Max Collins - The dark city

"Thanks for putting Cooper away. He has a little place in history, now-the first cop in Cleveland ever to be tried on bribery charges."

"Hardly the last," McAndrew said.

"That's right," Ness said. "I think, with your help, gentlemen, we're going to have a police department in Cleveland again."

He thanked the prosecutor, whose hand he shook a second time, and moved up the aisle, feeling good, smiling, but his smile froze as he saw the attractive woman in the simple blue dress with a white collar, her blonde hair brushing her shoulders. She had lingered, keeping her seat, and only now stood, moving out into the aisle to block his way.

"Thank you, Eliot," Gwen said, through her pretty teeth. "Thanks for nothing."

"Is that what we had? Nothing?"

"Nothing. We had nothing."

"I'd like to think we had something. I'd like to think you were more to me than just your father's daughter."

Her upper lip curled. Her dark blue eyes were hard and cold and wet. "How would you like our little affair to go public? I don't think even your newspaper pals could resist gossip this juicy-the safety director's dalliance with the daughter of the convicted crooked cop. It has a sweet ring, doesn't it?"

"It's a little late for blackmail, isn't it?"

"It's never too late for revenge."

"Revenge isn't my style, Gwen. Only time will tell if it's yours."

He walked around her and away from her, on up the aisle, his smile gone.

Sam Wild was waiting for him in the hall outside.

"I see the captain's daughter waited to have a word with you," Wild said.

"If you'd wanted a juicy story, you could've hung around and eavesdropped."

They walked.

"Can you still see," Wild asked, "after having your eyes scratched out?"

"I don't blame her for being bitter."

"Don't give me that! After what she did to you-"

"What did she do to me?"

"Well. That's between you and her, I guess."

"Right."

Their footsteps echoed.

"Don't you figure her father put her up to getting next to you?"

"I don't honestly know."

"Don't you care, Eliot?"

"I care. But I don't know. And Gwen's one mystery I'm not about to investigate any further." "I care. But I don't know. And Gwen's one mystery I'm not about to investigate any further."

The sun was shining on the skyline of Cleveland this May afternoon in 1936, as Eliot Ness and Sam Wild walked to Mickey's, a hole-in-the-wall bar on Short Vincent Avenue. The safety director drank straight Scotch, and the reporter drank bourbon. By the time a wobbly Wild escorted a quite drunk director of public safety to a room in the Hollenden to sleep it off, darkness had once again fallen.