Little Men, Big World

  W. R. Burnett has been described as an author whose "narrative moves along at a terrific pace - the the pace that we have come to expect from the best Hollywood crime films." This quality is again apparent in Little Men, Big World, the story of the invisible government that ruled a big Middle-Western city—a government of corrupt police, hired killers, shady politicians and white-tie-and-tails hoodlums who together ran a multi-million-dollar world of vice and gambling. It is a story told chiefly in terms of personalities; of Reisman, the cynical but idealistic reporter; of Judge Greet, a potentially great leader gone wrong; of Commissioner Stark, a public official with limited intelligence but unblemished integrity; of Leon Sollas, who made a fortune by taking the limelight as Public Enemy Number One; and of Arky, too countrified for the city, too citified for the country, who through a peculiar set of circumstances, including blind loyalty, ended up as king-pin of the city’s gambling. Frightening, shocking, but unexaggerated, this is a fascinating novel of a night-time world in the manner of Little Caesar and The Asphalt Jungle.

  W.R. BURNETT

  LITTLE MEN, BIG WORLD

  Copyright (1952) W.R. Burnett

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  About W.R. Burnett

  Bibliography

  Little Men, Big World

  For WHITNEY again

  and for the same reason

  1

  IT WAS a grey day. Dark rain-clouds moved slowly in from the west, grazing the tops of the tall buildings downtown. The huge sprawling Midwestern city by the river looked dirty, bleak, and ugly under a steady drizzle. When from time to time the drizzle stopped for a moment, bubbles of moisture, streaked with soot, danced in the heavy damp air. Tugs moaned on the river.

  Ben Reisman was bored, depressed, at a loose end. Today he’d really hit bottom. Why else would he be hanging around the old 17th Ward, trying to revive the past? Twenty years ago he’d been a police reporter and this had been his beat. Now he was the fair-haired boy of the Journal, the envy of the other newspapermen. His new column, “Day In, Day Out,” was catching on, and one by one other Midwestern papers were picking it up, even in Chicago. He was a big man in the city—a success!

  Lately he’d been able to move into a nice house in a nice suburb and his wife, Sarah, noted for jumping the gun, was already talking about sending the oldest girl to private school. Private school yet! Six months ago, Sarah had been hanging the Monday wash out on the fire-scape to dry.

  Sudden success, some people said. Sudden success, after twenty-five years? And was this success? How about the plays he’d intended to write, the novels? Reisman groaned and stared into his glass of Vichy water. The others were drinking whisky. He, too, liked whisky, and some nights he even got drunk. But the doc told him it would kill him and sometimes he was afraid. Why did he have ulcers? Young Downy did not have ulcers. Young Downy had pink cheeks and optimism. Not much in the way of brains. But what are brains? A liability.

  Reisman and the police reporters from the Pier 7 Station House sat staring out of the bar window, watching the rain fall on the bricks and asphalt of the filthiest slum in the whole city, even worse than Paxton Square.

  The others seemed depressed, too, and looked to Reisman for some entertainment. What was he doing hanging around the 17th Ward, anyway? That stuff about nostalgia he’d been talking in the station house was strictly the bunk. A shrewd one, Ben Reisman. Probably knew where it was buried. A guy’s gotta have an angle or he don’t get no place. Be funny, Reisman, they wanted to say. For Christ’s sake, be funny!

  What kind of a life was this? Life at its worst, of course—life in the 17th Ward. Life full of rape, drunkenness, thievery, slugging, unwanted babies in drains, old drunks dead in the alley, young puckeroos trying to be tough—life at its worst all right, but not even interesting. Just dull, dull, plain dull.

  “Who was that woman I seen you with the other night, Reisman?” asked Joe Pavlik, hopefully.

  “That wasn’t no woman,” said Reisman with a sigh, “that was the managing editor.”

  There were wan smiles. Reisman was not himself today. Even Downy, his boy Friday, was looking at him critically.

