Max Collins - Bullet proff

Specifically, they were playing "Me and My Shadow."

While Caldwell and McFate's "Big Parade" (as the press would soon call it) was still under way, Eliot Ness was finishing a quiet lunch at the Cleveland Hotel's posh Bronze Room, where in a back booth he and his executive assistant, Bob Chamberlin, were going over a travel itinerary.

"As far as anybody else is concerned," Ness said, keeping his voice down, his eyes locking Chamberlin's, "this trip is strictly to confer with the Buffalo officials on matters of traffic control."

Chamberlin sipped his coffee, nodded. "Particularly the news hounds."

"Yes-including Sam Wild. Including the rest of our staff, for that matter. Have you made the appointments?"

Chamberlin nodded again. "You'll start off with a contractor named Phillips."

"He was cooperative on the phone?"

"Very. I think he'll testify, once he's met with you and sized you up. He says he tried to do business in Cleveland over the past several years, but finally gave it up because of the 'extras' that were cropping up."

" 'Extras.'" Ness shook his head in disgust. "Specifically, bribes, payoffs, and phony 'fines' that went to line Caldwell's and McFate's pockets."

"Precisely." Chamberlin's ironic smile was smaller than his tiny mustache. "Phillips has a major construction business in Buffalo-he's engaged in building a chain of gas stations in a dozen cities right now, for the Tydol people-and he said to me, and I quote, 'You couldn't get me to Cleveland if I got a five-million-dollar contract, because the racketeers would have it all before I got through.'"

Ness raised an eyebrow. "Well, let's hope we can get him to Cleveland to talk to a grand jury."

"I think you can sell him on it. He's got a lot of bitterness toward the 'boys.' Now, next on the Buffalo agenda are two smaller contractors, home builders who-"

Ness, sitting with his back to the wall, as was his habit, raised a hand in a stop motion. "Hold up, Bob. Here comes Albert Curry."

"Curry?" Chamberlin said disbelievingly, craning his neck around to see for himself. "Isn't he on the detail that's keeping tabs on Big Jim and Little Jim?"

"He's supposed to be," Ness said, a hint of irritation in his voice, but curiosity, too.

Curry approached the booth and, hat in hands, looking sheepish but clearly angry, planted his feet and stood as if at parade rest. "I'm sorry to interrupt your lunch."

"We've had our lunch, Albert," Ness said. "Why don't you sit down and not attract any more attention than you already have and tell us what you're doing here."

Curry swallowed and slid into the booth next to Chamberlin. "I figured this is where you'd be. I had Garner let me out, and walked over. He's still on the job."

"Then our subjects are still under surveillance?"

"Oh yes. Look, Chief, I'm sorry to walk off the job and barge in on your-"

"Albert. Spill."

Albert spilled. In a rush he told of the humiliating procession he'd so recently been a part of.

Chamberlin laughed humorlessly. "Those bastards certainly have their nerve."

Ness smiled faintly. "They just have a sense of humor. Well, you know something? So have I."

Curry began to smile, now, liking the sound of that.

"You know," Ness said, pushing aside a half-eaten piece of pecan pie, "it seems to me that we've put the Kingsbury Run investigation on the back burner long enough."

Both Curry and Chamberlin looked at Ness in frank confusion.

"What in God's name," Chamberlin said, "has the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run got to do with-"

"Bob," Ness said pleasantly, pragmatically, "I want you to call Sergeant Merlo and have him pull some boys off the detective bureau. You know, the Butcher has been preying upon vagrants and the so-called dregs of humanity. It occurs to me that today would be a fine day to round up fifty or so of the filthiest vagrants in town, to question in our ongoing investigation."

Chamberlin began to smile slowly.

"Now since the Butcher only strikes at the most unfortunate of society's outcasts, naturally we needn't question anyone who appears to have had a bath within, oh, say… the previous three months."

"Naturally," Chamberlin said, toasting Ness with a coffee cup, then sipping from it.

"Have Merlo do this at once," Ness said. "And have him put them all in the same holding tank in the central jail."

"I got you," Chamberlin said, setting the cup down, nodding to Curry, who slid back out of the booth to allow Chamberlin to be on his way.

"Bob?"

Chamberlin turned. "Yes?"

"How long will this process take, would you think?"

"Not very. Three hours at the outside."

"Fine. Go to it."

Curry was still not following this. His own smile had long since faded.

"Chief," he said, "I have nothing against reactivating the Butcher investigation… God knows I never thought that guy Dolezal was guilty anyway, but why now?"

Ness leaned across the booth. "Albert," Ness said to the young detective, "wouldn't you say you witnessed a flagrant example of the law being broken today?"

"Huh?" "

"Disturbing the peace. Don't you think that two representatives of rank-and-file union members would know better than to disrupt the lunch hour of Cleveland's citizens with some noisy, traffic-clogging 'parade'?"

And Curry finally got it. "Yes, yes… definitely a law was broken. And they didn't have a permit for a public display like that."

"Well, you should make sure first. Check at the county clerk's office at City Hall. It should take you, oh… about three hours."

Curry was nodding, grinning.

And Ness's smile turned very nasty. "Then I want you to go up to that union office and arrest Big Jim and Little Jim, or if they're still parading around in a touring car, pull them over… but either way, throw their fat asses in jail. In a certain holding tank."

Curry was grinning like a Cheshire cat, now. Without a word, he scurried out of the Bronze Room. Ness, pleased with himself, ordered a Scotch.

Around four-thirty that afternoon, back in his office, Ness was at work cleaning up administrative paperwork to clear the way for his upcoming two-day Buffalo excursion. There was a characteristic (shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits) knock, which he recognized as Sam Wild's at the private-entry hall door. He rose from his rolltop desk and unlocked the door and Wild stumbled in, like a drunk.

Only he was intoxicated with laughter, not booze. Tears were streaming down his face.

"Hello, Sam," Ness said.

Wild, unable to speak, waved at Ness, found a chair over by one of the conference tables, and draped himself in it, long legs sticking out like a scarecrow's. The reporter laughed and laughed, finally digging a handkerchief out of a pocket to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.

"You are my hero," Wild said.

Ness was sitting back at the rolltop desk, with his chair swiveled around to face his friend. "Why, thanks. I do try to set an example for you. Give you something to shoot for."."Well, I'll never top this." Wild's laughter had subsided, but he was grinning like a guy holding a winning sweepstakes ticket. "Busting Capone was nothin' compared to this."

"Compared to what, Sam?" Ness asked innocently.

Wild gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. "I was just over at the jail. Now I'll tell you what you already know, 'cause your fine hand is obvious in this: those smelly fuckin' bums you rousted on the Kingsbury Run case, there must be fifty or sixty of 'em, are sharing a cell with Big Jim and Little Jim, still decked out in their finery for that parade they put on today."

"No kidding."

"I never smelled anything so bad as those bums packed together in that holding tank. Pee-you! What a foul stench. And then somebody turned on the steam in the cell block, full blast. Every radiator in the joint was going."