“Go,” Hastelloy ordered with an emphatic wave of his hand. As both vehicles roared past him in a swirl of black exhaust, accompanied by the shrill pitch of whistles blowing, they converged on the community center from all directions. At the entrance, two dozen cars loaded with bureau agents arrived in unison to storm the building.
He could not see them, but the sound of engines, whistles, and shouting from behind the community center let Hastelloy know his men had successfully secured the back alley as well. That gave him leave to begin jogging toward the building on foot.
Ahead, through the growing darkness of early evening, he watched twenty men storm through the front door en masse. The wave of aggressive agents overtook the two door watchers and battered them to the ground where they remained curled into the fetal position in an attempt to protect themselves.
The army of agents passed from his view, but the crashing sound of tables overturning and incoherent shouts gave a good account of their whereabouts. A handful of attendees attempted to flee out the front doors, and a slippery pair even tried climbing out a bathroom window, but the agents apprehended all of them.
A few minutes later, the police paddy wagons arrived along with the police chief who made a straight-line path for Hastelloy. He addressed him in a gruff tone over a chorus of protests spoken in both English and Russian from cuffed men being ushered from the meeting into the wagons. “Director, serving a warrant for illegal assembly is a little below your pay grade don’t you think?”
“A communist party gathering in our nation’s capital is serious business. Internal subterfuge is the greatest risk our nation has ever faced; more dangerous than even The Great War. These glowing embers of radicalism must be stamped out before they can catch fire,” Hastelloy answered with a sideways glare toward the police chief, which was met by a loud pop that washed his vision out in pure white. The temporary blindness eventually subsided to reveal a newspaper photographer unscrewing the spent bulb of his flash to take another shot.
“Be sure your officers perp. walk enough of them past the press. I’d hate for any major paper to settle for an out of focus shot on their front page spread,” Hastelloy ordered, only half joking. He then gestured for the police chief to lead the way into the building.
“Ah no wonder, it’s a press raid,” the gray-haired police chief sighed while holding the front door open for Hastelloy to enter. “Got to show the people the rise of communism is being kept in check here at home by our brave Bureau of Investigation. You know only one or two of these arrests are going to stick right? You fellas in suits already tried this garbage ten years ago with the Palmer Raids. You couldn’t deport any of them then, and you darn sure won’t now.”
Hastelloy stepped into the central gathering room of the community center and took in the intimidating presence. Staggered every ten feet around the perimeter of the rectangular room stood an agent holding his disk fed Thompson machine gun pointing toward the ceiling. The stout, militant presence was unmistakable and the faint aroma of urine in the air let him know more than a few men attending the disrupted meeting had the piss scared out of them.
“Permanent imprisonment isn’t really the objective,” Hastelloy countered. “Disruption, intimidation, and publicity do much better.”
“Your personal publicity or the Bureau’s?” the police chief asked. “The cameras would have caught this with or without you here.”
Hastelloy stopped on his path toward the facility’s backdoor to look upon the police chief with amusement. “Being appointed by the President to head his new Bureau of Investigation at the ripe age of twenty-seven does take a certain amount of showmanship along with ability. Anyone can smile for the cameras, a special few can actually do the job, but only a true genius finds win-win opportunities to do both.”
The police chief moved his eyes down to look at a puddle of fresh blood a few inches in diameter on the floor. “Bludgeoning men who are only attempting to exercise their rights to free speech and assembly guaranteed under the constitution will eventually catch up to you.”
“Careful there Chief, you’re starting to sound like a commie sympathizer. These days even a rumor of such political leaning could get you into trouble,” Hastelloy cautioned.
The aging police chief looked up again to stare down the man before him who was less than half his age. “Translation: is that some kinda threat?”
Hastelloy held the fiery stare for several seconds before taking a long and noisy sniff of the air between them. “You smell that?”
“You mean something besides the dirty diaper of this little child standing in front of me?”
“Yes, besides that. I smell a still simmering nearby,” Hastelloy said with a growing smile. “How in the world does a city so dedicated to the tenets of prohibition that it passed a constitutional amendment banning the sale or manufacturing of alcohol have an active distillery? Does anybody else smell that? I’m pretty sure it’s coming from the back alley.”
“I don’t smell anything,” the police chief declared along with a chorus of Hastelloy’s men giving a similar response.
“You four come with me,” Hastelloy ordered on his way out the back door with the police chief and a pair of his officers in tow. He stopped in the middle of the alleyway, turned his nose up into the air and gave both directions a long sniff. “That way,” he said pointing to the right.
After the group walked nearly a hundred yards down the shadowy corridor lit every fifty feet by a streetlamp, Hastelloy heard one of his men comment, “Boss you’ve got a nose like a bloodhound. I definitely smell something now coming from that warehouse on the left up ahead; the one with a truck idling at the back loading dock.”
“Looks like we have ourselves a doubleheader tonight boys,” the police chief declared. It was obvious he could not wait to get his men in there with the cameras watching his heroic moment.
“You don’t have a warrant to search that building, and we both know that probable cause after the fact is nearly impossible to prove these days,” Hastelloy cautioned. “Any evidence gathered won’t be admissible in court.”
