Eliot nodded absently.
"Some guy stopped to let his kids out," Curry said, with an amused smirk. "You should have seen those kids fighting over who got those bullets."
That seemed to perk Eliot up. "What?"
"A couple of boys, one about ten, another in his early teens. They were picking up souvenirs."
Eliot snapped his fingers. "That's it! That's how we can get our slugs from the food-terminal shooting!"
"What are you talking about, Chief?"
"There are all kinds of kids around a food market. Kids doing odd jobs, for pennies and produce. Cooler boys. That farmer whose truck got shot up had his kid with him."
"So?"
Eliot was smiling; it seemed to Ev an unsettling smile. He was poking his young protégé in the chest with a forefinger.
"Some of those kids picked up souvenirs, too, you can bet. A machine-gunning at the food terminal? Are you kidding? That's a big event."
Now Curry was smiling as well. "You're right! Some of those kids would've picked up a bullet or two, shell casings, as mementos."
Eliot put his hand on the young detective's shoulder, in a fatherly fashion. "Go find those kids, and find those bullets. And then we'll let the Ballistics Unit do their job."
"And then?"
"And then," Eliot said, "I'll do mine."
Listening to this conversation, watching the two men speak, Ev felt almost jealous. Not of young Curry, but of Eliot's job itself. She doubted she could ever be as important in his life as it was.
But she was going to give it the old college try.
He came over to her and said, "I can get us a lift back to the boathouse. How does that sound?"
"Better than machine-gun fire," she said, and smiled, and took his arm.
CHAPTER 18
Coming down the steep incline of Commercial into the Flats, Ness could see the smokestacks of Republic Steel against the horizon to the southeast. The holstered .38 under his left arm was a reminder of his last official venture into this section of town. To his far right loomed the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, over the shoulder of which peered the ever-present Terminal Tower. Hard to believe this dirty, shabby district was only ten minutes from downtown.
Riding with him on this cold, cloudy late afternoon, in the new sedan bearing the old EN-1 plates, were detectives Albert Curry, in front, and Will Garner, in back. In a separate car following were Bob Chamberlin, Captain Savage, and a plainclothes officer from Savage's Vandal Squad.
Ness drove along West Fourth, into a warehouse district nestled in a loop of the Cuyahoga, the twisting, oily-yellow river seemingly all around them, glimmering in the overcast day's filtered light. Acme Brothers Glass Works was a big sprawling brick building, with a windowed area at right and a loading dock at left. Ness pulled in so that his sedan was concealed by one of the several parked glass-company trucks. The white trucks had slanting side panels bearing racks with rubber pads and holders designed to hold plate glass.
Chamberlin pulled in alongside Ness; the second car was also hidden by the parked plate-glass trucks. Chamberlin, Curry, Savage, Savage's plainclothes dick, and Garner gathered around Ness like a football team huddling about their quarterback. The big Indian investigator was smoking a cigar, and in his hands was a sawed-off shotgun. It wasn't regulation, but Ness knew better than to complain; that gun had been on many a Chicago campaign.
Ness smiled blandly and said, "I don't anticipate any shooting, but I want you to have your guns out."
The men got their guns out—except for the already-armed Garner, of course.
"I'm going in alone," Ness said. "And if you should hear shooting within, don't come in after me."
There were expressions of confusion all around—except, of course, for Garner, who only smiled a little. He'd been on more raids with Ness than the rest of these men put together.
"It's vital that you keep all the exits blocked," Ness continued. "It's a fairly big facility, with a lot of ways out; fortunately, the windows are mostly too high for exiting."
"He might get to the roof," Garner said. "Warehouses have lofts and such. Ladders up to storage areas."
"True," Ness said, "but we're not expected. If our man bolts, he'll bolt immediately, and for one of the exits. So wait until I'm inside, and then deploy yourselves accordingly."
Ness did not have his gun in hand. He wore the tan camel's hair topcoat with his badge pinned to the lapel; the badge was glittering gold and it said CITY OF CLEVELAND DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC SAFETY. He walked calmly across the graveled loading dock and parking area and went up the half flight of stairs and inside.
