BULLET PROOF (Eliot Ness) Read online

  Shouts and screams, anger and pain, the hysterical whinnying of the horses, combined into one chaotic din. Shrill cries floated across the battlefield, bansheelike; standing up along the bluff were spectators, many of them women hugging children, the women's auxiliary of the strikers, silhouetted there, lined up along the high horizon like Indians at Little Big Horn. Only these were not warriors, waiting to swoop down, but horrified witnesses, wailing, shrieking, helpless.

  Bricks and billy clubs and the heels of fists and feet smashed into the sedan as it pushed through, rocking the vehicle. Ness stopped the car, put his hand on the door latch, and Chamberlin, next to him, said, "You're not going out there?"

  "That's why I came," he said. "Albert, you come with me, do your best to stay with me, anyway. Bob, you radio for reinforcements . . . and ambulances."

  "Oh-kay," Chamberlin said as Ness climbed out on one running board and Curry the other.

  Ness looked over the top of the car at Curry and, having to shout to be heard over the pandemonium, pointing, called, "See that sound truck?"

  And above the bobbing heads of the brawlers, right up near the front gate and the chain-link fence that was swaying as combatants fought up against it, was a green panel truck with a large sound horn atop it. Strikers often used these, Curry knew, to boom instructions out to picketers, to challenge nonstrikers and scabs as they entered a plant; but now it was strangely silent, the car swaying like the fence, getting bumped into, a buoy in a sea of fighting.

  Through the jostle of panicking, angry strikers, Ness moved like a shark, Curry in his wake. Blows were swung their way, fists and billy clubs, too, but the two detectives bobbed, weaved, ducked, and when necessary deflected them with raised forearms. Curry took a billy club blow across his arm that hurt like hell, but nothing broke. Occasionally a man seemed to recognize Ness, and backed off—not afraid of him, just stunned to see him here. It took several minutes to run this gauntlet, but then they were there, up against the sound truck. Ness, his hat lost in the journey, stopped a club-wielding cop who looked confused, not knowing who——or whether—to hit.

  "What the hell happened here, officer?" Ness yelled.

  "When the shift changed," the cop yelled back, "guys streamed out of the plant with clubs and saps and you name it. I seen some guns, too. . . ."

  Ness nodded, eyes hard, teeth clenched. He said, "Get back to it, officer . . . keep trying to break this thing up!"

  The officer nodded, eyes wide with frustration and fear, and dove back into the fray.

  On the driver's side of the sound truck, parked near the fence, Ness found that the vehicle was empty, either abandoned or separated from its operators. It was locked. Ness withdrew his revolver and smashed the window with the butt once, webbing it; twice, shattering it; reached in, unlocked the door, opening it. Standing on the running board, he leaned over, switched on the amplifier on the dash, turned the switch to HIGH, and pulled the hand mike on its coiled rubber cord, finding it had plenty of length.

  Ness handed the mike to Curry and said, "Give this to me when I get up there."

  "Up where?"

  Ness didn't answer.

  Curry watched, dumbfounded, as the safety director climbed atop the slightly rounded roof of the panel truck, the .38 long-barreled revolver in one hand. Once up there, he reached down to Curry and filled his other hand with the mike on the long coiled cord.

  Then Eliot Ness, standing atop the sound truck, noticed by no one as yet except the tribe of women observing from the bluff, fired the revolver into the air, once. Twice. Three times. Four times.

  Smoke and flame accompanied the gunfire as Ness pointed the weapon straight in the air, like another smokestack.

  And everyone froze, in mid-punch, mid-billy-club swing, mid-whatever. They froze in the midst of the heat of the summer night and of battle and saw Ness standing there with his gun in his hand and an expression that would've turned Medusa to stone.

  Slowly, he lowered the gun. He had their attention. He raised the microphone to his mouth, thumb clicking it on; a whine of feedback briefly cut the air. And then, as startling as the gunshots, Ness's soft voice, amplified many times, made metallic by the sound-truck system, filled the night.

