The dark city en-1

by Max Allan Collins

  "Too late?"

  "I don't want to hurt your career."

  "My career?"

  "This is a bad time for a divorce."

  "Divorce?"

  "I think we should just live apart for a while."

  "Evie, please, let's not…"

  "I've made up my mind on this, Eliot. I'm moving back to the house in Bay Village. If you like, I'll attend some of the public functions, the social things. No one has to know. I don't want to hurt you."

  "You are hurting me."

  "I don't mean to. I don't think you've meant to hurt me either. Have you?"

  "Of course not," he said forcefully, squeezing her arm.

  "Of course not," she said sadly, warmly, gently moving his hand off her arm.

  She got up and went to the bedroom and got her coat and handbag and the suitcase she'd packed that morning.

  She walked toward the door with the suitcase and he quickly followed.

  His hands were open in a pleading gesture, as he said, "But you'll be all alone out there."

  For the first time tears came to her eyes. She felt the moisture quivering there.

  "Oh, Eliot," she said, and went out.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Euclid Avenue Arcade provided a shortcut between Euclid and Prospect, the facing tiers of shops and offices separated by a four-hundred-foot esplanade covered by a massive glass-domed roof. Sunlight filtered through the Old Arcade, transforming it into a greenhouse for people. The ornate brass railings and balconies were tarnished and some of the streetlight-style lamps had gone dark, and every now and then a shop was shuttered. But Depression or no, the Arcade was an impressive, well-walked place.

  Sam Wild sat at a small round table along a balcony on the third level. He was near the Stouffer's Buttermilk stand, an ice cream parlor, one of many such indoor "open-air" cafes in the Arcade. He was eating an obscenely large and gooey hot-fudge sundae with whipped cream, nuts, and a cherry. People strolling by, particularly fat ones, would occasionally frown at the skinny Wild, who would just smile at them, flashing the smear of hot fudge on his mouth like a badge. He wasn't vicious, but he did have a little mean streak.

  It was the last Thursday in January, mid-afternoon, and Wild was waiting for Eliot Ness. Ness was unusually late, five minutes, and Wild kept looking for a sign of him. And there he was, standing at the nearby ice cream counter in his topcoat and fedora, ordering something.

  A cup of coffee.

  Wouldn't you just know it.

  Ness walked over with the steaming cup of coffee and sat across from Wild, who smirked in the midst of a hot-fudge bite and said, "Pretty adventurous of you."

  Ness removed his hat and unbuttoned his tan topcoat. He looked a little haggard, his eyes red and faintly circled. He'd aged since December. "I'll leave the hot fudge sundaes to the younger generation."

  "I think we're about the same age."

  "Chronologically. What's this about? Why can't we meet in my office?"

  Wild pushed the nearly empty dish to one side, used a paper napkin to remove the chocolate badge.

  "Sometimes," he said, arching an eyebrow, "a public place is more private than a private office."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means I don't trust anybody at City Hall except you."

  "I appreciate the vote of confidence." There was no sarcasm in Ness' voice. "But," he added, "I do trust my staff."

  "I don't know if you should."

  "Oh?"

  "Your second-in-command Flynt's a political hack. An appointee to appease Rees, his personal pal." Rees was the chairman of the Republican Executive Committee. "Flynt campaigned for Burton, and he worked for Rees' law firm as a claims attorney for insurance companies."

  "That doesn't make him a crook."

  "Maybe not, but it has a familiar ring. Flynt's doing favors down party lines. Last week he gave out half a dozen jobs in the police garage to political pals, thumbing his nose at civil service."

  Ness winced in thought. Then he said, "The tip's appreciated. I'll look into it."

  "I realize you're stuck with Flynt, for the time being anyway. But watch your back."

  Ness nodded. Smiled faintly. "Didn't know you were so concerned about honesty in government."

  "Who, me? I expect a little honest graft to be going on. Especially when a wholesome, clean-cut administrator like you would rather play G-man than run his department."

  Ness seemed to take no offense at that. Still smiling his barely perceptible smile, he said, "I told you right at the start, Wild, that fact-finding was my first mission. I've barely been in office a month, remember."

