The wind blustered in from the lake, fluttering the brim of Dillon's hat. He leaned against a bench with his back to the water, staring now toward the stout, backlit skyline, then toward the tiny people moving along the distant promenade. All those thousands within range of what he saw, and not one remotely aware of him.
Damn, she should be here.
He took a last drag on his cigarette and let it fly. It soared toward town with all the other litter.
"Hello, Sean."
Her greeting startled him. He whipped around to see that she had just stepped out from behind the bandstand, having approached from the direction of the water, and not from downtown at all. The hulking pavilion had blocked his view of her.
She had been carrying her shoes in one hand, crossing through the sand in her stocking feet. Over her shoulder was slung a large, dark woven bag, too big to be a purse. She put it on the bench, and leaned over to slip on her shoes again.
Her slim ankles struck him, the curve of her legs.
When she stood up straight again, she tightened the belt of her trenchcoat and pulled the collar up closer to her throat. She is so beautiful, he thought. Why is it again I have not been with her?
"I got off work early," she said, as if that explained her coming on him from behind.
Sean grinned. "I'm a pushover as a G-man, aren't I?"
"That depends." She picked up her bag again, clutching it with both arms, holding it before herself like a shield. Dillon noticed the bag's rough fabric and realized it was a messenger's satchel.
But what kind of G-man had he become? Raymond Buckley was the one measure of that. Depends? Everything depended on what he was going to say.
With a gesture he proposed they should sit on the bench, but she seemed not to notice, as if in her concentration she had been stripped to one thing.
He went forward a step. "We are launching..." he began, then hesitated at the stilted word. But argot, the language of his authority, was the point now. "...a special operation to bring highly public enforcement action against violators of the new draft law."
"The draft law?" Cass was sure she had missed something.
Dillon repeated himself. "The draft law. A month ago more than a million men registered for the draft. Two weeks ago local boards started issuing classifications and calling men up. You know that."
Cass nodded. Everyone knew it.
"For conscription to work, its has to be fair and it has to be seen as fair, which is where the Bureau comes in. Law enforcement is always targeted. Usually the targets are anything but the well connected and the powerful, but this time that's just who they are. The men who beat everything else and who people assume will beat the draft too—we have a surprise for them. In several key cities, beginning this week, agents will be nailing big shots who falsified their registrations or used influence with local boards to get exemptions. The point is the show of enforcement. The targets happen to include a Chicago fellow named Buckley." At last Dillon allowed himself to smile. "His name near the top of the list is my small contribution to the effort."
If by smiling Sean meant to elicit her congratulations, Cass missed the signal. "The draft?" she repeated with stark incredulity. "What does Raymond Buckley have to do with the draft?"
"He's a thirty-four-year-old male citizen, and therefore subject to the law." Dillon's voice went flat, a briefer's voice. "The Ward Seven draft board, at least two of whose members Buckley himself nominated, just this week classified him'S.S. 3-D, based on information Buckley was obliged to furnish under penalties of perjury."
"But what—?"
"3-D grants exemption from conscription due to hardship to wife, child or parent. In Buckley's case, since he's obviously unmarried, the hardship is to his widowed mother, whose address he gives as a La Grange old folks' home; he claims to be her sole support."
Dillon paused, wanting her to say something, but Cass only stared at him, waiting.
"The local draft board found itself disinclined to require proof, and so did not confront openly what everybody in the yards knows very well—that Buckley's widowed mother is dead."
Cass had begun to shake her head. "You're saying he fudged a draft registration? Who cares about that? The draft is nothing compared to—"
"But it's ours, Cass. His mother died four years ago. Buckley perjured himself. A federal violation. The draft law puts him on our field, in our court. He'll go to jail, Cass. He'll go to jail for years."
