Reporter Sam Wild of the Plain Dealer had spent the morning at the Central Police Station gathering reactions from cops about the Ness appointment. Those reactions were pretty much as he expected: indifferent as dish water. "Wish him luck. He'll need it." "Sure, we'll cooperate. Why not?" Cleveland cops had seen safety directors come and safety directors go, but things usually didn't change much under the surface. Most safety directors didn't seem to mean anything to cops. Just a different name painted on the same old door.
So Wild was pleasantly surprised, in the tunnel-like first-floor headquarters hallway, to bump into Ness himself.
"Well, Mister Director of Public Safety," Wild said, grinning. "Bearding the lions in their den, I see."
Ness stopped and smiled faintly, as both uniformed and plainclothes cops walked by in either direction, none of them paying him any heed.
Walking again, Ness said, "Just had a little chat with the Chief of Police."
Wild smirked. "What'd he do, tell you about his brave 'boys' and his flowers and his birdie?"
"No," Ness said.
The safety director was walking quickly. Even a long-legged guy like Wild had to work to keep up.
"Give us a break, here," Wild said. "How about a quote?"
"Too early," Ness said.
"I thought sure you'd have a press conference this morning."
Ness kept walking. "I told you boys last night, I'd take action first, and talk later."
"Yeah, yeah. That made a swell quote, but that's yesterday's news. Newspapermen got to eat every day, you know."
Ness stopped again. "Would you excuse me, Mr. Wild?"
"Well, sure."
And then Wild realized why Ness had stopped.
Inspector Emil Potter, Chief of the Detective Bureau, had just come in the Twenty-first Street entry, toward which Ness and Wild had been so briskly moving.
Potter was a man in his mid-forties with black hair and shaggy black eyebrows and a Dracula-pasty face. None-the-less, he had a hearty, hail-fellow-well-met manner. He was about five nine but broad-shouldered, and looked like he could change a tire without a jack. His hat was in his hand and his dark gray topcoat flapped as he walked. When he saw Ness, the skin around his eyes tightened.
The two men faced each other. Wild stood just to one side of Ness, taking it in.
"Good morning, Director Ness," Potter said, with a smile that struck Wild as about as sincere as a street-walker's come-on. "This is the first chance I've had to congratulate you on your appointment."
Potter reached out a big hand, which Ness took, smiling back with similar insincerity.
"Much appreciated, Inspector. I left a message for you with your secretary."
"Oh?"
"Yes. I'd like to speak with you this afternoon at three o'clock."
Potter made a tch-tch sound. "Sorry. I have a meeting with my sergeants at two-thirty. Why not stop down to my office now, and we can chat?"
Ness checked his watch. "That's white of you, but I have an appointment at eleven with Traffic Commissioner Donahue about these record traffic fatalities we've been racking up."
Potter nodded. "That is a major problem."
Ness smiled blandly. "Good. You may be able to help me out in that area."
Potter, not following this, shrugged and said, "Anything I can do, Director."
"You can start by being at my office at three o'clock."
Potter's eyes narrowed, the shaggy eyebrows twitching. "I thought I'd explained… my meeting…"
"Cancel it. See you at three."
And Ness tipped his hat and moved on.
Potter stood there glaring at Ness, but Ness didn't see. Wild did, but quickly picked up his step and fell in with Ness.
"Nice piece of work," Wild said.
"How's that?"
"You're makin' Potter meet with you on your turf, not his."
Ness' smile was barely perceptible. He offered no other answer. They passed through the vestibule and out into the cold air.
Wild followed Ness down the steps, their breaths billowing like smokestacks.
"Headed back to City Hall?" Wild asked, digging his gloveless hands in his topcoat pockets.
"That's right."
"How about giving me a lift?"
"How about taking a streetcar?"
"Give me a break, Ness. I gave you one."
Ness stopped and looked at Wild, his expression impassive. "Really?"
"Yeah, I put in the good word for you. I was the first guy who mentioned you to Burton."
Ness dug under his topcoat in his pants pocket. "Let me see if I have a dime for your streetcar fare."
"Hey, City Hall's my beat. Give me a lift, for Christ's sake. I'm freezing my ass off out here."
Ness studied him, sucked in a long cold breath and let it smoke out. "Okay. But no press conference."
Wild shook his head, waved his hands. "Anything you say is off the record."
Ness thrust a gunlike pointing finger at him. "I'll hold you to that."
They walked up the cement ramp to the black Ford in the elevated parking lot. Ness had left the car unlocked and Wild climbed on in.
Wild sat and watched Ness, who was starting the car up. "What are you going to do to Potter?"
