THE DARK CITY (Eliot Ness)

by Max Allan Collins

  The bartender was breaking a roll of nickels on the counter. He frowned at Ness and said, "Don't give my customers a hard time, bud."

  "I could arrest you both," Ness said, neutrally.

  The bartender filled the orderly's palm with real nickels, and smirked. "You're a cop? You don't look like a cop."

  "What do I look like?"

  "Teacher. No. Banker, I'd say. You got the clothes for it."

  Ness turned to Wild and said, "Sam, find a phone and call Central Headquarters for me, will you? Have them send somebody over to take that machine out."

  "Who are you?" the bartender asked, suspiciously.

  "My name's Ness."

  One of the truckers leaned forward to have a look at this, and snorted a laugh. "Oh, yeah? And I suppose you're the safety director, too."

  "That's right," Ness said.

  The bartender cocked his head back and looked at Ness through slitted eyes.

  The trucker wasn't through. "Listen, pal, go peddle that bullshit somewheres else. It just so happens the director's a personal friend of mine."

  "I see," Ness said. He raised his voice. "Well, if you don't believe me, ask the cop who's been hiding in that back booth since we came in. His drink's still at the bar."

  At which the patrolman quickly slipped out of the booth, pulling his cap down over his lowered head. He moved quickly around the room, between the booths and the edge of the tables, and out the door.

  Wild was laughing quietly at his table.

  Ness turned to him. "You want a beer? Or are you working?"

  "Yes to both," Wild said.

  "You heard him," Ness said to the bartender, who got two bottles of Pabst.

  The hospital orderly was standing there with a handful of nickels, his mouth hanging open like a yawning window.

  "That's damn nice of you," Ness said.

  The orderly thought for a moment, then said, "What is?"

  Ness nodded at the cupped palm and its nickels and said, "Buying our beers."

  The orderly shut his mouth, frowned in childlike disappointment, then slammed the nickels on the counter; he returned to his stool, where he sat drinking a beer and looking at, but not playing, the little pinball.

  Ness said to the bartender, "Got a minute?"

  "You gonna pull my machine?"

  "That depends on if you've got a minute."

  "I got a minute," he said. "If you'll give me one first, that is. To see if anybody's thirsty, and then I'll join you at a booth."

  Ness nodded, and he and Wild moved to the booth the patrolman had been nervously warming. They sat on the same side, leaving the other side for the bartender, who joined them shortly.

  "You're Ness," he said, then pointed at Wild. "But who's this?"

  "He's Sam Wild."

  "That name sounds familiar."

  "He's a reporter."

  "Plain Dealer," Wild said.

  "I don't need any publicity."

  "You won't get any," Ness said. "Not unless you want it. He's taking some notes for me, but he's operating on the understanding that he can't use anything in print unless this gets to the grand jury."

  The bartender reared back. "Grand jury! What the hell is this?"

  "It's about Captain Cooper, Mr. Brody. You are Joe Brody, aren't you?"

  The bartender's hand rubbed the slightly blue chin of the blade-like face. "I'm Brody," he said. "Brodzinsky, I was born under. Captain Cooper, huh? His little show finally about to close, is it?"

  "Possibly. If a few people are willing to talk to me."

  Brody laughed deep in his throat, his eyes widening. "Don't tell me I'm the first."

  "Not quite. The first I've interviewed personally."

  "Why should I tell you anything? I'm out of that business. Didn't you read about Repeal in the papers? I'm legit, now."

  "Relatively speaking."

  "Don't go breakin' my balls over a lousy pinball machine, Mr. Ness. I'll haul it off the counter and put it in your fuckin' back seat, if you want."

  "I was thinking more along the lines of this place of yours, which I assume you own."

  "I own it."

  "And bought with the proceeds of your bootlegging activities, no doubt."

  "Ha! I sure did, and it ain't the Vogue Room at the Hollenden Hotel, either, is it? There weren't very many of us who got rich bootlegging, not in this town."

  "Because the cost of protection was so high?"

  Brody winced at the memory. "Paying fines if we got busted, or payoffs if we didn't wanna be. Either way, we were screwed."

  "You want to talk about it?"

  "Tell your reporter friend to get lost."

