"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.