THE DARK CITY (Eliot Ness)

by Max Allan Collins

  "Okay," Wild said from the back seat where he was squeezed in between Curry and Savage. "It's a nice afternoon for a ride. A swell afternoon for a ride. The question is, where are we riding to?"

  "I'm very careful," Ness said, "about what I say to reporters."

  "Come on—spill."

  "We're taking in one of the hottest spots in town, gentlemen. The Black Swan. Fill them in, Councilman."

  The round face under the straw hat beamed. "If I'da known that was what we was up to, today, I'da brung my baseball bat."

  "That's one reason I didn't tell you," Ness smiled. "Would you mind filling them in?"

  "Dee-lighted, Mister Director," he said, and did.

  Wild, who knew all of this and more, said, "Is it all right if I add a little something to that, 'Mister Director'?"

  "Go ahead."

  Wild turned to Savage and said, "Captain Cooper owns the joint."

  "Cooper!" Savage said.

  Vehovic's smile was gone. "You can't mean it. I've known Captain Cooper for years. Cap's the original hail-fellow-well-met!"

  "He's met a few too many people," Ness said, "too well. I've talked to twenty-some former bootleggers in the last week who paid him thousands upon thousands in protection money before Repeal."

  "Cooper," Savage was saying, nodding. "It makes a lousy sort of sense. Nobody else on the department gets around like that guy does. Or has more buddies in blue."

  "Because of his buddies," Ness said, "I've limited this raid to just the few of us. And I don't dare call backup from the local precinct."

  "No, you don't," Curry said, his expression grave.

  The others fell silent. They just rode. Nice day for it.

  Before long they were turning off St. Clair onto Ivanhoe Road. Sun or no sun, there was still snow on the ground and the trees were gray and skeletal. On the left hand side of the road was a factory and several warehouses. On the right were various small businesses, spaced well apart, and visible behind them, the back ends of working-men's boarding houses, from the next street over. Lou Shapiro's coal-bin crib was over there somewhere.

  A weathered old two-story frame building, good-size but not massive, housed the Ivanhoe Cafe. The upper floor appeared to be residential, but the first floor was a restaurant, its windows decorated with frilly curtains. In front of the building were two gas pumps and painted on the left side of the building, in bold letters, ZIP GAS!, and below that, FILL'ER UP QUICK! On the other side of the building, near the roof, was the word BLACK, in white letters on black, with a white arrow that angled down and turned black as it cut through the word SWAN, in black letters on white. The arrow pointed to a second, smaller building that had been added on. A wooden latticework fence with a gateless opening led into a big shed-like structure, which housed the Black Swan Club.

  Ness pulled the sedan up to the gas pumps, got out, stretched, and yawned. The gas-pump jockey was a kid in overalls and a cap with earmuff flaps, and Ness directed him to fill the tank.

  "Okay if I use the restroom?" he asked.

  The kid nodded and pointed toward the restaurant.

  Ness ambled inside. It was a fairly nice little place, a big yellow room with one wall of booths, cloth-covered tables, and a counter with short-order service. A young couple was having a late lunch at a side booth, and a few workingmen were sitting at the counter having coffee. At a table by the front windows was a heavyset guy with cauliflower ears. He wore a plaid shirt and no steam came from the cup of coffee before him.

  "Got the time?" Ness asked him.

  The guy checked his watch, and Ness grabbed that wrist and flipped him onto the floor with a thump.

  "What the hell!" the guy yelled.

  Ness grinned down at him. "I guess I got a better eye for faces than you do. The last time I saw you, you were working lookout at Tommy Fink's. I guess there's always a job opening for a specialist, even in hard times."

  Ness pointed a finger, gently, toward a pretty, plump middle-aged woman behind the counter. "If there's another buzzer back there, please don't press it. I hate arresting women."

  The guy on the floor was scrambling to his feet, looking toward the door. Ness kicked him in the ass and he bumped his head hard against the door and flopped on his belly. A moment later the door opened and hit the ex-pug on the head again, and Savage came in.

  "Sorry," Savage said, more to Ness than the unconscious lookout.

