Max Collins - The dark city

"Then give me the name and address of a real prize whiner. Especially somebody who might've operated in the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Precinct. Somebody who really felt he was bled white."

"I can think of one. Joe Brody. Brodzinsky. He used to run a joint at East Sixty-fifth and Fleet."

"What's he doing now?"

"He's got a saloon in Garfield Heights. He told me he moved out there to get away from the Cleveland cops."

"You think he'd talk? Think he'd name names?"

Hedges shrugged. "You never know till you ask," and he returned to his work.

And Ness set out to do his.

Brody's Bar and Grill was on Broadway, near Garfield Park, just south of Cleveland in the blue-collar suburb of Garfield Heights. The interior of the unpretentious square yellow building resembled a restaurant more than a bar, being less dimly lit than most, with plenty of tables, and booths lining three walls. Behind the bar, which took up only half of one wall, was the kitchen, somewhat visible through a short-order window, but nobody was cooking back there, because nobody was eating out here. It was after two in the afternoon, and the place wasn't very busy. Some truckers and a couple of grounds keepers from nearby Calvary Cemetery were drinking bottled beer at the bar. At the far end of the bar, by the wall, a young guy in white, probably an orderly from the state hospital close by, was playing a countertop pinball machine. An empty stool separated him from a uniform cop, city not suburban, who quickly headed for a corner booth as Ness came in, Sam Wild close on his heels.

Ness slid onto an empty stool and Wild sat at a table nearby. Behind the bar was a thin dark man of about forty in a bartender's apron. He'd been talking to one of the truckers but now he fell silent. His face was blade narrow and his nose blade sharp. So were his dark eyes, as he studied the man in the tan topcoat and brown fedora.

Ness took off his hat and smiled blandly at the bartender. "Beer," he said.

"Any special brand?"

Ness shrugged. "You're the doctor."

Speaking of which, the hospital orderly down the bar hit the jackpot on the pinball. "Hot damn!" he said. He hopped off his stool, ran over and squeezed between Ness and the trucker, and showed the bartender two handfuls of slugs. He was pale, about twenty, with acne on his neck, and he was grinning like an idiot.

"Pay up, Joe!"

The bartender smiled without much enthusiasm and said, "Lay 'em on the counter. We'll count 'em."

Ness smiled at the hospital orderly. "Going to trade those in for real money?"

"You bet!" the orderly said. The teeth in the idiotic grin were bucked.

"That's against the law in this county, you know," Ness said.

"Yeah, sure," the orderly said, smirking, waving Ness off.

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."