BULLET PROOF (Eliot Ness) Read online

  Gordon laughed shortly. "I've already been taken for a ride."

  Caldwell raised a scolding finger and said, "Tut tut, now. Let's not be bitter. It's just a matter of business, after all. By the way—once you have your windows installed, you're going to need somebody to wash them."

  "Well . . . I suppose so. But I have people on my staff who—"

  "Here's a reliable union firm," Caldwell said, handing him a card.

  Resignedly, Gordon took the card and slipped it in a suitcoat pocket.

  "Of course I'll need to run some interference for you, with the window washers union."

  "What?"

  "One hundred dollars a month. Small price to pay for the knowledge that your windows will be clean . . . and unbroken."

  "I'm getting a little tired of your threats, Caldwell."

  "Then I'd suggest you get some rest." He glanced about the now completely plastered room. "Getting a joint like this going is a big job. Big responsibility." He smiled at his victim. "You must be exhausted."

  And he tipped his derby and left Gordon alone with his thoughts and his unfinished restaurant.

  CHAPTER 7

  The neighborhood was working class, edging into lower middle class, a street lined with duplex houses marked by the overhang of second-story porches. They were built close together, simple wooden-frame houses, unlike the brick two-flats Ness was familiar with back in Chicago. But they were well-kept, freshly painted structures that indicated Jack Whitehall had, to some degree, "made it."

  Ness left his black Ford sedan across the street, just down from a Sohio station and in front of a ma-and-pa grocery. The zoning in Cleveland was loose as hell; commercial and even industrial mixing in with residential like this was common, though it always threw Ness a little.

  The night was dark—the blackness emphasized by a broken streetlight—and it was warm. But Ness was not sweating. He rarely did, even on a close night like this one.

  Whitehall and family lived downstairs (Whitehall owned the duplex). Ness went up the short flight of wooden steps to the front porch, where he rang the bell.

  An attractive dark-haired woman of about thirty, in a blue-and-white floral print dress and an apron, opened the door and smiled shyly, tentatively.

  "Mr. Ness?" she asked through the screen door, arching her eyebrows. She had a sweet, almost melodic voice—feminine, rather timid.

  "Yes." He removed his hat. "Mrs. Whitehall?"

  "Yes," she said, with another shy smile, and opened the door. "Please come in."

  Ness stepped in. There was no vestibule; he was immediately in a modestly but well-furnished living room. Other than Ness and Mrs. Whitehall, who took his hat, the room was unpopulated. Several windows were open and an electric fan was going. There was an overstuffed couch upholstered in green mohair, and a matching overstuffed chair with a standing lamp, turned on. Nearby was a coffee table where a sweating bottle of beer sat on a Liberty magazine next to a copy of the novel Of Mice and Men. A big console radio was softly playing orchestral music, a syrupy rendition of "Pennies from Heaven." On the wall were several framed prints, including one of sheep grazing on a hillside, and another of Jesus, a three-quarter front view of an almost feminine, cow-eyed Christ in soft sepia tones. The latter print was very familiar to Ness: he'd seen the original in a church in downtown Chicago, and framed prints in countless Chicago homes since. Never before in Cleveland, though.

  "I'm just washing the dishes," Mrs. Whitehall said, with a quick smile and a nervous gesture toward the kitchen, a blur of white visible through an archway. "We eat in two shifts around here, you see. The girls eat around six, and I feed Jack around eight, or whenever he gets home."

  Ness returned her smile, saying, "Goes with the territory." The hours from five in the afternoon till eight at night were key to a union organizer like Whitehall, who had to approach prospective members after they'd got off work.

  "Jack will be with you in a moment," she said. "If you'll excuse me . . ."

  "Certainly."

  "Please make yourself comfortable," she said, gesturing to the overstuffed couch. He sat. She gave him one more quick smile and disappeared, with his hat in her hand, into the kitchen.

  Ness got up and wandered about the living room. He picked up a Shirley Temple doll from the floor and placed it gently on a table. He bent to examine the titles in a waist-high glass-and-wood bookcase along one wall; the authors ranged from Lenin and Trotsky to Edna Ferber and Sinclair Lewis.

