BULLET PROOF (Eliot Ness) Page 4

  "I felt you should be aware," Easton said, "that there are those who feel that the strikers are keeping the plant closed via violence and intimidation . . . and, perhaps, violence in retaliation is the only logical response. For the good of the community."

  Clouds were sliding across the sun; the afternoon was suddenly darker, cooler, at least for the moment.

  Ness shook his head wearily and said, "Mr. Easton. Sir. Provoking violence—escalating the violence that's already there—will not scare the workers into line. In reality, every beating administered in the name of the company wins converts to unionism. You can get a great education from a nightstick or tear gas."

  "Frankly, Mr. Ness," Easton said sadly, "I'm surprised to find you taking the side of the unionists."

  "That's just it: I'm not taking their side. Or yours."

  "What side are you taking, then?"

  "Cleveland's."

  Darby smiled tentatively. "Cyril—I don't think that's such a bad side for the Director of Public Safety to take."

  Easton toasted Ness with a martini glass. "Match point, Mr. Ness."

  "Eliot," Darby said, "speaking for the Chamber of Commerce, we aren't interested in seeing the Department of Public Safety used as a vehicle for 'union-busting.'"

  "Nor am I," Easton said, not entirely convincingly.

  "But," Darby went on, "we do expect you to pursue criminal labor activity."

  Easton nodded vigorously. "There are gangster-dominated unions operating in this city that demand your attention."

  "We refer specifically," Darby said, "to the situation as regards the glass workers and carpenters."

  Ness shrugged and nodded. "Caldwell and McFate," he said.

  James "Big Jim" Caldwell, vice-president of the Carpenters District Council and bargaining agent for the Glass Workers Union, and James "Little Jim" McFate, president of the Builders District Council, held sway over thousands of Cleveland laborers.

  "Those two are racketeers, plain and simple," Ness said. "No question of that, gentleman. No argument from me on that point."

  "Anyone wishing to build in Cleveland," Darby said, leaning over, speaking in hushed tones, "has to pay tribute to those two racketeers, as you accurately describe them. It's extortion; a protection racket like something out of . . . out of..."

  "Chicago," Ness offered, with a smile.

  "Exactly," Darby said.

  Easton leaned forward, his eyes tightening. "I'm concerned about these small-time hoodlums for one reason: they are costing our city dearly. We are the sixth largest city in these United States, Mr. Ness . . . but we're ranked sixtieth in building starts."

  "The word has spread, nationwide," said Darby. "Cleveland is too expensive a place to build—in terms of the blackmail these 'union' representatives will inevitably demand."

  Burton lifted an eyebrow and said, "Several major chain stores, in just the last six months, have abandoned plans to build here."

  "Scared off," Darby said glumly, shaking his head. "And not just because of the money involved. These are violent men. Gangsters."

  "Gentlemen," Ness said. "None of this is news to me . . ."

  "Then why," Easton asked tersely, "haven't you done anything about it?"

  Ness looked at the financier coldly, saying, "I have been in office roughly a year and a half. During that time I have been engaged, primarily, in launching and personally supervising perhaps the largest investigation into police corruption in the history of this country. The number of successful prosecutions my office has—"

  "My apologies," Easton said, raising a hand. "Your record is nothing if not impressive. And, too, I know you've been engaged, of late, in investigating these awful 'butcher' slayings."

  Ness nodded and said, "The so-called Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run is thought by some to be dead and by others merely to be... on hiatus. But I've been instructed, by Mayor Burton, to put my energies elsewhere. Right now, gentlemen, you should be relieved to know, I'm directing an undercover investigation into a labor racketeering case, which we're on the brink of cracking."

  "Good," Darby said, pleased. "Good." The sun was out again, reflecting off Darby's pink skull.

  Ness took a sip of martini, casually. "And our next target will be Big Jim and Little Jim. I can promise you that."

  Easton smiled and nodded. "Very good." He, too, seemed pleased; placated, even.

  "But I must tell you," Ness said firmly, looking directly at the Chamber of Commerce president, "that until one of your own steps forward to testify against Caldwell and McFate, I'm fighting an uphill battle."