  "That's what you've been waiting for, isn't it?" Ness said. The soft, husky voice conveyed a world of bitterness. "Gunfire? Isn't that what you all want?"

  Haunted faces stared back at him; not a word was spoken in response.

  "Ten dead at the Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago. One hundred sent to the hospital. Last month, at Massillon, two strikers machine-gunned, dead where they fell."

  The Massillon, Ohio, strike was yet another against Republic Steel.

  "Is that what you all want?" Ness said. Voice loud and tinny. A comma of dark hair swinging across his forehead, he seemed an unmustached, benign Hitler. "To die? To bleed? For a cause? Well, not in my town you don't."

  He put the gun away and he withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket. Now the crowd began to make noise, but softly, mumbling, rumbling.

  "The mayor has at my request issued a proclamation, a directive," Ness said into the mike. "I'm not going to read it to you. I'm going to spare you the "whereases" and 'therefores.' But the gist is this: starting immediately, I'm establishing a peace zone of five hundred yards around this plant. Pickets who come any closer than five hundred yards will be arrested."

  A general grumbling came up.

  Ness spoke over it: "Furthermore, anyone seen with any weapon—any weapon: brick, billy club, bat, bottle, two-by-four, rock, any weapon—will be arrested. This is not limited to strikers. This includes company employees. Is that understood?"

  Silence blanketed the men; eyes tightened with thought; a few heads nodded yes. A few men seemed to be near smiling.

  "Strikers, you need to move back at least to the intersection of Dille and Broadway."

  As Ness was saying this, the sounds of sirens cut the air.

  Men looked back in panic, and Ness spoke into the mike, saying, "Yes, those are reinforcements. But we also have ambulances on the way. So please step away from the injured and allow the police to handle them."

  Amid grumbling, one voice stood out: "Screw the police."

  "This is not South Chicago," Ness said. "This is not Massillon. My men are carrying no firearms. But you'll get your head split open, breathe tear gas, and do time in the lockup if you do not disperse, now."

  Slowly, with much grumbling and sighing, the men began to move away from the battlefield. Cops accompanied them, including the two mounted officers, breaking it up when little scuffles and shoving matches threatened to grow into something more. Other cops bent over the injured, and there were dozens of them. Blood pooled up here and there on the gravel. Bricks, bottles, clubs, broken boards, and various makeshift weapons were strewn about.

  Ambulances began pulling in, and the wounded were tended to. Four Black Marias filled with reserve cops arrived, and Ness made a human barrier of the bluecoats across the front of the plant.

  Ness, Chamberlin, and Curry were standing by the sound truck when a stocky, disheveled-looking individual in a suit and tie approached. The side of his head was bloody. Curry didn't know the man, but Ness did.

  "Mr. Owens," Ness said. "You obviously need some attention for that injury. Just go with the ambulance attendants, they'll—"

  "I'm fine, Mr. Ness. I just want to claim my truck."

  "Oh. Are you sure you're in shape to drive?"

  "Yes. I've had worse than this. I might have been able to help if... well, I got separated from the truck. When the shit hit the fan, I was up at the intersection, and . . . anyway. Appreciate what you did here tonight."

  "What I did here tonight was my job, Mr. Owens."

  "Well . . . I just wanted to express my gratitude. I doubt I can make that sentiment public. . . . We, uh . . . have an adversarial relationship, after all. . . ."

  "Only in your eyes, Mr. Owens."

  Owens swallowed, vaguely e
mbarrassed. "Well. At any rate. You may have saved some lives here tonight."

  He offered his hand and Ness shook it; then the safety director helped Owens to the sound truck, which he drove slowly off.

  "Interesting reaction," Curry said.

  Ness grinned. "I'll be a villain again by tomorrow. And the Republic bigwigs aren't going to love me, either."

  "Do you really care?" Bob Chamberlin asked.

  "Not in the least," Ness said.

  "Maybe we ought to put that labor-racketeering investigation on the back burner for a while," Chamberlin suggested. "Otherwise we risk looking anti-union, which is political suicide..."

