Ness was behind the wheel of a black unmarked Ford sedan-but not the one with the familiar-around-town EN-1 license plate: No calling card was required or desired on this excursion.
It was shortly after midnight on a pleasantly cool Tuesday in April; the moon was a shining silver-white plate that reflected on the hood of the sedan as Ness eased into a parking space just down the street from his destination. Jammed in the car with him were two plainclothes men and two uniformed. He checked his watch.
Two minutes.
The apartment building was just north of Case Western Reserve, overlooking the vast garden that was Rockefeller Park, on Ansel Avenue. A five-story graystone with terra cotta trim, the building had a uniformed doorman and, one would think, well-to-do or anyway well-off tenants.
One of those tenants was Willie "the Emperor" Rushing, one-time policy king, current front man for the Mayfield Road gang. Undoubtedly one of the few Negro residents of this obviously predominantly white neighborhood.
Ness was leading one of five squads that were about to simultaneously attack key numbers-racket figures. Two months ago he had delivered to Prosecutor Cullitan a document as thick as a popular novel; that document detailed the evidence and gathered the statements of seventy witnesses against twenty-three members of the Mayfield Road mob-including Salvatore Lombardi and Angelo Scalise.
After interviewing the witnesses himself, Cullitan had gone forward. For the last two weeks, those seventy witnesses paraded secretly through the Grand Jury room, with no press coverage and no apparent leaks to the mob; and tomorrow the indictments were to come down, naming all twenty-three defendants.
It was going so well it made Ness uneasy.
"We're taking no chances," Ness had told the startled group of detectives who without advance warning had been summoned (from home, in many instances) to the safety director's office at City Hall, for an eleven P.M. meeting. "We're not giving these bastards any opportunity to take a powder."
Pointing at a wall map of Greater Cleveland, with appropriate pins stuck in twenty-three positions, he explained that there would be five unmarked cars with twenty-five men divided between them. Around the table sat Moeller, Curry, Chamberlin, Garner, and Toussaint Johnson.
"It'll be a mass round-up," Ness said, with a tight smile. "We'll hit the first five targets at the precise same moment-synchronizing by police radio. Five minutes after each raid goes down, a paddy wagon will roll up in front and you'll load 'er up with bad guys."
"Sounds simple," Garner said, wetting the end of a fresh fat cheap cigar. "Any special charge? Never heard of arresting crooks the day before indictments were voted."
"Jail them as suspicious characters and hold them for investigation," Ness said. "That's good enough for Prosecutor Cullitan, and it's good enough for me."
One team would hit the Central-Scovill district; that would be led by Moeller with Curry and Johnson lending support. Two teams, led by Chamberlin and Garner respectively, would head for Cleveland Heights, where (among others) Lombardi himself lived. Detectives Powers and Allen, who had already been dispatched, would hit the far northeast side of Cleveland. Ness himself would hit three targets, two of them clustered together at East 90th and East 93rd, and another just north of that on Ansel.
It frustrated Ness that he couldn't be in on the collar of Lombardi and Scalise, personally; but realistically, as the leader of this mass offensive, Ness could not head up one of the outlying teams. He needed to be able to round up his quota of suspects quickly, and get to Central Station to supervise the booking and questioning of everybody else's prisoners, as well as his own, as they were hauled in.
But when Chamberlin paused while lighting up his pipe to ask the safety director why he wasn't claiming the Lombardi/Scalise collar for himself, Ness offered a different excuse.
"I'm an old Chicago boy," Ness said, smiling a little. "To me Cleveland Heights is all hills and winding roads. Even with a driver, I'd feel lost. You'll do a better job. Bob."
Albert Curry seemed stuck somewhere between confused and annoyed as he said, "Why are you putting Moeller and Johnson and me on the same team?"
"Two reasons," Ness said. "You're hitting the heart of the ghetto-it's going to be unpredictable and precarious down there. Obviously, Detective Johnson will be a great asset in that neighborhood, and Sergeant Moeller is an old hand at raids of this sort."