  They turned and watched the rain. It was making streaks on the sooty buildings. Blackish brooks ran in all the gutters.

  “April is the cruelest month, breeding …” Reisman began, but somebody interrupted him.

  “It’s May!”

  Reisman glanced at the interrupter with distaste. “Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a fellow named T. S. Eliot. He was a real slugger. He finally got into a World Series game as a pinch-hitter but struck out with the bases full. Eliot Agonistes.”

  Only Downy beamed. The rest merely stared, not understanding the allusion. Was this supposed to be funny? What was it—double talk? Reisman was getting goddamned superior since Mush Head broke down and let him have his say in a daily two-column spread. Christ knows he’d been around long enough. Should be managing editor by now with all his brains. Or was it brains? Wasn’t it just a kind of superficial cleverness?

  Reisman began to speak again and they all listened. Their quick attention warmed him a little and he ordered a bourbon and water, making the mental note: This, I’ll be sorry for!

  “... It’s not only the rain,” he said, “and the sad and dirty city that lowers my blood pressure and makes me a prey to the hoo-hoos. This morning I came down to breakfast feeling pretty good, for me—which wouldn’t be good for you, Downy—my egg was cooked right for a change—it didn’t drip goo or I didn’t have to strip it out of its shell with a reamer—the coffee was adequate—I always like an adequate brown coffee—and the toast had been well scraped by my oldest daughter—almost all the charcoal was off of it …” There was soft laughter and Jo Pavlik raised his eyebrows at the others as if to say: You see?

  “… All was right with the world. Okay, it was raining. I got rubbers. I got an umbrella. I even got a closed car. My wife looked like hell across the table, but I’m no Pinza, myself, so ... ? A good world. Then I pick up my morning paper. Japanese Communists marching on Tokyo. Okay. Communists are always marching on something. A new secret weapon—it makes the atom bomb look like a firecracker. This time you don’t have to worry about radioactivity. They won’t even find one of your pants buttons. I pass on, scared. So? A woman’s body found in a wicker basket, minus the head. My egg don’t taste so good now. Child abandoned in a stolen car in a vacant lot: child dies. Four killed in a traffic accident. I almost drop the paper. I know one of the guys. Like me he’s got three kids and damn little insurance. I turn the page. Noted businessman drops dead. Apparently in perfect health. His age? Forty-two. My age? Forty-six. And I ain’t in perfect health—far from it. So what do I do now?”

  “You turn to the sports page,” said Joe Pavlik.

  “No,” said Reisman, “first I argue with my wife about reading the paper at the breakfast table. To shut her up, I give her the woman’s section so she can read about all the coming-out parties in Riverview and what Old Family is being joined in
indissoluble bonds to what other Old Family.

  A thing of deep interest to the Old Family of the Reismans. ... Then I turn to the sports page—man’s refuge in an evil world: and what do I see? Dames. Nothing but dames. The famous ice skater, little Miss Frozen Pants—caught by the camera in a position she didn’t learn in finishing school. Famous girl bowler in the tightest pair of slacks I ever saw, bending over, of course. A bevy of swim cuties in French bathing-suits. This is the sports page? But where is Ted Williams? I turn to the horse-racing news. Ah—a picture of Citation, my favorite horse. But I can’t see him. Why? Miss Racetrack of 1950 has got such a broad keister she blots him out…” Joe Pavlik was rocking in his seat now. Reisman broke off and stared suspiciously down at his bourbon and water, then he drank it fearfully, and waited. Was that a premonitory quiver of the pain to come he felt running along the wall of his stomach? But no: probably only gas. He felt better at once, ordered another bourbon and water.

  There was a silence. Everybody looked more cheerful now, except Reisman. And it was an act with him, they all were sure: that long, sallow face—the unsmiling funnyman—the Pagliacci of the press room, according to Red Seaver.