Ness looked at Wild carefully. "Off the record?"
"Yeah, yeah. Off the record."
Ness looked in his rear view mirror as he began backing up the Ford. "I'm going to promote him."
The sedan rolled out onto the brick street in front of Central Headquarters, turning left on Twenty-first. They rumbled along, turning left on Superior, as Wild continued to grill Ness.
"Why are you promoting Potter?" Wild asked. "He was Mayor Davis' boy, so he's no pal of your boss."
Ness drove casually, one hand on the wheel. "Wait and see."
"Why do I get the feeling you're going to take on the whole goddamn police force?"
Ness glanced at him, smiled again, very slightly. "I'm planning to take on the Mayfield Road mob. That's who I'm planning to take on."
Wild laughed hollowly. "The Mayfield Road mob. You make it sound ominous."
"Isn't it?"
"They're just a bunch of savvy wops giving the public what it wants."
"Is that right." Ness' voice was as flat as stale beer.
"Hell, every city has its version of the Mayfield mob."
Ness stopped for a red light and gave Wild a hard, cool look. "And every city has its version of a police force. My version isn't going to look the other way where gambling's concerned." He turned his gaze on the red light. "The Mayfield Road mob has been raking in some two hundred thousand dollars a week on gambling. The numbers racket alone is pulling in better than half that amount."
Wild shrugged. "Times are hard, Mr. Ness. Isn't the numbers game a harmless enough way for the average Joe to dream about hitting it big?"
The light changed and Ness moved through the intersection, the bricks beneath the Ford's tires making a steady hum. The heater in the car was going.
"I don't much care whether gambling's right or wrong," Ness said with a small shrug, his eyes on the road. "Matter of fact, I like to gamble-or I wouldn't take on a job like this. I'm no reformer. I'm a cop."
Wild shook his head. "The Mayfield mob is just the Italian branch of the Cleveland Syndicate. It's the Jews and the micks who are the real power-Horvitz, McBride, McGinty, Rothkopf, Kleinman-"
"Kleinman's in jail."
Ness was making a point, Wild realized. It was Ness' squad of "revenooers" who had sent Kleinman away.
"He'll be out soon enough," Wild countered. "Anyway, you'll never nail the likes of Mo Horvitz."
"You may be right," Ness admitted. "Horvitz and some of the other big boys are moving into legitimate business. But the Mayfield Road group isn't. And they aren't just 'wops.' "
Wild looked over, with a nasty smile. "You refer, of course, to policy guys like Frank Hogey, and gamblers like 'Shimmy' Patton and 'Gameboy' Miller."
Ness nodded, eyes on the road.
"Hogey's fair game, I suppose," Wild said. "But he's got police protection up the wazoo. And Patton and Miller are operating outside the city limits. How do you expect to do anything about them?"
"Not all their operations are outside my jurisdiction," Ness said, matter-of-factly. "And the ones that are-the Harvard Club, the Thomas Club, in particular-I'm siccing Cullitan on."
"The County Prosecutor? He isn't even a Republican!"
"No, he's just a good prosecutor. And isn't that a novelty?"
Wild laughed with quiet sarcasm. "So Patton and Miller and the gang move from bootlegging to gambling, and you follow along right after 'em."
Ness glanced sharply over. "That's right. Because gambling on this scale brings the likes of the Mayfield mob into financial power, and with financial power like that they can own a safety department. They can own the courts. You end up with cops on the beat and captains in the precinct house that don't know what laws to enforce, what persons they dare to arrest. Since a cop moving up in rank depends on not making mistakes, he can get cautious arid complacent and pretty soon you have a city where criminals get away with murder, literally, while cops sit with zipped lips, twiddling their thumbs, trying not to step on any toes."
"Like Chief Matowitz, you mean."
"I didn't say that."
"DO you deny it?"
"If we were on the record I would."
"Why don't you go on the record with me, then? I think my readers would be interested in your views."
"When I have something to say, I'll say it."
"For a guy with nothing to say, you've been pretty talkative."
"For a reporter off the record, you ask a lot of questions."
Wild shrugged, grinned. "I'm just a curious sort of guy. You remember me from Chicago."
Ness grinned back. "Sure I do. You were a pal of Jake Lingle's."
Ness was referring to the notorious murdered newsman who after a brief period of martyrdom proved to have been in Capone's pocket, a major scandal for the Chicago newspaper world a few years back.
"I knew Jake," Wild said, trying not to sound defensive. "That doesn't make me a crook."
"It doesn't make you an archbishop, either."
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I can give you some leads now and then."
"I'll appreciate that. I can tell just looking at you you're a public-spirited citizen."
