Wild was laughing quietly at his table.
Ness turned to him. "You want a beer? Or are you working?"
"Yes to both," Wild said.
"You heard him," Ness said to the bartender, who got two bottles of Pabst.
The hospital orderly was standing there with a handful of nickels, his mouth hanging open like a yawning window.
"That's damn nice of you," Ness said.
The orderly thought for a moment, then said, "What is?"
Ness nodded at the cupped palm and its nickels and said, "Buying our beers."
The orderly shut his mouth, frowned in childlike disappointment, then slammed the nickels on the counter; he returned to his stool, where he sat drinking a beer and looking at, but not playing, the little pinball.
Ness said to the bartender, "Got a minute?"
"You gonna pull my machine?"
"That depends on if you've got a minute."
"I got a minute," he said. "If you'll give me one first, that is. To see if anybody's thirsty, and then I'll join you at a booth."
Ness nodded, and he and Wild moved to the booth the patrolman had been nervously warming. They sat on the same side, leaving the other side for the bartender, who joined them shortly.
"You're Ness," he said, then pointed at Wild. "But who's this?"
"He's Sam Wild."
"That name sounds familiar."
"He's a reporter."
"Plain Dealer," Wild said.
"I don't need any publicity."
"You won't get any," Ness said. "Not unless you want it. He's taking some notes for me, but he's operating on the understanding that he can't use anything in print unless this gets to the grand jury."
The bartender reared back. "Grand jury! What the hell is this?"
"It's about Captain Cooper, Mr. Brody. You are Joe Brody, aren't you?"
The bartender's hand rubbed the slightly blue chin of the blade-like face. "I'm Brody," he said. "Brodzinsky, I was born under. Captain Cooper, huh? His little show finally about to close, is it?"
"Possibly. If a few people are willing to talk to me."
Brody laughed deep in his throat, his eyes widening. "Don't tell me I'm the first."
"Not quite. The first I've interviewed personally."
"Why should I tell you anything? I'm out of that business. Didn't you read about Repeal in the papers? I'm legit, now."
"Relatively speaking."
"Don't go breakin' my balls over a lousy pinball machine, Mr. Ness. I'll haul it off the counter and put it in your fuckin' back seat, if you want."
"I was thinking more along the lines of this place of yours, which I assume you own."
"I own it."
"And bought with the proceeds of your bootlegging activities, no doubt."
"Ha! I sure did, and it ain't the Vogue Room at the Hollenden Hotel, either, is it? There weren't very many of us who got rich bootlegging, not in this town."
"Because the cost of protection was so high?"
Brody winced at the memory. "Paying fines if we got busted, or payoffs if we didn't wanna be. Either way, we were screwed."
"You want to talk about it?"
"Tell your reporter friend to get lost."
"I can do that, but I promise you he's not going to use any of this, unless you decide to go to the grand jury with it as a witness."
"Why in hell would I want to do that?"
"Because the cops in this town kept you from making the kind of dough you otherwise could've, in those years. Years that should have been gravy years for a guy like Joe Brody."
Brody said nothing. He sat there thinking, brooding.
"If you'd been in Chicago back then instead of Cleveland," Ness said, "you'd be living today in some fancy suburb or on the Gold Coast. Most of those guys made out pretty well."
"I hear Capone didn't do so good."
"He did fine. He just forgot to pay his taxes."
"I paid my taxes."
"Did I say otherwise?"
Brody sneered. "But you could make a phone call…"
Ness shook his head no. "I'm not here to blackmail you. Maybe you did pay taxes on the dough that went into this little joint, maybe you didn't. That's not my job or my concern."
Brody's sneer disappeared but his suspicions remained. "What is?"
"Captain Cooper. I hear he's a crook. I want to find out if that's so. If you didn't pay him tribute, well, I want to know that, too. I'm not looking to hang anybody, or whitewash anybody, either."
Brody's eyes narrowed to slits again. "You mean you want the truth? That's what you're after?"
"That's right."
"Ain't you the damnedest cop. What's in it for me?"
"Satisfaction."
"Revenge, you mean."
"Call it that. If Cooper bilked you back then, why not say so now? You're no longer working in criminal circles. Like you said, you're legit. You don't have to worry about payoffs to crooked cops. What good can they do you? Hell, you're not even in Cleveland proper."
"They could still cause me trouble. Some of them bastards are pretty vicious."
"You'll be protected. Besides, while they're on trial they're going to be trying to paint themselves lily-white. And after the trial, they'll be in jail."
"If they go to jail."
"With your help, that's where they'll go. And you know what a good time a crooked cop has when he goes to stir."
Brody smiled; the smile was like a cut.
"I'm part of a new regime," Ness reminded him. "Mayor Davis isn't in office anymore."
"You're the new broom," Brody said, wryly.
"Help me sweep clean."
"You interest me," he said. "Let me think a second. Let me go see if my customers are thirsty. Let me make a phone call."
Brody rose and went to the bar.
Wild said, "He's going to talk."
"Maybe. Depends on the call he makes."
"What call do you think he's making?"
"I think he's calling somebody connected."
"Connected? As in, the Mayfield Road mob?"
"Yeah."
"Why in hell?"
"To get permission to talk. To see if protection would be coming from their quarters, as well."
Wild began to nod. "If so," he said, "that would seem to indicate that the 'department within the department' has become a virtual rival mob, as you've theorized."
"Yes, it would," Ness said.
They sat and drank their beers. A few minutes later Brody came over with two more bottles of beer and a friendly expression.
He slid in across from them and said, "I'll play."
Ness and Wild exchanged glances.
"You understand I'm gathering background information for an investigation?" Ness asked. "Later I'll ask you to make a formal statement to Mr. Cullitan's office."
"Fine. No problem."
Ness smiled without pleasure. "It would seem I have allies in strange places."
"Mr. Ness," Brody said, "a man has got to get in bed with the damnedest people sometimes to make a go of it in this world."
"Agreed. Tell me about how you first got in bed with Captain Cooper."
Brody told his tale. He had run a speak at East Sixty-fifth and Fleet in the early days of Prohibition, but had expanded into the wholesale distribution business, selling "alcohol and bonded stuff in large quantities, fifty to a hundred gallons at a crack, to some fifty speaks. He lived in and worked out of the Sixth Precinct, which was where Cooper was stationed at the time as precinct captain.
"It started the day I did the bastard a favor," Brody said, referring to an afternoon in December 1924. "It was raining. I was in my car and I spotted him standing on a street corner. Gave him a lift to the precinct. On the way he said, 'Gee, I sure appreciate this.' I said, 'Think nothin' of it, Cap.' And he said, 'I could avoid putting you out like this if I had my own little car.' "
At first Brody thought Cooper was kidding, just making idle chatter; but "Cap" repeated his desire for a "little car" several times, and finally Brody had told him, "I'll talk to the boys, and see what I can do."