THE DARK CITY (Eliot Ness) Page 3

  "Which are?"

  Ness walked around to the front of the desk and leaned one hand on its top, the other clutching his fedora, as he looked Burton square in the eyes. "I was ready to say I would take the position on two conditions: one, that I not be deskbound, that I can be as active in investigative work as I choose, turning over the administrative duties to an assistant; and two, that I be given a free hand, without political interference. No whitewash jobs. Chips fall where they may."

  "I see no problem with that."

  "We talked about stepping on toes before. What if I have to step on the toes of some city council members? Councilman Fink, for example? Won't that defeat your purpose?"

  Burton laughed. "If you pull this thing off, the city council will have to vote us our money, sore toes or not."

  Ness smiled on one side of his face.

  "What do you say, Mr. Ness? Do you still want the job, after what you've just heard?"

  Still smiling, Ness again shrugged. "How's the pay?"

  "Not great, but it's a few thousand more a year than you're currently getting. There are some fringe benefits. We'll provide you with a city car. What are you driving now?"

  "A black Ford coupe that belongs to the federal government."

  "Well, in the future you'll be driving a black Ford sedan that belongs to the city. How's that for a step up?"

  "My predecessor got a Rolls Royce, but what the hell. I live in Bay Village. Is that a problem?"

  "You'll need a residence within the Cleveland city limits. I believe that can be provided for you. We could work out all these details—if you're interested in the job."

  "Your Honor," Ness said, grinning like a kid, "I wouldn't miss this party for the world."

  "Then let's get you sworn in," the mayor said, reaching for his phone. "The party starts tomorrow morning."

  CHAPTER 3

  It was almost nine that night when Eliot Ness, behind the wheel of the government Ford he would be turning in tomorrow morning, pulled into the drive of his Bay Village home. Several lights were on in the downstairs of the gray stucco, blue-shuttered two-story house. He hoped Eva hadn't waited dinner for him. He'd called to tell her not to, but she did have a considerable streak of martyr in her, God love her.

  He left the Ford in the garage, a separate building with a rentable loft—they just hadn't gotten around to renting it yet—between the main house and the lakefront. A friend in Chicago, with the old Retail Credit Company he'd worked for in his early private detective days, had put him in touch with a friend who'd helped him land this nice house for a song. A very nice investment it was, even if such Bay Village homes as this were bungalows compared to the near-mansions of Lakewood and Rocky River. On his long drive home well over an hour from downtown, he drove by those lavish homes each night and smiled and shook his head and promised himself, one day. . .

  Tonight it occurred to him that his evening daydreams might soon come true, if he could pull off this new job. Of course if he failed, he might never achieve his career goals and the material comforts his success would bring. But, what the hell—not trying was in itself failure.

  And he felt good about Burton. Burton had laid it on the line and hadn't hedged about the risk involved. Ness had met a lot of public officials in his years as a federal agent, but he couldn't recall one that had impressed him the way Burton did. If he could trust his instincts, and he always did, Ness saw this mayor as a man with brains and guts and even integrity. Ness wondered if such a man could last in the political arena.

  He held in his hand a bouquet of flowers. His cute redheaded secretary Doris had had them waiting for him at his office in the Standard Building when he returned from his conference with Burton at City Hall, a block away. Doris had claimed they were from "the staff," but he knew they were her idea. He was a detective, after all.

  Under his arm was a bound copy of the city charter, and a copy of the crime and law enforcement survey of Cleveland made a few years back by Felix Frankfurter and several others. Both were "gifts" from the Mayor. The job began tomorrow, officially, but he would begin his homework tonight.

  The night was cold and the wind whistled in off Lake Erie. It would be good to be in his warm house, with his warm wife, who was waiting for him in the doorway. Eva was a shapely, handsome woman of twenty-nine, a dark blonde with a heart-shaped face and light blue eyes, her Scandinavian heritage stamped on her every feature. She wore a simple dark blue dress with a patterned lace V-neck collar, and a light blue apron.