  "And barely been in your office. What facts you been finding lately?"

  He shrugged. "Just what you'd expect. That we've got an undermanned, inadequate, and demoralized police force."

  "That's not news."

  Ness smiled again, privately, ironically. "A few nights ago," he said, "driving home, I was listening in on the police radio, and heard a burglary call. By the time it was answered by a squad car, I had time to commit six or seven other burglaries."

  "Gee, I didn't know you were moonlighting."

  Ness sipped his coffee, his expression turning sober. "Just making a point. D'you know, I found one poor copper patrolling seventeen square miles of the city on foot?" He shook his head. "Just yesterday I tried to find out what the hold-up was on replacement parts, so we can get some of these broken-down police cars repaired. The factory rep was polite enough, but explained he just couldn't help it. Seems after twenty years, they discontinued making replacement parts for the model in question."

  "Yeah, well, they don't make replacement parts for the broken-down cops in this town, either."

  "Some things just need flat-out replacing."

  Wild was well aware that Ness was referring to the twenty-one rookie patrolmen he'd sworn in earlier that week. Ness had gone over each and every application with a care that bordered on obsessiveness. Despite the time pressure he was under, Ness had interviewed each candidate personally. Wild supposed this mirrored the approach Ness had put into assembling his ten-man "untouchables" squad back in Chicago. These rookies, Wild knew, were important to Ness; they were the future. Ness' plan, his dream, was to replace the old guard with a new breed of cop.

  Even now it was on Ness' mind. He said, "You know, I saw it in Chicago, and it's been the practice here, too. Police department appointments and promotions bought and sold, patronage and payoffs. That leads to a depart-ment rife with sloppy, out-of-shape cops. I know what I want out of my cops…"

  Wild waved at Ness to stop. "Don't tell me, don't tell me, 'A good officer should be a marksman, a boxer, a wrestler, a sprinter, a diplomat, a memory expert and, at least, a high school graduate. And most important, he should be honest.' "

  Another twitch of a smile. "I'm impressed. Flattered, even. That seems an exact quote."

  "It oughta be. You've worked it into half a dozen speeches around town in the past two weeks. Do you ever sleep, by the way?"

  "I squeezed some in last year."

  Wild leaned back in his metal chair. "I hear, on top of all this, you got some labor problems, too."

  Ness sighed. "Yeah, we know the produce haulers are getting shaken down, for one thing. I've got the Vandal Squad on it. I put Captain Savage in charge and if any-body can get the job done, he can."

  "The labor boys hate Savage. And he hates them."

  "You're telling me. I had a call from McMahon today."

  McMahon was executive secretary of the Cleveland Federation of Labor.

  "You told anybody about this call yet?" Wild said.

  "Press, you mean? No. It just happened."

  "You prepared to tell me about it? The particulars, I mean?"

  "Sure. Why not?"

  "Whaddya know-pay dirt." Wild got out his notepad and a stub of a pencil. "Spill."

  Ness shrugged again. "Not much to spill. He bitched about Savage being 'bitterly prejudiced'
against the unions. They have some sort of committee that wants to make a report to me about it. I said I'd listen, but that. Savage was going to continue as head of the Vandal Squad in any event."

  "Why don't you put Savage someplace else? It'd be the politic thing to do."

  "You want me to behave like you say Flynt does? Hell with it. Savage is a good, honest cop. I have to get behind every one of that breed I can identify. And the Vandal Squad is where he's made his mark."

  "Some of that mark was made strike-busting."

  Ness frowned. "He hasn't done any strike-busting for me. Look, I'll tell you what I told McMahon. Savage's principal assignment is investigating and suppressing window smashings, bombings, and other kinds of violence, which no legitimate union should have part of, anyway."

  Wild took down the quote and shut his notepad and said, "Thanks. You're going to get an anti-union reputation, my friend."

  "It won't be deserved. I'm anti-racketeering."

  "You make me yearn for the good old days."

  "What good old days is that?"

  "The good old days when there was a difference between the two."

  Ness laughed deeply. "You're such a goddamn cynic, Wild. What makes you tick, anyway?"