“Neither will all those arrests you made back there, but like you said, sometimes it’s not about making the arrests stick. Sometimes it’s about sending a message and instilling fear in the enemy,” the chief countered and physically turned Hastelloy around to face him. “You bureau boys have no jurisdiction over this. This will be my men taking these bootleggers down. You understand me?”
“Have it your way, just don’t forget to smile for the cameras,” Hastelloy said with his hands raised past his shoulders in surrender. He motioned with his head for his four agents to start walking back to the community center and fell in step behind them. Hastelloy shouted over his shoulder back to the police chief and his men, “Just be sure to do it right. If you can’t confiscate their equipment, at least make sure it will never function again before leaving.”
Hastelloy allowed his men to get about fifty feet ahead before he called out to them, “Go ahead and wrap things up in there. I’ll be along shortly.”
After a few more steps, he came out from under the illuminated circle cast upon the alleyway by the overhead streetlight. Now shrouded in shadows he dashed to the side. There, against an otherwise solid brick wall, his hands found a doorknob, which he tested to verify that it was indeed unlocked. He quietly opened the door and stepped into the back room of a two-story structure that stood adjacent to the soon to be raided warehouse.
He closed the door without a sound and let his eyes adjust to the lack of light before making another move. The faint outlines of a commercial kitchen materialized through the darkness. Eventually he saw a clear path leading to a closed door backlit by a lighted room on the other side of the barrier.
Hastelloy made his way to the door and opened it with a calm, even pace so as not to startle the other room’s occupants. He again paused before moving to let his eyes adjust to the lighting difference. When the whitewash faded into clear vi
sion once more, Hastelloy found himself staring down the barrel of a handgun. The weapon was wielded by a man easily twice his size with no body fat. Even if there were, he was not about to point it out to the brawny individual.
The mountain of a man was all business as he held the gun steady in Hastelloy’s face while patting him down for weapons with his free hand.
“He’s clean,” an appropriately baritone voice declared. He then stepped aside to grant Hastelloy entry into a quaint little Italian restaurant. The front curtains were drawn tight with a sign that read closed hanging from the front door.
Two men sat around a small table with an open bottle of red wine between them. The gentleman on the left sported the receding hairline of a forty-year old and wore a midnight black suit. The other was at most twenty-five and donned a much flashier charcoal gray double-breasted suit along with a white fedora. The elder was the first to speak.
“J. Edgar Hoover, the famed director of the Bureau of Investigation. This young hotshot has cost you and me more money than any other man alive,” the elder said to the younger with a playful flippancy. “Is that your boys I hear tossing my warehouse next door?”
“No, Don Maranzano, it’s the police chief and his men this time,” Hastelloy said on his way to the empty chair positioned across from the other two individuals. “I practically had to kick in the door myself before the old timer finally caught on. Even when we want them to bust an operation of yours, they can barely get it done.”
“Letting one of your joints be taken don’t seem like no way to run things,” the younger man interrupted.
“Director Hoover, this is my associate, Al. He’s visiting from Chicago to see how things ought to operate,” Maranzano said as an introduction.
“If we bust too many of Joe Maseria’s places without taking down a few of yours, then our arrangement begins to look suspicious. I can’t be seen as playing favorites,” Hastelloy instructed the younger man, but turned his attention to Maranzano with a question. “You did manage to get most of your inventory and workers out of there before tonight, right?”
“Of course,” the Don replied and began pouring himself and Hastelloy a glass of wine. “I even managed to have a few boys I suspect were on Joe’s payroll working the dock this fine evening.”
Hastelloy raised his glass in salute to a job well done and continued the tutorial. “Plus, a bust like this with all the reporters and photographers around is worth at least twenty with no one looking. Pretty soon Don Maranzano will have the entire eastern seaboard to himself so long as he sticks to the vice rackets of alcohol, prostitution and gambling.”
“What about other things like skimmin’ union dues, jackin’ delivery trucks, or puttin’ troublemakers six feet under? That kind of thing pays way better than bootleggin’ and sellin’ tail,” Al countered. “Besides, the politicians will come to their senses sooner or later and end the prohibition laws. We need to branch out and be ready.”
“People actually want alcohol, gambling and working girls. That’s why the Bureau and I have no problem looking the other way. When an organized crime ring branches into robbing banks, extortion and murder…? Well, then public outcry demands that I take action, and that can get very expensive for men like you. Just ask Joe Maseria.”
“So that’s it. We cooperate and let you have a flashy bust every now and then, and you leave us be the rest of the time?” Al asked, his voice dripping with skepticism.
“Nothing is ever that simple,” Hastelloy countered. “The Bureau’s cooperation does not come so cheap. Speaking of that, Don Maranzano, I believe you have some folders for me.”
“I do indeed,” the Don confirmed motioning with his free hand for his bulky associate to bring a briefcase over to the table. The hired muscle worked the combination, opened the lid, and placed it in front of Hastelloy for his inspection.