  "I was beginning to worry," she said. Eva had a rather musical voice, though the notes she hit of late were too often melancholy.

  "I told you not to," he said, leaning in to peck her cheek.

  "Oh, Eliot, you shouldn't have . . ."

  She had noticed the flowers.

  "Uh, well, they are rather pretty, aren't they?"

  She beamed as he handed her the flowers, red, white, and yellow with ferns. "You didn't have to do this. It isn't exactly the first night you've been a little late."

  "I'm glad you like them," he said, and stepped inside. She placed the flowers in a vase on a small table nearby. She helped him out of his topcoat and took his hat, hanging them both in the closet by the door.

  "I waited dinner," she said.

  "You needn't have. You should've eaten."

  "I wanted to wait. I want to hear about this big surprise of yours."

  The vestibule opened onto the large living room, with stair to the second floor rising on the right. Through an archway on the left was the dining room, but they ate in the kitchen, at the rear of the house. There was a breakfast nook where they took many of their meals.

  "I hope the roast beef isn't dried out," she said, bending to open the stove and look in. She had a nice rear end, Eva did. She had a nice shape in general, just this side of plump.

  The roast beef did prove a little dry, but gravy took care of that. He was hungry and wolfed down several servings of both the beef and the boiled potatoes. Eva was a good cook, and in fact he had to restrain her a bit. He liked simple meat and potatoes. Her special Swedish meatballs, which drew raves from family and friends, made him sick to his stomach.

  "Please tell me," she said, picking at her food, studying him. "I'm not like you, Eliot. I don't like suspense."

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin and smiled at her. "I guess you don't realize you're dining with one of the most powerful figures in city government."

  "Powerful? City government?"

  "Your husband is Cleveland's new Director of Public Safety."

  Her face lit up the room as she clasped her hands together. She rose, and came over and sat in his lap. She was soft and warm and smelled very good, like the flowers he'd (sort of) brought her, and her face was glowing.

  "I'm so proud of you," Eva said. "This is the day, the day we've been waiting for."

  He squeezed her. "Yes, it is. We've been working toward this for a long time."

  "You deserve a big kiss."

  "I think I do."

  She kissed him—a long, soft, sweet kiss that nearly ended dinner.

  "Eliot," she said, blue eyes flashing as she fell into a private joke of theirs, "is that your gun?"

  "Maybe I'm just glad to see you."

  She slid off his lap. "Maybe you should finish your roast beef. I have apple strudel for dessert."

  "We may have dessert all evening."

  "We may," she conceded, and she sat across from him and began eating with more enthusiasm now.

  He had met Eva Jonsen in elementary school so perhaps it could be said they were childhood sweethearts. But they had gone to different high schools and, in truth, barely knew each other in those days. Both had grown up on Chicago's South Side, in Roseland, a working-class residential area outside the Pullman industrial district. Her father had worked at the Pullman plant, in fact, while Eliot's had owned a small but successful bakery. They hadn't gotten to know each other until years later, when she'd been Alexander Jamie's
secretary.

  Jamie, who was married to one of Eliot's older sisters, had left the Justice Department to become Chief Investigator for the Secret Six, a group of Chicago businessmen who were trying to break the Capone stranglehold on their city. The Secret Six had worked hand-in-hand with Ness and his squad of "untouchables," and Eva had eventually become as much Eliot's secretary as Jamie's.

  With the kind of hours he was putting in, in those early Chicago days, he didn't have much contact with females—at least not decent females—and Eva had always been interested in his work and in him. She seemed to look up to him. She'd made it through high school and was a well-trained secretary, but the idea of a "college man" made her swoon. They spent a lot of time together at the office, and elsewhere, with her swooning and him catching. Now their sixth wedding anniversary was approaching.

  By a little after ten o'clock they were cuddled on the brown mohair couch in the living room, their shoeless feet up on the coffee table being warmed by the considerable blaze that he'd got going in the fireplace. The only other light in the room came from the electric bubbling liquid decorations on the small Christmas tree on a table in one corner.

