"Wild and the others do like to gamble," Ness admitted. "But they love a headline."

"Yes," said Chamberlin, "and we like to gamble, too, don't we? Tipping the press before a raid… they could leak it."

"That's why I waited till you'd had a chance to seal this building up," Ness said, "before I told 'em."

"There is a new wrinkle."

"Oh?"

"Shades of Maxie Diamond-they've installed a metal door."

"You're kidding; right in the hallway of an office building? That's a little conspicuous, isn't it?"

Chamberlin shook his head, no. "It's on the inside. I sent Al Curry up there posing as a confused Western Union messenger who went to the wrong office, and he got a good look. There's a receptionist in an outer office, and a big, heavy, gray steel door leads to the inner office, where the nerve center is."

Ness thought about that. "They'll be sitting at tables writing bets down on flash paper, with matches at their fingertips and wastebaskets at their feet. Damn."

"It's going to be tough to get in there before the evidence is ashes," Chamberlin admitted. "The receptionist obviously is a lookout man-a better-looking lookout man than the Mayfield Road boys usually utilize, if Curry's to be believed… but a lookout man nonetheless."

"Nobody's up on the seventh floor yet?"

"Right. Garner and the raiding party are waiting on the sixth floor, as you instructed."

Ness checked his watch. He made a clicking sound and said, "The reporters will be here any second. You bring 'em up to the seventh floor at four o'clock sharp."

"That's just ten minutes from now…"

"Right," Ness said, and took the freight elevator up to the sixth floor.

There he found Will Garner, vice cop Frank Moeller, and three more plainclothes cops waiting. Garner was a beefy six-four detective whose dark complexion and black hair reflected his Sioux heritage; he had been one of Ness's Untouchables in the Chicago days. Moeller was a pleasant, brown-haired, bullet-headed man who was about five pounds shy of heavy-set.