  Ness was yanking the buzzer out of the wall, ripping it out from along the lower window frame. "Head on back there," he told Savage. "Put Curry in back, in case there's a rear door. I don't think they've been warned, but you never know."

  Savage nodded and went out.

  Ness dragged the heavy, slumbering lookout over to a steam radiator and dug in his pocket for one of a half dozen pairs of handcuffs he'd brought for the occasion. He cuffed the guy to the radiator, turned to the handful of customers, and said, "Pardon the intrusion," and went outside.

  Ness walked through the latticework entryway and joined Savage, Wild, and Vehovic near the door, which was shut and locked. The muffled sound of a loudspeaker came from behind it, filtering through its speakeasy slot, but Ness was not in the mood to give anybody the password.

  He raised his foot and let fly. With a satisfying splintering crunch, the door flew open and out rushed the cranked-up sound of a horse race being called out, which was immediately interrupted by Ness' shout: "Police raid! Somebody shut that damn thing off."

  Somebody did, and an abrupt silence filled the room.

  More than fifty people were packed into the large, unadorned space. Many of them were seated in folding chairs arranged in irregular rows, where they'd been listening to the loudspeaker which hung on one wall, over a large racing' blackboard. Along the wall at left were the betting and payout windows, three of them, with three surprised male faces behind the wire mesh, and at right a bar, its heavyset bartender looking at the raiders as if they were an apparition.

  Nothing about the layout was fancy—makeshift was the word. The floor was gritty cement, with torn betting slips scattered like confetti. Empty beer bottles decorated floor and tables randomly. Along the periphery were blackjack tables lit by low-hanging, conical-shaded lamps. The dealers still had their decks of cards in hand, as Ness swung into the room, gun in hand.

  The group was largely male, workers from the neighborhood enjoying the mom-and-pop bookie joint. In their white shirts with sleeves rolled up, seated on wooden folding chairs, the group could've been gathered for a revival meeting. There were a few women, in their twenties. They looked scared, whereas most of the men just looked embarrassed.

  Ness put the gun away and told the dumbfounded group not to worry. "No one but employees will be arrested," he assured them. "I'd like to ask you to relax, because we're going to be taking statements from all of you. We need to establish that you made, or saw bets made here this afternoon, that you played, or saw blackjack played here."

  Savage was rounding up the three cashiers from behind the makeshift betting counter. He sat them down at one of the blackjack tables, just as a door at the left, connecting this building with the restaurant, flew open almost as if Ness had kicked it.

  A bear of a man in a white shirt and tie but no coat lumbered in, red-faced and angry. He had sleepy sky-blue eyes and a cupid mouth and a double chin. His eyebrows were upside-down V's and his brown hair was rather long and combed slickly back.

  He said to Savage, "What the hell is this?"

  "Ask that fella over there," Savage said, smiling faintly, pointing to Ness.

  The bearlike man swaggered over and placed himself in front of Ness, saying, "What the fuck's the idea?"

  "I take it you're in charge. What's your name?"

  The cupid mouth formed a little sneer. "Dick Cooper is my name, and you're goddamn right I'm in charge. My old man's head of the detectives in this burg. Just who the fuck do you think you are?"

  "Eliot Ness."

  The bear blanched. He swa
llowed, looking hard at Ness, squinting. "You look different in the papers."

  "I guess you never saw me in color before."

  The sleepy eyes tried to open wide. He stumbled back and bumped into a blackjack table. He fumbled for a chair, pulled it up, and sat heavily.

  He looked at Ness oddly, like he was having trouble focusing his eyes. "Don't you, uh ... go with my sister?"

  "I used to," Ness said.

  Dick Cooper thought about that, as he sat at the table leaning on his elbow, his hand covering his lower face like a mask. Ness went to the bar and used the phone. He called the Central Police Station and ordered up a paddy wagon and some patrolmen to help take the statements of the detained patrons.

  "I'll question you myself," Ness said to Cooper, looming over the heavyset young man who sulked at a blackjack table.

  "I want to make a telephone call."

