The mahogany-paneled, marble-floored banquet room on the twelfth floor of the Hollenden Hotel was packed with restless humanity. More than one hundred of the one hundred and twenty-five whose presence had been requested by Chamber of Commerce president Frank Darby had shown up for the afternoon meeting, which had been given the vaguely compelling title, "Cleveland's Brighter Business Tomorrow: A Plan of Action."
The businessmen, seated in chairs facing the riser on which a lectern awaited a speaker, had no notion of the real reason for the gathering. Cigar and cigarette smoke and impatient murmuring mingled in the air.
Eliot Ness, the man who had unbeknownst to them called this meeting, was late.
He had been caught going out the door of his office by a phone call. But that phone call had been important enough to risk the annoyance of the captive audience that awaited him a few blocks away.
"Eliot," the voice said, "how is Cleveland treating you?"
"Fine, Elmer," Ness said, sitting back down at his rolltop desk. "Are you calling from Washington?"
Elmer Irey was the chief of the Special Intelligence Unit of the Internal Revenue Service. Irey had been the Treasury Department counterpart of Justice Department agent Ness in the two-pronged federal assault on Al Capone.
"I am calling from Washington," Irey said. "I'm not out in the field much these days, I'm afraid."
"I doubt they can keep you behind a desk for long."
"Well…" Irey trailed off.
Irey was a modest, soft-spoken, genuinely nice man; but Ness had a somewhat awkward, strained relationship with him. This stemmed from two things: Ness and his "untouchables" had gotten much more press attention in the Capone bust than their IRS allies; and Ness had let Irey know he didn't approve of the Treasury Department going along with a plea bargain for Capone, which to the embarrassment of Irey and others was rejected derisively by the judge in the case.
"Were you able to check out those returns for me, Elmer? I know I'm trying to do a bit of an end run by coming to you…"
"Nonsense. We've helped each other before, and I trust we'll help each other again. Although I'm afraid I may not have been of much help, in this instance. Both Mr. Caldwell and Mr. McFate would appear to be law-abiding citizens, at least as regards their taxes. They file returns-on six-figure incomes, I might add-and pay their Uncle Sam his due."
"They do a lot of cash business. Payoffs under viaducts, back-alley bribes, that kind of thing."
"Well," Irey sighed, "we might well turn that up in a full investigation. And I would certainly take it seriously if you felt such an investigation was worth my unit's time. But I don't have to tell you the difficulty of tracing such transactions."
"No," Ness said, trying to keep his disappointment, his weariness, out of his voice. "You certainly don't. And I'm afraid the job you did on the Capones and Guzik and Nitti, in Chicago, have taught a lot of these hoodlums that the tax laws are the ones they best not break."
"I wish I could be of more help."
"It's generous of you to bend the rules like this, Elmer, in any case."
"Well, there was one item of possible interest."
That perked Ness back up. "Yes?"
"A good share of Caldwell's income is derived from a company called Acme Brothers Glass Works."
Ness scribbled the name on a notepad. "What do you mean 'derived,' exactly?"
"Well, it's his company. He owns it."
Rushing out of the office, heading over to the Hollenden on foot, Ness turned to Captain Savage of the Vandal Squard, who was accompanying him to the meeting, and said, "Ever hear of the Acme Brothers Glass Works?"
"Sure," Savage said, and filled him in.
Minutes later Ness was entering the back of the banquet room, looking across the sea of heads to the dais, where Frank Darby, small and bald and ardent, was patting the air and saying, "Our speaker will be here momentarily, gentlemen… your patience, please!"
Ness caught Darby's eye, and Darby smiled and took a seat on the small stage while Ness moved up the center aisle. As people saw who their speaker on "Cleveland's Better Business Tomorrow" actually was, a wave of discontent moved quickly across the room.
Ness took the stage but did not stand behind the lectern. He raised a hand in a stop motion, as if trying to hold back the tide of irritation.
"I'm sure you all feel taken advantage of," Ness said, "by Mr. Darby and myself. Many of you have spoken either to me, or to members of my staff, about the labor racketeering problem in Cleveland, as it applies to you individually and collectively. And all of you, to a man, have sent me and my men packing."
Seated about midway in the room, Vernon Gordon stood. He was white with anger. "I am a busy man, Mr. Ness. We are all busy men. We've every one of us told you how we feel about this matter."
Smiling gently, Ness shook his head. "No you haven't, Vern. You haven't begun to tell me how you feel. You've told me what you've decided to do for the sake of expediency. For the sake of business."
Gordon spoke through his teeth; he wore indignation like a second skin. "The taxpayers don't pay our salaries, Mr. Ness. We are in business. We have to be open for business, every day. You make it sound like we're doing something wrong, by trying to keep our businesses open and thriving."
Ness looked hard at the man. "You are doing something wrong. You're in tacit collusion with these venal bastards. And you damn well know it, Vern."
"I don't have to listen to this," Gordon said, and began to edge his way out to the aisle.
"I said you haven't told me how you feel about the labor racketeering problem. But I know how you feel, Vern-you and every man in this room. You're mad as hell that you have to deal with these bastards. You're mad as hell with yourselves for giving in to them."
Gordon halted in the aisle; he turned and looked at Ness and said, "Just what would you suggest we do?"
Ness spread his arms, opened his hands. "Look around you. Look how many of you there are. Look at how many of the most successful-I would even say powerful-men in this city are sitting in this room. And this group, this successful, powerful group, is letting itself be pushed around by two petty hoodlums. Just because it's easier to pay 'em off than stand up to them."