  "I can do that, but I promise you he's not going to use any of this, unless you decide to go to the grand jury with it as a witness."

  "Why in hell would I want to do that?"

  "Because the cops in this town kept you from making the kind of dough you otherwise could've, in those years. Years that should have been gravy years for a guy like Joe Brody."

  Brody said nothing. He sat there thinking, brooding.

  "If you'd been in Chicago back then instead of Cleveland," Ness said, "you'd be living today in some fancy suburb or on the Gold Coast. Most of those guys made out pretty well."

  "I hear Capone didn't do so good."

  "He did fine. He just forgot to pay his taxes."

  "I paid my taxes."

  "Did I say otherwise?"

  Brody sneered. "But you could make a phone call . . ."

  Ness shook his head no. "I'm not here to blackmail you. Maybe you did pay taxes on the dough that went into this little joint, maybe you didn't. That's not my job or my concern."

  Brody's sneer disappeared but his suspicions remained. "What is?"

  "Captain Cooper. I hear he's a crook. I want to find out if that's so. If you didn't pay him tribute, well, I want to know that, too. I'm not looking to hang anybody, or whitewash anybody, either."

  Brody's eyes narrowed to slits again. "You mean you want the truth? That's what you're after?"

  "That's right."

  "Ain't you the damnedest cop. What's in it for me?"

  "Satisfaction."

  "Revenge, you mean."

  "Call it that. If Cooper bilked you back then, why not say so now? You're no longer working in criminal circles. Like you said, you're legit. You don't have to worry about payoffs to crooked cops. What good can they do you? Hell, you're not even in Cleveland proper."

  "They could still cause me trouble. Some of them bastards are pretty vicious."

  "You'll be protected. Besides, while they're on trial they're going to be trying to paint themselves lily-white. And after the trial, they'll be in jail."

  "If they go to jail."

  "With your help, that's where they'll go. And you know what a good time a crooked cop has when he goes to stir."

  Brody smiled; the smile was like a cut.

  "I'm part of a new regime," Ness reminded him. "Mayor Davis isn't in office anymore."

  "You're the new broom," Brody said, wryly.

  "Help me sweep clean."

  "You interest me," he said. "Let me think a second. Let me go see if my customers are thirsty. Let me make a phone call."

  Brody rose and went to the bar.

  Wild said, "He's going to talk."

  "Maybe. Depends on the call he makes."

  "What call do you think he's making?"

  "I think he's calling somebody connected."

  "Connected? As in, the Mayfield Road mob?"

  "Yeah."

  "Why in hell?"

  "To get permission to talk. To see if protection would be coming from their quarters, as well."

  Wild began to nod. "If so," he said, "that would seem to indicate that the 'department within the department' has become a virtual rival mob, as you've theorized."

  "Yes, it would," Ness said.

  They sat and drank their beers. A few minutes later Brody came over with two more bottles of beer
and a friendly expression.

  He slid in across from them and said, "I'll play."

  Ness and Wild exchanged glances.

  "You understand I'm gathering background information for an investigation?" Ness asked. "Later I'll ask you to make a formal statement to Mr. Cullitan's office."

  "Fine. No problem."

  Ness smiled without pleasure. "It would seem I have allies in strange places."

  "Mr. Ness," Brody said, "a man has got to get in bed with the damnedest people sometimes to make a go of it in this world."

  "Agreed. Tell me about how you first got in bed with Captain Cooper."

  Brody told his tale. He had run a speak at East Sixty-fifth and Fleet in the early days of Prohibition, but had expanded into the wholesale distribution business, selling "alcohol and bonded stuff in large quantities, fifty to a hundred gallons at a crack, to some fifty speaks. He lived in and worked out of the Sixth Precinct, which was where Cooper was stationed at the time as precinct captain.

  "It started the day I did the bastard a favor," Brody said, referring to an afternoon in December 1924. "It was raining. I was in my car and I spotted him standing on a street corner. Gave him a lift to the precinct. On the way he said, 'Gee, I sure appreciate this.' I said, 'Think nothin' of it, Cap.' And he said, 'I could avoid putting you out like this if I had my own little car.' "

  At first Brody thought Cooper was kidding, just making idle chatter; but "Cap" repeated his desire for a "little car" several times, and finally Brody had told him, "I'll talk to the boys, and see what I can do."

