from Hummeno, in Austria-Hungary.' His parakeet was chirping in the corner. The eyes behind the glasses grew even more distant, though they seemed to smile. 'I remember Hummeno. Especially the orchard next door, and the fields where poppies grew.' The eyes stopped smiling. 'Cleveland wasn't as pretty. I remember selling shoes on Public Square and selling papers in front of May's Drugstore. There were a lot of fistfights, so I could maintain my… economic integrity. They called me 'greenhorn,' and I guess I was, but I took care of myself. It was a continual scrap for existence, your veritable survival of the fittest. But I made it. I learned to speak English. Do you hear an accent, Mr. Ness?'
Ness shook his head.
'I went to school, and I was good at my studies. I was a janitor, and an errand boy, a grocery delivery boy, finally a streetcar conductor, coming up in the world.
Then I got into the police department, and I started going to night school. I guess I had about every job in the department-sub-patrolman, sergeant, lieutenant, captain, inspector, acting chief, director of Police Training School, Detective Bureau chief-and I was the first officer in charge of Cleveland's mounted troops. I took a civil service exam for every rank and no one, no one, ever beat me out in an examination.' He was shaking a lecturing finger now. 'I kept taking night school, too, Mr. Ness. It took me twenty years, but I passed my bar exam a few years ago-1928 to be exact. And in 1931 became chief. Chief of Police of a great city.'
'You're to be congratulated,' Ness said, meaning it. 'You made the American dream come true. And worked hard to do it.'
A firm jaw jutted out of a face long since gone soft. 'That's right. I worked hard to get where I am. I would like to stay where I am.'
'And rocking the boat isn't a good way to do that.'
'That is quite right. I don't wish to rock the boat. I merely want to do my job.'
Ness laughed shortly. 'That's a coincidence. I merely want you to do your job, too.'
Behind the wire frames, the eyes tightened. 'Are you suggesting, sir, that I'm not?'
'I'm suggesting nothing. I don't give a damn about yesterday. How you chose to stay afloat while the Davis administration was in power is between you and your conscience. But I'm putting you on notice today: following the path of least resistance is not going to help you hold onto your job. I'm your boss, and I say the boat needs rocking. And you, Chief Matowitz, are going to help me rock it or you'll find out how easy it is to drown on dry land.'
The chief thought about that.
Then he began to nod, slowly. 'Where do we begin?'
Good, Ness thought.
He said, 'We cut out the politics and graft and favoritism, where promotions are concerned. Here on out, the only qualification for promotion will be ability and performance. Seniority be damned.'
'All due respect, Mr. Ness, that will go over like a lead balloon.'
'Well, start pumping it up with hot air then, Chief.' From what he'd heard today, Ness figured hot air was something Matowitz wasn't short of. 'What a man does- not how long he's been on the city payroll, or who he knows-is going to be the basis for advancement in this department.'
'Inspector Potter…'
'Let me worry about Potter. Good God, man, wouldn't you like to get out from under that bastard's thumb?'
The chief swallowed. Then he half smiled, like a kid caught in a lie, and nodded. 'I would.'
Ness pointed a finger at Matowitz. 'What would you do, what's the first thing you'd do, if you didn't have to worry about that bastard Potter?'
The chief shrugged, then his expression darkened again. 'I guess I'd break up that little political clique they got going over in the Detective Bureau. Do you know what kind of salaries they're pulling down?'
'Best pay in town,' Ness nodded. 'Better than a uniformed captain.'
'What if I wanted to transfer some of those guys out of there?'
'You're the chief. Do it.'
'You think I could?'
'I think that it would be a hell of an idea. I was going to suggest we transfer lieutenants and sergeants all over town, in every precinct.'
The chiefs eyes got very wide and he looked as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Then he managed to say, 'You're talking about hundreds of cops.'
'That's right. And it would upset hundreds of apple-carts. The kind that have those rotten apples you were talking about.'
'That would mean the bent cops would be uprooted. They'd have to start all over in a new precinct.'
'Only we won't give them a chance. What do you say, Chief?'
Suddenly Chief Matowitz seemed very businesslike. His mouth was a thin straight line that barely opened for him to say, 'Give me till tomorrow morning. I'll have the transfers ready for you to sign.'
Ness smiled and nodded and rose. He buttoned up his topcoat and put on his hat. The parakeet was really making a racket.
'I think your bird is hungry,' Ness said, just before he went out.
The chief was standing at a wooden file cabinet, digging some folders out, which he tossed on the polished desk top, finally cluttering it with some work.
'He can wait,' the chief said.
CHAPTER 6
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.