Gordon's arms were at his side. "You want us to testify."
"You're goddamn right I want you to testify."
Silence hung in the room.
Then Gordon said, "Eliot, do you know what you're asking? I was almost killed." He turned and looked around, saying to his fellow businessmen, "Do you know what it's like to duck a damn tommy gun?"
"Yes," Ness said.
There were some smiles in the audience.
Then Gordon turned back to Ness, and had to smile a little. He said sheepishly, "That was meant to be a rhetorical question."
"Vern. Find a seat. Hear me out."
Gordon sighed, shook his head, and with an air of resignation moved back down the row to his seat; but he sat with arms crossed and the expression of one who would be hard to sell.
A man stood in the back row.
"Mr. Ness," he said, "my name's Wilson-I have a shoe store on Euclid. I frankly don't know why I was invited here today. I paid a certain amount of tribute to Big Jim and Little Jim when I remodeled recently. I considered that a business expense. But when they came around wanting more, wanting me to kick in to this so-called window washers union, I drew the line. I told 'em to go fuh-Well, it's a physical impossibility, but I encouraged 'em to give it the old college try."
There were more smiles, and some nods. Others in the room had shared similar experiences.
"Some of you," Ness said, reaching in his inside coat pocket and withdrawing several folded, stapled sheets, "are here because you are on this list."
Like something choreographed for a Busby Berkley movie musical, every man in the audience sat forward, interested, alert.
"I should say, blacklist. I have obtained a copy of this infamous, legendary document, and it includes a good number of you, gentlemen. Some of you have been marked for vandalism that has not yet occurred. I would venture to say, Mr. Wilson, that your store windows will not last the month out. Others of you are not to be sold glass under any circumstances. Right now your windows are boarded up, and will stay that way, until you pay tribute to the two Jims-if they have their way, that is. This list has been circulated to every glass company in the city."
He nodded to Captain Savage, who began to pass out copies, one per row.
"A few copies of the list are being handed out among you now," Ness said. "Have a quick look, find your name if you like, then pass it along. Don't keep it. We'll be collecting these as you go."
Gordon stood again. "Where did you get that list?"
"I'm not at liberty to say."
"Will it hold up in court?"
"Prosecutor Cullitan tells me it has evidential value, yes."
Gordon's skeptical expression faded as he sat back down, hands on his knees now.
"And today," Ness said, "another interesting piece of information found its way to my office-courtesy of the IRS, a group that probably is not high on any of your personal lists." The remark brought murmurs of mild amusement. "However, I think we owe the Internal Revenue Service a debt of gratitude in this instance. Their records indicate that James Caldwell is the owner of Acme Brothers Glass Works-which Captain Savage tells me has a lock on better than fifty percent of the market in Cleveland. Not only is Caldwell breaking your windows, gentlemen, and taking payoffs for allowing union glaziers to replace those broken windows, and hitting you up for washing those windows once they've been replaced… he's selling you the damn windows. It's his glass."
"And our ass," somebody in back said.
Now there was widespread laughter, but it died out quickly, choking on its own bitterness.
Ness raised a hand and an eyebrow. "Gentlemen, you have heard me, and my staff members, speak of 'safety in numbers.' Look around you. I will promise you now that if I can't find sixty of you to testify, I won't ask any one of you to."
The men began to look at each other, surprised by such an extreme statement.
"This inquiry is a wide-ranging one," Ness said. "I'm already in the process of gathering witnesses from outside the city, specifically businessmen who have been driven from Cleveland because of the tribute these gangsters demand. We will go to the grand jury with an unbeatable case, or we won't go at all. That's my pledge to those of you who are willing to get involved."
Gordon stood again; this time he seemed almost embarrassed. "Eliot, much of what you say makes sense. You're making a convincing case, I admit that. But I have a family. We're many of us, most of us, family men."
"And you're testifying against gangsters," Ness said, nodding. "Your concerns are well-founded. But I promise you we will maintain strict secrecy as to the identities of the witnesses when the case goes to the grand jury. We'll allow no newspaper pictures taken in the courtroom. And we'll post police details at the homes of witnesses, making every effort to provide the maximum of protection."
Gordon sat back down, slowly.
"I don't want any of you to tell me today, at this meeting, what you've decided. In order to maintain secrecy, we'll contact you individually. It was not my intention, today, to gather all of you together to put you on the spot."
That eased the tension in the air, somewhat. And Ness could sense that he'd won, or was winning. He could see it in the faces. In the eyes.
"The Cleveland experience with labor racketeering in recent years," Ness said, "has been costly indeed. Construction has been choked. Building costs have soared. Vandalism has cost businessmen like yourselves, not to mention the public, thousands upon thousands of dollars. It has to stop. You have to stop it, gentlemen."
A man off to the left stood. Ness recognized him as Oscar Reynolds, who ran a men's clothing shop in the Old Arcade.
"No offense, Mr. Ness," Reynolds said, "but aren't you making this out to be something rather larger than it is? This is a small-time extortion racket, not Al Capone."
Ness smiled knowingly. "Al Capone, or what he has come to represent, is exactly what this is. I am convinced that the labor racketeering in this city is tied into the national network of organized crime. The bootlegging gangsters who were orphaned by Repeal, gentlemen, quickly found other things to do with their talents
… and breaking your windows, and charging you for the privilege, is one of them."
He let that sink in for a moment, then he said, "Thank you for your time," and quickly stepped down from the podium and left the room, even as Captain Savage was collecting the copies of the blacklist.