had once been roughly handsome.
Ness stood.
Lineham stumbled forward. He reeked of alcohol. It shimmered off him, like heat over asphalt.
Ness said, 'Lineham, you smell like a goddamn brewery.'
'Are you sayin' I'm drunk?' Lineham said. His voice was a pleasing baritone, his enunciation exaggeratedly precise.
'I'm saying you're drunk. I'm also saying you're suspended from duty.'
He waved his arms. 'Let's get a doctor in here. Let's go to some hospital and see if I'm drunk or not. I can't be drunk. It ain't even dark.'
'It's been dark all winter, Captain. Have you been drunk that long?'
Lineham shambled past Ness and stood before Matowitz's desk, where he tossed his hat. 'What do you say, Chief? I've known you for a long time… twenty-six years. Twenty-six years on the force together.'
Matowitz, his expression grave, pushed the resignation on the desk toward Lineham.
Lineham leaned his hands on the desk and read the sheet without picking it up.
Then he moved away from the desk, and almost lost his balance in the process. 'Make up your minds, gennle-men,' he said, his enunciation finally slipping away from him. 'Am I suspended, or fired?'
'No one's firing you,' Ness said. 'You're suspended for intoxication on duty. Meanwhile, charges against you will be drawn up.'
'Charges? What on?'
'Ask Tommy Fink,' Ness said.
Lineham's face turned pale and even more slack. 'You ain't gonna put no charges together.'
'I hear your sons work summers at Bainbridge-Tommy Fink's dog track.'
Lineham stumbled around; he nearly knocked the birdcage over. He was ranting, raving. 'It's unfair, it ain't just, to question my conduct as a police officer 'cause three of my kids happen to work at a dog track.'
'You can have your day in court, if you want.'
'They got the jobs themselves, they're helping pay their way through school!'
'Commendable.'
'I ain't resigning.'
'That's up to you. Your pension's a hundred and forty dollars a month. Think it over.'
'You little pipsqueak.'
Ness put his hand out. 'Your badge and your gun.'
Lineham managed to form his rubber lips into a sneer, and, with some difficulty, he managed to unpin his badge from his shirt and hand it to Ness.
'Cap, too,' Ness said.
Lineham swallowed and took his cap from Matowitz's desk and unpinned the badge and handed it to Ness.
'Gun,' Ness said.
Lineham unholstered his revolver, looking at Ness as though considering using it on him. But he handed it, butt first, to the safety director.
'Thank you,' Ness said. 'Now go home-in a cab.'
Lineham glared at Matowitz. 'I expected better of you,' he said.
'Look who's talking,' Matowitz said.
Ness pointed at Lineham. 'Don't go back to your precinct. Stay away from there, or you'll get hauled down here and tossed in the lock-up upstairs.'
Lineham tried to give Ness a look to kill, but it was really kind of pitiful. He shuffled out, moving side to side as much as forward. He didn't slam the door. He didn't even shut it. Ness did.
Matowitz sighed heavily, rising from his desk. He looked at the flowers lining his frosty windowsill. He touched them, gently, as if he were petting animals.
'We were on mounted patrol together,' he said.
Ness said, 'He's a bent cop.'
'I know.' Matowitz turned to Ness. 'You know, bad eggs like Lineham weren't always bad. They didn't make the system. They just woke up and found themselves in it. Sink or swim. They swam.'
'They're about to sink,' Ness said, and turned to go.
'Where are you off to?' Matowitz said.
'To show the West Side what a raid is all about,' Ness said. He smiled and nodded at Matowitz, who smiled sadly back, shaking his head, patting a nearby flower.
Then Ness went up to the Detective Bureau to round up some men he could trust. There had to be a few of those in this goddamn building.
CHAPTER 19
Tommy Fink's joint, as the neighborhood called it, was in the Paradise Hotel, a three-story brick building on the corner of West Twenty-fifth and Lorain Avenue. Rows of tall, arched windows dated the building to the late 1800s. The second-floor windows were for the most part dim, but those on the upper floor glowed yellow, their shades drawn. The lower floor, its windows made of glass blocks, was the Club Cafe, a name written in red neon over the front entry. Painted in white on the side of the building, and conveniently illuminated by a street lamp, were the words RESTAURANT and MEALS. The name of the hotel was written higher up, toward the top of the third floor, the word PARADISE in very large letters-a promise this building wasn't likely to keep. The Paradise was a small hotel-albeit not of the Rodgers and Hart variety-rather a men-only semi-residential hotel just a notch or two up from a flophouse. Its extra rooms went to farmers and truckers who stayed overnight whenever they did business at the nearby West Side Produce Market. The hotel was in the midst of a successful if vaguely run-down commercial strip. Autos lined West Twenty-fifth, a major thoroughfare, and the side streets too. Factories were nearby. That, and the produce market, made this a swell place for a bookie joint.
It was a cold but uncommonly clear night. Ness found a parking place in front of a pawn shop a block down from the hotel, and climbed out into the chill air. The second raiding car cruised by, found a spot half a block down and pulled in. Heller stepped out from the driver's side of the second car, another city sedan. With him was Detective Captain Savage. They joined up with Ness and his rider, Captain Cooper, in front of the pawn shop.
'Thanks for letting me come to the party,' Savage said, digging his hands in his topcoat pockets. He was shorter than the tall, heavyset Cooper, but he was formidable just the same, a pale, beefy dick of about forty-five, with one of those pleasant faces that can turn into a frightening parody of itself when its owner is angered or just plain feeling mean.
'I know this doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with the Vandal Squad,' Ness admitted, as the four men huddled under a pool of streetlamp light. 'But I had to ask people I can trust. And you're one of the few, Jack.'
'Funny thing,' Savage said. 'I was in this place just a few weeks ago.'
Savage had been investigating a series of stink bombings of cafes that had refused gamblers permission to install slots and dice games.
'I know,' Ness said, nodding. 'I remember. That's another reason I invited you. You can fill us in on the layout.'
Savage did so, quickly. The Club Cafe was a typical workingman's bar, with a long counter along the left wall for stand-up drinks and lunches, a wall of booths at the right, and tables in between. The back wall had double doors into the kitchen, a chalkboard menu, and a Paradise Hotel sign, with rates and an arrow that pointed to a closed doorway at the right.
'That,' Ness said, 'is the stairway to the third floor. But if they've seen us coming, it'll be locked, my undercover boys say.'
'That means the cafe employees work for Tommy Fink, too,' Savage said.
'He owns the building,' Ness shrugged.
