'I… I want to thank you for the vote of confidence, Mr. Ness,' Cooper said, beaming, seeming a little nervous.
'From what I've read and heard,' Ness said, 'it's not misplaced.'
'I didn't think you'd see me as, well, the right material for your administration. I'm not exactly a criminologist or anything. Or a spit-and-polish type, either.' Chagrined, he flipped his food-stained tie, like Oliver Hardy.
Ness smiled and said, 'I'm looking for effectiveness and honesty in my cops. But if you want to spend some of your salary increase on dry cleaning, I wouldn't complain.'
Cooper smiled on one side of his face. 'I think I can swing that.'
'Now,' Ness said, 'let's get down to it.'
Ness filled Cooper in on the theory that a virtual network of crooked cops was working within the force. He didn't mention Wild as the rumor's source.
'If they are an organized group,' Ness said, 'it stands to reason they do indeed have a leader, a 'chief of their 'department within the department.' I believe this so called 'outside chief is among our sixteen precinct captains. The most likely candidates would seem to be the captains in charge of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Precincts.'
'I'd have to agree,' Cooper said, nodding.
'There's another possibility, of course: your immediate predecessor.'
'Potter?' Cooper said, shocked. 'Impossible. He's a political wheeler-dealer, but I don't believe for a minute he's crooked.'
'We'll see. At any rate, we have to begin investigating.'
'I'll put some of my men right on it.'
'I don't know about using the Detective Bureau itself, just yet. Not till you've had a chance to get in there for a while and do some housecleaning. And I don't want this information in the hands of a lot of men.'
Cooper gestured casually. 'I know some detectives I can trust. Let me put them on the job. They can make some discreet inquiries.'
'Okay, but let's make it extremely discreet. Let's do it from the inside. And with one man.'
Cooper's sky-blue eyes narrowed. 'How, exactly?'
'I've been making a lot of transfers, a lot of changes in assignment. I've got a raft of 'em going out.' Ness nodded toward the pile of paperwork on the rolltop desk, itself a veteran of his Chicago wars. 'Find me an honest detective, brief him, and I'll put him on that list, knock him back down to uniform, and place him in the Fifteenth Precinct.'
'The most suspect precinct in town,' Cooper said, nodding again.
'Exactly right. People are assuming that most of these transfers indicate suspicion, on my part, of either corruption or dereliction of duty. That isn't always the case, but it will give our undercover man a nice patina of disrepute. Of course he'll complain vocally about being 'demoted.' And that should encourage any bent cops in the Fifteenth to invite him into their little club.'
Cooper smiled tightly, and said, 'If we can infiltrate their network with one of our men, we can bust the bastards wide open.'
'One would hope,' Ness said. 'But you have to find the right man.'
Cooper put a hand on his chin. 'I think I may know just the boy.'
Ness raised a lecturing finger. 'Nobody is to know about him but the two of us.'
Cooper nodded. 'I'll talk to him. If he agrees, I'll have his name for you by tomorrow morning. Do you want to meet with him?'
'No. Let's not risk the contact. I trust your judgment.'
Cooper, sensing he'd been dismissed, stood stiffly and extended his hand, a rather formal gesture for a rumpled cop with a food-stained tie. Ness stood and shook the hand, as Cooper said, 'I'll try to be worthy of that trust.'
'The cops in the department who earn my trust,' Ness said, 'are going to find me the best friend they ever had. Those who don't are going to have an enemy out of their worst nightmares.'
Two cops yesterday, who'd been drinking on the job, had found that out; Cooper was well aware of that.
'I'll see if I can't stay on your good side,' Cooper said, putting on his hat, tipping it, and going out through the inner office.
Ness returned to his rolltop desk and continued signing the transfer orders until the door from the outer office swung rudely open and Sam Wild strode in, irritated as hell, with Ness' secretary Betsy, an attractive brunette woman with glasses, right on his heels.
Ness swiveled his chair away from his battered desk and turned to look at the pair, as they skirted the conference tables, coming at him. He leaned back in his chair, bumping the desk behind him, and smiled just a little as Wild said, 'What the hell's the idea? We had a deal,' while Betsy spoke at the same time, some of her words aimed at Wild, 'I told you Mr. Ness was busy, you need an appointment,' and others at her boss, 'I told him you were busy, that he needed an appointment.'
Ness patiently waited for silence, ceasing to listen after the first volley. Then he said, 'Thank you, Betsy. I will see Mr. Wild.'
Betsy's mouth tightened. She glared at Wild and strode out, not quite slamming the door behind her.
Wild smirked, then walked over and leaned one hand against the nearest arm of Ness' chair. His red bow tie was crooked; his brown jacket looked almost as slept-in as Cooper's suit had; he was hatless, his head of brownish-blond wiry hair looking as rumpled as the jacket. He was such a skinny, angular guy he made Ness think of a praying mantis. In Wild's case, preying.
'I see in the Press you were out in the field yesterday,' Wild said.
'I was,' Ness said.
'Fritchey had a pretty good story on it.'
'I thought it read well.'
'So you personally charged two uniformed officers with drinking on the job.'
'Intoxication on duty.'
'Whatever. Personally ordered their dismissal.'
'That's right.'
'What happened to our arrangement?'
'Where I treat you right and you treat me right?'
'That's the one.'
Ness stood. 'I'll tell you.' He took off his coat and folded it and put it neatly on the desk behind him, next to the papers he'd been signing.
Wild laughed. 'Workin' up a sweat signing those forms, are ya, Mister Director?'
'No,' Ness said, and coldcocked him.
Wild went down like kindling. He sat there, all elbows and knees, rubbing some blood out of the corner of his mouth with two fingers, and gave Ness a round-eyed look of utter disbelief.
Betsy peeked in and her mouth opened wider than Wild's eyes. Ness gestured her out with one hand and gave her a look and she retreated, the door shutting with a click like a gun cocking.
Wild breathed some air out. He didn't get up. He sat there, looping his arms around his legs like a kid playing Injun-pass-the-peace-pipe, only peace wasn't what he had in mind.
'That's called assault here in Cleveland, Mr. Ness.'
Ness unfolded his coat and put it back on. 'Like we used to say in Chicago, Mr. Wild-prove it.'
Wild got up, slowly, like a tent being raised. He dusted himself off and said, 'Maybe I had that coming.'
Ness sat back down and pointed to the door. Not the one Wild and Betsy had come through, but the one that opened onto the hall, the locked one on which the words SAFETY DIRECTOR'S OFFICE could be seen, backwards, through the pebbled glass.
'The press room is thataway,' Ness said, and swiveled back to face his desk.
Wild positioned himself to one side of Ness, but didn't lean against an arm of his chair this time. 'You think I made a sap out of you, with that story last Friday.'
'You did your best to.'