  Darby's eyes narrowed; part of it was the sun, part of it wasn't. "Eliot, these men are unscrupulous . . . they're dangerous."

  "Yes they are. But you can't ask me to stop them, on the one hand, while on the other continuing to give into their various shakedown demands for the sake of expedience."

  "That's not fair," Darby said. "The May Company has never—"

  "I didn't mean you specifically, Frank. But the victimized members of the Chamber who are complaining to you, privately, need to complain to me, publicly."

  Darby was sobered by that; he nodded, saying, "I'll see what I can do."

  "I realize what I'm asking," Ness said. "Both Caldwell and McFate are entrenched in the community. Hell, Caldwell lives right here in Bratenahl! Moved to an expensive house out here couple years back. He's a neighbor of the very people he's exploiting. Some of them accept him as a necessary evil. He's a friendly enough fellow, when he isn't threatening you or busting up you or your property."

  "He is at that," Darby said, with quiet frustration.

  "I understand your problem," Ness said. "Behind the smiles and hail-fellows-well-met, these men are thugs, no doubt of it. They use violent vandalism as their lever."

  "The sound of breaking glass," said Easton dryly, "has become a common one in this city,"

  "And when glass breaks," the mayor said, just as dryly, "it has to be replaced."

  Which was where Big Jim Caldwell's Glass Workers Union came in.

  "In the past eighteen months, gentlemen," Ness said darkly, "ten thousand plate-glass windows in Cleveland have been shattered—some by bricks... others by gunfire."

  Leaving them with that statistic to ponder, Ness rose, declining another martini. He had work to do. An undercover investigation to look after. The McKinney-Corrigan stalemate to check up on.

  Burton seemed relieved the meeting was over. Darby seemed pleased with Ness's anti-labor rackets pledge. Easton, Ness couldn't read. Shaking hands all around, racket tucked under his arm, Ness headed across the terrace lawn for the dressing room. As he did, he made note of another Lake Shore club member.

  Sitting at a table, playing cards with several local businessmen, was a stocky, jovial man wearing a pastel yellow sport shirt and a smug expression.

  Laying his cards down, the smug, jovial man said, "Gin."

  And the others threw their cards in, smiling, shaking their heads, muttering about what a lucky bastard their friend was.

  Like Eliot Ness, Big Jim Caldwell had won a game this afternoon.

  CHAPTER 4

  Harry Gibson arrived at work a little drunk.

  But then Harry Gibson almost always arrived at work at least a little drunk, a condition that no one ever commented upon, and which some, perhaps, failed to discern. After all, few of the merchants, farmers, or truckers who frequented the Northern Ohio Food Terminal had ever encountered Gibson in any other condition. To them, he was never less than a swaggering, towering son of a bitch. That he had booze on his breath was just another detail, not necessarily telling.

  Gibson was a massive six foot two, a bruiser with brown slicked-back hair and a flushed face and lumpy but deceptively pleasant features that were usually set in a smile. It was a smile that Gibson wore even as he demanded his various pieces of the action from the merchants in the market; a smile he wore when a whore took off her slip; a smile he wore when he was breaking a farmer's leg.
/>   As for arriving at work half tanked, well, that wasn't his fault, was it? He had to show up at three A.M., didn't he, and what else was there to do till three in the goddamn morning but sit in a saloon and soak up some suds? Six days a week he worked the market from before dawn till late afternoon, when he headed back for his flop, hit the hay, and crawled out again around nine at night to find a bite, a broad, a bottle, starting the cycle anew. It was a full life.

  The Northern Ohio Food Terminal, at East Fortieth, south of Woodland Avenue, was within a mile and a half of the rough-and-tumble East Side neighborhood where Gibson grew up. His pop, of whom Harry was said to be the spitting image, had been a coke shoveler at a steel mill in the Flats; at age forty-five the elder Gibson, his lungs shot after breathing in God knew how much coal dust, collapsed at work, losing his job, leaving the family re-sponsibility to his three boys. Harry, the youngest, had done his share, and still did help out the old man and old lady. But he'd decided early on that such a life was not for him; the steel mills, the factories, could do without Harry Gibson. Blessed with his pop's brawn, Harry, who was now thirty, had run with a street gang as a kid, got into bootlegging as an older kid, and graduated into being a union slugger, getting in tight with McFate and Caldwell, who had a lock on the construction unions.