"But for the draft? What about what he did to my uncle? I want people to know what he did! What he is still doing!" Cass pushed her satchel into Dillon's arms, but it fell, spilling papers, yellow sheets filled with scrawl. The wind ripped several pages away, and Cass rushed to retrieve them, even as she continued frantically, "Anyone might cheat the draft"—she snagged a page, then another—"but only an animal would do what Buckley does. It's all here." She flourished the papers in Dillon's face. "This is what I brought you. It's everything about Buckley."
The satchel held manila folders crammed with hundreds of yellow sheets. "What is it?"
"It's Buckley's conversations, what he says to people, how he speaks to them, what he threatens them with, what he does to them. My uncle and Dr. Riley were just two. Buckley is an animal! I want people to know about this!"
"His conversations?"
"On the telephone."
"The telephone?" A steel spring snapped open in his mind, an entirely new image of the woman before him.
"The switchboards. It's where I work, remember?"
"You did this?" He fingered the pages of transcript, lists of names, dates, paragraphs of tidy handwriting.
"I've been doing it every free moment for a year. As supervisor, I make it a point to relieve the girls myself who handle Buckley's exchange. In front there's an index, a log of dates on which he talks about the killings. There are six separate killings at least. He talks about it like he's ordering sandwiches. It's everything you need."
The shock Dillon felt had transformed his face into something ugly. "I couldn't use it, Cass."
"Why?"
"Because this is illegal. And it's federal, it's FCC. You can't show these transcripts to anyone. Who knows you've done this?"
"Nobody."
"Cass, this is serious."
She grabbed the satchel. "You're saying I broke the law? You're saying what / did is serious?"
Dillon turned, holding on to the bag. She fought him for it. "Are you going to arrest me?"
He held the bag away from her with one arm. When she reached for it, he pulled her against himself with the other. Neither of them moved.
After a long time she spoke, her voice muffled against him, still thick with incredulity. "You think I did something wrong?"
"That's not what I meant, Cass." He held her away, to see her. "It's Buckley I'm thinking of. If a judge knew about this, we couldn't convict him even of the draft violation."
"But it doesn't count, what's in there? What I heard him and the others say? Murder? Gambling parlors? They have slot machines in candy stores! There are police captains who call Buckley every week, and Buckley—"
"That's the problem, Cass. Their system works only if they stick together, and they do. Everyone from Mayor Kelly and the chief justice down will work to protect Buckley. Anyone who comes forward against him will disappear the way Doc Riley did. There have been six hundred syndicate homicides in Chicago in the last twelve years, not counting so-called accidents like your uncle's. Do you know how many convictions? Eleven." Dillon paused to let the number register. "We don't investigate or prosecute murder cases. The DA does, and he's either one of them, like that coroner was, or he rolls over for them, like Courtney did. And the same is true of the grand jury. We can only get Buckley if we get him into federal court. It's that simple."
"But the draft—"
"It's five years in prison if he gets maximum, and I promise you he will."
"That is not enough," Cass said with cold exactitude. "You are
rolling over for them too, by thinking it is."
Her accusation was like a blast of wind off the frozen sea of her hatred, and Dillon wanted to turn away from it. But perhaps the chill he felt was from the bundle of pages he held under one arm, not only a record of Buckley's connivance, but evidence of his absolute immunity. There was the outrage. Dillon knew damn well the mockery it was to go after Buckley on the draft, like going after Scarface Capone on taxes. But you play the cards in your hand, or you fold.
Thinking about cards, he shifted the satchel to get a better grip on it. "I should look at this," he said.
"Even if it's against the law?"
"Do you want me to read it or not?"
"You were why I took it all down. I thought it would be a weapon."
"How?"
"I don't know." She felt the full force of her disappointment at his scruple, his readiness to strike so weakly at Buckley, and at her own inability to think what else to do. "I have nowhere to take it but to you."
"That's just as well, Cass. No one else should know about it, just us."
They were not standing on the same spot at all; their South Side Irish-Catholic lives, with all they had in common, had made them very different people. Something in Cass Ryan frankly frightened Dillon. The unexamined purity of her perception? Her utter lack of second thought? Selfhood like a flame?
