CHAPTER 23
The sun was in the sky. It was definitely in the sky, playing hard-to-get with some clouds that were white. Not gray. White. It was the first Saturday in March and, while not exactly balmy, it was not exactly cold, either. Spring had not yet sprung, but it was clearly lurking, waiting to make its move.
Ness wasn't waiting. On Monday the city council would be voting on his safety department budget. He'd made a lot of headlines in his two months or so in office, but he'd made some enemies too, including a certain Councilman Fink. So the odds of his getting his budget passed, at this point, were even, at best. He aimed to improve those odds this fine Saturday afternoon.
He had asked Councilman Vehovic, Captain Savage, Sam Wild, and Detective Curry to meet him in his office at two P.M. City Hall was pretty well shut down by that time Saturday, the safety director's office included. The secretaries, including Gwen, had gone home, as had Ness' assistant, Flynt. As the men arrived, Ness made introductions where necessary, and with no more explanation than, 'It's a nice afternoon for a ride, boys,' herded them downstairs and into the parking lot and into his Ford. It was a little crowded and, on this spring like day, a little warm for men still wearing their winter topcoats.
'Okay,' Wild said from the back seat where he was squeezed in between Curry and Savage. 'It's a nice afternoon for a ride. A swell afternoon for a ride. The question is, where are we riding to?'
'I'm very careful,' Ness said, 'about what I say to reporters.'
'Come on-spill.'
'We're taking in one of the hottest spots in town, gentlemen. The Black Swan. Fill them in, Councilman.'
The round face under the straw hat beamed. 'If I'da known that was what we was up to, today, I'da brung my baseball bat.'
'That's one reason I didn't tell you,' Ness smiled. 'Would you mind filling them in?'
'Dee-lighted, Mister Director,' he said, and did.
Wild, who knew all of this and more, said, 'Is it all right if I add a little something to that, 'Mister Director'?'
'Go ahead.'
Wild turned to Savage and said, 'Captain Cooper owns the joint.'
'Cooper!' Savage said.
Vehovic's smile was gone. 'You can't mean it. I've known Captain Cooper for years. Cap's the original hail- fellow-well-met!'
'He's met a few too many people,' Ness said, 'too well. I've talked to twenty-some former bootleggers in the last week who paid him thousands upon thousands in protection money before Repeal.'
'Cooper,' Savage was saying, nodding. 'It makes a lousy sort of sense. Nobody else on the department gets around like that guy does. Or has more buddies in blue.'
'Because of his buddies,' Ness said, 'I've limited this raid to just the few of us. And I don't dare call backup from the local precinct.'
'No, you don't,' Curry said, his expression grave.
The others fell silent. They just rode. Nice day for it.
Before long they were turning off St. Clair onto Ivanhoe Road. Sun or no sun, there was still snow on the ground and the trees were gray and skeletal. On the left hand side of the road was a factory and several warehouses. On the right were various small businesses, spaced well apart, and visible behind them, the back ends of working-men's boarding houses, from the next street over. Lou Shapiro's coal-bin crib was over there somewhere.
A weathered old two-story frame building, good-size but not massive, housed the Ivanhoe Cafe. The upper floor appeared to be residential, but the first floor was a restaurant, its windows decorated with frilly curtains. In front of the building were two gas pumps and painted on the left side of the building, in bold letters, ZIP GAS! and below that, FILL'ER UP QUICK! On the other side of the building, near the roof, was the word BLACK, in white letters on black, with a white arrow that angled down and turned black as it cut through the word SWAN, in black letters on white. The arrow pointed to a second, smaller building that had been added on. A wooden latticework fence with a gateless opening led into a big shed-like structure, which housed the Black Swan Club.
Ness pulled the sedan up to the gas pumps, got out, stretched, and yawned. The gas-pump jockey was a kid in overalls and a cap with earmuff flaps, and Ness directed him to fill the tank.
'Okay if I use the restroom?' he asked.
The kid nodded and pointed toward the restaurant.
Ness ambled inside. It was a fairly nice little place, a big yellow room with one wall of booths, cloth-covered tables, and a counter with short-order service. A young couple was having a late lunch at a side booth, and a few workingmen were sitting at the counter having coffee. At a table by the front windows was a heavyset guy with cauliflower ears. He wore a plaid shirt and no steam came from the cup of coffee before him.
'Got the time?' Ness asked him.
The guy checked his watch, and Ness grabbed that wrist and flipped him onto the floor with a thump.
'What the hell!' the guy yelled.
Ness grinned down at him. 'I guess I got a better eye for faces than you do. The last time I saw you, you were working lookout at Tommy Fink's. I guess there's always a job opening for a specialist, even in hard times.'
Ness pointed a finger, gently, toward a pretty, plump middle-aged woman behind the counter. 'If there's another buzzer back there, please don't press it. I hate arresting women.'
The guy on the floor was scrambling to his feet, looking toward the door. Ness kicked him in the ass and he bumped his head hard against the door and flopped on his belly. A moment later the door opened and hit the ex-pug on the head again, and Savage came in.
'Sorry,' Savage said, more to Ness than the unconscious lookout.
Ness was yanking the buzzer out of the wall, ripping it out from along the lower window frame. 'Head on back there,' he told Savage. 'Put Curry in back, in case there's a rear door. I don't think they've been warned, but you never know.'
Savage nodded and went out.
Ness dragged the heavy, slumbering lookout over to a steam radiator and dug in his pocket for one of a half dozen pairs of handcuffs he'd brought for the occasion. He cuffed the guy to the radiator, turned to the handful of customers, and said, 'Pardon the intrusion,' and went outside.
Ness walked through the latticework entryway and joined Savage, Wild, and Vehovic near the door, which was shut and locked. The muffled sound of a loudspeaker came from behind it, filtering through its speakeasy slot, but Ness was not in the mood to give anybody the password.
He raised his foot and let fly. With a satisfying splintering crunch, the door flew open and out rushed the cranked-up sound of a horse race being called out, which was immediately interrupted by Ness' shout: 'Police raid! Somebody shut that damn thing off.'
Somebody did, and an abrupt silence filled the room.
More than fifty people were packed into the large, unadorned space. Many of them were seated in folding chairs arranged in irregular rows, where they'd been listening to the loudspeaker which hung on one wall, over a large racing' blackboard. Along the wall at left were the betting and payout windows, three of them, with three surprised male faces behind the wire mesh, and at right a bar, its heavyset bartender looking at the raiders as if they were an apparition.
Nothing about the layout was fancy-makeshift was the word. The floor was gritty cement, with torn betting slips scattered like confetti. Empty beer bottles decorated floor and tables randomly. Along the periphery were blackjack tables lit by low-hanging, conical-shaded lamps. The dealers still had their decks of cards in hand, as Ness swung into the room, gun in hand.
The group was largely male, workers from the neighborhood enjoying the mom-and-pop bookie joint. In their white shirts with sleeves rolled up, seated on wooden folding chairs, the group could've been gathered for a revival meeting. There were a few women, in their twenties. They looked scared, whereas most of the men just looked embarrassed.
Ness put the gun away and told the dumbfounded group not to worry. 'No one but employees will be