"This won't be my first raid, either," Curry said, obviously a bit offended that he wasn't heading up one of the teams himself. "And you said two reasons…"
Ness looked at Moeller and said, "Care to explain. Sergeant?"
Moeller, who was sitting next to Curry, offered a twitch of an apologetic smile and said, "I had a call this afternoon, from somebody in Hollis's camp… one of these Future Outlook League members. Seems there's a men-only party tonight at League Hall. Six of our suspects are gonna be there."
"What's League Hall?" Curry asked.
"State Democratic League," Johnson put in. "The Negro Democrats' HQ. Eighteenth Ward Junior Democratic Club is puttin' on this smoker tonight… there will major policy guys on hand."
"This sounds political," Curry said. "Hollis is a Republican-maybe he just wants to embarrass the opposition."
"That may be the motivation behind the tip," Ness said, "but we won't play it for politics." He lifted a forefinger. "No arrests other than the policy guys. Understood? I don't want any reporters tagging along with you."
"Press been tipped?" Garner asked.
"Not yet," Ness said. "But on my way out, I'm going to see who's in the press room-if anybody's on the job, I'll tell 'em to head over to Central Station and wait for a story to fall in their laps."
Now, at exactly ten after midnight. Ness spoke into the hand mike on the coiled rubber cord and said, "Go."
He stepped out of the sedan. It was cool enough for a topcoat, but he hadn't worn one; his suitcoat was unbuttoned and his revolver was in its shoulder holster. He and officer Claude Lewis, a Negro patrolman who was in plainclothes tonight, walked the half-block to where the doorman stood, while one of the uniformed officers waited by the car and another of the uniformed officers went around to cover the rear of the building.
The doorman was a big pink man about forty who in his elaborate uniform with epaulets looked like a chorus member in a Victor Herbert operetta. It was a role he took seriously, however, because he held out his hand in a pompous stop gesture.
"This is a private building," he said, chin up, eyes down.
"This is public business," Ness said, pleasantly, and with a thumb lifted his lapel to reveal the gold safety director's shield.
The doorman looked down his nose at the badge and Ness grunted and brushed the big man aside, then pushed the glass door open and went in; behind him, Patrolman Lewis was telling the doorman, "Don't warn 'em upstairs, or you'll be an accessory."
The offended but now docile doorman didn't reply, although it might have been a fair question to ask accessory to what.
The lobby was small, clean, and modem, with assorted mirrors and potted plants; Ness and the patrolman took the elevator up to the third floor, where in Suite 3C the Emperor ruled his roost.
Ness knocked on the bright red door. Three hard, rifle-shot knocks.
There was no response.
He knocked again. Three more hard rifle shots.
"Guess I'll have to kick it in," Ness said, matter-of-fact but purposely loud.
A muffled female voice from behind the door called out: ''Willie ain't here!"
Ness spoke to the door. "Are you Mrs. Rushing?"
There was a pause. "I is gonna be."
"Who am I speaking to?"
"Jewel LaVerne. We engaged."
"Well, that's very romantic, Miss LaVerne. Open the door, please. We have a warrant."
"Let me see it."
"Open the door, Miss LaVerne, and I'll show it to you."
She reluctantly eased open the door, halfway, leaning against the doorjamb with studied insolence that failed to mask her fear; a yellow-complexioned girl of perhaps twenty, she had a round face with sultry, long-lashed eyes and a full mouth and a lack of make-up made her no less sullenly pretty. She was wearing a man's silk pajamas, which she filled out interestingly, sleeves and pant legs rolled up to accommodate her shapely five-five frame. She smelled of lilac perfume and sleep.
Ness dug the folded warrant out of his suitcoat pocket and showed it to her. She looked at it blankly; his guess was she couldn't read.
She looked at him, batting her lashes in slow motion and gazing at him like a bored cat; but there was tension in the eyes nonetheless.
"Willie ain't here, I tole you. He's outa town."
"Where, out of town?"
"Two hundred miles away."
"Please stand aside, Miss LaVerne."