  Harry knew that he probably could have turned an even tidier buck if he'd followed some of his bootlegging pals into the mob. But that was risky work—you could wind up dead in a ditch, like with these policy-racket wars that had been flaring up lately; or in stir, playing fall guy for the big boys in the Mayfield Road gang, who made sure they never did any hard time.

  Besides, union work was something a guy like Harry Gibson could be proud of. Helping the little guy not get took advantage of, like his pop had been.

  Harry was chairman (a title Big Jim Caldwell suggested) of the Marketers Co-op Club; what this meant was vendors in the stalls inside and outside the sprawling food market had to pay him weekly dues. If anybody failed to pay, that's when Harry's negotiating skills were called into play: stalls would be smashed, produce trashed, your occasional arm or leg busted.

  The service Harry provided the vendors, in addition to making sure nobody gave any of 'em a bad time, was being middleman between them and the farmers who brought their crops to sell at the market. The Marketers Co-op Club, which is to say Harry and his staff of twenty strong-arm assistants, informed the farmers coming in that they weren't allowed to unload their own trucks. Instead, they were required to hire two-man crews, handlers from the Drivers and Employees local, to do the work; it usually ran twenty-five bucks per small truck, fifty for a bigger rig. Any farmers or truckers who refused would again run into Harry's negotiating skills: tires slashed, vehicles wrecked, your occasional arm or leg busted.

  There hadn't been much need for negotiation in the last couple weeks, not since Harry had sprayed one farmer's truck with machine-gun fire, lighting up the predawn morning like the Fourth of fuckin' July. It had been funnier than hell watching that farmer and his kid tuck their tails 'tween legs and go rattling out of the loading-dock area, barely able to steer that bullet-puckered hunk of junk out of the terminal. They were lucky it even drove.

  Beyond his considerable negotiating skills, Harry, who was also the business agent of the Drivers and Employees local, could shut the market down with a snap of his thick fingers. With an item as perishable as produce, the union had the farmers and dealers by the balls; if Harry called a strike, forcing the handlers to quit work, the Northern Ohio Food Terminal would be a world of rotting goods.

  The market, a big yellow-brick building, a block long and half again as wide, opened at five A.M.; but trucks began showing up shortly after three, jamming Fortieth Street, engines running, drivers waiting for the line ahead to move so they could pull up to the loading docks and empty their loads. It was a cool, clear morning, for now, though the sun would remind everybody it was July soon enough. Along the loading docks the unloaders in Harry's union stood in their leather aprons, waiting for the trucks to pull in; they looked bored, even though the air was filled with the shouts and honking horns of impatient truckers.

  Soon the market would be crawling with buyers: men in business suits representing the chain stores; men without ties who were the smaller, local grocers, buying for their coming day, to fill the shopping lists not yet made out by housewives around the city, who were sleeping now but would be shopping later.

  Some of the trucks were already being unloaded. One of Harry's unloaders was up in the reefer, as the refrigerated trucks were called, swinging boxes of butter down to another unloader, who was stacking them on the sidewalk, six high, eight deep, like a small building. As Harry passed by, his shoes crunched packing ice that had spilled onto the sidewalk.

  Harry liked working the market. He liked the hustle and bustle. He liked the way the place smelled, even: barrels of sauerkraut, sheep's milk cheese, candied ginger; steam rising off the griddle of the hot-dog stand inside; the scent of turnips and carrots as an unloader threw back a tarp and hosed down piled bunches of greens. The place was a second home to him: He'd done odd jobs here as a kid; you could earn a few pennies and get some free produce at day's end.

