Max Collins - The dark city

Heller was sitting in the Club Cafe drinking coffee, not rum, when Ness came down to leave for the precinct house.

"How much cash was up there?" Heller asked.

"A couple grand," Ness said, "more or less. Today's receipts."

"Healthy little operation."

"It isn't feeling so good now."

Heller stood, yawned. "For a guy who likes excitement, Eliot, you seem determined to turn the world into a dull damn place."

"That kid we saw in the ditch," Ness said, moving out into the chill evening, Heller following, "isn't in the world at all, anymore. Dull or exciting."

"Well, I get your point, and this town sure could use some cleaning up. Just don't overdo it. Need me anymore tonight? Any of your cop pals need rides home?"

"No, Nate, on either count. Thanks for your help."

"You coming home tonight? Or are you heading out to the boathouse again?"

"The boathouse. You'll have the apartment to yourself tonight."

"Not necessarily," Heller said, smiling a little, tipping his hat, pushing through the throng of spectators and heading for his car.

Under bright lights at the Ninth, One-Arm Nick Selby didn't change his story. Ness, who didn't use either a rubber hose or a dismembered limb during questioning, took satisfaction in simply ruining Nick's evening, and complicating his life. He wanted Nick to give serious consideration to a new line of work, or at least a change of scenery. And he wanted to send a message to the Mayfield Road mob, and to gamblers like Fink, and to Fink's councilman brother, as well.

It was almost midnight when Ness left the Ninth Precinct house, and nearly one A.M. when he reached suburban Lakewood. He pulled into the private drive, checking in with the guard in the little booth, before heading down the winding drive to the nest of cottages and boathouses, one of which was now a hideaway of sorts for him.

The boathouse, on Clifton Lagoon in the ritziest part of Lakewood, was a fringe benefit compliments of Mayor Burton's friend Alexander Wynston. Legally, the safety director had to maintain a residence in Cleveland; he had to have a listing in the city directory, so the Lake Avenue apartment had to stay, death-threat phone calls and all.

But Ness wanted a place where he could get away, where he could spend some time alone or with a lady friend, like Gwen Howell, without having to worry about the prying eyes of neighbors. Even with the papers on his side, gossip could get around and do damage.

So Burton had arranged this additional residence for him, the third counting the Bay Village house where Evie was, but he hadn't set foot out there since they moved. Ness had been staying here most evenings for several weeks now, leaving his apartment to Heller.

For a relatively small building, the boathouse looked massive, its design-like a castle, with two stories of gray stone topped by a squat tower-setting it apart from the more traditional frame structures of the surrounding cottages. Its yard was walled off with more gray stone, and there was even a moat of sorts, frozen over now.

Ness didn't feel much like a king, however, even if a queen of a woman waited within, probably long since asleep. He felt like a very tired cop. He parked the car in front of his castle, behind Gwen's little Chevy coupe, and paused to look at the front yard, which was Lake Erie. The lake was just across the drive, or anyway the lagoon that became the lake was-an endless stretch of gray-blue in the moonlight.

He wondered whether tonight had been a triumph or a disaster. The papers would love the story and the mayor would get the best Ness publicity yet. But Tommy Fink's brother on the city council would hardly be happy. Somehow he couldn't make himself care. He had done his job. What the hell else could they ask of him? He was a tired cop who'd done his job.

Then he let go of the thoughts and wandered into the boathouse without turning on any lights. He hung his topcoat in the hall and drifted into the living room which took up half the lower floor; its pale yellow stucco walls were trimmed with dark wood, and occasional wildlife paintings and prints gave the place a male ambiance. He tossed his jacket on a chair and loosened his tie and dropped himself into a soft brown sofa in front of the fireplace, wishing it were going. He thought, for a moment, about sitting in front of the fireplace with Evie, back in Bay Village.

"It's not too late," a female voice said.

For a moment he thought it was Evie.

But of course it was Gwen. She was in a sheer blue nightgown. Even in the dim light, he could see the lovely shape of her, the generous breasts, the supple muscles of her stomach, the blonde triangle, the sleek legs. Evie would never have worn such a gown. Evie was no prude, but neither was she forward. Gwen was a modern, anything-but-modest woman. He liked this quality in her, but was nonetheless a little thrown by it. He wondered if he'd ever get used to it.

"Too late?" he asked.

She settled in next to him. "For a fire. We could still build a fire."

"Let's just go to bed."

"Did you have anything to eat? I could fix you something."

"Let's just go to bed."

"And sleep?"

"We can negotiate that."

"I don't know why I'm even speaking to you."

"Oh?"

"You said you'd be home early tonight. I didn't know you meant early in the one-in-the-morning sense."

Ness winced. "I'm so tired I forgot to apologize."

"You also forgot to call."

"I know. I know. I'm a heel."

"You just get caught up in your work. Don't apologize for it. I admire that in you."

"You do now. It'll wear thin eventually."

"Think so? Did you have a good day?"

"Not bad. Not bad at all. Your father was in on it. We finally hit that place you made the calls to in the Eighth Precinct."

"Really?"

Briefly he told her about the raid.

"It makes me think all this trouble is worth it," he said.

"How's that?"

"Well, when I see old-time cops like your father and Savage pitching in with those rookies, busting the biggest bookie joint in town, suddenly I stop feeling like I'm chipping away at an iceberg with an ice pick. Suddenly I start feeling like maybe this job can really be done. If the clock doesn't stop ticking first."

"Clock?"

"Never mind. Never mind…"

"I have faith in you, Eliot. I know you can do anything you put your mind to."

"Do you? Do you, really?"

"Sure. I'll show you."

"Hmmm?"

"Upstairs," she said, and took him by the hand.

It struck Ness as especially ironic that Cuyahoga, the river from which the county took its name, took as its name an Indian word for "crooked." The Indians surely had nothing metaphorical in mind for the river, which snaked crazily through the industrial valley Cleveland residents called the Flats. Steel mills and factories and warehouses sprawled throughout this bottomland area; loading machinery lurked like prehistoric beasts turned to framework iron, lording it over a flat prospering wasteland of decaying docks, iron-ore hills, industrial debris, and railroad tracks. Flames licked the gray sky and clouds of smoke mingled with it, a study in progress and its price. The skeletal steel structures of the various bridges spanning the valley cast shadows upon the land, like those of the Depression itself, which had cut into but hardly halted the activity of the industrial Flats. During the day, the Flats had a solemn, scarred beauty, the makings of a prize-winning black-and-white photograph. But to Ness, day or night, the Flats remained a mystery. To a Chicago boy, raised in a city where the lakefront was sacred, where lakefront parks and 'recreation and clean beaches thronged with people at play, not at work, this oily, yellow river that flowed out of Lake Erie, winding through a landscape dominated by machines, was a puzzle. Something in the back of his mind nibbled at him, reminded him, that the men helping him, the angels lining his slush fund, were the same ones who helped turn this valley into a pockmarked, profitable hellhole.