But he had just agreed to throw in with her, no? Now that he was going to read the pages filled with her painstaking handscript, therefore justifying them, he knew that what bound him to this woman was more powerful than what he once regarded as the flame of his own selfhood, his very conscience.
With that recognition, a feeling of amazement flooded him. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he leaned toward her, bringing his face to hers.
Cass instinctively lay aside her large question about him as she inclined slightly to meet him. It was as much her act, then, as his, their first kiss.
Dillon helped himself to a cone full of cooler-water and downed it like a shot, not to quench a thirst, but for the sheer release of crushing the paper cup in his fist. Then he turned and walked slowly down the long, brightly lit corridor to the room where they had Buckley.
Buckley and his lawyer, both seated on one side of the long table, looked up when Dillon entered. He enjoyed the shock of recognition in Buckley's face, but it went as quickly as it came, and he said nothing.
Dillon also enjoyed the sight of the gnarled pink notch in his ear.
"Aha, Dillon!" Leo Fitzgerald said from his place on the near side of the table. He was in shirtsleeves, standing with one foot on the seat of a wooden chair, the revolver on his hip on full display.
To the side, at a smaller table, sat a young girl, a Bureau stenographer, hands poised at her machine. A glance was all it took to make her once again invisible.
Fitz swept a hand toward Sean. "This is my colleague, gentlemen. Special Agent Sean Dillon, who came up from Washington to give us a hand."
"Mr. Buckley and I have met," Dillon said as he closed the door. He stepped aside to lean against the wall, pulling cigarettes out of his pocket.
Buckley leaned to whisper in his lawyer's ear, not the man who'd represented him at the Foley inquest. The lawyer listened for a moment, his eyelids lowered. He nodded, then abruptly glared up at Dillon. "My client says you threatened him."
Dillon did not react.
But the lawyer turned back to Fitzgerald. "Which perhaps answers our question? Is this agent's personal vendetta the reason for my client's indictment? Whatever the reason, it amounts to selective enforcement, and it won't stand up."
"Not 'selective enforcement.' Selective Service." Fitzgerald began to fuss tobacco into the scorched bowl of his pipe. "The reason for the indictment is right in front of you." He gestured at the photostats on the table. "Shall I recite that last sentence for you again, the one just above your client's signature? 'I fully understand that it is a federal crime punishable by fine or imprisonment or both to knowingly make any false statements concerning any of the above facts as applicable under the provisions of Title 16, United States Code, Section 1032.'"
"Which we deny."
Fitz glanced at Dillon while putting a match to the pipe now at his mouth. "He forgot that his mother died."
"That is not what we asserted." The lawyer slapped the table. "And my client is in no way responsible for the classification rulings of the Selective Service board. If you follow up on these charges against Mr. Buckley, you're going to have to bring charges against a lot of people."
"What is your draft status, counselor?" Dillon asked.
"How is that relevant?"
Dillon pushed away from the wall. "May I see your draft card, please?"
"It's in my desk."
The two agents exchanged a look. Fitzgerald asked, "Have you read the statute?"
"I'm over-age. They're only drafting up to thirty-five."
"Men up to forty-five are required to carry their registration cards on their person at all times. As surely you know."
"How old are you, counselor?" Dillon asked.
The lawyer only stared at Dillon.
Dillon said, "American men may take their obligations under this law more seriously when they learn that the federal grand jury—which convenes, by the way, in New York—has handed down this week indictments identical to Mr. Buckley's against seven hundred and twelve men."
"Out of a total of what?" the lawyer was relieved to ask.
Fitzgerald glanced at Dillon.
"Millions, right?" the lawyer pressed. "That proves my point. This is politics, not justice."
"Would it be justice," Fitzgerald asked, "if I arrested you?"
