THE DARK CITY (Eliot Ness) Page 8

  At least there was until that goddamn Ness had busted the entire operation and put Phillie in stir. Another year and Phillie would be out, and Joe had no doubt great things would start happening again.

  Until then he was on his own, picking up on whatever con he could. The Chicago outfit offered him work, but he didn't like all those deaths in the family. Anyway, he preferred grifting.

  This cemetery scam was better than most. Cleveland wasn't the only place where this sting was playing. He first broke in his G-man act (fuck you, Ness) in New York, for another cemetery lot sales outfit. The New York cops had finally got wise, and he and two other salesmen had lammed. But Joe had heard about the Cleveland game, and so, here he was.

  In front of a creaky old house on East Sixty-sixth.

  Joe dug his hands in his topcoat pockets—Christ, it was cold—and made his way up the front walk, and around the side and climbed the rickety steps to what was more an attic than a second floor. Twelve grand, hiding out in a hovel like this. He knocked on the door. Yellow paint dropped off like ugly snowflakes.

  The door opened and seventy-three-year-old childless widower Elmer Elsworth answered. A skinny prune-faced geezer in Coke-bottle wire-framed glasses, Elsworth was the first client Joe had encountered in the neighborhood who wasn't a Slovak.

  "What can I do for you?" the old man rasped, squinting behind the thick glasses, smiling, immediately friendly. He wore a frayed plaid shirt, suspenders, and well-worn brown trousers. None of the clothing looked any too clean, and Elsworth's face was stubbled white.

  Joe showed him the badge, identified himself as Agent White and asked if he could step in out of the cold.

  " 'Course you can," Elsworth said, gesturing graciously. "Glad for the company. These winter evenings are mighty dull."

  The interior was a shock. It made Joe wonder what made Elsworth so goddamn cheerful. With the exception of a worn easy chair, the room was bare of furniture. Across the room a fire burned in a small coal stove. The colorless wallpaper was ancient and peeling off walls that fell from a slanted, cracked ceiling. There were no curtains on the windows, just weathered shades, pulled down. The wooden floor was bare and dirty. In front of the easy chair was a crate, which served as a table for a plate of beans and a cup of coffee, Elsworth's supper, it would seem. On the floor, near the chair, was a large brass ashtray, a remnant of better days perhaps, filled with cigar butts. The smell of smoke and beans lingered in the air. And on another crate was a lit candle, dripping wax. Somewhere in the darkness, perhaps behind a wall, perhaps not, was a chittering sound. Mice.

  "Sorry it's so dark in here," Elsworth said. "Don't have no electricity. Place is wired for it, but I just don't care to spend the money. And, well, I'm legally blind, so the devil take it."

  The room was fairly warm from the glowing stove, but it was obvious that otherwise there was no heat either.

  "Can I offer you my chair?" Elsworth asked, gesturing toward it.

  "No. No thank you. You sit. I'll stand."

  "Mighty neighborly of you," Elsworth said. He bumped into the crate as he sat, jostling his beans and coffee, and asked Agent White if he'd like some Java. Agent White declined.

  "If there's some way I can be of service to the government," Elsworth said, "just let me know. I was a babe in arms during the War Between the States, don't you know, and too old for the Great War. But that don't mean I'm not a good American."

  "I'm sure it doesn't," Joe said. "Besides, the government is interested in helping you."

  And Joe went into his spiel: he was collecting pass-books in restricted loan companies with the idea of forwarding them to Washington so Mr. Elsworth could get full value, all at once.

  Elsworth sat blinking behind the thick glasses and gradually started to smile.

  "I knew it," he said, "I just knew it."

  "Uh, knew what, Mr. Elsworth?"

  "I knew one day my ship would come in. Why, I scrimped and saved all these years . . . worked for White Motor Company for longer than you've been alive, I'd reckon. Retired some time ago, and I suffered privations, believe you me, preparing for my declining years."

  Jesus Christ, Joe thought, these crazy old coots. What were they waiting for? Elsworth here has a twelve-grand passbook (worth six grand face value, at least) and he lives in a dirty, dreary attic, sitting in the dark, eating his plate of beans, dancing with mice, waiting for what? To get even older?