  The slightly muffled sound of a flushing toilet signaled the imminent arrival of the man of the house. Ness wandered back toward the couch but did not sit. When Jack Whitehall entered the living room, all six foot four and two hundred pounds of him, he gave Ness a stern look, but Ness smiled pleasantly at him and Whitehall suddenly laughed.

  "You bastard," Whitehall said, not without affection. "You got your nerve. Sit the hell down."

  Ness sat the hell down.

  So did Whitehall, in the overstuffed chair. Dark-haired, white-complected Whitehall, his white shirt-sleeves rolled up, sweat stains under his arms, looked every bit the roughneck he was reputed to be in local union circles; jaw like a shovel, nose lumpy from innumerable breaks, ears cauliflowered, eyes lidded, he looked like a brute. But under the sleepy, sullen hoods of his eyes, something glittered. Something alert. Something intelligent.

  "It was your idea, Jack, to meet at your home."

  He had a drink of his beer. He didn't ask Ness if he wanted one. He didn't offer a hand to be shaked. He only offered the following pronouncement: "I'm not going to go sneaking around to see you, Ness. People would get the wrong idea. You come to my house, you're just a cop giving an honest union guy a bad time."

  "I'm not here to give you a bad time, Jack."

  Whitehall's scowl returned; he gestured menacingly with a massive, callused hand. "You sure as hell gave the union a bad time at Republic Steel. You don't have much of a memory, for a guy that worked a factory job."

  "I did the union a favor at Republic Steel. They're at the bargaining table now."

  Whitehall slammed the beer bottle down on the Liberty magazine. "Bullshit. I see the papers. I see the society columns. You're thick with those high-hat bastards. With those"—Whitehall seemed about to utter something truly distasteful—"captains of industry."

  "I hold a high public office, Jack. I have to deal with all sorts of people in my line of work."

  Whitehall sneered, gestured to himself archly. "Even low-life types like me?"

  Ness glanced around the room. "I'd say you're doing pretty well. I'd say you haven't worked a factory job yourself in some while."

  Whitehall bristled. "Maybe not. But I'm a good god-damn closer to what the man on the line is thinking and feeling and wanting than some half-assed, so-called public ser—"

  "Jack. Don't look for an argument where there isn't one."

  "Look, Ness—"

  "It used to be Eliot—or 'kid.' Has it been that long?"

  Whitehall tried to maintain his scowl, but it dropped away like the mask it partially was, and he grinned, and shook his head. "I guess maybe it has been."

  Fifteen years ago, back in Chicago, Whitehall and Ness had worked together at the Pullman plant; Whitehall, a few years older than Ness, working class through and through, had been preaching communism and unionism even then. Ness, son of a small businessman, had no interest in unions, felt that a guy could better himself if he worked hard, if he excelled.

  "I always liked you, Eliot," Whitehall said, his tone warmer now. "But you were full of shit even then. All you could think about was how to get ahead. You never stopped to ask yourself: How can we make things better for everybody?"

  "I put myself in charge of me, Jack, and everybody else in charge of themselves."

  "You think it's that simple, huh?"

  "Pretty much."

  Whitehall shook his head, heaved a sigh. "Well, it worked for you, all right. You ended up in the front office, and then before lon
g you were off to college. And now look at you. Young man on the move. On his way up. What's next? Mayor?"

  Ness shook his head no. "I like being a cop, Jack."

  Whitehall smirked. "You would."

  "It's a profession like any other."

  "Not hardly. Why did you pick it, Eliot?"

  Ness shrugged. "It seemed wide open to me. Most of my peers were going into the business world. Law enforcement seemed backward. A field just waiting for somebody to take a more modern approach."

  "You saw an opening and you took it."

  "That's right."

  Whitehall sighed again, wearily. "A leader like you, it's a goddamn shame. We could've used you."

  "I don't like being used."

  "Tell that to your pals at the country club."

  "You really do want to argue, don't you, Jack?"

  "We just don't see eye to eye on things, Eliot."

  "I'm not against your cause, Jack. I just don't choose to make it mine. But I did help you recently. That much you have to grant me."

