Ness shook the man's hand-it was a firm, dry grip that didn't try to prove anything, was just naturally strong. "This is Detective Curry. He's on my personal staff."
Johnson and Curry nodded at each other; they did not shake hands.
"Take a load off," Johnson said. "Buy you a beer?"
"Sure," Ness said.
Johnson got up and went over and got three beers at the bar. His suitcoat was open and the strap of his shoulder holster showed; the bulges of big guns were obvious under either arm. He was called by some "Two-Gun" Toussaint, Ness understood.
Johnson sat the three beers sloshingly down and the men each took one.
"Here's to crime," Johnson said, raising his glass.
"We'd be out of work without it," Ness admitted, and took a drink of the tepid beer.
"How'd did you find me?" Johnson asked.
Curry said, "Your desk sergeant said you usually stopped in here when you got off duty."
Johnson nodded. "It's a friendly little place."
"Unlike the Elite Cabaret," Ness said. "I understand you're working that case."
"Oh yeah."
"How do you read it?"
Johnson's smile was barely there. "Knife fights on this side of town ain't no big deal. Usually."
"Usually. Something unusual about this one?"
"Well, this has all three players windin' up real dead. Two got their throats cut, one got stuck in the belly. How's that happen, exactly? Does a fella who's got his throat cut up and stick another fella in the belly? Or does a guy gut-stuck waltz over and cut another fella's throat? How does that happen, exactly?"
"I don't think it could."
Johnson's smile widened, but showed no teeth. Calmly he said, "We found a topcoat in a garbage can."
"So I hear," Ness said.
"Had a label from some fancy haberdashery in Terminal Tower. A white man's topcoat, you ask me."
"Well, I am. Asking you."
Johnson nodded. "Blood all over the top part. Blood type matches one of the dead fellas-Leroy Simmons. Kind of a spurtin' pattern on the coat."
"Splashed there," Ness said, "when somebody's throat got cut."
"Exactly."
"What does it add up to?"
Johnson shrugged. "Adds up to the Pittsburgh boys has all packed up and gone home. The east side is Lombardi's again, and the odds on the numbers is back to 500 to 1. Is what it adds up to."
"I'd like that coat," Ness said. "Maybe we can track the owner."
"I could use some help at that," Johnson said, and sipped his beer.
"So could I. I've been checking up on you, Johnson. Your record is good. Damn good."
Johnson's smile flashed white, suddenly. "If I wasn't already on the force, you think I could get on?"
That stung Ness, and it was close to impertinent; but he had to give the man his balls for making the remark.
"Yes I do," Ness said. "You have a high school education, and you served in the war, and well. I'd like a hundred like you."
"Maybe you would," Johnson said. "That way the Call and Post might get off your ass."
Curry swallowed and looked at his boss. Ness was impassive for a moment, but then he laughed.
"You're so right," Ness said. "Are you interested in working with me, and my staff, on this numbers investigation?"
"I thought you'd never ask," Johnson said, smiling again, but not whitely.
"You have a personal stake in this, after all."
"Yes I do. You got a right to know this, Mr. Ness. I was a friend of Rums Murphy, the policy king. Before I was a cop, I was a bouncer in a place of his. Anyway. He was shot right in front of my eyes. I'm sure it was Lombardi's doing, and Scalise. I swore over my friend's bleeding body I'd get those bastards."
"Why haven't you? You've been a cop all these years."
Johnson laughed; it was as explosive as it was brief. "Mr. Ness, before you started kickin' these crooked cops outa their cushy jobs, nobody was a cop in this town, badge or not. There was pressure and there was politics and there was a lot of money floatin' around up above me. All of that kept me from doin' anything about going after Murphy's killers. I was ordered off that case. I was told if I went near it, I'd be off the damn force."
"I'm surprised that stopped you."
"It didn't. I been talkin' to people for years. I know dozens of witnesses who could put those tally bastards behind bars. But I can't get nobody to talk in public."
"Are we still up against that? Is this a dead end?"
Johnson shook his head, no. "Not if we team up, you and me. Without me, you can't do it. You don't know who to talk to. You wouldn't know how to talk to 'em, if you knew who to talk to. I know. Who. And how."
"But you've known that for five years, and what has it got you?"
"Not a damn thing-except, I know where the bodies is buried. Better still, I know who knows where the bodies is buried. And with my street savvy, and you to back me up, we can find witnesses, all right."
Ness's eyes narrowed. "My backing you up will do that?"
"It will. The east side may not love you, Mr. Ness, but they trust you to do what you say you'll do. They know you're not crooked. They know when you say you'll protect a witness, you'll protect a witness. That union deal proved that. Together, Mr. Ness, we can turn Mayfield Road into a goddamn parkin' lot."
Ness grinned. "You come through for me. Detective Johnson, and you'll be the first Negro sergeant on the force."
"I was hopin' for chief," Johnson said, deadpan. "But I'll settle."
The two men shook hands again.
"You had supper?" Johnson said, getting up. He shambled out of the bar, climbing into a rumpled brown topcoat as he did, and Ness and Curry followed him.
"No," Ness said.
Curry shook his head, no.
"They serve up a mean gumbo down the street," Johnson said, pointing with a thumb. The street was dark, now, neon standing out starkly in the night.
"What's gumbo?" Curry asked.
"New Orleans dish, isn't it?" Ness asked.
"That's right," Johnson said. "Made outa pork, chicken gizzards, okra, sweet potatoes, shrimp, spices, herbs… but Pappy's down the street has got a secret ingredient."
"What's that?" Curry asked.
"Goat testicles," Johnson said.
The two white men, whiter than usual, thanked the Negro cop for his offer but tactfully declined.
As they left in the EN-1 sedan, Ness thought he heard roaring laughter behind him.
CHAPTER 9
Toussaint Johnson was well aware that Al Curry was ill at ease, riding around the colored east side in Johnson's used Chevy sedan. Johnson did nothing in particular to add to the young detective's uneasiness; neither did he do anything in particular to lessen it. Toussaint Johnson had spent going on forty years as a black man in a white-ruled world, and he didn't mind seeing any white man get a sample of what it was like to be the minority.
This was their first day on the east side, in their attempt to gather witnesses for Ness, and Johnson had met Curry's attempts at making conversation with polite but terse and sometimes sardonic responses.
"What's it like working this side of town?" Curry had asked, as the sedan bumped over the ruts of Scovill Avenue.
"Lively," Johnson had replied.
"How can these people stand living like this?" Curry had later asked, with no condescension and with considerable sympathy.
"Day a time," Johnson had replied.
So it had gone for a while, and now Curry had lapsed into a morose silence.
That was fine with Johnson. He didn't like conversation for the sake of conversation with anybody, color aside. His wife, Maybelle, was a chatterbox, God bless her, and he had learned how to have lengthy conversations with her without listening to anything she-or for that matter, he himself- said.
He lived with Maybelle and their two boys and one daughter in a white frame house in a mixed neighborhood off Hough Avenue, near League Park, where the Cleveland Indians had played till the Municipal Stadium was built a few years back. His son Clarence was the star quarterback at East High, and his younger son William was an honor student. Johnson felt no guilt about living in a better neighborhood than the colored citizens of the Roaring Third who he served and protected. But he didn't feel superior to those people. Just luckier.