Breaking Blue by Timothy Egan Read Free Book Online

of being the toughest man in town. At just over six foot three inches tall—with a fifty-four-inch chest—Ralstin towered over all but one man at the Stone Fortress. He had a long, pointed nose, green eyes, and showed dimples when he smiled. In silk vest, pressed fedora, gleaming shoes, he didn’t look like a man who earned forty-two dollars a week. He was the best marksman on the police force, and certainly the best-known fighter. Several times a week, he took on contenders inside the Stone Fortress. Nobody ever pinned him. But as strong as Ralstin was physically, his real power came from psychological intimidation. He knew a little bit—the right information—about everybody who might have some control over him. He traded in these small secrets, the shadings of character that could determine a career or break a marriage. It was, until the late summer of 1935, his black-market specialty.
    By 1935, after seven years as a cop, Ralstin seemed to have enough ammunition on his police colleagues to see him through the roughest of times. He needed it, because his career was then in decline, and his marriage, to Monnie Elliott, was falling apart. When he liked another woman, he simply went after her. By the mid-1930s, he liked a lot of women, most of them introduced to him by his best friend,Burch. When Monnie objected, he blew up at her: it was none of her goddamn business what he did outside the house. After a while, he rarely came home or made any pretense about monogamy or trying to stay together.
    But he adored his wife’s daughter, Ruby. She was barely a teenager when Clyde introduced her to liquor, taking her into a speakeasy and ordering her a whiskey sour. She coughed; he laughed. “Swallow it, kid; it’ll make a man out of you.” He seldom mentioned anything to his stepdaughter about police work, unless something had happened that he found funny. He told her once about an acquaintance of his, a fellow cop, who would spend the first part of his shift walking down one side of the street, drinking a pint of whiskey; in the second half, he would walk down the other side, consuming another pint. His doctor told him he was going to kill himself if he continued this routine. So, rather than give up drinking and patrolling, the cop went home and blew his brains out. Clyde nearly fell to the floor from laughing as he told the story to his stepdaughter.
    When Ruby was in her early twenties, she married. Ralstin hated his new son-in-law, a car salesman. On a November night in 1934, Ralstin went over to their house, a few blocks from his own home on the North End, and started slapping around Ruby’s husband, a much smaller man. Clyde dragged him out into the street, knocked him to the ground, and kicked his head against the pavement. Blood poured out of one side of the young man’s head; his face was smashed in and he could no longer resist. In the midst of this pummeling, a gas station attendant, Monte Adams, who had just ended his work shift walked by. Seeing the younger man on the ground, attacked by a windmill of fists, Adams screamed at Ralstin to stop. Ralstin told him to back off, mind his own business. Neighbors peered out from behind drapes. Lights came on. Fearing that Ralstin would kill the man, Adams jumped atop Ralstin, who threw him to the ground. While they wrestled, Ralstin’s service revolver fell out. Adams grabbed the gun and pointed it at Clyde.
    In a few minutes, a patrol car arrived. When the two officers stepped out, they immediately recognized Detective Ralstin. “He tried to kill me,” Ralstin said of Adams. Pointing to his wounded son-in-lawon the ground, Ralstin said that the boy was drunk and had been beating his wife. The gas station attendant and the young man were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
    At their trial, they were found not guilty by a judge who said there was no evidence to back the charge. “The man who was most guilty and was the cause of the disorder was not