  Whitehall smiled slowly. The hooded eyes seemed amused, and warmer. "The food terminal, you mean."

  "Yes. We've gotten rid of Gibson and his goons. That leaves the door wide open for you and your Teamsters."

  He was nodding. "Yeah, it does. And we'll walk right in."

  "You see an opening and you'll take it. So say thank you, Jack."

  "Thank you, Eliot."

  "I'll be damned if you don't sound like you mean it."

  "I'll be damned if I don't. But you didn't ask for this meeting to talk about the food terminal, did you?"

  "Only to say that I expect the Teamsters to act like a real union at the terminal, and not a goon squad. If you do, we'll step right back in and shut you down quicker than you can say Harry Gibson."

  Whitehall's eyes had turned cold again; he seemed offended. "We're not goddamn extortionists."

  "No. But your strong-arm tactics are well-known. You've been up on a lot of charges, Jack."

  Whitehall shrugged. "I'm up on one now."

  "A serious one."

  "A serious one. Assault to kill. A goddamn trumped-up charge and you know it."

  "I don't think it's trumped up. I wish it were."

  Whitehall and two of his cronies had been involved in a disturbance at a polling place during the last election. A uniformed cop had tried to break it up, and Whitehall had put the slug on the cop and taken his revolver away.

  "You have a reputation for using strong-arm tactics, for being Cleveland labor's bad boy. You were a chief suspect in that coal-company office bombing. You did ninety days after you tipped over a furniture truck and beat up its driver."

  Whitehall said nothing.

  "I understand the Teamsters District Council president has put you on notice: you're to be on your good behavior from here on out, or you'll be out."

  Whitehall blew air through his nose like an angry bull. "The rank and file will never let that happen. The day that assault-to-kill indictment was brought, my union guys unanimously reelected me secretary/treasurer of the local!"

  "But I wonder what a jury will do?"

  Whitehall winced at that and sat back in his chair.

  "What," Ness said, casually, "if I could arrange to have that indictment dropped."

  Whitehall gazed suspiciously at his one time co-worker. "Why would you do that, Eliot? Old times' sake?"

  "I want your help."

  "Help the cops? No way. No way in hell."

  "Hear me out."

  Whitehall cut the air with two crossing motions of his arms and hands, like an umpire calling Ness out at the plate. "I shouldn't even be talking to you. My union guys got no love for the cops, as you damn well know, and hell, you're worse than a cop. I wish you were just a cop, but you're a former G-man. Do you have any idea what your pal J. Edgar Hoover is trying to do to the unions of this country? The FBI is about the biggest union-busting operation there is!"

  "I was never an FBI man, and Hoover is no 'pal' of mine."

  "I don't care. You're an ex- G-man. You're no friend of mine."

  "I'm no enemy, either. Do you view unionism as just another racket?"

  "Hell no! Do you?"

  "It can be."

  "Well... of course it can be. So can the cop business, as you well the hell know."

  Ness pointed a finger at him. "Right. And it took somebody like me, working on the inside of the department, to clean up the cop business."

  Whitehall's eyes narrowed. "What are you saying?"

  "We got rid of Gibson at the food terminal, but we couldn't get to his bosses—Caldwell and McFate. They were too well-insulated."

  Whitehall's expression turned from hostile to thoughtful. "Those bastards are a cancer on the Cleveland union scene," he said, to himself more than Ness.

  "Then help me cut 'em out."

  Whitehall's expression was pained. "I'm not really in their camp, Eliot."

  "You have some dealings with them. You're not on bad terms with them."

  "No I'm not. Not really. I... I have to deal with them, from time to time. We have to swim in the same water, even if they do foul it."

  Ness held up a cautionary palm. "All I'm asking is for you to keep your eyes and ears open. To pick up on any inside information you can."

  "I'm not a goddamn informer!"

  "This is Caldwell and McFate we're talking about, Jack. The Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum who have almost single-handedly turned unionism into racketeering in this town."

  "I'm not an informer."

  "I need your help. The cause you believe in needs these two gone. And, beyond that, I can get that indictment against you dropped."