  "Curiosity. The same thing that killed the cat is what keeps Mrs. Wild's little boy lively. See, it's trying to figure out what makes a Boy Scout like you tick that keeps me interested in this ol' life."

  "You really think I'm a Boy Scout?"

  "Actually, no. I think you're an ambitious young guy. A guy on his way up. But you got a problem, and it may hold you back."

  "Which is?"

  "You can't get Chicago out of your blood."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "You shouldn't have taken this one on, Ness. It's career suicide. You got a month, maybe a month and a half, to get some Hollywood results, or you're screwed, right?"

  Ness said nothing, which to Wild was an admission.

  "You've already used up a month of your limited time, and you've done okay. You made some nice headlines, and the mileage you got out of the Harvard Club is a good start on what you need to get accomplished, I'll grant you. But where are you where your dirty cops are concerned? They're not exactly gonna blow the whistle on each other. How are you going to manage an investigation into a closed shop like that, let alone find out who their 'chief is?"

  "It can be done."

  Wild wiped some fudge off his face with a paper napkin. "In a year, maybe. Not in a month and a half."

  "And that makes me a career suicide." For the first time Ness sounded irritated.

  Wild shrugged. "It's that problem I mentioned before."

  Ness laughed hollowly. "I can't get Chicago out of my blood, you mean."

  "Yeah. You had such a good time chasing Capone's boys around back alleys and driving trucks through doors and playing cops and robbers, you just can't quite give it up."

  Ness looked into his coffee as if an answer might be there, to some question or other. "That's what my wife says," he said softly, almost absently.

  "I don't think I've ever met your wife."

  "I don't think you have at that."

  Ness drank his coffee and looked out over the balcony, down to the lower level where shoppers strolled under the shadows of flapping flags of all nations.

  Wild didn't need to be sent a telegram to tell him to drop the subject of Mrs. Ness, although he couldn't help wondering if the circles under Ness' eyes were from problems at home or from the long hours he put in. Of course, those factors might be related. What the hell. Wild went on to other matters, to the reason he'd asked Ness to come here today.

  "What do you know about cemeteries?"

  Ness' eyes widened at the apparent non sequitur. "People are dying to get in?"

  "I mean the cemetery business, " Wild said. "Real estate. Little bitty pieces of real estate."

  "I don't know anything about cemeteries, other than I know some people who wish I'd move into one."

  "Suppose I told you that you aren't the only guy in Cleveland playing G-man?"

  Circles or not, Ness' eyes became alert. He sat forward and said, "Enlighten me."

  "A Slav from the East Side, a railroad worker named August Kulovic, came to me with his fourteen-year-old daughter in tow. Seems before Christmas he gave his passbook worth fifteen hundred bucks to a so-called G-man calling himself Sidney White."

  "Gave it to him?"

  Wild explained the scam to Ness, who sat listening intently, his expression darkening.

  "The only reason Kulovic got suspicious," Wild said, "was his daughter. She can read. She read the 'surety bonds,'-even though the Kulovics had been warned not to handle bonds 'cause if they got them dirty, they'd be worthless. And Miss Kulovic found out her father had bought some overpriced cemetery lots."

  Irritation tugged at the corners of Ness' mouth and eyes. "Why do you know about this, and I don't?"

  "Well, you do now, thanks to me. But Kulovic first went to the cemetery itself and was told they didn't own these lots. A sales organization did. That sales organization's office was no longer at its listed address, in the Hanna Building, no less… although I'll bet they're still in town, doing business under another name. Anyway, Kulovic called the cops and they sent him to the Better Business Bureau, who said they couldn't help him. He went to several lawyers who didn't want the case. No-body to sue, since the cemetery companies had done nothing illegal laying off some of their plots to an investor. Finally, the poor old guy did the smartest thing he ever did. He left government and business and lawyers behind and came to the fourth estate. He dropped by the paper, and I happened to be in my office instead of cover-ing City Hall that day, and if you've wondered why my shining face has been so scarce the last couple of weeks, I've been busy putting together one hell of a story."

  "Which breaks when?" Ness' eyes were narrow. Their placid gray did not lessen the intensity of his gaze.