  He looked at her radiant face, the glow of the fire making it even more so, and felt very much in love with her. He knew they'd been drifting apart—his long hours, separation from her family back in Chicago, their failure to have a child, all of that and more, had been working against them. They were both quiet and tended to hold things in, and that didn't help, either.

  But right now, he loved her. He loved her very much. He promised himself to do something about their situation. It did not occur to him, however, simply to tell her how much he loved her.

  "I'm happy for you," she said.

  "Be happy for us," he said. "This means more money. A real standing in the community. A real chance to try out my theories, my ideas about law enforcement."

  "You learned so much at the university, and you've had so little chance to use it."

  He knew she meant that in a positive way, but it rubbed him a little wrong. "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, you know, dear. All these years of chasing bootleggers. Kicking down doors and swinging an axe."

  He laughed. "Sometimes I do feel like Carrie Nation in trousers."

  "No longer. You've busted your last still, Eliot Ness."

  He laughed shortly. "I hadn't thought of that. I suppose I have."

  "That's behind you, all of that awful, dangerous work. And I'm so glad."

  Eva reached her face up to his and kissed him. That was unusual for her. She rarely initiated a kiss, or anything else. But her lips were warm on his, and she was eager, and he began to help her out of her dress. Then he undressed, and in the flickering light of the fire, on the mohair couch, they made love, with a desperation and enthusiasm that outdistanced any coupling of theirs in recent memory.

  Soon—well, not too soon—they were a naked married couple clinging to each other, watching the fire slowly die. The lovemaking done, Ness was thinking about work again, his other marriage. Reviewing his day.

  Just to keep things kosher, while still in Burton's office Ness had phoned his secretary at the Standard Building and dictated his resignation from the Treasury Department. He told her he'd be right over to sign it, and relished the disappointment in her voice as she said, "Yes, sir." Then he broke the news: "Your old boss is the city's new safety director." And he relished the girlish squeal that followed as well.

  As he stepped from the mayor's office, with His Honor at his side, he'd been greeted by a small mob consisting largely of curious city employees, but in the front row were half a dozen reporters. This was no surprise as there was a press room just down the hall—right across from the safety director's office, actually—and, as it turned out, one of the reporters had seen Ness going into the Tapestry Room, and put two and two together.

  The group included Clayton Fritchey from the Press, and Wes Lawrence and Sam Wild of the Plain Dealer. They were in shirtsleeves and suspenders and had pencils and pads at the ready.

  Burton gave them a brief statement. "I consider the appointment of the Director of Public Safety to be of the greatest importance ..." and so on, and then the news-hounds started in.

  "Does the appointment of Mr. Ness presage the naming of a new police chief?" Lawrence asked.

  "I have no statement on that subject at this time," the Mayor said. "But I should point out that removal of a police chief requires a Common Pleas Court trial."

  "No new police chief," Sam Wild said, scribbling. Wild was tall and lanky and pale, with dark blond curly hair. He had rather pointed features, like a pleasant Satan. He wore a red bow tie and a smirk. Ness knew the shrewd, cynical reporter from Chicago and liked him, within reason.

  Fritchey, a man who talked the way he wrote, asked: "What instructions have you given your new safety director about dealing with the staggering problem of reviving such a demoralized and corrupt department?"

  "Yeah," Wild added, looking up from his pad skeptically. "It's no secret our police force is undermanned and stuck with ridiculously substandard equipment. It's also no secret the department's been drained of energy and ambition by two years of self-serving, dirty politicking."

  Ness had to admit Wild had balls, and Fritchey, too. Balls were what it took to ask the Mayor those questions, even if it was the previous administration they were skewering, even if it was silently understood by all parties that Burton's future depended upon his press.

  Burton's smile was a thin, unreadable line. He said, "Mr. Ness will have a completely free hand to develop the law enforcement policies of this city, as he sees fit. He will in fact be his own chief investigator."

