Max Collins - The dark city

The only confrontation Ness had had with Cooper was the same Saturday afternoon that the Black Swan had been raided. Ness had gone back to his office, called Cooper there, and informed him he was on suspension.

"Your badge and gun," Ness had said, seated at the conference table.

The big man had stood there and complied, slowly, his round face no longer jovial, the gun clunking on the table.

"I don't have to tell you what happened this afternoon," Ness said. "You've talked to your son by now no doubt."

Cooper said nothing. His face was blank, though his eyes seemed rheumy.

"This department," Ness said, "is just going to have to get along with one chief from now on. Yes, I know you're the so-called 'outside chief.' But before too very long, believe me, you'll be inside." He nodded to the door. "That's all."

Cooper cleared his throat, then spoke, tentatively: "You're definitely filing charges?"

"That's right."

"Suppose I was willing to retire?"

"No."

Cooper smiled, but with a trace of scorn. "You can't give me the break you'd give anybody else, can you? You need the publicity I'll bring you. To get your budget passed, Monday."

"Yes."

Cooper's faintly sneering expression remained. "I see."

"But I'd bust you just as hard even if that weren't the case."

Cooper's face went blank. "I–I see."

The man turned slowly and trudged toward the door, where he paused and looked back at Ness and said, "Being a cop is a hard job, Mr. Ness. Maybe if you weren't so goddamn young, you'd know that. There's a lot of suicides in this trade. There's a lot of long hours and misery. There's also a lot of wrong people with too much money. I just wanted the right people to get some of it. I just wanted them to be able to take care of their families. I'm not ashamed. I just made sure I treated my boys right."

"What would you know about it?"

Cooper narrowed his eyes, confused. "Know about what?"

"Being a cop."

And Ness looked down at the paperwork before him- Cooper's suspension-and heard the door click shut.

As for Gwen, there'd been no confrontation at all. She hadn't shown up for work on Monday. On Tuesday Ness received a businesslike written request from her to be transferred elsewhere in City Hall. He saw no reason not to, and passed the request along to Personnel with his approval.

He had seen her in the City Hall halls, from time to time, but she had looked right through him, stonier than the marble under her feet. She looked thinner, but as pretty as ever, despite the glasses and pinned-back hair that marked her office style.

He'd gone back to the apartment, when Heller headed back for Chicago, because the boathouse was too full of her. For right now, anyway.

There had been minor cuts, but his budget for the police and fire departments had passed, even though it required a tax hike. Even Councilman Fink hadn't dared vote against it, what with the press Ness had gotten. And Fink had gotten the vote out in his district to help float the necessary bond issue.

In the weeks, months, since the Black Swan hit, Ness had again been away from his desk, working as his own chief investigator. He'd been down gloomy alleyways and in grimy basement apartments and in fancy suburban homes. He had personally interviewed sixty-six witnesses who said they'd paid money to policemen for protection.

No police witnesses had come forth yet. The city's corrupt cops, with the usual code of silence, were locked into shielding each other. But, their leader gone, their network smashed, all that remained for Ness was to root them out one by one. Which he had set about to do.

He had completed an eighty-six-page report, which he'd delivered two weeks ago to the county prosecutor's office. He figured Cullitan and his boys would have at least twenty cases to prosecute, among them two precinct captains (of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth), a deputy inspector, two lieutenants, and a sergeant. He expected these cases would flush out other bad cops, sending them scurrying into early retirement.

But he'd made one mistake. After he handed over the graft report to Cullitan, he took a week's vacation at a lodge in the woods on the lake, courtesy of one of his slush-fund angels. And during that week, he left his assistant, John Flynt, in charge.

Since Heller's phone taps hadn't come up with anything against Flynt, and since Flynt had been minding the store effectively while Ness was away conducting field investigations, the young safety director had thought he could get away with leaving the department in Flynt's hands. In that week, however, Flynt leapt like a hungry dog on the job's patronage opportunities and began appointing fire wardens left and right, with the apparent guidance of councilmen like Fink, and without seeking the approval of, or even informing, Chief Grainger.

What had really torn it, though, were Flynt's efforts in Cooper's favor. The acting safety director had immediately put through the paperwork on Cooper's retirement.

Ness, who'd been without a phone during his vacation, immediately put the brakes on the retirement upon his return, and called Flynt into his office.

Flynt stood like a man waiting for the firing squad to have at him, and proud of it.

Ness took aim. "What in the hell was the idea of putting Cooper's retirement through? You're well aware I turned him down."

"I believe you're wasting the taxpayers' money. I object to Cooper being brought to trial."

"On what grounds, for God's sake?"

"On the grounds that the evidence is such that he won't be convicted, and this office will be embarrassed."

"I see. You figure any jury is bound to take a cop's word over that of bootleggers."

"Yes, I do."

"Well, I tell you what, Mr. Flynt. I realize gambling in this city is more or less illegal, but as two gentlemen of the old school, what say we have a little wager?"

"A wager?"

"If Cooper is found guilty, you'll resign."

Flynt's smile under the twitchy little mustache was smug. "And if he's found innocent, you will resign?"

"No," Ness said, smiling blandly. "You just won't have to."

Flynt lifted an eyebrow. "And if I don't care to wager?"

"Then I'll fire you right now. I'd like to see you go to the Civil Service Commission for help, after all the shit you've given them."

Flynt swallowed dryly. "I accept the wager."

"We needn't shake on it. I promise that if the outcome of the trial is such that you must resign, I won't embarrass you in front of the press. You've contributed to the department's efficiency and morale. I'll say so publicly."

"Then why do you want my resignation?"

"We just don't think alike, Mr. Flynt. You're too damn political."

Flynt smiled. "And you're not? The next weekend you spend at some industrialist's lodge, or some quiet evening at Alexander Wynston's boathouse, why don't you ponder your own political debts?"

And John Flynt had left, in a fleeting moment of victory.

Fleeting, because now, as Ness sat in the courtroom of the Criminal Court Building, the foreman of the jury was pronouncing John S. Cooper guilty on seven counts of bribery.

The courtroom sat in stunned silence, briefly, then a murmuring moved like a tide across the gallery, until the judge had to bang his gavel to stem it.

Judge Day announced he would sentence Cooper on Saturday. Each of the counts of bribery carried a penitentiary term of one to ten years. Ness figured some of them would be served concurrently, however; he estimated this particular judge, an honest one, would hit Cooper with a good twenty years.

As the packed courtroom slowly emptied, Ness went forward to shake hands and trade smiles with Cullitan and his assistant McAndrew.

"That little tome you dropped on my desk," Cullitan said, referring to the graft report, "is going to keep me looking at the inside of this courtroom for a long, long time. Thanks for a fine piece of work, Eliot."