"Something's up, Eliot," Wild said. "Or you wouldn't be teetotaling it this afternoon."

"Something is up," Ness admitted, with an ornery child's smile. "I guess you know that we've been zeroing in on the Mayfield Road bunch."

"With labor out of the way," Fritchey drawled, nodding, "and the police department pretty well sanitized, it would seem about time you took those boys on, directly."

Webb Seeley shrugged. "You already chased Horvitz and Rothkopf and McGinty and their gambling interests out of the county."

"Hell," said Fritchey, "out of state — they're operating in northern Kentucky, now."

"Those boys," Wild put in, with one arched eyebrow, "are getting more and more into legitimate concerns. Even Chuck Polizzi is playing it cool. He's leaving it all to Lombard! and Scalise."

Ness was nodding. His smile had disappeared. He lifted a forefinger and waggled it like a scolding schoolteacher.

"Those two," he said, quietly ominous, "are next."

"Is that why you've been hitting the bookie joints so hard?" Seeley asked. "Getting so's a feller can't make an honest bet."

"What bookie joints are those?" Wild said, almost disgruntledly, swirling his bourbon in his glass. "Our esteemed safety director has shut down every bookie joint I know of. This city is getting as boring as its reputation, thanks to young Mr. Ness, here."

Seeley sipped his beer and said to Ness, "We lost count at eighty-four times in one month, when your men Powers and Allen kept raiding that same bookie joint… busted up the place so often the poor bastard bookie had to put two full-time carpenters on staff, to keep the place up and running. Finally said the hell with it and closed up shop."

"So what's left?" Fritchey asked. He laughed humorlessly. "The numbers game? You going to try to clean up the colored east side? That's rich."