The sullen face squeezed into a childish pout and she stepped back and slammed the door in Ness's face, damn near breaking his nose.
He stood back, feeling more stupid than angry, rubbed his sore nose, and sighed.
Patrolman Lewis asked, "You want me to bust it down?"
"No thanks," Ness said, with a faint smile. "This is a specialty of mine."
He kicked the red door three times, with the flat of his foot, emphasis on the heel, enjoying the feel of the impact as it climbed the muscles of his leg, shaking his whole body, rattling his teeth. The door sprang open on the fourth kick and Ness knifed through the apartment, pushing the sweet-smelling woman aside. The apartment was ornately furnished, the carpets thick-napped Orientals; the Emperor had himself a palace, all right.
"Stay out here," Ness ordered Lewis. "Keep an eye on her, and the door!"
Ness quickly found the bedroom, a room so garish it startled him, from the fancy brocade wallpaper, blood-red, to the ornate white furniture and huge polished brass bed with red silk sheets and overhead mirror. The smell of the woman's lilac perfume was in the room.
Willie was, too.
The big middle-aged man was climbing out the window-while his girl had been stalling the cops, fastidious Willie had taken time to get dressed, in a powder-blue shantung-silk suit and pale yellow crepe linen-silk shirt with a dark blue silk-knit tie. He was weighted down with gold jewelry-rings and cufflinks and diamond stickpin-and in his left hand was an alligator traveling bag.
"All dressed up and nowhere to go, Willie," Ness said, standing with his hands on hips, grinning. "Except jail, of course."
Willie stepped back inside; he let the alligator bag drop to the floor and put his jewelry-heavy hands up and his smile was as wide and white as a picket fence.
"Mister Ness," he said. "I was jus' about to leave town on business."
"Were you," Ness said, approaching Willie cautiously. "Do I have to cuff you, Willie, or will you come along quietly?"
"What the charge?"
"We're just going to hold you for questioning. No big deal."
"Fine with me, boss," Willie said, and he shoved Ness with two big hard hands, knocking him back against the foot of the brass bed. Willie slipped out the window, with a deep laugh, and Ness picked himself up and smiled tightly and went after him, catching him on the fire-escape landing.
Willie turned and swung a ham-size fist, but Ness ducked it, tackling Willie; the two men slammed into the metal railing and began wrestling, and soon the Emperor, a big bear of a man, was on top, the cross-hatching of the metal grill-work digging into Ness's back. The cool night was damn near day, with the full moon above, and Ness could see clearly the vicious expression over him as the Emperor drew back a massive fist and was about to let fly, when Ness grabbed the gun out from under his shoulder and pointed it straight up into the big man's face.
The Emperor's two white wide eyes looked down into the smaller black infinite one of the. 38 and he froze, his drawn-back arm and fist caught in midair, as if stiffened there.
"Think about it, Willie," Ness said. "You can be dead, or we can go back inside and pretend this never happened."
The Emperor swallowed and smiled the picket-fence grin again and crawled off Ness like a satisfied lover. He stood on the fire-escape landing and brushed off his fancy silk suit with whisk-broom hands.
"Pretend what happened, Mr. Ness?" Willie asked innocently.
Ness was on his feet now. It was a little windy up here, he noticed.
"Are you all right, Mr. Ness?" the patrolman below called up. The fire escape was on the east side of the building and it had taken a while for the man stationed out back to notice the struggle.
"Everything's under control," Ness yelled down. Then to Willie, with a gesture of the. 38, he said, "After you, Emperor."
Willie stepped back inside.
"Them indictments is comin' down," Willie said, "ain't they?"
"Let's put it this way," Ness said. "You're about to be deposed."
Ness led the man through his apartment, where the girl stuck her pink pointy tongue out at the safety director; Ness, Rushing, and Lewis went down the elevator and out front, where a Black Maria was waiting.
Lewis stood eagerly by as the paddy wagon officer closed the back door of the buggy on the glumly seated Emperor, and Ness checked his watch.
"We're on schedule," Ness said to Lewis, "but barely. Let's go."