Stolen Away

“Lindy wanted Mills to send him the agents who ‘got Capone.’”

“Meaning you, Irey and Wilson.”

“Yes. But I’m tied up with the mop-up operation here, and besides, Irey and Wilson would rather work without me, I’m sure.”

Elmer Irey, Frank Wilson and Eliot Ness were indeed the feds who nailed Capone. Eliot’s Justice Department unit squeezed Capone’s financial nuts in the vise, and confiscated the records Irey, Wilson and their pencil-pushers turned into evidence. But there was friction between Justice man Ness and the IRS boys; both factions seemed to resent the credit taken by the other.

“I’ve recommended a Chicago Police Department liaison be assigned to the case,” he said. “On site, at Hopewell.”

“Why?”

“Early indications are this is a gangland operation, very possibly of midwestern origin. I’ll fully brief you, before you leave….”

“Brief me!” I sat up. “What are you…?”

“I’ve cleared it with your boss.”

“Sapperstein?”

“Chief of Detectives Schoemaker. And the Chief himself. And the Mayor. You’re going to Hopewell.”

I opened my eyes wide as I could and looked at nothing. “Well…that’s swell. Nice break from hanging around train stations and bus depots. And it could be good for my career, but…why me?”

Eliot shrugged. “You made some nice headlines, cracking the Goldberg case.”

I snorted. “Right. I killed two guys up there, and what did it amount to? The dame went free, the case was closed, and who knows how many accomplices are still running around loose?”

Eliot waggled a lecturing finger at me; he was barely a year older than me, but he had a bad habit of treating me like a kid. “Nate, you put a baby back in his mother’s arms. Doesn’t matter that it’s the arms of some bootlegger’s common-law wife. A kidnap ring getting busted up, and a kid going safely home, is exactly what the public wants to hear about right now.”

“Well. It was dumb luck.”

“Much good police work is. The case got enough national play that when I spoke to Lindbergh on the phone yesterday, and mentioned you, he was enthusiastic that you come.”

My skepticism was fading; excitement was creeping up the back of my neck. “But, Eliot…why did you suggest me?”

His face was blank and hard. “I don’t trust Irey and Wilson—that is, I don’t trust their judgment. They’re good investigators, when they’re examining ledger books…but they don’t have your street savvy.”

“Well, thanks, but…”

“You should know a couple of things. My suggestion that you be sent was met with enthusiasm in various quarters.”

“Why in hell?”

He shrugged. “Different people want you out there for different reasons.”

“Such as?”

Eliot counted them off on his fingers. “Lindbergh wants you because he thinks you’re some kind of police hero, who saved a child. I want you there for my own purposes. But…there are people within the department who want you out there because they feel, should it come to that, you can be ‘handled.’”

Now I was getting irritated; I shifted in the hard chair. “Just because, once upon a time, I…”

He held up a hand. “Nate. I know. The Lingle case put you in plainclothes. But it also taught you a few lessons you did not expect to learn. I assume you’re still carrying the Browning your father…”

After a beat, I nodded.

He smiled faintly. “I don’t have many police contacts, Nate. You’re one of a very small handful of men on the Chicago force that I feel I can trust. I’m right about you. The men in the shadows, who think you’ll sell out for a sawbuck, are wrong.”

“Eliot, you are so right,” I said. “It would take at least a C-note.”

He didn’t know whether to smile or not. So he just shook his head.

“Come on,” he said, rising. “I want you to hear what Snorkey has to say….”

Cook County jail was on the West Side, not far from my old stomping grounds, in the midst of a Bohunk neighborhood where Mayor Cermak had relocated both the jail and the county courthouse. His Honor did this, he said, to “help real estate” in the area. That was about as straightforward a statement as any Chicago mayor ever made.

The assistant warden, John Dohmann, took us up five flights in a steel-and-wire elevator that opened onto a heavy iron-barred door, labeled Section D. Dohmann turned a heavy double key in the lock and revealed bars that enclosed the vast sunny concrete room that was Alphonse Capone’s cell, a cell that might have housed fifteen in this badly overcrowded facility. Outside the bars, facing the cell, sat a United States deputy marshal with a billy club on his belt.

I’d lived in Snorkey’s kingdom for many years, and it was unnerving approaching the monarch’s throne room, even if it was concrete and steel.

Capone—who wore not a jailhouse-gray uniform, but a blue flannel suit with a tan shirt and no tie—sat playing cards at a table with the only other prisoner in the cell, a small, pretty young man of perhaps nineteen. On the way up in the elevator Dohmann had mentioned that Capone had been allowed the cellmate to help him pass the time with handball and cards. Looking at this kid gave the term “handball” new implications.