There was no vestibule, no reception area, just an open room with only a single counter separating visitors from the half-dozen desks where secretaries and various office personnel were at work.
Ness spoke to the nearest office worker, who was typing up a form or a bill of some kind. A plain woman of about thirty, wearing glasses, she seemed startled and annoyed all at once.
"May I speak to the office manager?"
"In what regard?"
Ness tapped his gold badge. "Police business."
"Just a moment," she said, trying for indignation but seeming mostly unsettled. She rose and walked briskly off, a small-busted, wide-hipped woman in a white blouse and black skirt.
Ness glanced to the left, where the warehouse was. A double doorway was marked NO ADMITTANCE. He returned his gaze to the office area, where he found every eye trained on him, but only for a moment, as the workers returned nervously to their work, all of them having the guilty look that most innocent people have when police intrude into their lives.
The office manager was a man in a vest and loosened tie and rolled-up shirt-sleeves; he was perhaps fifty, stocky and balding, with a rumpled face that had a cigar stuck in its skeptical mouth.
"What sort of police business?" the man asked.
No niceties; just right into it.
"I understand Harry Gibson works for you."
"That's right. What about it?"
"Where is he?"
"What's this about?"
"I have a warrant for his arrest."
"Is that right?" The skeptical mouth twisted into a smile. "But do you have a search warrant for Acme Glass?"
"No. But I will leave armed police at every exit while I go get one. And when I come back, I'll have more than a search warrant. I'll have photographers and reporters from every paper in town. Maybe you'd like the free publicity."
The mouth lost its skepticism; in fact, it went slack, the cigar clinging to the moisture in one corner.
"Well?" Ness said.
"He's in the warehouse. He has a desk he sits at."
"Is it in an office?"
"No. Right out in the open. I only have one office back there, and the warehouse manager needs it. Harry, uh. . ."
"What?"
The man shrugged; now he seemed embarrassed. "Harry doesn't do much around here, really."
Ness laughed shortly. "What a shock."
Ness walked to the double doors, then turned and saw the office manager standing at a desk with a phone in hand.
"Give Big Jim my best regards," Ness said pleasantly. "And tell him he's next."
The office manager tasted his tongue and nodded, but did not put down the phone.
Ness unbuttoned his topcoat. He unbuttoned his suitcoat underneath. He touched the gun under his arm, half withdrew it from the holster, just to loosen the weapon from the leather binding, and put it back in place. Then he went in.
Off to the left was the slant of the loading-dock area, with three large garage doors. Immediately he passed the warehouse manager's office; the manager—or so he assumed, as the fellow was wearing a shirt and tie—was talking to two men in work denims. All three wore metal helmets. The manager noticed Ness walking by and stepped out of his office with a look of irritation and concern.
Before the man could speak, Ness tapped his badge with a forefinger and said, quietly, "Harry G
ibson."
The manager made a disgusted face—more out of distaste for Gibson, Ness thought, than anything else— and pointed off into the warehouse area.
Ness moved past a wall of pegboard where various tools hung, past the loft over the manager's office—a loft stacked with truck tires and boxes—and into a world of wood, metal, and glass.
It was a vast high-ceilinged room, cement floor, brick walls. Wood crates of plate-glass sheets, stored upright in metal framework bins, were arranged in rows, with aisles between them, with occasional open work areas where metal-hatted glaziers were cutting glass on large workbenches while others tended a massive machine with rollers on which large plate-glass sheets were being washed. Some of the metal frameworks were two-story affairs, with sheets stored sideways; steel ladders, some of them on rollers, were here and there. The warehouse was a warren of metal framework and wooden racks and glinting green-edged glass.
Looking up, Ness saw a gridwork of metal beams and bars and pipes, with several pulley systems designed to unload trucks and move massive crates of glass. Handcarts with glass sheets roped onto two-sided padded racks, which formed tight upside down V's, were lined up like autos in traffic, though occasionally a dolly, loaded or not, was stalled out in an aisle. But mostly there was row upon row of stacked, crated, racked glass sheets.
