Max Collins - The dark city

The door Cooper had knocked upon cracked open, however, and a slice of unshaven face peered out.

"What is it?" The voice that went with the unshaven bulldog face was a pleasant baritone, despite the irritation it conveyed. Something about the face tugged at Ness' memory…

"I don't think we can get together tonight," Cooper said.

"Huh?"

The suspect sketch, Ness thought. This guy definitely resembled the cemetery scam-artist Wild's cartoonist had sketched, but some other bell was ringing, too…

"The Swan got raided and I'm gonna be tied up," Cooper was saying. "The cops are here havin' a look around."

"Okay," the guy said, and shut the door.

Cooper smiled at Ness and pointed to the door opposite. "Sorry. I'll just go use the phone, okay?"

Ness brushed the big man aside and knocked on the door.

No answer.

He glared back at Cooper, who shrugged. He quickly pulled the fat young man to the railing of the stairs and handcuffed him there. Then he yanked his revolver from his shoulder harness and stood before the closed door, yelling: "Open up! Police!"

As if in response, a gunshot cracked the air.

Ness reflexively ducked to one side, but if a gun had been fired at the door, the shooter had missed: no bullet holes splintered the wood.

Then he remembered-Curry was still out back.

Maybe the shot was fired out a window at Curry.

Ness kicked the door open and dove inside. From the cold wood floor, he looked up and aimed his gun, but all he saw was an open window.

He got up and rushed over and leaned out. The man had jumped over to the roof of the addition to the building, and was now edging along the slant of the roof, belly down, 38 in his right hand, having made the leap, obviously, because the smaller Black Swan building might be easier to climb or jump down from.

Ness yelled out the window. "Curry! Are you all right?"

Curry's voice came from below. "I'm okay!"

Ness looked down. He could see Curry splayed against the side of the Black Swan, around the corner from where the guy was doing his rooftop tango.

And the guy with the bulldog face was looking back at Ness, and squinting.

"I don't believe it!" Joe Fusca said, almost shouting. "I don't fucking well believe it!"

And he swung his arm around and shot at Ness, who ducked back in the window, as the shot and another and another and another chewed up the sill.

Ness smiled.

Long time no see, Joe, he thought.

He lifted his fedora by two fingers gently up into the line of fire, and a bullet tore a hole in the hat and whipped it out of his fingers; another bullet chewed up more sill.

He slipped out of his topcoat; he slipped out of his jacket. Then he slipped out of the window, revolver in his left hand, jumping for that nearby roof.

He hit hard and started to slip off the asphalt tile of the roof, but the toes of his shoes caught the lip of a rain gutter, and he held on, and got his footing, his balance.

Fusca was pointing the. 38 at him, but Ness said, "You've had your six. I haven't used any of mine." Pointing the revolver at him.

"I can't believe it," Fusca said, shaking his head, eyes wide. "Ness. Ness."

Ness felt himself smiling, eyes narrowing. "Nice to see you, too, Joe. Glad you could drop by."

Fusca made an animal sound deep in his throat, and hurled his revolver at Ness, who batted it away with his left forearm, sending it flying, though it hit hard and the pain momentarily stunned him.

His eyes were shut, in fact, when his thick-set opponent lost his balance from throwing the gun and went flailing off the edge of the roof and landed below, on his neck. Ness heard the sound of the man's neck snapping, like the branch of a tree.

Ness climbed down off the roof, swinging on the gutter and getting a hand from Curry and Savage below, who eased him to the snowy earth. He walked over to the slumped, twisted form, over which Sam Wild was now kneeling.

"This guy is real dead," Wild said.

"I heard his neck break," Ness said matter-of-factly. He handed Curry a small key. "Go unlock Cooper's cuffs and let him lead you into his room. Let him make his phone call. Then search the room, unless he insists otherwise."

Curry looked confused by the instructions, till Ness raised a cautionary finger and smiled a little and said, "No search warrant, remember."

Then he leaned down next to the body.

"Jesus!" Wild said, turning the dead man's face so he could see it better. "I think this guy might be our bogus G-man we been looking for. You know, the-"

"Cemetery lot scam-artist, who burned up those old men."

"Yes! He's a ringer for the sketch my artist worked up."

"I know he is," Ness said, with faint disgust. "And that makes me want to kick myself."

Wild looked at Ness. "Why in hell do you say that?"

"The sketch was good. I should've made him from it."

"You know this guy?"

"Yeah. I knew him. Took me a minute before the bell rang. But it rang: Joe Fusca. He recognized me, too. I busted his brother in Chicago, a few years back. He's still doing time. This deceased gentleman is one of the lesser members of a distinguished family of con artists."

"Extinguished, you mean. What was he doing here?"

"Hiding out, no doubt. He worked for Cooper-the father, not the son."

Wild smiled, nodded. "In the cemetery lot racket."

"That's right." A small crowd was forming, among them the woman who ran the restaurant, Ness spoke to her. "Let's get a blanket and cover him up, shall we? Till the meat wagon shows."

Wild was looking down at the corpse. "Think you'll be able to prove he torched those old geezers?"

"Probably not. We'll connect him to Cooper and the cemetery scam, and that's all that matters."

Wild was still looking at the dead Fusca. "How could anybody do that?"

"What?"

"Set fire to somebody. I mean, I've seen all kinds of things in this job of mine, but that's cold, brother."

"Well, he's burning in hell now," Ness said.

The uniformed men from downtown showed up and Ness left one of them with the corpse and went in to question Dick Cooper, who had probably called his father by now.

Ness shuddered. To think that sleepy-eyed creep might've been his brother-in-law.

As the jurors filed in, Ness checked his watch. The five men and seven women had reached their decision in one hour and twenty-three minutes, one of the fastest verdicts Ness could remember in a major criminal trial in Cleveland.

He was glad it was over. He didn't much like sitting in courtrooms, despite the fact that his job often called for it. At the moment, a courtroom only served to remind him that his wife was in the process of divorcing him. But perhaps the outcome of today's proceedings would be more pleasing.

Captain Cooper sat quietly at the defense table with his attorneys. The big bald man in the rumpled brown suit looked massive. His attorneys had apparently instructed him not to slump. The trial had taken nine days, during which Cooper had sat erect, but stolidly, his face betraying' no emotion whatsoever except an occasional faint appreciative smile when his character witnesses-eleven police officers, a former police captain, and Councilman Fink-took the stand.

Cooper's counsel had depended on the cops' testimony holding more sway with the jury than Cullitan's nine bootleggers. But, it seemed to Ness, the detailed and convincing tales of the latter made the vaguer testimony of the former seem thin indeed. So did the defense attorneys' efforts to show that an "underworld plot" against an honest cop had brought Cooper here.

The Cap, as the bootleggers often referred to him, did not take the stand in his own defense.