Wild shrugged. "You shouldn't have passed that motion barring the press from your meetings."
Whitehall didn't push it; nor did Wild. They sat in silence, listening to the noises of the neighborhood, the muffled sound of radios, the clinking of dishes being washed and dried, the traffic of the nearby main thorough-fare.
"I don't know whether I'm supposed to tell you this or not," Wild said.
"You want me to get some whiskey, to help you decide?"
"Yeah. Why don't you?"
Whitehall went in and got a bottle and two glasses and returned. He poured Wild, and then himself, a drink.
"Anyway," Wild said, "you have a right to know, although by all rights it should be Ness who tells you."
"Tell me."
"Then again, he might not tell you. Might not want you told."
"You tell me. We put our butts on the line."
Wild thought about that. Then he raised his glass to Whitehall and Whitehall raised his and they clinked glasses in a toast to their teamwork.
"Vernon Gordon came forward," Wild revealed.
"Damn. That's good news."
"You're goddamn right it's good news. Gordon was the key witness, the one guy Ness felt he had to get in front of the grand jury. I mean, Gordon suffered the most outrageous vandalism of anybody. Machine fuckin' gun, no less."
Whitehall raised a hand. "Keep it down, please. Better watch the language. My kids are right inside."
Wild made an apologetic face and gesture, and went on. "Ness spoke to a whole group of them, a hundred or more of the businessmen that the two Jims have been preying on; and he told them he wouldn't ask any of them to testify unless there was a total of sixty witnesses that came forward."
"So how many came forward?"
Wild smiled. "Sixty-one."
"Ha. Just made it."
"Any number of 'em, including Gordon, said they'd testify in any case."
"How did Ness pull that off, anyway?"
Wild grimaced. "I don't know how he pulls off half of what he pulls off. But he's got a good share of the business community behind him."
Whitehall sipped his whiskey, nodding. "That's what worries me about my old co-worker."
"What?"
"I'm afraid he's gonna wind up in the pocket of those 'prominent businessmen' and 'captains of industry' and 'social leaders' he hangs out with at the country club and so on. Hell, he lives in a damn boathouse that belongs to Wynston, who's got dough in Fisher Body, for crying out loud."
Wild was slowly nodding. "I know. I been telling him that. But he doesn't want to listen. Eliot Ness likes to think that those guys are civic-minded and that all they'll ask of him is to do his job and do it well. Which he does in spades, obviously."
Whitehall shook his head. "It won't be that simple. The bill will come due. Again and again."
Wild shrugged. "What can I say? I agree with you."
They sat in silence, drinking and smoking.
Finally, Wild stood and said, "I got work to do. And it's getting late."
Whitehall rose. "Thanks for coming."
"Thanks for the invite."
The two men shook hands, smiling at each other with cigars stuck in their smiles.
Then Whitehall accompanied Wild back inside, where the reporter thanked Sarah again and said his good-byes to her and the kids.
Once Wild had been seen off, Whitehall removed his suitcoat and his tie and shoes; he put on his bedroom slippers and padded into the girls' room, where Sarah, in her dressing gown, was reading them The Wizard of Oz. He sat on the edge of the bed, stroking Dorrie's hair, listening to the gentle, musical sound of his wife's voice.
Both his girls had Sarah's sky-blue eyes. Neither one of them had a facial feature that resembled their father, a fact for which he was grateful.
"What did you girls do today?" he asked them, after his wife had finished tonight's chapter.
The little girls spoke of their day, in overlapping sentences, none of which made much sense; their concerns were trivial, though so important to them. He listened to and savored the sound of their voices, and nodded when it seemed appropriate, without really listening to the words.
He hugged Dorrie and kissed her on the cheek, and then went around and hugged Janey and kissed her on the forehead.
"That's what Glinda did," Janey said.
"Huh?" Whitehall said.
"She kissed Dorothy on the forehead. And it protected her. Nothing could hurt her."
"Nothing," Dorrie said, wide-eyed and nodding.
"That's nice," Whitehall said, and smiled back at them, loving them without understanding a damn word of it.
In the hall he hugged Sarah to him; she was so much smaller than he was, it was like hugging another child. She beamed up at him, with the same sky-blue eyes as the kids, and said, "I can kiss you on the forehead, too, if you like."
"Ha. I don't think that'll do me much good."
"Well then, let me just do this, then."
And she kissed him on the mouth. A sweet kiss that had more than a hint of passion in it.
Then, with an ornery little smile, she looked up at him and said, "Are you coming to bed, you big bully?"
"Yeah. After my radio program."
"What, Eddie Cantor, again?"
"He's funny, honey."
She rolled her eyes. "Then to bed?"
"Then to bed."
She turned to go and looked at him with a mock mean look, as if to say You better, and he reached out and patted her on her sweet soft ass and her expression melted and she padded down the hall in bare feet.
In the living room he switched on the radio, dialed his station, and settled himself in his easy chair, waiting for his show to come on. Hands folded in his lap, he felt himself on the verge of drifting off to sleep. The overstuffed chair, next to the porch windows, was as comfortable as a mother's arms. It soothed his weary damn bones. He'd had another long day at the food terminal, though well worthwhile. The Teamsters would have that place sewed up in a week.
Whitehall smiled to himself, pleased with his life. He had come a long, long way from that log cabin on Lake Michigan. He had little memory of his father, who had run a small grocery store at Scott's Point, serving a small community of fishermen and loggers. From the age of six he'd been raised by his grandfather on a small farm, and when his grandfather died, went to live with his foundry-foreman uncle in Manistique, Michigan, a town of five thousand whose electric lights, running water, indoor plumbing, movie house, and department stores had opened up a whole new world for the burly bumpkin.
He had also been introduced to pool halls and street gangs, and with his brawn and brains had little trouble maintaining respect and even dominion. Whitehall was an unusual roughneck among roughnecks, because he studied, and liked to read. He grew up on Zane Grey and Tom Swift and was a reader to this day, everything from Karl Marx to Sinclair Lewis.
Of course, it was the sons and daughters of bankers, merchants, doctors, and lawyers who went to college; and occasionally die offspring of the middle class, the department-store clerks, the bank tellers, the civil-service workers. Not the likes of Jack Whitehall, the ill-clad kin of a foundry worker.
He had hoboed around awhile after high school, and took his first real job on a Great Lakes steamer out of Toledo. Working in the galley as a kitchen flunky, he set tables and washed dishes, pots and pans, and swabbed floors. He'd been forced to sign up in the Lakes Carriers Association, a company union. It had been his first lesson in the education of a working man. When the ship steward, to whom he reported, got sacked for drinking on the job, the steward's three-man staff, hardworking Jack Whitehall included, was canned as well.
Like all company unions, there was no real grievance committee; nothing to protect the worker from unjust firings. It had made an impression on young Whitehall. When he finally wound up in Chicago, in the Pullman plant, working back-breaking twelve-hour shifts, he was a man born to the union cause.