  "Soon. Of course, I'd have a better story if I could lead with your statement to the effect that you plan to tackle this nasty little sting. I've been digging, Ness. I turned up and talked to half a dozen other victims, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, I'd wager. This is just one neighborhood. I bet they're hitting all over town."

  Ness was nodding. "Systematically hitting ethnic neighborhoods, taking advantage of devalued passbooks and their illiterate holders. I think your instincts are right."

  "One other nasty angle."

  "Which is?"

  "In some instances, the neighborhood cop has paved the way for the scam artists to make contact with their marks. Vouched for them."

  "Bent cops again," Ness said, tightly.

  "They're a common denominator in this burg. Anyway, those are the facts. So what's your pleasure?"

  Ness lifted an eyebrow. "Why don't we go over and talk to Cullitan about this?"

  Wild shrugged. "If that's how you want to go."

  "I hate to say it, but his men could investigate this better than any cops I could come up with at the moment. This sounds like the makings of a grand jury investigation to me."

  Wild grinned. "That'd make a swell lead for my story. But for your purposes, isn't a grand jury a slow way to go?"

  "Cullitan's in my corner; he'll move fast if I ask him to. Do you have a list of the victims you've uncovered so far? Kulovic and the others?"

  "Sure." Wild got out his notebook, flipped to the proper page. "You want me to copy 'em down for you?"

  "No, thanks," Ness said, reading Wild's list. His eyes narrowed. "Jesus," he muttered.

  Wild had never heard Ness say that before. It made the reporter sit up.

  "Do you know what neighborhood this is?" Ness said.

  "More or less," Wild shrugged. "Middle of the East Side."

  "Remember the Joanna Home fire?"

  "Sure. That old folks' home. Burned right before Christmas. Two old goats got themselves incinerated."

  "They weren't goats. They were men."


  "Jeez, excuse me, Saint Ness. I'm such an insensitive lout."

  "You are at that. And you don't have much of a nose for news, either."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "All your victims are elderly, or at least getting up there, and they all live in this same Slovak neighborhood."

  "Right. So?"

  "The Joanna Home is smack in the middle of that same neighborhood. The two elderly victims of the fire were Slovaks, just like the victims of your sting."

  Wild waved that off. "I thought the fire warden said that house was a firetrap, that the fire started in some faulty wiring and went up a wall into the laundry room and that was that."

  Ness didn't reply. Instead he took the reporter's notepad and from inside a jacket pocket took a pen and a small spiral notebook, in which he copied the names and addresses of the victims.

  "You really think its arson," Wild said.

  Ness pushed the notepad back across the small table and tucked his notebook and pen back in his pocket.

  "Let's keep that angle out of your story, for right now, okay?" Ness smiled, but it wasn't very convincing. "It's just a hunch, this arson thing. Let's just leave it at that."

  "What's in it for me, if I do?"

  "You'll be the only reporter along for the ride when I make my policy raids soon."

  "You're moving against Frank Hogey?"

  "I might be."

  "Hot damn. You got yourself a deal." Wild didn't have to think that one over. The cemetery scam was an investigative piece, not news, and no other paper in town was onto it. "Where to now? Cullitan's office?"

  "Not just yet. First let's go out to August Kulovic's place on East Sixty-fourth. You've got some pretty fair staff artists at the Plain Dealer, don't you?"

  "Yeah," Wild shrugged. "So?"

  "So we're going to take one of 'em with us. I'd like a picture of Agent Sidney White."

  "Good idea," Wild said as he and Ness left together, leaving melting ice cream and half a cup of coffee behind. "From what I hear, he looks a hell of a lot more like a G-man than you do."

  CHAPTER 14

  The next evening, Friday, was bitterly cold and windy and starlessly bleak. All in all, a good night to stay inside and hope that tomorrow would be more suited for making merry, or Mary, whichever the case might be. The citizens of Cleveland seemed to know just how vain a hope that was, however, because thousands of men and women, young and old, weren't waiting for a better tomorrow. They were crowding into the Hollenden and Carter Hotels tonight, for F.D.R.'s Birthday Ball, paying a buck a ticket to dance "so that crippled children might walk."