  "No way in hell," Ness said. "Bob, stay here and keep an eye on things. Albert, see if that sedan will still drive. I better get back to City Hall and make my report to the mayor . . . and get him to issue that proclamation I said he made."

  CHAPTER 3

  "That's deuce," said Eliot Ness, in tennis whites, racket in hand, about to serve in the final set of a long game of doubles. Next to him was Mayor Burton, his sturdy frame leaning forward in anticipation of the return, and across the net from Burton was trim, bald, intense Frank Darby, president of the Chamber of Commerce and general manager of the May Company. Across the net from Ness was white-haired, wiry Cyril Easton, richest financier in the city. Of the four men on this grass court at Lake Shore Country Club, only Ness wore short pants; and of the four men on this court, from which Lake Erie could be shimmeringly seen, only Ness was not in his early fifties.

  Nonetheless, the match had been hard fought. Ness played tennis well, though he was better at badminton and handball; the latter sports were part of a daily ritual at Dewey Mitchell's Health Club, whereas this complimentary membership to classily suburban Bratenahl's Lake Shore Country Club, with its golf-green-like tennis courts, was something new. He'd played on hard clay in Chicago and was just getting used to the faster play of grass.

  Cleveland's safety director was physically in top shape, but these three older men were every bit as fit as he was: all of them worked out on a daily basis (Burton with Ness at Dewey Mitchell's), and the retailer and financier played with single-minded stamina that thirty-four-year-old Ness could only envy. Under a hot afternoon sun Ness and Burton had won the first set 6-2, lost the second 4-6, won the third 6-4, and lost the fourth 1-6.

  And now Ness fired his fastest serve, and Darby's return flew out of bounds.

  Burton smiled at Ness; Ness smiled back.

  Ness served again, another fast one, but Darby was ready and lobbed it behind Burton, who scrambled back and managed a weak but sufficient backhand return, while Easton moved in for the kill with a slashing forehand cross-court.

  Ness tore after it, lunging, catching a piece of it, tumbling to the grass, skidding, as the ball sailed over the net, whizzed down the baseline, and just caught the inside corner, for match point.

  Minutes later, the four men were sitting at a white wooden table under a yellow-and-white umbrella on the terrace bar overlooking the courts, the lake providing a blue backdrop and gentle breeze. They had toweled off but their whites were moist with the game. They drank martinis.

  "You play an interesting game, Mr. Ness," Easton said. He had a warm white smile and cold blue eyes. His face was deeply grooved, his features sharp; his flesh was a golden brown nearly as rich as he was.

  "So do you, Mr. Easton," Ness said.

  "Yours is a thoughtful, almost scientific approach," Easton said reflectively. "But you aren't afraid to take risks—to put yourself on the line."

  "Or my wardrobe," Ness said wryly, gesturing to the stripe of green he'd added to his white short pants when he'd slid across the court going after that last point.

  Mayor Burton sipped his martini. "It's nice to get away from the office for a few hours. I appreciate the invitation, gentlemen."

  "So do I," Ness said, smiling, but behind the smile was apprehension. He knew that in some way this silver cloud had to have a gray lining. Tennis or not, this was a business meeting, a meeting called by one of the most important men in the city. In the state.

  In the nation.

  Cyril Easton had arrived in Cleveland from Canada with his Baptist minister father back in 1901; the intelligent teenager had favorably impressed one of the elder Easton's congregation in the Euclid Avenue Baptist church: a certain John D. Rockefeller. Under that wealthy wing, young Easton flourished, supervising and expanding Rockefeller's utilities interests; later, when Rockefeller associates formed a syndicate to send Easton on a Canadian utilities venture, only to pull out in the panic of '07, Easton found Canadian backers and began building a personal fortune.

  By the late twenties Easton's utilities holdings rivaled Samuel Insull's; he controlled Goodyear Tire and Rubber, and merged and purchased his way into control of Republic Steel. He was said to be worth one hundred million in 1929.

  Before the crash, that is—after which he was left with a mere one hundred grand. Unlike Samuel Insull, however, whose fall included disgrace and imprisonment, Easton had slowly but shrewdly built his investment banking firm into the front ranks of international investment speculators. Among his many successes was financing the giant Fisher Body works here, providing thousands of jobs for Clevelanders.

