'Done. Showin' it around, without much luck. So, Samuel. Is that why you wanted to get together? To ask me about my career? Oh, hey, thanks for the gloves, man. I'm makin' a livin' writing, but just barely. A buck a piece for these damn 'vignettes' don't go very far.'
Wild reached in his coat pocket and withdrew a ten-dollar bill. 'How far will this go?'
Katzi grinned, his eyes flickered. 'The meter is runnin'.'
Ness said, 'Was Clifford Willis a dirty cop?'
Katzi shifted in his seat and grinned lazily at the safety director. 'That depends on how you define dirty.'
'Why don't you define it for me, then.'
'In your way of thinking, Willis was dirty. Where I come from, the numbers is a part of the way things are, and so is paying off a cop for protection. But, yeah. He was on the pad, to the numbers racketeers.'
'Scalise and Lombardi, you mean.'
Katzi blew out smoke; up on the stage the actors were emoting, their voices echoing like an insistent conscience.
'That's recent history,' Katzi said, with an easy smile.
'Go back a few years, when the Emperor opened his first policy house. Before that, Rufus Murphy had the only policy house in Cleveland, the Green House. He made sweet money, Rufus did-that illiterate son-of-a-bitch sent his daughter to school in Paris.'
Ness was listening politely, but Wild could tell he wanted Katzi to get to the heart of things.
But Katzi was a storyteller and couldn't be hurried. 'So Emperor Rushing, who was running gambling houses up till then, sent for a pal in Chicago name of Cateye, who knew the policy racket, and they opened up the Tijuana House. After the Emperor opened his house and was real successful, a lot of colored hustlers, gamblers, pimps, club owners, businessmen got in on the act and opened houses of their own. The policy racket was booming.'
'Which means,' Ness said, 'the cops working the Negro district went on the take.'
'It sure does. And Willis was working that beat as a patrolman.'
Ness sighed. 'What about Toussaint Johnson?'
'What about him?'
'Was he on the pad?'
Katzi's eyes narrowed shrewdly. 'I understand Toussaint is workin' with you these days.'
'That's right.'
'So do you really want to know the answer to that question?'
Ness said nothing. Then he nodded.
'Well,' Katzi said, with a big grin, 'I don't think I'll answer it, anyway. Toussaint is a hell of a guy-and I can tell you this, he is not on the pad, today. He hates those Italian mobsters like fire hates water. He is not on the pad. You dig? You understand?'
'Yes,' Ness said.
'But Willis was,' Wild said. 'On the pad.'
Katzi nodded emphatically. 'When policy was booming, and the alky mob got Repeal dropped in their ugly laps, that's when Black Sam and Little Angelo muscled in.'
'Did you witness any of that?' Ness asked, quickly.
'No. I was in the pen at the time. When I went inside, Rufus, the Emperor, and Johnny C. were on top of the world. When I come out a couple years ago, they were dead, turned stooge, and retired, respectively. And Willis was on the Scalise and Lombardi payroll.'
'I see.'
Katzi laughed; it was mellow. 'You know, you were the best thing that ever happened to Willis.'
'Me?' Ness said, shocked.
'Willis was a patrolman, remember. He had a taste of the take, but nothin' major, mind you. When you come in back in '35 like a big brass band, you shook things up by transferring cops from one precinct to another, all over town.'
'Right,' said Ness, somewhat defensively. 'That upset crooked apple carts all over the city.'
'Sure it did. It was smart. Hey, I'm not bein' critical, Mr. Ness. And a whole lot of those transfers you made were big cheeses. Officers-captains and lieutenants and sergeants and detectives. Am I right?'
'Of course you are,' Ness said, trying to mask his confusion, not terribly well. 'That's where the power was. We had a crooked department within the real department, in those days. They had their own structure, their own 'chief.' '
'I know. You sent a whole bunch of those high-ranking boys to the pen, including their chief. Hell-I met some of 'em there, and you'll be glad to know it was no picnic for 'em.'
Now Ness smiled. 'I'm not sorry to hear that, no.' The smile faded. 'But you still haven't said exactly how it is I'm 'the best thing that ever happened' to the late patrolman Willis.'
'You transferred all the big boys outa the Roarin' Third,' Katzi said, with a matter-of-fact shrug. 'Who did you think was gonna move up into position? A patrolman like Willis, who was on the pad already, and still working the Roaring Third! The new higher-ranking boys were afraid to take a piece of that action, with you in town, throwing crooked captains and the like in the clink.'
Ness was nodding. 'So Willis, a relatively little fish, fell through the cracks of the system. And became a bigger fish because he was in the right place at the right time.'
'That's the story, Mr. Ness. And you know, a crook has no morals. He'll work for anybody, if they got the dough.'
'What are you saying?'
Katzi blew out blue smoke, shrugged, smiled one-sidely. 'The reason why Willis was killed was he went against Lombardi and Scalise.'
'In what way?'
'You know that killing over at the Elite Cabaret, a while back?'
'Of course.'
'Well, what do you know about it, exactly?'
Ness seemed on the verge of irritation; he didn't like a snitch who asked questions. 'We know that it represents the Mayfield Road gang chasing that Pittsburgh bunch out of the city. Scaring them off Lombardi and Scalise's turf. And we suspect Scalise himself murdered those men.'
'That's the word on the street on the subject,' Katzi confirmed. 'But can you prove it?'
'We traced a bloody coat from the alley of the Elite to a haberdashery where Scalise has done business-but we couldn't find a clerk to admit making the sale, or a sales slip either.'
'Five'll get you ten,' Katzi said, 'Scalise killed Willis, too. Personally.'
'What makes you say that?'
Katzi shrugged again. 'Scalise is meaner than a drunk snake. He likes hurtin' people. He likes killin' people. Everybody in the Roaring Third knows that.'
Ness had an intense expression. 'And why would he've killed Willis, his own man, a cop he had in his own pocket?'
'That's what I been telling you, Mr. Ness. Few months back, Willis did business with the Pittsburgh boys.'
Ness looked sharply at Wild; there was the motive. At last. There was the motive.
'Word on the street,' Katzi was saying, 'is that the Pittsburgh outfit offered Willis more than Scalise and Lombardi were payin', if he'd help 'em move in. And he did. And he dead.'
Ness digested that, then asked, 'Why'd they wait so long to pay Willis back for his betrayal?'
'How should I know? Maybe to keep you from putting two and two together. Maybe to make Willis sweat some before they chilled him. Maybe to line up a new cop fixer, first. Hell, you're the detective.'
Ness thought about that.
Katzi crushed his cigarette under his heel on the theater floor. 'Think you can put those mother-raping dago bastards away, Mr. Ness?'
'Oh yes,' Ness said.
'Good. I got no love for 'em, myself.'
'Why's that?' Wild asked. Katzi didn't seem to him the sort of guy who would give a damn one way or the
