When the lights came up, Ness stood before them expressionless, the room bathed in silence.

"Ten strikers killed," Ness said finally. "By cops. No dead women or children thank God, but as many people-women and children among them-as are present here were hospitalized for injuries… including twenty-three policemen."

No one in the room needed to be told that the newsreel's strike had occurred at a Republic Steel mill.

"And that, gentlemen," Ness said, with hard eyes and a humorless smile, "explains why you're going on duty unarmed, tonight."

A hand was raised midway back.

Ness nodded, and the cop, a young one, stood, saying, "Sir-surely you expect us to defend ourselves."

"You will have nightsticks, and some of you will have tear gas. Use these sparingly, if at all. The only weapon in your arsenal I want you to use unsparingly is good judgment."

They had filed out soberly. Matowitz waited and said something to Ness-something conciliatory, apparently, as it was followed by the two men shaking hands and ex-changing warm if weary smiles.

Ness, Chamberlin, and Curry had left the police station around ten; Curry suggested to his chief that he take another car, rather than the easily recognized EN-1 sedan, but Ness said being noticed was part of the exercise.

Curry caught Broadway just south of the Central Station, trading the bustle and neon glow of the downtown for the desolate gloom of the industrial Flats, the bottomland area that was home to the twisting Cuyahoga River as well as steel mills, warehouses, and factories. For several blocks Broadway traced the edge of the bluff overlooking the Flats; then, suddenly, the street took a sharp right and dropped straight down, as if a trapdoor under the city had given way.

Soon they were driving through an ill-lit area of small factories and warehouses; and after Broadway-a well-paved, well-maintained street-bottomed out, the side street Dille, not so well-paved or maintained, cut away.