  While he no longer controlled Republic Steel, Easton remained on the board of directors. Which meant that the shadow of the Corrigan-McKinney strike fell across this white table on this sunny day.

  No less significant was the presence of Frank Darby, who'd been general manager of the May Company since 1905, after making a success of the store's first shoe department. It had been Darby who convinced David May to live up to the company slogan "Watch Us Grow" by constructing a $2.5 million facility. That eight-story structure seemed less imposing today, in 1937, but the May Company, with its many locations nationwide, was flourishing even in this depression.

  "I understand things are quiet out at Corrigan-McKinney today," Darby said.

  "Knock on wood," Ness said. He had a drink of the cool martini. Sailboats dotted the lake, swaying lazily.

  "You were in a difficult position," Darby said. "I for one think you handled yourself well."

  "Neither the unions nor Republic had kind words for me in the press," Ness said. "But I can live with that."

  Easton smiled thinly. "That's an interesting political view."

  Burton laughed shortly. "I'm afraid none of Eliot's views are particularly political."

  "Do you agree with his approach?" Easton asked the mayor.

  The mayor hesitated, but his answer was what Ness had hoped it would be: "Yes. It's not the city's job to take sides in these matters. My director of public safety has taken steps to preserve the safety of the public—the very definition of his job."

  Easton swirled his martini, the olive in which stared up at Easton like a single green-and-red eye. "There are those who think Mr. Ness takes too soft a position where the labor problem is concerned. There are those who feel that strikes are criminal activities and should be handled accordingly."

  "Mr. Easton," Ness said softly, but with an edge, "the law of the land backs the rights of these workers to organize, and to go on strike."

  "The New Deal," Easton said, with a faint tone of derision. "Unmitigated, unconstitutional horseshit."

  "Perhaps," Ness said. "But as of now, collective bargaining is something that Republic Steel and industry in general are going to have to live with. And company goons, hired to beat, maim, and kill strikers, are engaging in some 'unmitigated, unconstitutional horseshit' themselves, wouldn't you say, sir?"

  Easton smiled briefly, plucked the olive from the drink and popped it in his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and said, "Mr. Ness, you do have a point. And this 'peace zone' you've established has unquestionably cooled the situation down. It's just that . . . well. There are those who think a firmer hand would have a longer lasting effect."

  Burton winced.

  "Mr. Easton," Ness said, "with all due respect, those wh
o were shot down in the Memorial Day Massacre and at Massillon are enjoying the lasting effect of being dead."

  Easton's face was a humorless mask. "Mr. Ness, communism is a serious problem. It's not a problem a man in your chair ought to ignore."

  Ness sat up straight. "Mr. Easton, the first thing a company like yours does when organized labor rears its head is brand any and all strikes, any and all unions, a communist plot. Next, they fund armed vigilante and citizens' committees as part of 'back-to-work' movements to break strikes."

  Easton was frowning; Burton fidgeting; Darby listening.

  "I won't be manipulated or intimidated or paid off into using my department as a goon squad for some steel company. Nor will I be shamed by unions into being their bodyguards."

  "Eliot," Darby said, gesturing with an open hand, "I sympathize with your views, but the reality is that individuals in this city who have supported Mayor Burton—and have supported you—expect certain considerations."

  Burton winced again.

  "They won't get them," Ness said flatly. "I'm prepared to turn over the key to my boathouse, and resign from both country clubs where I've been given memberships, and resign from the various associations, and—"

  "Eliot," Burton said, putting a hand on Ness's arm. "Please. No one is suggesting anything untoward here."

  Easton motioned to a waiter for another martini and said, "Hal is right, Mr. Ness. I'm merely passing certain sentiments along to you . . . for your information. For your consideration. Your well-known conscience and integrity I would never compromise. They're your stock-in-trade, after all."

  The sarcasm of that, gentle and lingering as the breeze off the lake, was not lost on Ness. But he said nothing. He drank his martini; ordered another.