Max Collins: Murder by numbers

"Nobody's up on the seventh floor yet?"

"Right. Garner and the raiding party are waiting on the sixth floor, as you instructed."

Ness checked his watch. He made a clicking sound and said, "The reporters will be here any second. You bring 'em up to the seventh floor at four o'clock sharp."

"That's just ten minutes from now…"

"Right," Ness said, and took the freight elevator up to the sixth floor.

There he found Will Garner, vice cop Frank Moeller, and three more plainclothes cops waiting. Garner was a beefy six-four detective whose dark complexion and black hair reflected his Sioux heritage; he had been one of Ness's Untouchables in the Chicago days. Moeller was a pleasant, brown-haired, bullet-headed man who was about five pounds shy of heavy-set.

"Curry's covering the alley and the fire escape?" Ness asked.

Garner nodded.

"When do we go in?" Moeller asked.

"At four," Ness said.

"How?" the Indian said.

"You're going to walk right in through the receptionist's office; at four, somebody inside is going to unlock that steel door."

"Who's going to do that?" Moeller asked, wincing with confusion.

"Me," Ness said, lifting the metal lid off one of the two massive garbage cans that sat to one side of the freight elevator. The lid was like an ungainly, battered shield; Ness gripped it in his left hand.

The door to the fire escape was nearby; Ness walked to it, looked at Garner significantly, and said, "Four sharp."

Then Ness went out on the black metal stairway; the pleasant, nearly warm day seemed windier up here. He glanced down and waved to Albert Curry, who was standing guard below, by the loading dock. Then he climbed the fire-escape stairs to the seventh floor and moved along the catwalk of the 'scape till he came to the window he was looking for.

He knelt on the gridwork floor, one hand clutching the garbage can lid, fingertips of the other hand caressing the rough surface of the concrete building. He peeked carefully into the room. No drapes or blinds obscured the view; these crooks were bold. Or careless. He would have installed bur-glar-proof wire-mesh glass. But an operation like this had to keep moving, like a floating crap game, and renovations would seem too much bother, too much expense, for a temporary facility. Ness had counted on that.

At least thirty people were at work in the large office; several long, banquet-style tables filled the otherwise empty room, with people sitting on both sides, and everyone-except a few bouncer-like types who were either guards or supervisors or both-was busy on the phone every minute. And, as he'd figured, books of matches and wastebaskets were kept handy. He caught a glimpse of the formidable gray steel door.

He got out his revolver; the gun in one hand, the garbage can lid in the other, he continued to kneel, but didn't look inside anymore. He looked only at his watch, at the second hand as it glided around the face; waiting for four o'clock.

Four o'clock came and he stood. He took a breath, smiling, enjoying the adrenaline rush, enjoying this beautiful day, and he smashed the garbage-can lid into the window, shattering every pane in the lid's path, shards raining on the floor under the sill. Quickly but carefully, glass crunching under his feet, he hopped inside, tossing the garbage-can lid clatteringly to the floor, fanning the. 38 before him, so it could take them all in.

"Everybody on your feet," he shouted, "hands in the air!"

Sixty eyes opened wide and thirty chins dropped to the floor. The bookies, men of every size and shape but each one wearing shirts with sleeves rolled up, their coats on their chairs, slowly rose.

"This is a raid, gents," Ness said, moving along with his back to the wall; when he reached the steel door, he unbolted and swung it open. "No sudden moves…"

As if to contradict their boss, Garner, Moeller, Chamberlin, and half a dozen plainclothes men rushed in, and began gathering the evidence.

Soon flashbulbs were popping, and Sam Wild, lighting up a Lucky, smiled at Ness lazily and said, "You topped Maxie Diamond, after all-even bagged yourself a steel door."

Ness said nothing, but allowed himself a small, self-satisfied smile.

Wild erased it: "Now let's see how you fare on the colored side of town…"

Albert Curry, youngest plainclothes man on the department, was disappointed he'd missed the action. Keeping watch in the alley had proved to be dull and, while much of what any police detective did was perfunctory and routine, Curry had been spoiled. Being attached to the safety director's office meant consistently lively duty.

Curry was a fair-haired, pale, cherubic thirty and looked at least five years younger. He was standing beside his chief's black Ford sedan, leaning casually against the door, ready to drive him back to City Hall. He was watching with satisfaction and some envy as Bob Chamberlin, with the aid of several uniformed men, led a parade of disgusted-looking crooks in shirtsleeves and loosened ties out of the Leader Building into the back of a Black Maria waiting on Sixth; this was the second paddy wagon to be so filled.

Typical of his chief's style, this raid had gone off smoothly and quickly. It was barely four-thirty and thirty-one arrests had been made (thirty males and one female, the blond receptionist, who'd gotten a private ride over to the jail with a policewoman chaperone). Ness and Will Garner were upstairs combing the office.

From the alley Curry had seen Ness break the window and leap in that window, gun in hand. Well, maybe not leap (although the papers would surely put it that way); but Curry could hardly imagine another safety director in the country making such a reckless play.

Curry admired that, though his boss did get some criticism for being a glory-hound, for going out in the field and investigating and leaving the administrative duties largely to Chamberlin and others. His chief's reputation as "the G-man who got Capone" was an important publicity tool for Mayor Burton; Curry saw nothing wrong with that.

And to dismiss Ness as a publicity-seeking racketbuster was to ignore the facts: Ness was at the forefront of modern thinking in police science and criminology. A University of Chicago grad who studied with famed criminologist August Vollmer, Ness had modernized Cleveland's police department. He switched from cops walking beats to patrol cars with two-way radios, reorganized the traffic bureau, set up a juvenile delinquency unit, and much more.

Only once had Ness disappointed Curry. Last month, on the Mad Butcher investigation, Ness had captured the mass murderer but allowed the madman to be quietly committed to an asylum; the "butcher," it seemed, was the son of a prominent and wealthy friend of the mayor's. Though the safety director was the least political public official Curry had ever known, Ness had obviously caved in to pressure from Mayor Burton and the "financial angels" who had the slush fund that made possible, in this depression, many of the safety director's investigations.

Curry admired his chief no less for being human; in this hard world, in these hard times, it was hard to imagine a better man than Eliot Ness. But the young detective knew that the Untouchable was haunted by the compromise. Lately, Ness had thrown himself into his work even more obsessively than before. He looked bad, physically, to Curry; years older than just a few months ago. Ness worked late, then stayed out drinking with Wild and other news hounds, and must have been getting precious little sleep. Curry was worried for his boss.

The only saving grace, it seemed to Curry, was Ness's girlfriend, Ev MacMillan, a fashion illustrator at Higbee's; she was apparently a calming influence, though she liked the nightlife, too.