  "Go ahead," Ness said, and nodded back toward the bar.

  "I want to make it in my room."

  "Where's that?"

  "There's apartments over the restaurant. One of them's mine."

  "Are you denying you run this place? You said you were in charge."

  The cupid lips smiled nervously. "I meant, I own the building. I don't know nothin' about this activity here."

  "I see."

  "I rent the place to a guy named Nick for sixty bucks a month."

  "You've never been back here before?"

  "Can I make that phone call?"

  "In your room?"

  "Yeah."

  "Mind if I come along?"

  "I guess not."

  "Good," Ness said, and took Cooper by his fleshy arm and guided him across the room to the connecting door. Ness had, after all, made this raid without notification to the local precinct and without obtaining a search war-rant. His excuse for doing neither of those things was that he was merely responding in person to Councilman Vehovic's charges that the Black Swan and other clubs were running wide open in the Fourteenth Precinct. Young Cooper's invitation to look at his apartment was nice to have, in lieu of a search warrant.

  Cooper led him through a narrow hall to the stairway. Ness followed the man up. At the top, Cooper said, "You gonna search this whole building?"

  "I expect," Ness said, who hadn't been planning any such thing.

  Cooper gave Ness a blank, sleepy-eyed look and nodded once and turned to the right and knocked on a door.

  "If it's your room," Ness said, getting suspicious, "why are you knocking?"

  "I gotta check in with a friend of mine."

  "Just use the phone in your room, okay?"

  The door Cooper had knocked upon cracked open, however, and a slice of unshaven face peered out.

  "What is it?" The voice that went with the unshaven bulldog face was a pleasant baritone, despite the irritation it conveyed. Something about the face tugged at Ness' memory . . .

  "I don't think we can get together tonight," Cooper said.

  "Huh?"

  The suspect sketch, Ness thought. This guy definitely resembled the cemetery scam-artist Wild's cartoonist had sketched, but some other bell was ringing, too . . .

  "The Swan got raided and I'm gonna be tied up," Cooper was saying. "The cops are here havin' a look around."

  "Okay," the guy said, and shut the door.

  Cooper smiled at Ness and pointed to the door opposite. "Sorry. I'll just go use the phone, okay?"

  Ness brushed the big man aside and knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  He glared back at Cooper, who shrugged. He quickly pulled the fat young man to the railing of the stairs and handcuffed him there. Then he yanked his revolver from his shoulder harness and stood before the closed door, yelling: "Open up! Police!"

  As if in response, a gunshot cracked the air.

  Ness reflexively ducked to one side, but if a gun had been fired at the door, the shooter had missed: no bullet holes splintered the wood.

  Then he remembered—Curry was still out back.

  Maybe the shot was fired out a window at Curry.

  Ness kicked the door open and dove inside. From the cold wood floor, he looked up and aimed his gun, but all he saw was an open window.

  He got up and rushed over and leaned out. The man had jumped over to the roof of the addition to the building, and was now edging along the slant of the roof, belly down, .38 in his right hand, having made the leap, obviously, because the smaller Black Swan building might be easier to climb or jump down from.

  Ness yelled out the window. "Curry! Are you all right?"

  Curry's voice came from below. "I'm okay!"

  Ness looked down. He could see Curry splayed against the side of the Black Swan, around the corner from where the guy was doing his rooftop tango.

  And the guy with the bulldog face was looking back at Ness, and squinting.

  "I don't believe it!" Joe Fusca said, almost shouting. "I don't fucking well believe it!"

  And he swung his arm around and shot at Ness, who ducked back in the window, as the shot and another and another and another chewed up the sill.

  Ness smiled.

  Long time no see, Joe, he thought.

  He lifted his fedora by two fingers gently up into the line of fire, and a bullet tore a hole in the hat and whipped it out of his fingers; another bullet chewed up more sill.

  He slipped out of his topcoat; he slipped out of his jacket. Then he slipped out of the window, revolver in his left hand, jumping for that nearby roof.

