"Ain't this the damnedest thing," Lawrence said.
Bob Chamberlin, at the mansion-like home of Salvatore Lombardi on Larchmere in Cleveland Heights, had come up empty. Nobody was home but the servants.
He called the bad news in, just as Garner, at a fancy apartment house on Eddington just off Superior, was discovering that Angelo Scalise had flown the coop as well.
By dawn Ness was sitting in his office, with Curry, Garner, and Chamberlin; everybody else had gone home. The bad guys had been booked-of the twenty-three men on whom warrants were issued, all but six were rounded up.
So, unfortunately, had been some three hundred men who attended the smoker at the Demo League Hall. A dozen paddy wagons had shuttled the angry and embarrassed guests to the Central Station, where they were allowed to sign waivers and were released. The booking agent for the strippers, who had shown obscene films to the group earlier in the evening, was among those arrested, as were the strippers themselves, girls in their twenties who had prostitution arrests on their records.
Several dozen of the party-goers, who escaped the indignity of arrest, would be sporting wrenched backs and sprained ankles and worse, today, from jumping out the windows last night.
"Will the papers cover it?" Chamberlin asked. His pipe was in his hand, unlit.
All four of the men looked haggard, their beards heavy, their eyes bloodshot. All but Ness had their coats off and slung over the backs of their hardwood chairs; and even Ness had his tie loosened.
"No," Ness said. "Only the Call and Post."
"Why?" Curry asked. "Sam Wild and Fritchey and Kelly and Seeley were at the station when those paddy wagons rolled in."
"Colored news," Garner said with a wry smirk. He had a cigar in his mouth, but it had gone out and he wasn't bothering to light it.
"Not everybody who was arrested was colored," Curry insisted.
"Most were," Chamberlin said, with a soundless laugh. "And as for those who were white, the local press wouldn't want to embarrass any prominent Clevelanders, now, would they?"
"Was this a disaster tonight," Curry said, honestly wondering, "or a success?"
"A qualified success," Ness said, though his expression was close to a scowl. He got up slowly and moved to the big wall map and began plucking out pins. Only six remained when he was done. "We've got everybody but a few of the bigger fish-and we'll get them, too."
"Were they tipped, d'you think?" Chamberlin asked.
"How?" Curry asked. "None of us knew about these raids until we were seated in this room, just hours ago."
"I don't mean to imply anybody was tipped about tonight's round-up," Chamberlin said, gesturing with the unlit pipe. "But it was no deep secret that indictments were in the wind."
Ness sat on the edge of the table. "Bob's right. We're lucky our net pulled in as many fish as it did. And today I'll call my friends at the Justice Department and get a national sweep going."
"What if Lombardi and Scalise and the rest skipped the country?" Curry asked.
"That's tougher," Ness admitted. "But there's such a thing as extradition. We won't give up on 'em."
"Great," Curry said. "Then why don't you look happy?"
Ness sighed heavily. He hesitated for a moment, then said, ' 'I let Hollis and Councilman Raney make a fool of me. I was stupid to think I could contain the politics of that situation over at the League Hall."
"I'll bet Hollis knew it was going to be a big, rowdy, randy scene," Chamberlin said. "That wasn't your average smoker for a dozen lodge brothers."
"No it wasn't," Ness said.
"Where's Sergeant Moeller?" Curry asked. His tone lacked respect.
"I sent him home. He seemed pretty embarrassed about the way things came down."
"He should be."
Chamberlin snorted. "Did he really have to go all moral and bust that shindig?"
Ness looked carefully at Curry, who said, indignantly, " I don't think he did."
"From the police report," Garner said, unlit cigar roaming his mouth, "it sounds like the kinda party Nero mighta fiddled at."
"Well," Curry admitted, "yes, it was, kind of."
"Under normal circumstances," Ness asked, "would you have busted that party, Albert?"
"Well… well. Yes, I suppose I would've. Under normal circumstances."
"You suppose?"
Curry breathed out his nose like a bull considering goring a matador. "I would've."
Ness shrugged. "Moeller was just doing his job. Making a decision under fire, as we all must, from time to time. I'm going to stand behind him on it… without being thrilled over the results."
"Johnson isn't here, either," Garner noted.
"I sent him home, as well," Ness said. "Albert-did you think Johnson knew what you were in for, at that smoker?"
"No. Not really."
"You don't think he was working for the interests of Hollis and Raney?"
"No," Curry said, shaking his head emphatically. "He felt as uneasy as I did, about raiding the place."
Ness said nothing, thinking.
"Where do we go from here?" Chamberlin asked.
The sun was sneaking in around the edges of the shaded windows.
"I'm going over to the Hollenden," Ness said, rising, yawning, tightening his tie just a bit. "I'm going to catch a couple of hours' sleep before the Grand Jury session convenes."
The men trudged out, tired to the bone, uncertain to a man about just what, if anything, had been accomplished on this long night.
CHAPTER 16
The next night, crowding ten, the same four men-Eliot Ness, Robert Chamberlin, Will Garner, and Albert Curry-sat at a booth in the lounge of the Hollenden Hotel. It was the same booth in which, months before, Ness had held court with various members of the Cleveland press, announcing his intentions to launch a numbers-racket inquiry. The walnut-appointed lounge had a low-key atmosphere, with subdued lighting to match. The mood of these men, however, was neither low-key nor subdued.
The nation's most famous former Prohibition agent was pouring to overflowing the other three detectives' upraised champagne glasses with the appropriate bubbly beverage. The men were all smiles-even Garner, who prided himself on his stoic Indian countenance, was grinning like a C stu-dent who just got straight As.
Ness, grinning at least as wide as any other man at the table, poured himself some champagne and they clinked glasses.
"To Salvatore Lombardi," Ness said. "Wherever he is."
Everyone laughed. This was a good sign, considering the escape of Lombardi was easily the biggest stain on their victory. Word on the street was that Lombardi had skipped town; that he had headed south, figuratively and literally. Mexico, it was said.
Even without Lombardi's presence at the Grand Jury today, there was much to celebrate. Indictments had indeed come down on all twenty-three numbers racketeers; only five were still at large. Even without Lombardi and Scalise in custody, the Mayfield Road mob's hold on the numbers racket was broken. The boys couldn't run the racket from jail or from Mexico or whatever rathole the likes of Scalise had dug him-self.
And one key figure-slot-machine king Albert "Chuck" Polizzi, peer of Lombardi and Scalise-had sauntered into the Hollenden lounge earlier this afternoon, when Ness was at lunch.
"Sit down, Chuck," Ness had said. "I'll buy you a drink."
Nattily dressed in a cream-color summer suit, darkly tanned, the forty-five-year-old gangster had grinned smugly and slid into the booth next to the safety director.
"I been in Florida," Chuck Polizzi said cockily. "Fishin'. Spending' time with the wife and kids. Flew back when I heard you guys was interested in talkin' to me."