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."
Now Little Jim began to smile, a little. "You mean, we use the cops hanging onto us to show that we're not doing anything wrong."
Big Jim nodded. "That's exactly right-not doing anything but going about union business, upright moral representatives of the working man."
"Will the papers run that?"
"Sure they will. They need a new story every day. That story about us being bad boys will be old before you know it. Eliot Ness is a big shot in the papers, but remember-the next day they wrap fish in 'im."
That made Little Jim laugh. That was a good one.
"Besides," Caldwell said, grabbing his derby, "we can have a little fun with our chaperons."
"Fun?"
"Just follow me," Caldwell said, grinning, pausing only to relight his cigar before swaggering out of the union offices and heading for the street.
And for the better part of a week Big Jim, and Little Jim, too, indeed had fun with their police retinue.
The boys made a habit of taking long drives in the country, in a new Buick owned by the union (but used by Big Jim-a matching Buick owned by the union was Little Jim's to use). The cops were driving old clunkers and had trouble keeping up with the sleek, powerful sedans. Big Jim would step on the gas and take the car to the edge of the speed limit, over rough, bumpy backroads, making the cops work to keep up, their buggies shimmying and shaking and rattling. Sometimes the two Jims would lose their escorts and have to pull over to the side of the road and wait, or slow to a gawking Sunday driver's pace, till Cleveland's finest caught up.
Similar hijinks marked their in-town pleasure driving. Big Jim would take it easy, then round a corner and slip into an alley before the cops had made the turn; then Big Jim would wait for them to go by, pull in behind the shadows and honk, startling and embarrassing them.
It was good for a laugh, for a while. But Little Jim got sick of it quickly, and, finally, after almost a week of it, so did Big Jim.
And now, at the beginning of another day that held as its only prospect driving aimlessly around the Cleveland area with cop magnets stuck to their asses, Big Jim was the one pacing around the union office, while Little Jim sat glumly behind the desk, frustration and boredom eating at him.
"I thought they'd give it up by now," Caldwell said. He was smoking a cigar again, but puffing nervously at it, like the smokestack of a train engine taking a steep grade.
"And the papers haven't taken the bait," Little Jim said.
Big Jim shook his head side to side in bewilderment. "I thought they would. I really thought they would. Us leading those jerks on wild goose chases out in the sticks, that's good stuff. They oughta use it, goddamn it."
Dour Little Jim leaned his long face on one hand, elbow propped against the uncluttered desktop. "Why should they? You plant the story in a few reporters' ears, but how do they know it's for real? They got to see it with their own eyes."
And now Big Jim stopped in his tracks and grinned. He pointed with the stubby cigar at his partner, like he was aiming a projectile. "You, my friend, are more than just a pretty face."
"Huh?"
"You gave me an idea. You gave me one hell of an idea."
The chunky Caldwell fired himself at the desk like a cannonball. His charge was so quick it took McFate aback.
"You're gonna love this," Caldwell said, grinning like a demented cherub. "You're gonna just love it."
Little Jim would reserve judgment on that, but he watched, spellbound, as his associate whirled into action, making one phone call after another.
Shortly before noon, just hours and a flurry of activity later, Big Jim Caldwell and Little Jim McFate walked out into the glorious, sunny August day. One would think they had stepped not out of a six-story brick building, but a bandbox. They were dressed in black silk top hats that reflected the sunlight, striped trousers and swallow-tailed coats, vests with white piping, and Ascot ties snugged under wing collars. Their black shoes, peeking out from under pearl-gray spats, outshone the sun. Both carried gold-crowned walking sticks like scepters. They looked as grand as two petty crooks decked out in rental attire could ever hope to look.
Grander.
Parked at the curb were two glistening black Packard touring cars, their tops down; a colored chauffeur in uniform stood at attention, holding open the rear door of the first of the two Packards. Big Jim gestured regally for Little Jim to enter first. Little Jim did, and Big Jim followed, and the chauffeur shut the door with a satisfying metallic chunk and took his position behind the wheel.
The second Packard, directly behind the first, was filled with a small but formally dressed musical group: a trumpet, a trombone, a clarinet, and a snare drum. The colored chauffeur of the second car had a glazed, wide-eyed look, like a black comedian in the movies. But his eyes were no wider, his expression no more glazed, than that of the two plainclothes police officers in the car parked in front of union headquarters, taking all of this in.
Little Jim recognized the cop in the rider's seat as Albert Curry, one of the safety director's dicks. Neither he nor Big Jim knew the name of the other one, a big dark fellow who looked like an Indian, but they had come to know his face well. He and Curry had been their day-shift companions since the first day of the surveillance.
"Driver," Caldwell said, "let the parade begin."
And the first Packard pulled away from the curb, the second one slowly falling in line, with the two cops trailing after in their clunker of a black Ford sedan.
"You know," Caldwell said, smiling almost sweetly, leaning his head so close to his partner their top hats touched, "Ness embarrassed Snorkey once. Snorkey went apeshit and starting busting stuff up."
"Snorkey?"
"Ah. You don't go back that far with the Outfit, do you, lad? Snorkey. Capone. Ness wanted to get some press attention, he wanted to embarrass Big Al. So he took all of the beer trucks that he and his so-called 'untouchables' confiscated and they had a big parade up Michigan Avenue, right past the Lexington Hotel, where they knew Snorkey would be watching. Fifty or sixty of the goddamn things. Just to give Snorkey the needle-and get in the papers."
"Got a lot of attention, I'll bet."
"Parades always do, bucko. Parades always do."
And the three-car convoy made its way down Euclid Avenue, at noon, a slow procession that was taken in by laughing lunch-hour spectators, and the photographers of the press who had been tipped by Big Jim, who along with Little Jim tipped his silk hat regally to the amazed, amused crowds, who began to stop and line up along the sidewalks, waving back, some of them even cheering.
Hoots of laughter filled the air as the curb-lined gallery read the banner draped across the rear of the first touring car:
CALDWELL AND MCFATE'S CIRCUS COURTESY THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY CITY OF CLEVELAND
At East Fourth Street the motorcade paused at the scene of a fender-bender accident: two taxis had crashed into each other, and the drivers were out, talking to a pair of uniformed cops. A small crowd had gathered, who now looked gleefully toward the Caldwell and McFate fleet. Little Jim, as they passed by the accident scene, noted that the windshield of one vehicle was spiderwebbed.
Impulsively he shouted: "Hey-there ain't supposed to be no window smashing today, boys!"
Howls and guffaws burst from the outdoor audience, and Big Jim patted the taller man on the back, knocking Little Jim's top hat off balance.
"To think I ever accused you of havin' no sense of humor," Caldwell said.
Little Jim smiled like the Mona Lisa and damn near blushed.
And, of course, while all of this was unfolding, Curry and the Indian were bringing up the rear, the younger cop's face crimson with embarrassment. The car they were immediately tailing was the one bearing the musicians, a mere combo to be sure, but, small as they were, putting out a lot of sound.
Specifically, they were playing "Me and My Shadow."