“I think you’ll find this batch very useful,” Don Maranzano commented while Hastelloy began thumbing through the four-inch thick stack of papers, receipts and photographs. Featured among them were some of the most powerful and influential individuals in American business and politics. “Vice President Curtis, and Henry Ford have taken numerous deliveries of alcohol from our organization. President Hoover, Speaker Longworth, and Alfred Sloan like the ladies, as you can see.”
With an air of great satisfaction, Hastelloy closed the briefcase, took one last gulp of wine, and rose to his feet. “Don, it has been a pleasure as always. Al, from Chicago, good luck and be sure to stay on the good side of the agent heading my Chicago office. Eliot Ness can be a real bulldog.”
Without another word, Hastelloy headed for the door, but came to a stop upon hearing Maranzano’s parting words.
“The contents of that briefcase along with all the other stacks of files me and my boys have gathered for you over the years contain some pretty damning stuff. Things powerful men would do almost anything to keep from becoming public. I’d say that, along with running the Bureau of Investigation, makes you the most powerful man in the country.”
“Be sure and remember that,” Hastelloy said and proceeded out the same door from which he entered.
Chapter 6: A New Deal
“how did your meeting with the distinguished Charles Dawes go this evening?” Hastelloy asked one of his field agents seated across the desk in his office.
“At first he was quite insistent about seeking the Republican presidential nomination next year. He was supremely confident he still carried sufficient clout within the party to win.”
“Well the man did earn a Nobel Peace Prize a few years back, and was Vice President under Coolidge only three years ago. I suppose he’s entitled to a somewhat inflated ego,” Hastelloy mused.
“I’ll say,” the agent added. “He darn near laughed himself silly when I broached the topic of him not seeking the nomination in favor of letting President Hoover try for a second term. After he wiped the tears from his eyes Mr. Dawes said to me in no uncertain terms that ‘I cannot in good conscience give that man another four years in office to push this great nation of ours even further into an economic depression’.”
“How did he react when you presented him with the evidence we have of his insider trading activities involving the City National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago on which he sits as a board member?” Hastelloy asked.
The agent let loose a laugh as he answered the question. “When I told him charges would be filed if he did not step away from politics, he darn near lunged across the table to try and choke the life out of me.”
“Not very becoming of a Nobel Peace Prize winner,” Hastelloy chuckled. “Did it work though? Is he still intent on running for president, or will he step away?”
“I have no idea who the next president will be, but I do know that it will not be Mr. Dawes. After much consideration, he’s chosen to retire from politics,” the agent answered with pride.
“Excellent. Good work,” Hastelloy commended as he rose to his feet while gesturing toward the door.
The field agent got the message and rose from his chair to leave Hastelloy’s office, but paused at the doorway. “Do you mind if I ask, sir, why does the Bureau care who’s the next president of the United States? We are revealing a lot of dirt we have on people and making enemies of several powerful men in the process. Why?”
“For the sake of national security,” Hastelloy answered in a manner that invited no further questions. Without paying the agent any further notice, Hastelloy directed his attention to his secretary seated at her desk outside his office door. “Alvina, is my seven o’clock here yet?”
“Yes, Mr. Frank Lowden is waiting out in the reception area for you,” the aging secretary answered.
“Tom,” Hastelloy called out to his departing field agent. “Before you leave, can you please escort Mr. Lowden into my office?”
“Another meeting with a prominent Republican Party member for the sake of national security?” the agent asked over his shoulder with a hint of sar
casm.
“Precisely; please show him in,” Hastelloy answered on the way back to his desk. A few minutes later, he rose from his chair and offered a greeting handshake to the last possible internal Republican challenger to President Hoover’s reelection bid. “Mr. Lowden, thank you for taking the time to meet with me this evening.”
“It was no trouble, though I am curious why the Director of the FBI would want a private meeting with me,” Mr. Lowden replied while grasping Hastelloy’s extended hand.
“Presidential politics,” Hastelloy answered. “You presented President Hoover quite a challenge in the Republican primaries the last go around. Tell me, do you plan on challenging him again this election cycle?”
“You’d better believe it,” the man answered while visibly noticing that Hastelloy had not yet released his hand from his grasp. “With manufacturing output reduced to one third of our capacity since 1929 and the people suffering twenty-five percent unemployment, you’d better believe I plan to run against that incompetent fool. Now, would you mind if I used my hand to pull up a chair so that we may talk more comfortably?”
“No need, you won’t be staying long enough to warrant getting comfortable,” Hastelloy answered and then turned Mr. Lowden’s hand to face palm up. “You see the circles and creases at the tips of your fingers here. It turns out those patterns of circles are unique to every individual.”
“Fascinating,” Mr. Lowden answered with a perplexed look at the abrupt change of topic with a hint of indignation lingering behind his eyes at Hastelloy denying his guest the right to sit down. “You law enforcement types come up with the darndest ways to tell one person from another.”
“Yes, we do,” Hastelloy replied with a bright smile. “It means that everything you touch with these fingertips can be traced back to you. For example, if you grasp a glass at a party to take an illegal drink of scotch, we can trace it back to you. If you hold a gun to commit a crime we can now prove you did it.”
Origins: The Reich Page 4