  Whitehall thought that over. He got up and paced. From the kitchen came the clink of china as dishes were washed and dried. Kate Smith was bellowing "Whistle While You Work" over the radio, but the volume was way down.

  Whitehall came over and stood before Ness and said, "What do I have to do, exactly?"

  "As much as you feel you can."

  "What if I don't find anything out?"

  "I'm not a communist, Jack. I only reward those who excel."

  "You're a smug, snotty little bastard these days."

  "And you're a brutal son of a bitch who thinks the ends justify the means. Now that we've got that out of the way, do we have a deal?"

  Whitehall snorted a laugh and said, "We have a deal."

  They didn't shake on it. Whitehall just sat back down, but next to Ness on the couch this time, and said, "How much do you know about how Caldwell and McFate operate?"

  "I know their general modus operandi," Ness said, and recapped the Caldwell/McFate approach of hitting up store owners on the eve of a building's completion.

  "There's a hell of a lot more to it than that," Whitehall said.

  "Oh?"

  "Are you aware of the window washers union that Caldwell put together?"

  Ness sat forward. "No."

  "Well, the first round of bribes is just the beginning. If the store owner doesn't pay Caldwell a regular tribute—the amount varies from place to place, according to what the traffic will allow, I understand—the window smashing starts in again. And, of course, the blacklist kicks in."

  Ness's brow knit. "Blacklist?"

  Whitehall shrugged. "It's a list of window-smashing victims and victims-to-be. Merchants who will not be allowed to purchase glass in the city of Cleveland until they come to terms with Caldwell and his window washers union."

  "When you say 'blacklist,' do you mean that in a literal sense?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Ness felt the excitement surge within him. "I mean, are we talking about a list of people that is more or less understood... or is there an actual, physical document?"

  "It's a real list. There are probably several copies— circulated to the various glass companies in town, and agents of McFate and Caldwell, although I understand Big Jim and Little Jim make all their own initial contacts."

&nbs
p; "Elaborate, please."

  "Well, they handle most of their shakedown rackets personally—instead of being 'well-insulated' like they were at the food terminal, here they make sure that only themselves and their victims are witness to the initial demands, and the resulting payoffs. They carry out a lot of their own threats, too, I understand. They both did their share of strong-arm work, before they made it big."

  "If a blacklist truly exists, it's a document that could convince any grand jury to indict those sons of bitches. . . ."

  "So if I could get ahold of a copy of that list . . . ?"

  "That assault-to-kill charge would disappear faster than Houdini."

  Whitehall smiled thinly, studied Ness from those sharp, hooded eyes. "Are you blackmailing me, Eliot?"

  "No," Ness said pleasantly. "I'm just providing you with an incentive. It's something we capitalists believe in."

  With that Ness rose. Whitehall went into the kitchen and returned with Ness's hat.

  Taking it, Ness said, "You have a lovely wife, Jack."

  "I know. I got two great kids, too. Girls."

  "I'd like to meet them."

  Whitehall opened the door. "I don't know when you'll get the chance, cause we won't be meeting here again."

  Ness tipped his hat. "But we will be meeting. Good night, Jack."

  The men shook hands, finally, and Ness slipped out into the dark night.

  CHAPTER 8

  Vernon Gordon sat in his restaurant, in a booth, in the dark, on the Thursday night before the facility's Friday opening. It was approaching midnight and Gordon was alone, the carpenters and painters and electricians gone, having finished their finishing touches, the lingering odor of paint and varnish the only remaining sign that the restaurant was not yet a going concern. Gordon sat in shirt-sleeves and loosened tie and paint-stained slacks, hands folded before him almost prayerfully, wearing a small, satisfied, but not quite smug smile.

  It had all gone well. There had been minor hitches, primarily the petty shakedowns of Big Jim Caldwell and Little Jim McFate; but putting up a restaurant in a city of any size required a certain number of payoffs. Gordon expected that; it had been worse in New York and Detroit, actually. At least here in Cleveland—since Ness became public safety director, anyway—there was little graft on the city level. They hadn't even been approached for the usual building-inspector palm greasing. That made it almost a trade-off: less city graft, more union shakedowns. Business expenses. You had to learn to live with it.