  Brody and several of his partners in the wholesale bootleg business put together twenty-five hundred dollars for a new Hudson, which they delivered to Cooper, calling it, "A little present from the boys." A year later, Cooper nudged the boys into another little present—a new Auburn. The ashtrays in the Hudson were apparently full.

  "It wasn't too long after that," Brody said, "that he handed me a list of names and addresses. About fifteen speaks. He had me hit 'em up for fifty bucks each, a month."

  "Did you get a cut?" Ness asked.

  "No. It was just a favor I was expected to pay the Cap, in return for not going to jail."

  "Did anybody refuse to pay?"

  "Sure."

  "What happened to them?"

  "They went to jail."

  "How much a month did you collect for him?"

  "Little over a grand. This was back in '26, '27."

  "How much did you collect, total?"

  "Twenty-five grand, easy."

  "Why did you stop collecting for him?"

  "He turned that over to some people working for him, and started hitting me up for dough."

  "People working for him? Who?"

  "Who do you think? Cops."

  Ness paused for a moment. His mouth felt dry. He drank some beer and said, "You've been very helpful."

  "Cooper's greedy. He wasn't satisfied with what he had coming to him. He wanted the other guy's share, too."

  "I'll be satisfied," Ness said, "to see Cooper get what's coming to him. Do you think you know of others who might be willing to talk out against Cooper? Former associates of yours, perhaps?"

  Brody suddenly got cautious again, eyes narrowing. "I can think of a couple ..."

  "There's safety in numbers. If I can take a crowd of you former bootleggers to the grand jury, there will be less chance of reprisals from Cooper's cops."

  Brody tapped his fingers on the table. "Let me go see if my customers are thirsty. Let me make another phone call."

  He got up and went to the bar.

  "What do you think?" Wild asked.

  "I think Cooper's a corrupt son of a bitch, and I think we're going to nail him."

  "So you think Brody's going to come back here and give us some names?"

  "Yup," Ness said.

  And in fifteen minutes, Brody did.

  Ness and Wild drove directly to a modern two-story brick home in upper middle-class Cleveland Heights, overlooking Cleveland and Murray Hill. It was a gently rolling, somewhat wooded residential area, reeking nicely of money. Not wealth, exactly, but plenty of money.

  Abe Greenburger had plenty of money. Unlike Joe Brody, he had stayed in the wholesale liquor business after Repeal. Ness had heard rumors that Greenburger had ties with the Mayfield Road mob, ties which may have explained why he'd prospered to such a degree. Like Brody, he chose to live in a suburb, beyond the reach of Captain Cooper's "department-within-the-department."

  Greenburger, a small dark bald man, was dressed in an expensive suit. He had only an hour for Ness and Wild before a business meeting "downtown." A handsome, serious-looking man of about fifty, he ushered them into a study dominated by dark wood and leather-bound books, pulling up a swivel chair from behind his desk for himself while his two guests sank into a soft brown leather couch.

  "My experiences collecting money were much the same as my friend Joe Brody's," Greenburger said. "But I only did so for about a year, collecting perhaps nine thousand dollars. The captain fired me, in a sense. Because I used bad judgment."

  "How's that?" Ness asked.

  "I delivered a satchel of cash to his home. He was furious about the intrusion."

  "Where was the usual drop?"

  "In his office at the precinct house. On his desk. Did Joe tell you about the clambakes?"

  "Why, no."

  Greenburger smiled, his teeth very white in his tan face. "That was an extra gouge the captain devised. He would have his cops sell tickets to the things, above and beyond the regular payoff."

  "Tickets to the clambakes, you mean?"

  "Yes. They'd rent a hall or use some speakeasy, someplace with a big back yard for standing around steaming and eating the clams, and there'd be gambling, chuck-a-luck mostly, and liquor, cheap liquor, for sale. And two big empty beer barrels, into which the guests, bootleggers mostly, were to toss money."

  "How much would that amount to?"