  He hit hard and started to slip off the asphalt tile of the roof, but the toes of his shoes caught the lip of a rain gutter, and he held on, and got his footing, his balance.

  Fusca was pointing the .38 at him, but Ness said, "You've had your six. I haven't used any of mine." Pointing the revolver at him.

  "I can't believe it," Fusca said, shaking his head, eyes wide. "Ness. Ness."

  Ness felt himself smiling, eyes narrowing. "Nice to see you, too, Joe. Glad you could drop by."

  Fusca made an animal sound deep in his throat, and hurled his revolver at Ness, who batted it away with his left forearm, sending it flying, though it hit hard and the pain momentarily stunned him.

  His eyes were shut, in fact, when his thick-set opponent lost his balance from throwing the gun and went flailing off the edge of the roof and landed below, on his neck. Ness heard the sound of the man's neck snapping, like the branch of a tree.

  Ness climbed down off the roof, swinging on the gutter and getting a hand from Curry and Savage below, who eased him to the snowy earth. He walked over to the slumped, twisted form, over which Sam Wild was now kneeling.

  "This guy is real dead," Wild said.

  "I heard his neck break," Ness said matter-of-factly. He handed Curry a small key. "Go unlock Cooper's cuffs and let him lead you into his room. Let him make his phone call. Then search the room, unless he insists otherwise."

  Curry looked confused by the instructions, till Ness raised a cautionary finger and smiled a little and said, "No search warrant, remember."

  Then he leaned down next to the body.

  "Jesus!" Wild said, turning the dead man's face so he could see it better. "I think this guy might be our bogus G-man we been looking for. You know, the—"

  "Cemetery lot scam-artist, who burned up those old men."

  "Yes! He's a ringer for the sketch my artist worked up."

  "I know he is," Ness said, with faint disgust. "And that makes me want to kick myself."

  Wild looked at Ness. "Why in hell do you say that?"

  "The sketch was good. I should've made him from it."

  "You know this guy?"

  "Yeah. I knew him. Took me a minute before the bell rang. But it rang: Joe Fusca. He recognized me, too. I busted his brother in Chicago, a few years back. He's still doing time. This deceased gentleman is one of the lesser members of a distinguished family of con artists."

  "Extinguished, you mean. What was he doing here?"

  "Hiding out, no doubt. He
worked for Cooper—the father, not the son."

  Wild smiled, nodded. "In the cemetery lot racket."

  "That's right." A small crowd was forming, among them the woman who ran the restaurant, Ness spoke to her. "Let's get a blanket and cover him up, shall we? Till the meat wagon shows."

  Wild was looking down at the corpse. "Think you'll be able to prove he torched those old geezers?"

  "Probably not. We'll connect him to Cooper and the cemetery scam, and that's all that matters."

  Wild was still looking at the dead Fusca. "How could anybody do that?"

  "What?"

  "Set fire to somebody. I mean, I've seen all kinds of things in this job of mine, but that's cold, brother."

  "Well, he's burning in hell now," Ness said.

  The uniformed men from downtown showed up and Ness left one of them with the corpse and went in to question Dick Cooper, who had probably called his father by now.

  Ness shuddered. To think that sleepy-eyed creep might've been his brother-in-law.

  FOUR

  MAY 26, 1936

  CHAPTER 24

  As the jurors filed in, Ness checked his watch. The five men and seven women had reached their decision in one hour and twenty-three minutes, one of the fastest verdicts Ness could remember in a major criminal trial in Cleveland.

  He was glad it was over. He didn't much like sitting in courtrooms, despite the fact that his job often called for it. At the moment, a courtroom only served to remind him that his wife was in the process of divorcing him. But perhaps the outcome of today's proceedings would be more pleasing.

  Captain Cooper sat quietly at the defense table with his attorneys. The big bald man in the rumpled brown suit looked massive. His attorneys had apparently instructed him not to slump. The trial had taken nine days, during which Cooper had sat erect, but stolidly, his face betraying' no emotion whatsoever except an occasional faint appreciative smile when his character witnesses—eleven police officers, a former police captain, and Councilman Fink—took the stand.