  They didn't deserve their money. They didn't know how to enjoy it. They didn't know anything to do with money but save it. Let somebody have it who knew what to do with it.

  Joe Fusca.

  "Then you'll stop by in two days with my security bonds, Agent White?"

  "That's correct. And I'll see you then. You don't have to get up to show me out. I know the way."

  Elsworth pointed to the coal stove.

  "I was just about to stoke up my fire," he said.

  "You just relax," Agent White said. "Let me do that for you."

  CHAPTER 9

  On Tuesday morning, Eliot Ness sat at the scarred rolltop desk in his spacious wood-and-pebbled-glass office in City Hall, signing papers. Judging by the grin on his face, you'd think that paperwork was his favorite part of his new job. You would be wrong.

  These papers were special ones. As he blotted his signatures one by one, he savored his executive position. He was very quietly, in an administrative way, shaking up the city's police department as it had never been shaken up before.

  In the midst of this pleasant paperwork, Ness was interrupted by the buzz of the intercom on the desk.

  "Captain Cooper is here for his appointment," his secretary's voice said tinnily.

  "Good," Ness said, leaning into the little speaker box. "Send him in."

  A tall, balding, round-faced cop of about sixty, Cooper wore a brown suit that looked slept in, and his tie bore a food stain or two. But Ness could grit his teeth and overlook a little personal sloppiness in a cop as hard-working and well-respected as this one.

  Cooper, hat in hand, took the chair Ness offered him at one of the conference tables that took up the central part of the room, and Ness sat across from him. Cooper's face was almost as rumpled as his suit, though his light-blue eyes were incongruously benign and even becoming in the midst of his battered features.

  "Captain Cooper, I'm naming you acting Detective Bureau chief."

  Cooper opened his mouth, but at first couldn't seem to think of anything to say.

  Ness went on. "And, if the work of the weeks ahead goes at all well, we'll drop the 'acting.' "

  "I ... I want to thank you for the vote of confidence, Mr. Ness," Cooper said, beaming, seeming a little nervous.

  "From what I've read and heard," Ness said, "it's not misplaced."

  "I didn't think you'd see me as, well, the right material for your administration. I'm not exactly a criminologist or anything. Or a spit-and-polish type, either." Chagrined, he flipped his food-stained tie, like Oliver Hardy.

  Ness smiled and said, "I'm looking for effectiveness and honesty in my cops. But if you want to spend some of your salary increase on dry cleaning, I wouldn't complain."

  Cooper smiled on one side of his face. "I think I can swing that."

  "Now," Ness said, "let's get down to it."

  Ness filled Cooper in on the theory that a virtual network of crooked cops was working within the force. He didn't mention Wild as the rumor's source.

  "If they are an organized group," Ness said, "it stands to reason they do indeed have a leader, a 'chief of their 'department within the department.' I believe this so called 'outside chief is among our sixteen precinct captains. The most likely candidates would seem to be the captains in charge of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Precincts."

  "I'd have to agree," Cooper said, nodding.

  "There's another possibility, of course: your immediate predecessor."

  "Potter?" Cooper said, shocked. "Impossible. He's a political wheeler-dealer, but I don't believe for a
minute he's crooked."

  "We'll see. At any rate, we have to begin investigating."

  "I'll put some of my men right on it."

  "I don't know about using the Detective Bureau itself, just yet. Not till you've had a chance to get in there for a while and do some housecleaning. And I don't want this information in the hands of a lot of men."

  Cooper gestured casually. "I know some detectives I can trust. Let me put them on the job. They can make some discreet inquiries."

  "Okay, but let's make it extremely discreet. Let's do it from the inside. And with one man."

  Cooper's sky-blue eyes narrowed. "How, exactly?"

  "I've been making a lot of transfers, a lot of changes in assignment. I've got a raft of 'em going out." Ness nodded toward the pile of paperwork on the rolltop desk, itself a veteran of his Chicago wars. "Find me an honest detective, brief him, and I'll put him on that list, knock him back down to uniform, and place him in the Fifteenth Precinct."

  "The most suspect precinct in town," Cooper said, nodding again.