  Reisman sighed and looked out at the rain. Down at the end of the street he could see the worn brick buildings abutting on what used to be called Death Corners. “In the twenties,” he said, “when I was working this beat we used to have some real excitement. The bootleggers used to shoot each other round here just to see each other fall. This street was like a penny-arcade shooting-gallery. I used to duck by instinct when I got off the streetcar to go to the station house. A motorman got clipped by a stray bullet right in front of this bar. It was a speak then. Don’t anything ever happen?”

  “You’re wasting your time here,” said Joe Pavlik. “No copy—except the juvenile delinquents. Them young girls—brother! Run for your life. They try to peddle it in broad daylight-—and all of fourteen.”

  “Look at the circles under Joe’s eyes,” said somebody.

  “I could name names,” said Joe indignantly, “but the old Riverview name of Pavlik would not be among them.”

  “They shifted the guy from the Examiner on account of it,” said Downy.

  “And you better watch it yourself, Downy,” said Joe. “I saw you talking to that big kid with the bushy red hair.”

  “She asked me for a cigarette, goddam it!” shouted Downy with unnecessary heat. “Is it a crime to give a girl a cigarette?”

  “If she’s a minor—yes.”

  “Show me that law.”

  “Right here in my pocket,” said Pavlik. Then he turned to the waiter. “Buster, would you mind giving me a little whisky with my water next time?”

  The waiter called Joe something under his breath and shuffled to the bar.

  Reisman rose, leaving almost half of his second drink. A faint pain was nagging at his stomach. “If I only had less brains and more strength of character!” he murmured sadly.

  “Don’t give up so easy, Ben,” said Joe. “Sit down. Something may happen yet. Brannigan on the desk always calls us.”

  “I’m not looking for anything,” said Ben. “That is, anything Brannigan could call you about. Gentlemen, I was merely looking for my youth. You’ll all understand about things like that later. For Downy—twenty years later.”

  “Okay, pappy,” said Joe. “Come back again in a decade. We don’t get many celebrities around here—and it brightens the place.”

  Downy rose to accompany Reisman—at least to his car—the obsequious disciple. But Joe snapped his fingers at a sudden thought.

  “Say,” he called, “you get around, Ben. You’re not buried like we are. Hear anything about George Cline moving back in?”

  Reisman showed a flash, then lowered his eyes. He remembered Cline well. A big boy ten years ago. But they’d run him out. At least that was the story. Leon Sollas, the new boss of the vices and rackets, had run big George out. George had gone west and prospered. Las Vegas. Reno. Some place like that, if there were any other places like that!

  “No,” said Reisman. “Haven’t heard a thing.”

  “We only hear rumors,” said Downy, defensively, afraid Reisman might be sore at him for not mentioning such things.

  But Reisman ignored him. “I don’t know, Joe. Such stories are always floating around. Leon’s been running the thing for ten years. Last time I saw him at the fights he looked mighty smug and healthy.”

  “Leon’s a front and you know it,” said Joe. “The boys in the background call the turn and pull the strings. Leon merely takes the rap and gets all the unfavorable publicity. Public Enemy Number One. That crap.”

  “You know maybe who the boys in the background are?” asked Reisman ironically.

  “If I did I’d be the biggest man on Newspaper Row. But the rumor is, things been rocky with the boys lately and there have been complaints that the set-up can’t deliver anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Reisman. “I am now merely a columnist.”

  In spite of what he said, however, Reisman felt a sudden quickening, a sudden interest in life. His stomach crawled slightly, as in the old days, and this time he was sure it was neither gas nor his tried and true friend and companion, the ulcer; it was instinct warning him, some kind of sixth sense that had made him a top reporter on the crime beat.

  Things were at sixes and sevens in the city. He knew that. There were rumors and rumbles—had been since old Commissioner Hardy, elected to Congress, had left for Washington and had been replaced by his friend and protégé Thomas Stark, who was zealous and able but not quite another Hardy. Bookies had been prosecuted and heavily fined—something unheard of in the old days. A famous escort bureau—the biggest call service in the city—had been put out of business, and Mrs. Lansing, the most famous madam of all, was now serving a term in the Winona Women’s Prison. But Reisman had ignored all this. Stark’s intentions were of the best, but you can’t sop up the ocean with a sponge.