  These days, in his exalted position, Harry never did any physical labor, other than busting your occasional arm or leg. He wore a shirt and tie under a leather jacket; his khaki trousers were work pants, but rarely got dirty. He walked along the aisle connecting the loading docks, enjoying the sight of his union boys opening tailgates, untying ropes, pulling tarps back, taking loads down. Putting money in Harry's pocket. A relay team unloaded watermelons from an open truck onto the dock and into the market; crates of cantaloupes, sacks of potatoes, baskets of tomatoes, were passed along and hauled into storage bins; bunches of onions and turnips got stacked in a big green mound, as green as money. As green as the money Harry was making.

  Now, just as the traffic jam out on Fortieth let up, another was forming here along the loading-dock area. Metal-wheeled dollies squealed as cooler boys trundled up the wide ramp inside the terminal to the freight elevator, next to which gigantic floor scales trembled under cantaloupe crates. Unloaders maneuvered their two-wheeled hand trucks, piled up with crates, around each other and stacks of produce and a dozen other obstacles, swearing, yelling, but steering clear of Harry as he passed, their expressions momentarily tightening into smiles for their business agent, who found the noisy hubbub of the loading docks as reassuring as the ringing bell of a cash register.

  Not all of them appreciated what he was doing for them, but that was okay with Harry. As long as they stayed in line. Long as they paid their dues.

  Up ahead, two docks down, a small crowd had gathered; it had to be something good, Harry knew, to interrupt market activities in these bustling predawn hours. He walked in a straight line down the connecting aisle, causing unloaders operating hand carts to weave around him and out of his way, like motorists avoiding a child who has wandered onto a highway.

  Two men—obviously farmers—stood at the rear of a modest, battered tractor-trailer rig, where they had just as obviously been stopped in the process of unloading crates of greens onto the dock. Two other men were confronting the farmers. These men wore leather jackets and shirts and ties, like Harry's; without ever suggesting it, Harry's goon squad (though neither he nor they thought of themselves as such) had adopted their leader's style of dress as a sort of uniform.

  Jack Rose, a big black-haired boy Harry had known since his kid gang days, was gesturing with a hand the size of a catcher's mitt.

  "It's a buck an hour per man," he said in a raised voice, indicating he was repeating these words for perhaps the third or fourth time, "and it's a two-man job. And it's a good four hours' work."

  "Four hours!" the older of the farmers said. A faintly freckled Swede, or maybe Norwegian, Harry figured; about thirty-five, thickly mustached, and pale for a farmer. He wore coveralls and a floppy straw hat. He was a hick if Harry ever saw one, and Har
ry saw plenty here at the market.

  "My uncle told you, we can do it in under two hours ourselves," the other one said, a towheaded younger man, also in overalls but wearing a cap. He was pale, too, Harry noted, craning his neck to see better. License plate on their truck was New York.

  "You don't understand," Rose said, smiling harshly. "It's union rules. You got to hire us. No choice in the matter."

  "It's too much," said the mustached farmer, shaking his head no. "We can't afford it. We'll do it ourselves, thanks just the same."

  Harry, staying in the second row of the small but steadily gathering crowd, decided not to get involved. Neither Rose nor the other man, O'Day, had spotted their boss looking on. It would be good to see how they fared in a confrontation. Two more of his boys, Callahan and Carney, in their leather jackets and shirts and ties, fell in next to their boss in the growing audience.

  "I guess you never hauled into this market before," Rose was saying, in a slightly more friendly tone.

  "Not in a couple of years," the mustached farmer admitted. "Now if you fellows would just go about your own business—"

  Rose thumped the mustached farmer's chest with two stiff fingers. "This is our business. What are you, one of these smart guys? I got a good notion to pound you into this here pavement, pal. And we can tip over your truck, too, if you want, and if you ever come in here again, it'll cost you fifty fucking bucks to unload."

  The two farmers looked at each other, shrugged, shook their heads no, and began unloading more crates onto the dock.

  Jack Rose kicked one of the crates, splintering the wood.

  The mustached farmer sighed, shook his head again, and calmly said, "That'll cost you, mister."

  "No," Rose said, "it'll cost you,"

  He picked up another crate and smashed it on the cement, cracking it open, spilling out the contents, turning produce into garbage.

  And now Rose and O'Day seemed aware of the crowd around them, if not of Harry Gibson's presence in it, and that seemed to spur the pair on.