  "Exactly right. People are assuming that most of these transfers indicate suspicion, on my part, of either corruption or dereliction of duty. That isn't always the case, but it will give our undercover man a nice patina of disrepute. Of course he'll complain vocally about being 'demoted.' And that should encourage any bent cops in the Fifteenth to invite him into their little club."

  Cooper smiled tightly, and said, "If we can infiltrate their network with one of our men, we can bust the bastards wide open."

  "One would hope," Ness said. "But you have to find the right man."

  Cooper put a hand on his chin. "I think I may know just the boy."

  Ness raised a lecturing finger. "Nobody is to know about him but the two of us."

  Cooper nodded. "I'll talk to him. If he agrees, I'll have his name for you by tomorrow morning. Do you want to meet with him?"

  "No. Let's not risk the contact. I trust your judgment."

  Cooper, sensing he'd been dismissed, stood stiffly and extended his hand, a rather formal gesture for a rumpled cop with a food-stained tie. Ness stood and shook the hand, as Cooper said, "I'll try to be worthy of that trust."

  "The cops in the department who earn my trust," Ness said, "are going to find me the best friend they ever had. Those who don't are going to have an enemy out of their worst nightmares."

  Two cops yesterday, who'd been drinking on the job, had found that out; Cooper was well aware of that.

  "I'll see if I can't stay on your good side," Cooper said, putting on his hat, tipping it, and going out through the inner office.

  Ness returned to his rolltop desk and continued signing the transfer orders until the door from the outer office swung rudely open and Sam Wild strode in, irritated as hell, with Ness' secretary Betsy, an attractive brunette woman with glasses, right on his heels.

  Ness swiveled his chair away from his battered desk and turned to look at the pair, as they skirted the conference tables, coming at him. He leaned back in his chair, bumping the desk behind him, and smiled just a little as Wild said, "What the hell's the idea? We had a deal," while Betsy spoke at the same time, some of her words aimed at Wild, "I told you Mr. Ness was busy, you need an appointment," and others at her boss, "I told him you were busy, that he needed an appointment."

  Ness patiently waited for silence, ceasing to listen after the first volley. Then he said, "Thank you, Betsy. I will see Mr. Wild."

  Betsy's mouth tightened. She glared at Wild and strode out, not quite slamming the door behind her.

  Wild smirked, then walked over and leaned one hand against the nearest arm of Ness' chair. His red bow tie was crooked; his brown jacket looked almost as slept-in as Cooper's suit had; he was hatless, his head of brownish-blond wiry hair looking as rumpled as the jacket. He was such a skinny, angular guy he made Ness think of a praying mantis. In Wild's case, preying.

  "I see in the Press you were out in the field yesterday," Wild said.

  "I was," Ness said.

  "Fritchey had a pretty good story on it."

  "I thought it read well."

  "So you personally charged two uniformed officers with drinking on the job."

  "Intoxication on duty."

  "Whatever. Personally ordered their dismissal."

  "That's right."

  "What happened to our arrangement?"

  "Where I treat you right and you treat me right?"

  "That's the one."

  Ness stood. "I'll tell you." He took off his coat and folded it and put it neatly on the desk behind him, next to the papers he'd been signing.

  Wild laughed. "Workin" up a sweat signing those forms, are ya, Mister Director?"

  "No," Ness said, and coldcocked him.

  Wild went down like kindling. He sat there, all elbows and knees, rubbing some blood out of the corner of his mouth with two fingers, and gave Ness a round-eyed look of utter disbelief.

  Betsy peeked in and her mouth opened wider than Wild's eyes. Ness gestured her out with one hand and gave her a look and she retreated, the door shutting with a click like a gun cocking.

  Wild breathed some air out. He didn't get up. He sat there, looping his arms around his legs like a kid playing Injun-pass-the-peace-pipe, only peace wasn't what he had in mind.

  "That's called assault here in Cleveland, Mr. Ness."

  Ness unfolded his coat and put it back on. "Like we used to say in Chicago, Mr. Wild—prove it."

  Wild got up, slowly, like a tent being raised. He dusted himself off and said, "Maybe I had that coming."