Dillon watched Buckley, who sat with his hand at his eyeglasses, hiding that ear, tilting the lenses slightly to read the form that bore his signature, as if trying to grasp how such a trivial matter—he barely remembered dealing with it—could be coming back at him like this. He was dressed in a dark suit and white shirt. His tie was carefully knotted. A gold cufflink showed at his sleeve.
"The papers said there were forty-seven indictments in Chicago." The lawyer put his hand on Buckley's arm as if to restrain him, though Buckley had continued to read with the equanimity of an accountant.
Dillon was disappointed that he could sense so little of Buckley's reaction, and he realized that by rising to the lawyer's bait, he and Fitzgerald had been suckered. The lawyer's job was to draw the heat away.
Dillon had been imagining this moment for months, and he had gotten it completely wrong. He'd remembered Buckley lunging at him outside the coroner's hearing room, threatening to kill him too, and he'd counted on some similar display here. He never anticipated this cool detachment, what seemed a radical self-control.
Finally, as if in response to Dillon's stare, Buckley shook his head, pulled his arm out from under the lawyer's hand, looked up at the agents and said, "It doesn't matter. It's obvious what you've cooked up, and it doesn't matter."
Dillon had forgotten Buckley's speech impediment, that thick-tongued slurring. Unconsciously, he had eliminated it, as if such unmanly imperfection didn't square with the proper image of an enemy.
"I got to admit, I didn't see it coming." Buckley leaned back in his chair, unhooked his eyeglasses and only then allowed his direct gaze to fall on Dillon.
"Fine or imprisonment or both, Mr. Buckley."
Buckley shrugged, but could not resist asking, "How long?"
"Up to five years."
Buckley glanced at his lawyer, who shook his head: never.
And then, for an overlong time, nothing happened. Fitz smoked his pipe, still with his leg on the chair. Dillon continued to hold his position against the wall. The ash from his cigarette fell on the floor because he did not want to lean forward to the ashtray. Dillon quite deliberately called up the memory of Mike Foley's corpse dripping with blood on the edge of the slaughterhouse sinkhole. Cass Ryan's uncle seemed more dead than ever because Dillon had
no memory of what he looked like alive. It made no sense to him now that, in fact, he had never met the man.
Buckley's face was white, unsmiling, set like plaster.
Dillon realized that Buckley and his lawyer were waiting for an offer, as if what Washington had wanted was a piece of Buckley's loan shark operation to help finance the coming war. The bright room with its four blank walls and overhead light sank into the silence of human refusal.
No one moved or spoke.
Then Leo did.
He tapped the bowl of his pipe on the table, and said, "Take your break, Marie."
The stenographer stood up and, without a backward glance, left the room.
Fitzgerald now took his foot off the chair and sat down, leaning across the table toward the lawyer. "We are pressing for the maximum penalty in this case, and given the importance the government attaches to making the draft law work, I think we'll get it. Your client should understand what he's up against here, and so should you. Do you want to deal with us or not?"
Dillon's surprise took him off the wall. He nearly screamed, Deal? Deal with this bastard? What are you talking about?
Dillon steadied himself by leaning on the table, a standing version of Fitzgerald's craning posture.
The lawyer picked up a pencil and began tapping idly. "What do you have in mind?"
"Not what, who. We want Edward J. Kelly."
The lawyer dropped the pencil.
Buckley continued to sit stone-faced.
But Dillon had to grip the table to keep from challenging his partner: What the hell is this?
"We want John M. Bolton. And we want Jimmy Martin."
Now the lawyer laughed abruptly. "Why stop at the mayor and a couple of aldermen? What about Pat Nash? And Governor Horner? Don't you want them, too?"
"We would take them. We are prepared to quash the indictment against your client in return for his help in developing certain cases."
"What cases?"
"Misappropriation of NRA funds, interstate transportation of gaming equipment, violations of the Mann Act."
Raymond Buckley cut Fitzgerald off simply by raising his hand. "Or what?"
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