"The guy must really know how to watch the nickels and dimes, know what I mean?"
Ness pounded the side of the steering wheel with a fist. "Shit."
Not far away, a streetcar on the bridge screeched. It was like a cry of pain.
Wild gestured with both hands, apologetic. "I been wanting to run this past you, but I couldn't quite get it out. Then I heard what Curry said, and…"
"It would explain some things." Ness pushed his hat back on his head, eyes narrowing.
"Such as?"
"Such as why Mo Horvitz was willing to give me the name of the 'outside chief,' if I'd play along."
Wild bent his head, as if not believing what he'd heard. "You're saying Cooper's the 'outside chief?"
"It makes sense. I was figuring the top man was one of two precinct captains…"
"From the Fourteenth or Fifteenth, right."
"But a Detective Bureau guy like Cooper floats from precinct to precinct. He can make the rounds easier. And my promoting him to bureau chief put him in an even better spot to do that." Ness laughed without humor. "As you once pointed out, he's 'popular with the men.'
"
"What does that have to do with Horvitz offering to give up the name of the 'outside chief?"
"Plenty. What's been the most surprising thing about this cemetery scam?"
"That the marks would bite in the first place."
"No, in times like these, that's no surprise. What's surprising is that the Mayfield Road mob hasn't turned up in it. They're nowhere to be seen."
Wild nodded slowly. "And they always have a piece of the action in this burg. Look at their policy-racket takeover."
"Exactly. And in every neighborhood where the cemetery scam's been run, cops have vouched for the 'G-men' or the "bank presidents' or 'real estate men' who've come around."
"What are you saying? That this whole scam is cops?"
"Damn near. I'd guess that Cooper's the major investor- 'Corepo' is probably only one of the phony names he owns land under. And you can bet Corepo and the rest of Cooper's names have well-stuffed bank accounts in town and out. And other cops have money in the racket, that seems a safe bet. Safer than investing in cemetery lots, anyway. The salesmen and the sales organization officials who ran the scam were most likely con artists from the outside. Whether the cops invited them in, or they came in and linked up with the cops, who can say. What's the difference, really?"
"Then where does the Mayfield mob come in?"
"That's just the point: no place. And you can bet they tried. But 'Chief Cooper told them to take a hike. He's that powerful now."
Wild nodded, not slowly. "Powerful enough for Mo Horvitz to want to depose."
"I think the 'department within the department' has gotten so powerful, under Cooper, that it's become virtually a rival mob. The cops are running their own rackets now. This cemetery scam may be only one of many."
"Christ." Wild swallowed thickly. "I think you may be right."
Ness shrugged. "It's mostly supposition."
"I bet we can find the facts to turn supposition into a jail sentence for Captain Cooper." Wild clapped his hands. "I can smell the headlines! Am I glad I teamed up with you!"
Ness started the car. He made a U-turn and headed up out of the Flats.
"We'll start with Cullitan," Ness said. "We'll have his boys dig into Captain Cooper's finances. We'll find out how a guy making thirty-five hundred a year can afford to sink a hundred grand into cemetery lots."
"Think of what that hundred grand got turned into, when the lots got signed over to those marks at inflated value."
Ness guided the Ford onto Huron.
"It's within your grasp, Eliot."
"What is?"
"The big bust, the big collar that'll give you your safety department budget. You may be able to pull this thing off yet."
Ness said nothing.
Neither did Wild for a while.
Then the reporter said, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry?"
"About it turning out to be Cooper. About Gwen, really."
Ness said nothing. Behind them the Flats slipped into darkness, as the underbelly of the clouds glowed a peculiar faded red. Like blood, but diluted.
CHAPTER 21
It took only a week for Cullitan and his young staff of lawyers to do the financial research, but it was the longest week of Ness" life.
Patience was not his long suit, and waiting for that other shoe to drop, where Cooper was concerned, drove Ness quietly crazy.
He tried to tell himself that Gwen should not be held accountable for the possible sins of her father. He tried to convince himself that she had entered his life, his confidence, by chance. He nearly made himself believe it, too. They spent much of the weekend together, as they had the last several, and Saturday had been fine. They'd gone to the Hollenden Hotel where the newly redecorated Vogue Room was a futuristic dream world of coral and blue, silk wallpaper, and stainless steel, and they'd danced to Benny Goodman's orchestra, which played a bittersweet arrangement of "Pennies from Heaven" and an intoxicating "The Way You Look Tonight." And when they wound up back at the boathouse, he'd had enough romantic build-up-and enough to drink-to believe in her, to believe in what they'd been sharing these past weeks.
Sunday had been tougher. He'd taken her to a movie, "Born to Dance," at the Hippodrome. She loved musicals. He didn't like any kind of movie, really, and his boredom led to daydreaming which led to sober reflection about the beautiful daughter of Captain Cooper, the lovely divorcee sitting next to him, eating popcorn as she stared at the silver screen, enthralled by Eleanor Powell who was dancing and singing "her jinx away," if the lyrics of her song were to be believed. He desperately wanted out of the theater suddenly; the matinee audience, a packed house, seemed like a mob that might turn on him any moment. Silly thought. He chewed his thumbnail.
Gwen had cooked a meal for him after the show. She'd done this a few times, perhaps to show him she could. She waited on him, wearing her red silk Chinese lounging pajamas. She catered to his simple meat-and-potatoes tastes, which he appreciated. And she seemed to be a good cook, good enough to suit him, anyway.
But it made him sad, somehow. The time he was spending with her here at the boathouse was too much like the time he used to spend with Evie at the Bay Village house. Gwen's brash modern-girl outlook was something that didn't show up much during these quiet evenings. Sitting in front of the fire together; playing two-handed rummy; taking turns stroking the fur of the cat who'd shown up at the back door last week. It was all so familiar. I've been here before, he thought. Why was he moving out of one life into another one, when the new one so resembled the old?
Any man, getting romantically involved for the first time after his marriage had gone on the rocks, was bound to have such feelings. This Ness knew. He also knew, as they sat in front of the fireplace, the moment fast approaching when they would head upstairs and tumble into bed, that the strain of the situation could not withstand the pressure of what he suspected about her father. Suspicions which, of course, extended to her motives for getting involved with him.
None of which he could discuss with her.
"I'm going to sleep down here on the couch tonight," he said.
Cuddled up in a ball next to him, she looked at him and smiled the crinkly smile. "Sure."
"I mean it, Gwen."
Her smile faded and her face became a blank, pretty mask that she hid behind, studying him. The soft flickering light from the fireplace made her look especially lovely. Without make-up, she seemed younger than her age. She had a very fresh-scrubbed and mid-western farm-girl look at odds with her practiced air of big-city sophistication.
"You do mean it," she said, after a while.