  Sollas was the boss—at least he was considered to be the boss, and he’s got credit for running George Cline out of town. If Cline tried to move back in, there’d be real trouble. Or would there? The crime climate had changed greatly since the wild and lunatic twenties. The big hoods were now businessmen and owned hotels and summer resorts and distilleries. They all wanted to be “gentlemen,” and winced away from the word “crime.” All on the legit, now. Of course occasionally somebody got the blast put on him—but only as a last resort, strictly as a last resort.

  “Well,” said Reisman, “if George wants to move back he and Leon will probably kiss and make up. Plenty for all is the new motto, more or less, wouldn’t you say, Joe?”

  “I guess so,” said Joe. “The sale of kid gloves has gone up like hell the last twenty years. You don’t find guys in alleys with pennies in their hands any more. Ah me. I was born too late. It must have been lovely in those days.”

  “It was just ducky,” said Reisman, then he turned and went out, followed by Downy.

  “He was nosing around all right,” said Joe to the others. “Looking for his youth, eh? Him only forty-six and going like a house on fire.”

  “What do you mean, only forty-six?” demanded a chubby-faced kid reporter. “My old man’s just forty-seven.”

  “You must have been one of his earliest mistakes,” said Joe.

  Young Downy opened the car door for Reisman.

  “Ben,” he said, “can I ask a favor?”

  “Sure,” said Reisman, glancing in mild surprise at the handsome youth.

  “Couldn’t you put a bug in the Old Man’s ear for me? I hate this place. It makes me sick at my stomach. I have nightmares.”

  “You kidding?”

  “No, Ben. I’m serious.”

  “I thought you were going to be a writer. This is life in the raw. Great copy.”

  “It’s not for me. I can’t stand all this dirt and filth—every kind. And these crazy young kids, and these poor beat-up old winos, men
and women. I’m getting the jumps. Is this what life is?”

  “Oh! A reformer!”

  Downy hesitated, got hold of himself. “Well, I just thought you might …”

  “I will, kid, if that’s what you want. But don’t get sore if they send you out to cover flower shows and ping-pong tournaments.”

  “Thanks, Ben.”

  “And keep your ears open about those rumors. You know?”

  “Oh, sure, Ben, sure,” said Downy, flushing slightly, embarrassed, feeling derelict in his duty toward his idol.

  Reisman felt quickened, unusually alive, like a hound on the scent. Actually it was none of his goddamned business. He had his column now and that was a full-time job, a heart-breaker. They kept telling him he was too conscientious about it. But how could you be too conscientious about your bread and butter with three growing girls to feed and a wife to clothe and appease? Mush Head, the editor, had said to him: “Jesus, Ben, you don’t have to sparkle every day—just now and then. It gets monotonous. Anyway, you know as well as I do that the dullest columns get the most readers and the most dough in the end. Get your sights down. You’re not writing for The New Yorker.”

  “How do you go about being dull?” Reisman asked. “Read the editorials,” said Mush Head, with a dirty laugh.

  No, it was none of his business. But he couldn’t let it go—for two reasons. One, his old training: it nagged at him. Two, he was in love with Commissioner Stark—that’s what Sarah said. Sarah resented his interest even in a man.

  Yes, in a way, Reisman was in love with the new Commissioner. He admired him and felt sorry for him. He was in a spot, subbing for Hardy, and besides, he was like the Dutch boy trying to stop the dyke with his finger. But in the case of the Commissioner, the dyke had a thousand holes in it, and he only had ten fingers.

  Reisman decided to look up an old source of information: Bat Riggio, an ex-pug with a broken nose, eyebrows bulged out with scar tissue, and a tin ear. He had always looked punch-drunk but wasn’t—far from it. Reisman hadn’t seen him for about a year and then he’d run into him at the fights by accident. He’d looked prosperous, said he was managing a couple of pretty good boys.