The White Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

illegal.”
    â€œIt was,” I said. “And the sad truth is they all lost their jobs when Governor Coolidge broke the strike with the National Guard. The police commissioner fired those who had gone off the job and hired fifteen hundred new cops.”
    â€œYour father and uncle among them,” Kaz said. I guess I’d told him the story before. Maybe a few times, now that I think about it.
    â€œYeah. Them and hundreds of other veterans who’d just returned home from France. Most of them Irish, since it was hard to find work when you spoke with a brogue and had a moniker from the auld sod. Dad would have been glad to get work in a factory or digging ditches, anything to put food on the table. Instead, he and Uncle Frank wound up bluecoats, and worked hard at it. Frank had made detective the year before, working vice out of the downtown headquarters.”
    â€œWhat was your father’s assignment?” Kaz asked. This was territory I hadn’t covered before.
    â€œHe was warming a chair in the commissioner’s office,” I said. “Awaiting a transfer, learning administration and procedures, that sort of thing.” Dad had alluded to a payoff in order to land a plumb assignment like homicide, but I could never get any details out of him. I never even knew if he’d been assigned to the commissioner because he’d paid up or had refused to.
    â€œIt is hard to imagine your father as a police bureaucrat,” Kaz said, “after all you have told me about him.”
    â€œIt didn’t last long, not after the prohis showed up.”
    â€œPro-hee? What is that?”
    â€œNo, Pro-heez. Short for Prohibition agents, from the US Treasury Department,” I explained.
    Kaz smiled as he sipped his tea. “You Americans do not like your words overly long, do you?”
    â€œWe’re too busy for big words, Lieutenant Kazimierz,” I said, drawing out his last name for as long as I could manage. “But since we’re grounded here, I’ll take my time. You’ve heard of Eliot Ness?”
    â€œYes, of course,” Kaz said. “The Untouchables. Chicago, Al Capone.” Kaz loved American gangster movies and especially slang associated with mobsters. Otherwise he was pretty much of an egghead. An armed and deadly egghead, that is.
    â€œSame bunch. The Bureau of Prohibition sent a squad to Boston with orders to cooperate with visiting agents from the Canadian Royal Commission on Customs and Excise. Taxmen, just like the US Treasury boys. Since they were on our turf, someone had to be assigned to them.”
    â€œYour father,” Kaz said. “Because he was the least senior detective. No one else wanted to be associated with the prohis.” I could tell Kaz liked the new slang.
    â€œYep. Local cops used the Prohibition laws when it suited them. If it would help to nab a mobster, fine. But no one wanted to bust open barrels of beer and keep honest folks from a little relaxation. But the Treasury men from the Bureau of Prohibition, they had a calling, all right.”
    â€œThey were simply upholding the law, Billy,” Kaz said.
    â€œA ridiculous law that made gangsters rich and politicians more crooked than ever. But you’re right, the law is the law, and Dad was told to help the Canadians and the prohis any way he could. Since it was his first assignment, he figured he had to do a decent job if he wanted to make a name for himself.”
    â€œWithout overdoing things,” Kaz said. We both turned to look outside as the rain drumming on the metal roof lessened. It was still coming down heavily, but a sliver of light gleamed at the horizon.
    â€œNow you get the picture,” I said. “He had to walk a tightrope. Especially when the Canadians explained what brought them to Boston.”
    â€œLet me guess,” Kaz said, lowering his voice. “Joseph Kennedy.”
    â€œOn the money,” I said. “They were