A man with a brain in his head and steel in his fists could go a long way for the worker, and for himself. Yes, he was in it for himself and his family, but he was no goddamn pork-chopper. Yes, he used threats and violence when that was what it took to get the job done. But he sure as hell was no shakedown artist like those bastards Caldwell and McFate, who gave the labor movement the worst kind of bad name. Much as he distrusted and even hated cops, he was glad he'd helped Ness try to nail those bums.
And, knowing that stubborn Scandyhoovian (as Nordics like Ness were called back where Whitehall came from), he would get the job done.
Eddie Cantor came on and woke Whitehall up. Soon he was laughing, as Cantor dueled first with the Mad Russian ("How dooo you dooo?" — that always killed Whitehall) and then with that lovable dope Parkyakarkas.
Despite the radio (which wasn't turned up all that loud, with the kids sleeping in the other room), a noise on the porch caught Whitehall's attention. He turned his head slightly and looked over his shoulder, and through the thin white translucent curtain he could make out the figure of a man holding something.
The window behind him shattered under the chatter of a machine gun and slugs riddled the left side of his body and the back of his neck; he began to rise and more bullets tore into him, tore through him, shaking him like a large animal shakes a smaller one in its teeth, and he fell awkwardly to the floor, tumbling, doing an ungainly little dance, dead before the pain could register, dead before he could see his living room and its nice overstuffed furniture get the stuffing knocked out of it, as bullets chewed up the room, shutting off the radio, cutting off Eddie Cantor in mid-joke, the sound of female screams, a mother and her two girls, cutting shrilly above the metallic din.
CHAPTER 15
The body was gone by the time Ness got there; only a chalk outline remained. Both the coroner's man and the photographer were gone as well. Nonetheless, the crime scene was freshly preserved; the murder might have occurred minutes ago, not several hours.
He'd been stuck in an endless, budget-battle city council meeting, seated at Mayor Burton's side, when a plainclothes cop sent by Sergeant Merlo of the Homicide Bureau brought him the news of the Whitehall shooting. With the mayor's permission, Ness had left the meeting. He'd run into Sam Wild coming out of the press room.
"Were your ears burning tonight?" Wild had asked with a one-sided smile.
"Why?" Ness said, moving quickly down the hall, footsteps echoing off the marble floor.
Wild followed along. "I had dinner at Jack Whitehall's tonight. You were a frequent topic of conversation."
Ness looked at him sharply. "When was this?"
"Oh, I don't know. I went over about six-thirty, stayed till eight, maybe."
"Within an hour of your leaving," Ness said, "Jack Whitehall was murdered."
The usually unflappable Wild stopped dead. His face drained of blood.
Ness kept walking, slipping his trench coat on, looking back to say, "Machine-gunned through his front-porch window."
Wild caught up. "His wife and kids…?"
"Unharmed."
"I'm coming along."
"It's not really appropriate, Sam, a reporter at the scene at this stage."
"Fuck you, I'm coming."
"I guess you're coming."
The living room of Whitehall's home was a grisly sight. Next to the white chalk outline on the natural wood floor, which was splashed with blood and brain matter and assorted gore, were hundreds of fragments of glass that had been blown out by the machine-gun fire. The chopper had apparently been thrust right up to the pane. Some of the shards had been scattered across the room; the pattern of slugs was stitched in the wall opposite Whitehall's bullet-tattered easy chair. The radio had taken a dozen slugs easily. The effeminate portrait of Christ still hung on the wall, albeit crookedly now; its glass had been shattered and the Savior had gotten one in the cheek.
Grim as all of this was, Ness was pleased that the evidence had not been disturbed; before his arrival in Cleveland, crime-scene procedure here was unprofessional, to say the least. His first move had been to remind his detectives of the "golden rule" for investigators as stated by Hans Gross in System der Kriminalistik back in 1906: "Never alter the position of, pick up, or even touch any object before it has been minutely described in an official note and a photograph taken."
The efficiency of this crime-scene investigation was due, Ness knew, to the man in charge, Sergeant Martin Merlo, the somber, professorial detective whose primary ongoing assignment was the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run case. Two other detectives were present as well, one of them notating a crime-scene floor plan on a clipboard, the other making detailed field notes in a small notebook. And several uniformed officers were posted at the street and in back of the house, keeping out the curious.
"You know Sam Wild," Ness said, gesturing behind him with one hand, taking off his fedora with the other.
"Yes," Merlo said indifferently, aware that the safety director cut a lot of slack to the press in general and Wild in particular.
"Where's Mrs. Whitehall?"
"She's in the bedroom," Merlo said. He was a thin middle-aged man with horn-rimmed glasses. "There's a doctor with her, a fellow who lives a few doors down. They sent for him even before they called the police."
"And the children?"
"Whitehall has a brother in town. He and his wife came over and picked the kids up and are taking care of them." Merlo made a clicking sound in his cheek. "Poor lads looked awful-not crying, just stunned, white as little ghosts."
"Give me a reading of the situation."
"Well, we have a witness."
"Good."
"But not much of one."
"Oh?" Ness's eyes were fixed on the chalk outline on the floor; the outline looked ridiculously large, but then, Whitehall had been a big man.
"Fellow who lives upstairs," Merlo explained. "He has a wife and a teenage daughter, but they were at the movies tonight. He heard the shots, looked out the window, and saw a figure running toward the street, getting in a car parked in front of the Whitehall house. The car drove north on East Boulevard."
"Did he get a look at the guy?"
"No. No physical description except a big man in a raincoat, collar up."
"License plate number?"
"No."
"Did he describe the car?"
"A dark sedan."
"That's it? No make? No color?"
"No. You might want to talk to him yourself."
Ness sighed. "And the neighbors on either side?"
"Nothing. They heard the noise, of course. They say they thought it was a car backfiring."
Ness looked at Wild, who rolled his eyes.
"That's one way of not getting involved," Ness said glumly. "Well, you've done a good job of preserving the crime scene, Sergeant."
"Thanks. We staked off the front yard; ground's a little damp from that rain yesterday, but I don't think we're going to find any footprints. The gunman came up the front walk, onto the porch, and fired a volley through the window there. Then he went back the way he came."
Ness had a closer look, stepping carefully around the chalk outline and squeezing next to the easy chair, which angled away from the southernmost of four windows looking out on the porch. Blood was spattered on the teeth of glass remaining in the window. Strands of Whitehall's hair clung to the sheer curtains.
"Ballistics make an I.D. yet?" Ness asked.
"Cowley is still here; he's got a big job, with all these slugs. Want to talk to him?"