Max Collins - The dark city

"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?"