  The reporters exchanged wide-eyed glances of a sort jaded newsmen rarely shared.

  "That's unheard-of," Fritchey said.

  "Well, you heard it now," the Mayor said. "Mr. Ness is a former G-man, who wouldn't have it any other way. Now, if you'll excuse me, gentlemen."

  "Excuse me, Your Honor," Wild said, standing so that he blocked the mayor's way back to his office. Borderline rude but ballsy, Ness thought. "Are you sure this G-man stuff isn't just a ploy to squeeze some budget dough out of your upside-down cake of a city council?"

  "As I recall, Mr. Wild," Burton shot back with a nasty little smile, "you yourself were one of those who suggested Mr. Ness as a possible candidate for this job."

  And Burton brushed past Wild and ducked into his office.

  That, of course, hadn't really been an answer to Wild's question, but Burton—brains, guts, integrity or not—was still a politician. He knew all about answering questions without answering them.

  Ness quickly exited the mayor's outer office, and was soon out on the balcony beyond which the City Hall atrium rose. Quick footsteps on the marble floor and overlapping voices echoed.

  Finally Ness stopped in his tracks, turned to the gentlemen of the press who followed him in a pack, and said, "I'm on my way to my office at the Standard Building. I hope, if my staff hasn't gone home for the day, to say some goodbyes, and clean out my desk and generally take care of personal matters."

  "And you don't want us tagging along," Wild said.

  "Right."

  "Then how about a statement?"

  "I just landed this job, boys. I haven't had a whole hell of a lot of time to reflect."

  Lawrence pushed his glasses up on his nose and said, "Are you kidding? You didn't have wind of this? It's been in the air all week."

  "I don't have any political contacts, fellas. Nobody told me, 'cause there was nobody to tell me."

  "A statement, Mr. Ness," Fritchey said.

  "Let's just say my first duty is one of fact-finding. After that I don't know what I'll do, but I hope to take action first and talk about it later."

  " 'Action first, then talk,' " Wild echoed, smiling a little, scribbling. "That'll do. That and bein' your own chief investigator. See you tomorrow, kid."

  And the rest of the reporters had follow
ed Wild's lead, leaving Ness alone to exit the massive City Hall and walk through the cold night-like afternoon, to his old office where Doris and other staffers waited with flowers and a resignation to sign.

  "Some of them won't miss me," he said.

  "What?" Eva said.

  They were sitting together in the warmth of the fire, naked, his arm around her shoulder, snuggling her to him.

  "I'm not popular with everybody on the Alcohol Tax Unit," he said. "Hedges, for one, will be glad to see me go."

  "I'm sure he's just jealous."

  "I don't think so. Just a clash of styles. Hedges is a good cop, but he's an old-fashioned one. He doesn't understand police science. All he knows is the third degree and stool pigeons and stakeouts."

  "I'm so glad you're out of that awful, dangerous sort of thing."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, you're the safety director. You're an executive, now."

  "I suppose I am."

  She gestured with both hands. "That's where you've been heading, isn't it? You didn't go to college to be a policeman. You studied to make something of yourself, and you have."

  "Well, thanks, honey."

  "I'm so proud of you. So very proud of you."

  She hugged him. Her flesh seemed cool and warm at once.

  He said, "To be honest, baby, it's still going to be dangerous."

  Her eyes grew as round as a silent movie queen's. "Why would it be dangerous?"

  For a moment he considered telling her about Burton's "ticking clock." About the possibly suicidal career risk he was taking.

  Instead he said only, "I'm up against a very crooked police force. I was hired to clean it up. That's not going to make me popular."

  "I see."

  "We'll have plenty of protection. You needn't worry."

  She said nothing. She was looking at the dwindling fire.

  "Really, sugar. There's nothing to worry about."

  "Good."

  "Of course we'll need to move into the city."

  Disappointment painted her face. "Move? From here? But I love it here—my garden, swimming ..."