"Worked in the Pullman plant," he continued, "when I got out of high school. Dipping radiators. Hard work. I don t envy these men their lives."

"The question is," Bob Chamberlin said from the backseat, "do you begrudge them a pay raise?"

Ness stared out the window. Enough time had elapsed to make Curry think there would be no response to Chamberlin's question when Ness said quietly, "That's not my decision." Then a beat later: "I wish it were."

Curry understood his chief's sympathies for the strikers, if not the contradiction of the gun under Ness's arm. Curry came from a working-class neighborhood himself, on Cleveland's far east side. His father-a skilled cabinetmaker sixty years of age-had been laid off two years ago by the furniture company that employed him for twenty-eight years. Curry, and his brother John, who also had a job with the city, were covering their parents' mortgage payments; his father-a life-long Republican who'd always had a hardheaded you-get-what-you-earn/you-get-out-of-life-what-you-put-into-it philosophy-was accepting fifteen dollars a month from the county relief office.

The Depression was, to Curry, some awful, arbitrary force of nature, a disaster not unlike a tornado or flood or earthquake, leaving misery and hardship in its path. Survival had become the first order of business, finding and keeping a job the top priority.

Curry felt lucky to have a job-he'd worked hard to get where he was with the department, but he knew he was mostly lucky. As a traffic cop he'd pulled several people, including a small child, from a burning car; Ness's predecessor in the safety director's chair had very badly needed a "brave, honest officer" (as the papers had embarrassingly put it) as a positive example. So Albert Curry was promoted to detective-youngest in the city-without having to buy his badge, a rarity at the time.

If he questioned the wisdom of those with jobs going out on strike, in hard times, for better pay and working conditions, he understood their mistrust of company owners.