It was a big facility, but Cleveland was a big city, and this one warehouse had a good share of that city's glass business in its pocket; no wonder Big Jim Caldwell's income was in six figures.
Toward the back of the building, behind an open area where glaziers were assembling windows—the sound of their hammering not unlike that of machine-gun fire—sat Harry Gibson, at a desk on which his feet were up. He was reading The Police Gazette; his lips were moving. It occurred to Ness that, oddly, he had never seen a policeman reading The Police Gazette. Gibson, whose metal hard hat was on his desk next to a cup of coffee, was wearing denims and work shoes, like the other workers, but his looked unused, like his conscience.
"Hello, Harry."
Gibson looked away from the pin-up photo he was perusing to regard his visitor. His eyes narrowed; his lumpy face tightened in thought and aggravation.
"What the hell do you want?"
"A word with you."
"I'm busy, Ness. Go make your headlines at somebody else's expense."
"You do look busy, Harry. By the way, you're under arrest."
Gibson sighed heavily, as if to say, Oh, brother; then he grinned. His teeth were a pale yellow, like sweet corn. He hauled his feet down off the desk. He stood. He was a big, brawny son of a bitch, at least two inches taller than Ness.
"What chickenshit charge is it this time, Ness?" Gibson said, sneering down at the detective. "Breaking windows? Tossing stink bombs?" He shook his head, his greased-back brown hair as motionless as if painted on his scalp. "Don't you ever get tired of bum-rapping the labor movement?"
Ness took several steps and stood very close to Gibson; he could smell the man's boozy breath. With a small smile, in a quiet voice, Ness said, "My girl was in the car."
Gibson, shaken, stepped back a little, not enjoying having Ness right up on him like that, staring up at him coldly. "W-What . . . what are you—"
"My girl could have been killed. She was in the car with me when you went duck hunting on the bridge with your tommy gun. That was unwise of you, Harry."
"You're crazy—you're a goddamn crazy man!"
"We matched the bullets, Harry. We matched them all—we can tie you to the food terminal, and Gordon's restaurant, and Jack Whitehall, and the shooting on the High-Level Bridge."
Gibson's eyes were jumpy; he began to sputter. "Prove it, big man. Who's gonna testify against me? Did you see me?"
"We've got witnesses who'll testify, Harry. But we won't need them. We went through your apartment this afternoon. We had a search warrant. We went through your garage. We found the gun, Harry. We've got the gun. And now we've got you."
Gibson grabbed the coffee cup off his desk and hurled its contents in Ness's face; the sting of alcohol hit Ness's eyes, and he rubbed them dry with a coat sleeve while with his other hand yanking the thirty-eight from the shoulder holster.
But when he could see again, it was in time only to glimpse Gibson hightail it around the corner of a wall of crated, racked sheet glass.
Ness followed, but as he rounded the corner, he stopped short before running headlong into a dolly loaded with glass, left there to trip him up by Gibson, who he could see sprinting down the aisle, amazingly fast for a big man.
"Stop or I'll shoot," Ness yelled, and Harry didn't, and Ness did.
The bullet missed Harry, hitting just behind him, the shot echoing through the warehouse, all but drowning out the crash of the plate glass it spiderwebbed. Workers were scrambling for the loading dock area and those big garage doors.
Gibson ducked around another corner.
This time Ness doubled back around, so as not to run into any more traps. But when he entered the aisle, he found it empty. He crawled through a space between the crates in the metal rack that was the aisle's left wall and entered the next aisle, the final one on that side of the building. But no Harry.
Down at the end of the aisle was a ladder on wheels. Perhaps if he climbed up on that, he'd have a vantage point from which he could spot Gibson. He knew if Gibson made for any one of the exits, the men outside would nail the bastard. No need to panic.
Ness moved quickly down the aisle, not quite running, not wanting to make that much noise, and when he heard the scraping sound above him, he pulled back. The sheets of glass rained down and shattered before him, ricocheting off the cement, hitting the floor like a clumsy waitress spilling all the dishes in the world.
