BULLET PROOF (Eliot Ness)

by Max Allan Collins

  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.

  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 stitc
hed 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?"

  "Yes."

  Leaving Merlo and Wild inside, Ness found Cowley, a plump, pleasant man of about thirty-five with reddish-blond, thinning hair, on the porch using a tape measure to pinpoint the location of the various shell casings. He was making field notes and then picking up each shell casing with the pencil he was taking notes with, before dropping each casing into small, individual manila evidence envelopes. It was a tedious process, but Cowley didn't seem to mind. One of the top ballistics experts on the department, Cowley had been handpicked by Ness himself.

  "David," Ness said. "What do we have here?"

  Cowley stood, smiled a greeting, holding up a cartridge casing on his pencil. "Forty-five caliber. Machine gun—look at the number of casings, and the direction and the force with which they've been ejected. Judging by the pattern of the breech face marks on the cartridge, the firing-pin marks, the characteristic bulge of the cartridge, I'd say probably a Thompson."

  "Only one weapon?"

  "So far that's all I've identified. Wasn't one weapon enough?"

  Ness pointed at the cartridge riding the pencil. "I want you to compare those to the casings from the Gordon's restaurant shooting."

  "Fine," Cowley said, nodding. "Any connection besides machine guns used in both?"

  "You tell me."

  Cowley nodded. "I won't get to it till tomorrow. I'm going to be here awhile."

  Ness nodded. He well knew that Cowley had hours ahead of him here. When the ballistics man was finished on the porch, he would have to move inside and begin dealing with the spent bullets in the walls and elsewhere. Each slug would have to be removed from its point of impact, the location of which would have to be logged; this procedure, too, was tedious, as care had to be taken so that the cutting instrument Cowley used did not ruin identifying characteristics on the soft metal of the spent bullets.

  Ness went back inside, about to join Merlo and Wild in conversation, when a somber man about fifty, in shirtsleeves, pushing up his wire-framed glasses on his sweaty brow, came out from the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

  "Is Mr. Ness here?" the man said.

  "I'm Ness."

  "Mrs. Whitehall would like to see you."

  "And you are?"

  "Dr. Spencer. I'm the family doctor."

  Ness nodded and walked toward the hall, but the doctor touched him on the arm, halting him. With a tortured expression, the doctor said, "She's insisting, but don't stay long. She's really very upset."

  "Understandably."

  "I'd like to sedate her, but she won't allow it until she's talked to you."

  Ness nodded again.

  Mrs. Whitehall, her pretty face devoid of makeup, her complexion white, her eyes red, sat up in the bed, covers at her waist. She had an oddly blank look.

  "Close the door, Mr. Ness."

  Ness did.

  He stood at her bedside. "I'm dreadfully sorry for—"

  She raised a hand in a stop motion. She was staring straight ahead, into the darkness at the edges of the barely lit room.

  "He was so gentle tonight," she said. "Tucking the girls in. Kissing them good night."

  Ness said nothing.

  She looked up at him. Her eyes were wide and hollow. "Jack was doing something for you, wasn't he?"

  Ness hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

  "Helping you."

  "Yes."

  "You were his friend."

  "I liked Jack. I respected him. He was the best man in his world."

  She smiled bitterly. "Did you get him killed?"

  The words hit Ness like a blow.

  Swallowing, he said, "I don't know."

  "Don't you?"

  "I may have," Ness admitted.

  The bitter smile began to tremble. Tears began to slide down the white cheeks. 'Are you satisfied with... with the result?"

  "Mrs. Whitehall, I... I don't know what to say. I can only assure you that the person who did this—actually, the persons, I think the man who fired the weapon was only a weapon of sorts himself—will be tracked down. I will give this my personal attention, I promise you."


  "That is so big of you, Mr. Ness. So very big."

  "I understand your bitterness, Mrs. Whitehall. I know that finding Jack's killers won't bring him back. But it's about all I can offer."

  She reached out and up and slapped his face.

  The sound was ringing. The pain was sharp.

  "Get out," she said.

  Ness nodded and went out.

  Merlo was conferring with one of his detectives. Ness stopped and waited till the exchange was over, then spoke to the detective in charge.

  "I want you to work with Albert Curry on this," Ness said. "You've worked together before, and well."

  "Yes, we have," Merlo said, with a gentle smile, "on several occasions. But tell me ... why is the safety director involving a member of his personal staff in a murder investigation? Frankly, I think the Detective Bureau is quite capable of—"

  "Of course. Particularly with you on the job, Sergeant. But this is, obviously, a labor-related killing. And my office is involved in an ongoing wide-ranging inquiry into labor racketeering."

  "Ah, yes. Of course. So I need to keep Captain Savage of the Vandal Squad informed as well."

  "He and his men are assigned directly to me now."

  "This labor inquiry is a major effort you're making, then."

  There was a faint tone of disapproval in Merlo's voice, and Ness knew why: Merlo was still irritated that the full-scale investigation of the Kingsbury Run mass murderer, in which Ness and his staff had been closely involved, had been cut back to just Merlo himself.

  "Martin," Ness said, putting a hand on the detective's shoulder, "I'm in your corner where Kingsbury Run is concerned. But the mayor pulled me and my staff off that case. We both know the Butcher will eventually resurface and we'll be back in business."

  "But it will take another killing to do that. We should be trying to find the bastard, to stop him before he kills again."

  "You're still on that case, Sergeant. But you're also on this one. And I expect your full attention."

  "You'll get it." There was resignation, but no resentment, in Merlo's tone.