heading up one of the teams himself. "And you said two reasons ..."

  Ness looked at Moeller and said, "Care to explain. Sergeant?"

  Moeller, who was sitting next to Curry, offered a twitch of an apologetic smile and said, "I had a call this afternoon, from somebody in Hollis's camp . . . one of these Future Outlook League members. Seems there's a men-only party tonight at League Hall. Six of our suspects are gonna be there."

  "What's League Hall?" Curry asked.

  "State Democratic League," Johnson put in. "The Negro Democrats' HQ. Eighteent
h Ward Junior Democratic Club is puttin' on this smoker tonight . . . there will major policy guys on hand."

  "This sounds political," Curry said. "Hollis is a Republican—maybe he just wants to embarrass the opposition."

  "That may be the motivation behind the tip," Ness said, "but we won't play it for politics." He lifted a forefinger. "No arrests other than the policy guys. Understood? I don't want any reporters tagging along with you."

  "Press been tipped?" Garner asked.

  "Not yet," Ness said. "But on my way out, I'm going to see who's in the press room—if anybody's on the job, I'll tell 'em to head over to Central Station and wait for a story to fall in their laps."

  Now, at exactly ten after midnight. Ness spoke into the hand mike on the coiled rubber cord and said, "Go."

  He stepped out of the sedan. It was cool enough for a topcoat, but he hadn't worn one; his suitcoat was unbuttoned and his revolver was in its shoulder holster. He and officer Claude Lewis, a Negro patrolman who was in plainclothes tonight, walked the half-block to where the doorman stood, while one of the uniformed officers waited by the car and another of the uniformed officers went around to cover the rear of the building.

  The doorman was a big pink man about forty who in his elaborate uniform with epaulets looked like a chorus member in a Victor Herbert operetta. It was a role he took seriously, however, because he held out his hand in a pompous stop gesture.

  "This is a private building," he said, chin up, eyes down.

  "This is public business," Ness said, pleasantly, and with a thumb lifted his lapel to reveal the gold safety director's shield.

  The doorman looked down his nose at the badge and Ness grunted and brushed the big man aside, then pushed the glass door open and went in; behind him, Patrolman Lewis was telling the doorman, "Don't warn 'em upstairs, or you'll be an accessory."