Max Collins - Bullet proff

"Let's widen that circle some," Ness said, with a nasty smile. "Let's put a twenty-four-hour watch on Big Jim and Little Jim. I'll get several more shifts of two-man teams, assigned 'round the clock."

"And, what?" Curry asked. "Try to catch them in the act?"

"No. I want you to make no pretense of hiding your presence. Get on their fat butts and stay there. Our goal here is deterrence, not surveillance. From now on, Mr. Caldwell and Mr. McFate will be chaperoned by the city-they'll have their own private police escort."

"I like it," Garner said, the thinnest of smiles on his bronze face.

"But we can't catch them at something that they aren't doing anymore," Curry said, confused.

"We don't need them to commit any new crimes," Ness said. "They committed plenty already. We'll keep working on Vern Gordon and other potential witnesses, both here in Cleveland and outside the city as well. I'll be building a case, gentleman, while you keep on theirs."

The three men exchanged smiles and rose and exited the restaurant into a sunny morning just as a contractor, several carpenters, painters, and plasterers were unloading trucks out front.

Little Jim McFate, after a week of it, was not amused.

He wasn't known for his sense of humor, anyway; in fact, Big Jim often kidded him about being such a gloomy Gus. But Little Jim knew that the labor racket was a serious one; that when you were organizing, you had to paint a black picture of what life without unions was like. That when you were running a shakedown, for instance, you had to make the mark believe you really would break his legs. And then you really had to break them, if it come to that.

Nothing funny about it. He hadn't got to this exalted position by being some half-assed prankster. Like when he formed the protective association for the barbers of Cleveland, where he clipped the barbers for dues while elevating and fixing prices. You had to be tough, sharp, and taken seriously, to pull off that kind of scam.

So Little Jim's no-nonsense manner had come in handy, over the years. But he liked a good time as much as the next fellow. The workers he represented-painters, carpenters, glaziers, and the rest-thought he was swell. They knew he was a down-to-earth guy who would sell you the shirt off his back and gladly hoist a few with you.

And it wasn't like he didn't enjoy a good laugh-he liked "Jiggs and Maggie" in the funnies, and Laurel and Hardy at the movies, although the dirty stories you heard in bars made him uncomfortable. He was a family man, after all. A husband. A father.

He had fond memories of his own childhood, though memories of his father, who died when Jim was six, were few. Pop, a carpenter, had worked himself to death trying to support the McFate brood. Growing up on the West Side, in a working-class neighborhood, Little Jim learned early on that there were goddamn few opportunities to make it out, to make it big. He watched his older brothers work their tails off, getting cheated out of good wages by the factories where they toiled, and swore it would never happen to him.

Real wealth, he could see, came not from hard work, but from theft. Some thieves were thieves; some were mob guys; while others were robber barons, or bankers. And Little Jim had learned, also, early on, that there would never be an opening for him on a steel mill's board of directors, or at a bank.

When he got back from the war, he got a painting crew going, and noticed that not only his business, but all business, was booming. Consequently, unions seemed like a place where some good could be done, and some money could be made. He signed a lot of painters up for the local, and put together a really nice con on the side, selling permits to home owners who wanted to paint their own homes. If a home owner didn't buy a permit, Little Jim would wait till the house was painted and then splash stain all over it.

That con, after years of moneymaking, finally got shut down last year, when Little Jim's front man got nailed by the safety director's dicks. But it was sweet while it lasted.

So, anyway, it wasn't like Little Jim McFate had no sense of humor.

And when this goddamn thing had first begun, he'd even allowed Big Jim to convince him it was a big joke.

"They're following us around, everywheres we go," Little Jim had said after a full day of it, two days after the Gordon's restaurant shooting. He was pacing around Big Jim's office at union headquarters on East Seventeenth Street.

Caldwell had his feet on the desk and his hands behind his head, elbows flaring out, a big grin on his face and a big cigar in his grin.

"Laddie-buck," Caldwell said, eyes twinkling like a goddamn pixie's, "the great Mr. Eliot Ness has gone and done us an honor."

"An honor?" Little Jim halted his pacing.

"He's put us under police protection. To make sure no harm comes our way."

"Judas priest, man. How can you take this so lightly?"

Big Jim swung his feet off the desk; he flicked ashes off his cigar into an ashtray that was one of the few objects on the desk. There were no papers or anything else to indicate work was ever done on that smooth oak surface.

"I don't take it lightly," he said, standing, strolling over to McFate. "But we're the subject of some very bad press right now. We can use this police attention to our betterment."

"To our betterment? What in the hell-"

"Boyo-look. We took extreme measures with Mr. Vernon Gordon. They were necessary, and I think they'll in future make our efforts with other downtown merchants go even quicker, even smoother. But right now the newspapers are engaging in some nasty speculation. About us."

"They're all but goddamn coming out and saying we did it!"

"Well, we did."

"Like hell! I was home in bed, asleep with my missus!"

"Bucko, we had it done. And that is a fact."

Big Jim shrugged. "Well, sure. We had it done. Of course we had it done. We should sue the bastards for slander!"

Caldwell put a hand on his partner's shoulder, patted it in a there-there fashion. "It's libel, only it isn't libel when it's true, and so we're not going to make a bad situation worse by acknowledging those accusations."

"It's that bastard Wild. He's in Ness's pocket."

"So he is. But the other papers have picked up on it as well. We're the top-billed act of the editorial pages these days."

"And now we got goddamn cops trailing us all over town! Trailing me home! It's embarrassing! I'm a goddamn family man."

"I know you are, lad. As am I. But there's no harm done by this attention."

"No harm! How are we expected to do business when-"

Caldwell frowned, shook his head no, vigorously. "We aren't going to do any business. Not any new business. Now's not a good time for that, anyway, not with a press spotlight on us. And we'll have our regular payoffs picked up by people we trust. Harry Gibson needs something to do with his hands."

"I thought you gave him a job at your glass warehouse."

"I did. But he can use that as a place to work out of."

Now Little Jim was the one shaking his head no. "I don't like getting too many people involved. I like to keep the business end to just the two of us."

Caldwell shrugged with one shoulder. "Gibson's already involved."

"Well, he's an all right ghee," Little Jim admitted. "But let's not pass out too many invites to the party."

"Agreed," Caldwell said, nodding.

"Far as I'm concerned," Little Jim went on, "we got two uninvited guests already, all the time."

He was referring to the two cops who were constantly on their tails.

"Actually," said Caldwell, "I think there's six of 'em-three shifts of two. Think of the money we're costing the taxpayers. After a week or so of lawful activities, we might point out to some reporter-and I don't mean Sam Wild-that Mr. Ness is wasting precious tax dollars."