But he'd covered his face, and none of the large fragments had flown to find him, and he fired upward, to the sound of more breaking glass, and of Gibson up above, scrambling.
Ness turned the corner to see that another of the ladders on wheels was standing in this aisle, mid-way, almost close enough for Gibson—up on the second level, standing in a half-empty bin—to reach out and pull over. He was stretching out a hand for it when Ness called out.
"Hold it, Harry!"
And Harry, looking toward Ness, who was aiming the revolver up at him, lost his balance.
He pitched into the metal ladder, which scooted away on its wheels as Gibson careened off and tumbled backward and landed, hard, on his back, on the multiple edges of roped, upright sheets of glass below. His mouth opened to cry out, but no cry ever emerged.
He was pinned there, the massive sharp edge of stacked glass poking through him like the point of a giant's sword. He wriggled, caught like a bug, but he seemed dead already—perhaps these were death spasms. Ness, feeling as detached as a surgeon, stood looking up at the dangling, impaled Gibson. Blood soaked the denim shirt and dripped heavily to the cement floor. Eyes open, head tilted to one side, body slack, chest pierced, Harry Gibson had found a way to beat the murder rap.
Ness went to the nearest exit and opened the door. An anxious Albert Curry stepped inside.
"I heard the shots. Are you okay?"
"Yes," Ness said. "Go round everybody up and come in the front way."
Soon his crew was around him, standing in the aisle looking up at the punctured Gibson.
"That's a new one," Will Garner said, uncharacteristically impressed. "How did you manage it?"
"I didn't want him dead," Ness said.
"Sure you did," Garner said, shotgun cradled in his arms. "You would have rather it been in an electric chair, is all."
"We needed that son of a bitch," Ness said.
Curry nodded glumly. "Without him, the link to McFate and Caldwell is gone."
"Unless maybe we can find whoever was driving for him," Savage said, "the night he shot up your car on the bridge."
"We don't have any leads on the driver," Ness said grimly. "None at all."
Chamberlin put a hand on Ness's shoulder; the smile
under the tiny mustache was kind, reassuring. "Eliot—let's look at the bright side: a murderer is dead. And after the work you've done—we've all done, these past four months—you've got plenty to go to the grand jury with, on racketeering and extortion charges."
Ness was nodding. "You're right. It's time to put those bastards out of business, and behind bars, where they damn well belong."
Everyone nodded. The sound of Gibson's dripping blood seemed to make it unanimous.
CHAPTER 19
On the Monday just prior to Christmas, in the union headquarters in the six-story building on East Seventeenth Street, little holiday cheer was in evidence.
In the outer office, where Big Jim Caldwell's attractive brunette secretary sat typing, a small fir trimmed with tinsel and red and green electric lights was perched upon a small table, but there were no gifts under the tree.
And in Big Jim's office there was no tree, no tinsel, no cheer whatsoever. On this occasion it was Big Jim who was pacing, while Little Jim sat behind his partner's desk, drinking whiskey from a water glass. Anger clenched Caldwell's round face; McFate slouched in the chair, with an even more doleful expression than usual.
"I feel so goddamn helpless," Caldwell said.
McFate said nothing.
Caldwell stopped and gestured with two open hands. "There's got to be some way to stop this thing."
McFate shrugged.
Caldwell paced. He knew McFate would have nothing trenchant to contribute, but he couldn't keep his frustration inside; he had to voice it.
But he knew, too, that McFate's silence was an appropriate response. There had been nothing that could be done to squelch the grand-jury inquiry. It had been too sweeping a probe, with more than one hundred witnesses called, including the two Jims themselves. How do you intimidate that many witnesses? How do you even keep track of them? For that matter, with the secrecy that Ness and Prosecutor Cullitan had imposed, how could you know how a witness had testified? You couldn't tell the betrayers from the faithful without a scorecard—and there were no fucking scorecards!
BULLET PROOF (Eliot Ness) Page 16