  Ness sat back down and pointed to the door. Not the one Wild and Betsy had come through, but the one that opened onto the hall, the locked one on which the words SAFETY DIRECTOR'S OFFICE could be seen, backwards, through the pebbled glass.

  "The press room is thataway," Ness said, and swiveled back to face his desk.

  Wild positioned himself to one side of Ness, but didn't lean against an arm of his chair this time. "You think I made a sap out of you, with that story last Friday."

  "You did your best to."

  Wild's upper lip tightened over his teeth. "Well, hell, you wasted my time, with that milk run. That wasn't news, except the way I played it. You tell me all sorts of stuff off the record, and I tell you about the 'outside chief and everything, and what do I get for it? A raid that lays an egg. You could've handed me the Potter scoop, but instead you gotta be a big shot and announce it at a press conference. What good does that do me? Give me a real story and I'll make a hero out of you."

  "Maybe I'm not looking to be a hero."

  "Maybe I'm not looking to get laid tonight. Look, give me a story. Give me a real story. Give the mayor some headlines. You remember the mayor, don't you? Just down the hall, here? Come on! Earn your goddamn keep, Ness!"

  Without looking up from his signing, Ness said, "You'll never get an interview out of me again, Wild, if you play me for a sap."

  "What if you act like a sap? Am I supposed to lie about it?"

  Ness laughed, looked at Wild. "Why, afraid God would strike you dead?"

  "Well." He shrugged, thinking it over. "I slanted stories before, I guess ..."

  Ness threw his pen down, sighed. "I don't expect you to slant your stories to make me into Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy. I just want a fair shake. And if you wanted to be on my side a little, well, I wouldn't lose respect for your sense of journalistic ethics."

  "Such as it is," Wild said, smirking slightly, not so cockily as before.

  "Such as it is. Sit down over at one of the conference tables, Wild. Get your notebook out."

  Wild smiled and did.

  Ness joined him.

  "You want a real story. An exclusive."

  "No. I want to quit my job and ride the rails."

  "Well, if adventure is calling you, Mr. Wild, don't let me stand in the way."

  "I want a real story," Wild said dryly. "An exclusive."

  "Those papers I'm in the process of signin
g. They're transfers. Reassignments."

  "Yeah?"

  "The chief made some suggestions. I helped him some."

  "Oh? What, to clean his bird cage?" "No. Say what you want about Matowitz, but he was a great cop."

  "Emphasis on 'was.' "

  "I'm giving him a chance to show he still has it. And he's coming through for me."

  "Recommending a few transfers, you mean? Big deal. This is your idea of an exclusive? Any theories on whether this cold front's going to move out? Has somebody in Cleveland finally seen the sun?"

  "We got an all-points bulletin out on it."

  "Not a bad idea. Transfers." Wild shook his head. "How many?"

  "One hundred and twenty-two."

  Wild looked up from his notepad. His eyes hadn't been this round since Ness knocked him on his can.

  "Including," Ness said, "two captains, seven lieutenants, thirty-five sergeants, and thirty-one detectives."

  "Holy Christ." Wild scribbled frantically.

  "Also, twenty-four officers are on probation."

  Wild let air out of cheeks puffed up like Old Man Winter's. "You're coming out and saying all these cops are on the pad?"

  "No. If I knew them to be crooked, they'd be out on their collective ass. I'm just shaking things up, Mr. Wild. Responding to the chief’s suggestions, and my own observations in the field."

  "How many precincts does this affect?"

  "All of them. All sixteen."

  Wild continued to scribble. He was grinning now. "This, Mister Director, is more like it."

  "I just love to please you, Mr. Wild."

  Wild looked up from the notepad. "You wouldn't want to let me know who your replacement for Potter's going to be?"

  "Captain Cooper is acting Detective Bureau chief."

  "Anybody else got this?"

  "I made the appointment about five minutes before you burst in here. Is that exclusive enough for you?"

  "It'll do," Wild grinned. "Cooper's a good man, I hear. Popular with the men, but not political. Suppose that's what you like about him. Is he going to land the job for real?"

  "I haven't decided."

  "Hey, Mister Director, let's not go clamming up all of a sudden."

  "I'm not. I haven't decided. It's a key position. I'm not rushing into anything. But he's got the inside track."