"Banana oil. Aren't you wise to who you're chauffeuring around? Simply the best police reporter in town."
"Why, is Clayton Fritchey riding the running board?"
"Very funny. But I got a good memory, too. I remember Chicago myself. For instance, how you liked seeing your name in print, especially when it was in headlines. 'Eliot Press,' we used to call you."
That only seemed to amuse Ness. "Really," he said archly.
"Yeah." Wild jerked a thumb at his chest. "Treat me right and I'll treat you right. You can't afford to be on the bad side of the fourth estate. You ain't political. So you'll rise or fall on your press clippings."
Ness said nothing, but he did throw a sideways glance at Wild, and smiled a little himself.
"You know I'm right," Wild said. "Burton brought you in for publicity value: 'Former G-Man Appointed Safety Director.' The public eats up this G-Man shit with a spoon."
Ness smiled wryly, a secret lurking in his steel-gray eyes that Wild wished he could get at.
"I'll grant you part of my job is a cosmetic one," Ness admitted. "But right now I have to stay off the record for two reasons: I don't want to alienate the rest of the press; and I haven't had a chance to do anything yet. Give me a chance to get the lay of the land, for Christ's sake."
"That's fair enough, I guess. At least you aren't pretending you weren't hired for your press value."
"I was hired," Ness said, "to make the new administration, the reformers, look like they're getting something done. I'm helping 'em keep their campaign promises."
"Just like Chicago," Wild said, nodding. "You had to show the public that gangsters in the Windy City weren't immune from some good old-fashioned law and order. That there were a few cops in the world that couldn't be bought. And you pulled that off, while the tax boys did the less flashy work that really put ol' Scar face away."
Ness nodded.
Wild went on: "But I don't think you're very likely to have such luck with the Mayfield mob, frankly. And if you plan on cleaning up the police force, you'll need a broom bigger than God's."
Ness was driving with both hands on the wheel now, turning right on Sixth. He didn't look at Wild as he asked, "If you think I'll be a washout, why come along for the ride?"
"It'll be fun seeing you try to do the impossible," Wild said good-naturedly. "There'll be some dandy headlines in it for both of us, while you do."
"You seem pretty convinced I'll fall flat on my face."
"Or thereabouts." Wild shook his head. "I just don't think you know what you're up against."
"Care to enlighten me?"
"Sure. Why not." Wild smiled tightly, smugly. "Ever hear of the 'outside chief?"
Ness said nothing for a moment, the car humming along. Then: "No."
"The 'inside' chief,' of course, is Matowitz. The chief within the department. Inside the system."
"You're not suggesting Matowitz is corrupt."
"Hardly. He put those blinders on all by himself. No-body paid him to. Matowitz isn't the point."
"Well, get to the point."
Wild shrugged with one shoulder. "It's just a rumor."
"A rumor."
"A rumor. Backroom talk. To the effect that a very high-ranking police official is on the pad."
This time Ness shrugged. "That would be no surprise on a department as… troubled… as this one."
"Don't worry," Wild smirked. "We're still off the record. If you want to call the department 'corrupt,' be my guest. I won't repeat it in print."
"Make your point."
"The point, simply, is this high-ranking cop is said to be the 'outside chief.' The chief of the 'department within the department.'
"
Ness' eyes tightened. "The department within the department, huh?"
Wild smiled patiently, as if teaching a child. "The crooked cops know each other. They protect each other. They're a department within, and yet outside of, the department. And their 'chief-whoever he is-directs things, makes assignments, passes the graft around even-handedly and keeps everything and everybody in line. So rumor has it."
"I see."
"Are you sure you haven't heard this rumor before?"
"Not in such detail. Never that there was a so-called 'outside chief.' "
Wild lifted his eyebrows, set them down. "It's just a rumor. I wouldn't print it in the paper."
"I understand," Ness nodded. "Thanks, Wild."
"And their ties to the May field Road mob are, well, obvious."
"That much I knew."
"I figured you had to know something. Now. What are you going to do for me?"
Ness thought for a moment, then, eyes still on the road, said, casually, "I'm going along with a squad of cops on a betting-joint raid tomorrow. How would you like to be the only reporter along for the ride?"
"It beats a streetcar all to hell," Wild grinned.
"I ask only that you don't make a sap out of me," Ness cautioned. "I'm just tagging along to check out their procedure. See if the raid goes off without a hitch."
"Or whether somebody tips off the place," Wild said, nodding.
"Right. It won't make a big story for you, but it'll be a start. Anyway, just stick around. Be patient. There's going to be plenty of dandy headlines for you in the next couple of months. I can just about promise you that. Now, here's City Hall."