Max Collins - Bullet proff

"Somebody's going to be sorry," he said. And his face was hard, now; nothing boyish about it.

Sirens slashed the stillness.

Soon two squad cars were on the scene, and she leaned against the guardrail, feeling strangely exhausted and oddly distanced, as Eliot gave the details to the uniformed officers. The young, towheaded detective called Curry pulled up shortly thereafter, rushing up to his "chief," his anxiety as apparent as his devotion.

Eliot filled in Curry, who said, "Did you see who it was?"

"No. It was a man, with a hat slouched down and a plaid scarf over his lower face, like a damn highwayman. That's all I saw, and not very well, at that. That tommy gun was talking."

"But there were two of them?"

"Yes. He had a driver. That's a shift in M.O."

Curry sighed. "No license plate. We'll find the car abandoned in the Flats somewhere, no doubt."

"No doubt. But I want you to start picking up those spent forty-fives. Let's see if we can match this machine gun up with the one that ate Gordon's restaurant and killed Jack Whitehall."

Curry nodded. "Too bad we can't tie it into that incident at the food terminal. We've got three witnesses now, who will come forward and identify Harry Gibson as having shot up that farmer's car, including the farmer himself."

"But without any spent bullets from the terminal shooting, to make comparison, we don't have the link we need."

"I know." The young detective sighed. "Do you want me to close traffic off on this bridge? And treat it like a crime scene?"

"No. That's impractical. Just collect the bullets from the backseat of my car and take the appropriate field notes."

Curry nodded. "I'm glad to hear you say that. It's too late to preserve the integrity of this as a crime scene, anyway. Too many gawkers have stopped along the way to interfere with the evidence."

Eliot nodded absently.

"Some guy stopped to let his kids out," Curry said, with an amused smirk. "You should have seen those kids fighting over who got those bullets."

That seemed to perk Eliot up. "What?"

"A couple of boys, one about ten, another in his early teens. They were picking up souvenirs."

Eliot snapped his fingers. "That's it! That's how we can get our slugs from the food-terminal shooting!"

"What are you talking about, Chief?"

"There are all kinds of kids around a food market. Kids doing odd jobs, for pennies and produce. Cooler boys. That farmer whose truck got shot up had his kid with him."

"So?"

Eliot was smiling; it seemed to Ev an unsettling smile. He was poking his young protege in the chest with a forefinger.

"Some of those kids picked up souvenirs, too, you can bet. A machine-gunning at the food terminal? Are you kidding? That's a big event."

Now Curry was smiling as well. "You're right! Some of those kids would've picked up a bullet or two, shell casings, as mementos."

Eliot put his hand on the young detective's shoulder, in a fatherly fashion. "Go find those kids, and find those bullets. And then we'll let the Ballistics Unit do their job."

"And then?"

"And then," Eliot said, "I'll do mine."

Listening to this conversation, watching the two men speak, Ev felt almost jealous. Not of young Curry, but of Eliot's job itself. She doubted she could ever be as important in his life as it was.

But she was going to give it the old college try.

He came over to her and said, "I can get us a lift back to the boathouse. How does that sound?"

"Better than machine-gun fire," she said, and smiled, and took his arm.

Coming down the steep incline of Commercial into the Flats, Ness could see the smokestacks of Republic Steel against the horizon to the southeast. The holstered. 38 under his left arm was a reminder of his last official venture into this section of town. To his far right loomed the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, over the shoulder of which peered the ever-present Terminal Tower. Hard to believe this dirty, shabby district was only ten minutes from downtown.

Riding with him on this cold, cloudy late afternoon, in the new sedan bearing the old EN-1 plates, were detectives Albert Curry, in front, and Will Garner, in back. In a separate car following were Bob Chamberlin, Captain Savage, and a plainclothes officer from Savage's Vandal Squad.

Ness drove along West Fourth, into a warehouse district nestled in a loop of the Cuyahoga, the twisting, oily-yellow river seemingly all around them, glimmering in the overcast day's filtered light. Acme Brothers Glass Works was a big sprawling brick building, with a windowed area at right and a loading dock at left. Ness pulled in so that his sedan was concealed by one of the several parked glass-company trucks. The white trucks had slanting side panels bearing racks with rubber pads and holders designed to hold plate glass.

Chamberlin pulled in alongside Ness; the second car was also hidden by the parked plate-glass trucks. Chamberlin, Curry, Savage, Savage's plainclothes dick, and Garner gathered around Ness like a football team huddling about their quarterback. The big Indian investigator was smoking a cigar, and in his hands was a sawed-off shotgun. It wasn't regulation, but Ness knew better than to complain; that gun had been on many a Chicago campaign.

Ness smiled blandly and said, "I don't anticipate any shooting, but I want you to have your guns out."

The men got their guns out-except for the already-armed Garner, of course.

"I'm going in alone," Ness said. "And if you should hear shooting within, don't come in after me."

There were expressions of confusion all around-except, of course, for Garner, who only smiled a little. He'd been on more raids with Ness than the rest of these men put together.

"It's vital that you keep all the exits blocked," Ness continued. "It's a fairly big facility, with a lot of ways out; fortunately, the windows are mostly too high for exiting."

"He might get to the roof," Garner said. "Warehouses have lofts and such. Ladders up to storage areas."

"True," Ness said, "but we're not expected. If our man bolts, he'll bolt immediately, and for one of the exits. So wait until I'm inside, and then deploy yourselves accordingly."

Ness did not have his gun in hand. He wore the tan camel's hair topcoat with his badge pinned to the lapel; the badge was glittering gold and it said CITY OF CLEVELAND DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC SAFETY. He walked calmly across the graveled loading dock and parking area and went up the half flight of stairs and inside.

There was no vestibule, no reception area, just an open room with only a single counter separating visitors from the half-dozen desks where secretaries and various office personnel were at work.

Ness spoke to the nearest office worker, who was typing up a form or a bill of some kind. A plain woman of about thirty, wearing glasses, she seemed startled and annoyed all at once.

"May I speak to the office manager?"

"In what regard?"

Ness tapped his gold badge. "Police business."

"Just a moment," she said, trying for indignation but seeming mostly unsettled. She rose and walked briskly off, a small-busted, wide-hipped woman in a white blouse and black skirt.

Ness glanced to the left, where the warehouse was. A double doorway was marked NO ADMITTANCE. He returned his gaze to the office area, where he found every eye trained on him, but only for a moment, as the workers returned nervously to their work, all of them having the guilty look that most innocent people have when police intrude into their lives.

The office manager was a man in a vest and loosened tie and rolled-up shirt-sleeves; he was perhaps fifty, stocky and balding, with a rumpled face that had a cigar stuck in its skeptical mouth.

"What sort of police business?" the man asked.