  "I counted the proceeds on one occasion, when Captain Cooper was too drunk to do so himself. It came to slightly over three thousand dollars. Can I offer you gentlemen something to drink?"

  The third interviewee of the afternoon did not offer Ness and Wild anything to drink. Lou Shapiro had been out of the beer business a long time. And his surroundings did not resemble those of his former associate Greenburger, nor those of Brody, for that matter.

  Shapiro was the only one of the three former Cooper collectors still in Cooper territory—the Fourteenth Precinct, to be exact. He was unemployed, living in the basement of a transient workingman's rooming house, in an apartment, a "crib," that was a converted coal bin. The stark unpainted rough wooden walls, the bare mattress on a steel frame, the hooks on the wall that held his patched clothes, seemed bitter reminders to Shapiro of what had been denied him.

  "They took it damn near fast as I could make it."

  Shapiro had the same basic build as Greenburger. Unlike Greenburger, however, Shapiro had a full head of curly hair, the only possession of his that Greenburger might envy. A skinny unshaven rat of a man, he sat on a tattered, at-one-time overstuffed chair that he'd scavenged. His hands were in his coverall pockets. It was cold in the former coal bin.

  "I paid the bum twenty-five grand over five years. I was running a little beer parlor that should've been a gold mine. To try and get on his good side, I gave him the names of some places and offered to collect for him."

  "Did you?"

  "Yeah, two hundred to two-fifty a month. This was in '27 and '28. Then the cops took over collections. And the monthly rate went up, even for me, who used to collect for him. As long as we paid off, they didn't raid us. But the first month you missed a payment, or said you didn't have the dough, you got hit. If you tried to operate without paying off, they'd frame you with a phony raid, if they couldn't catch you for real. Then they'd offer to fix the case, if you kicked in."

  "Do you know anything about these so-called 'clambakes'?"

  "Clambakes, picnics, b
enefits. Every few weeks some cops would come in and, in addition to the regular bite, would shove five of these tickets in your mitt at five bucks apiece. I went to one of these shindigs once, since I bought the tickets anyway, hoping to get something out of it. There were so many police there I was sure they must've imported 'em from Chicago or someplace. The party lasted all day and into the night. There was a lot of booze that the cops got free from us and then turned around and sold to us at fifty cents a shot. That was rubbing it in, don't you think? I didn't stay till the thing was over because the cops were getting drunker and drunker and fights began breaking out. I didn't like the looks of it and that's the last one I ever went to."

  "But you kept buying tickets."

  "Sure. Once I complained when they tried to peddle me tickets for a 'benefit' that took place the night before. A cop grabbed me by the throat and said, 'What the hell difference does it make? You never go to them, anyway!' I bought the tickets."

  The scruffy little man raised a fist and shook it at a small basement window, railing against his lot in life.

  "I worked my butt to the bone for years and look what I got to show for it! And that bastard Cooper's within spitting distance of me, raking it in."

  "What do you mean?" Ness asked.

  "Just down here on Ivanhoe Road—bookie joint, the dough just rollin' in. The Black Swan Club. That's his place."

  "His place?"

  "Sure. He owns it."

  CHAPTER 23

  The sun was in the sky. It was definitely in the sky, playing hard-to-get with some clouds that were white. Not gray. White. It was the first Saturday in March and, while not exactly balmy, it was not exactly cold, either. Spring had not yet sprung, but it was clearly lurking, waiting to make its move.

  Ness wasn't waiting. On Monday the city council would be voting on his safety department budget. He'd made a lot of headlines in his two months or so in office, but he'd made some enemies too, including a certain Councilman Fink. So the odds of his getting his budget passed, at this point, were even, at best. He aimed to improve those odds this fine Saturday afternoon.

  He had asked Councilman Vehovic, Captain Savage, Sam Wild, and Detective Curry to meet him in his office at two P.M. City Hall was pretty well shut down by that time Saturday, the safety director's office included. The secretaries, including Gwen, had gone home, as had Ness' assistant, Flynt. As the men arrived, Ness made introductions where necessary, and with no more explanation than, "It's a nice afternoon for a ride, boys," herded them downstairs and into the parking lot and into his Ford. It was a little crowded and, on this spring like day, a little warm for men still wearing their winter topcoats.