Max Collins - The dark city

"Why, no."

Greenburger smiled, his teeth very white in his tan face. "That was an extra gouge the captain devised. He would have his cops sell tickets to the things, above and beyond the regular payoff."

"Tickets to the clambakes, you mean?"

"Yes. They'd rent a hall or use some speakeasy, someplace with a big back yard for standing around steaming and eating the clams, and there'd be gambling, chuck-a-luck mostly, and liquor, cheap liquor, for sale. And two big empty beer barrels, into which the guests, bootleggers mostly, were to toss money."

"How much would that amount to?"

"I counted the proceeds on one occasion, when Captain Cooper was too drunk to do so himself. It came to slightly over three thousand dollars. Can I offer you gentlemen something to drink?"

The third interviewee of the afternoon did not offer Ness and Wild anything to drink. Lou Shapiro had been out of the beer business a long time. And his surroundings did not resemble those of his former associate Greenburger, nor those of Brody, for that matter.

Shapiro was the only one of the three former Cooper collectors still in Cooper territory-the Fourteenth Precinct, to be exact. He was unemployed, living in the basement of a transient workingman's rooming house, in an apartment, a "crib," that was a converted coal bin. The stark unpainted rough wooden walls, the bare mattress on a steel frame, the hooks on the wall that held his patched clothes, seemed bitter reminders to Shapiro of what had been denied him.

"They took it damn near fast as I could make it."

Shapiro had the same basic build as Greenburger. Unlike Greenburger, however, Shapiro had a full head of curly hair, the only possession of his that Greenburger might envy. A skinny unshaven rat of a man, he sat on a tattered, at-one-time overstuffed chair that he'd scavenged. His hands were in his coverall pockets. It was cold in the former coal bin.

"I paid the bum twenty-five grand over five years. I was running a little beer parlor that should've been a gold mine. To try and get on his good side, I gave him the names of some places and offered to collect for him."

"Did you?"

"Yeah, two hundred to two-fifty a month. This was in '27 and '28. Then the cops took over collections. And the monthly rate went up, even for me, who used to collect for him. As long as we paid off, they didn't raid us. But the first month you missed a payment, or said you didn't have the dough, you got hit. If you tried to operate without paying off, they'd frame you with a phony raid, if they couldn't catch you for real. Then they'd offer to fix the case, if you kicked in."

"Do you know anything about these so-called 'clambakes'?"

"Clambakes, picnics, benefits. Every few weeks some cops would come in and, in addition to the regular bite, would shove five of these tickets in your mitt at five bucks apiece. I went to one of these shindigs once, since I bought the tickets anyway, hoping to get something out of it. There were so many police there I was sure they must've imported 'em from Chicago or someplace. The party lasted all day and into the night. There was a lot of booze that the cops got free from us and then turned around and sold to us at fifty cents a shot. That was rubbing it in, don't you think? I didn't stay till the thing was over because the cops were getting drunker and drunker and fights began breaking out. I didn't like the looks of it and that's the last one I ever went to."

"But you kept buying tickets."

"Sure. Once I complained when they tried to peddle me tickets for a 'benefit' that took place the night before. A cop grabbed me by the throat and said, 'What the hell difference does it make? You never go to them, anyway!' I bought the tickets."

The scruffy little man raised a fist and shook it at a small basement window, railing against his lot in life.

"I worked my butt to the bone for years and look what I got to show for it! And that bastard Cooper's within spitting distance of me, raking it in."

"What do you mean?" Ness asked.

"Just down here on Ivanhoe Road-bookie joint, the dough just rollin' in. The Black Swan Club. That's his place."

"His place?"

"Sure. He owns it."

The sun was in the sky. It was definitely in the sky, playing hard-to-get with some clouds that were white. Not gray. White. It was the first Saturday in March and, while not exactly balmy, it was not exactly cold, either. Spring had not yet sprung, but it was clearly lurking, waiting to make its move.

Ness wasn't waiting. On Monday the city council would be voting on his safety department budget. He'd made a lot of headlines in his two months or so in office, but he'd made some enemies too, including a certain Councilman Fink. So the odds of his getting his budget passed, at this point, were even, at best. He aimed to improve those odds this fine Saturday afternoon.

He had asked Councilman Vehovic, Captain Savage, Sam Wild, and Detective Curry to meet him in his office at two P.M. City Hall was pretty well shut down by that time Saturday, the safety director's office included. The secretaries, including Gwen, had gone home, as had Ness' assistant, Flynt. As the men arrived, Ness made introductions where necessary, and with no more explanation than, "It's a nice afternoon for a ride, boys," herded them downstairs and into the parking lot and into his Ford. It was a little crowded and, on this spring like day, a little warm for men still wearing their winter topcoats.

"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.