Ness put the gun away and told the dumbfounded group not to worry. "No one but employees will be arrested," he assured them. "I'd like to ask you to relax, because we're going to be taking statements from all of you. We need to establish that you made, or saw bets made here this afternoon, that you played, or saw blackjack played here."
Savage was rounding up the three cashiers from behind the makeshift betting counter. He sat them down at one of the blackjack tables, just as a door at the left, connecting this building with the restaurant, flew open almost as if Ness had kicked it.
A bear of a man in a white shirt and tie but no coat lumbered in, red-faced and angry. He had sleepy sky-blue eyes and a cupid mouth and a double chin. His eyebrows were upside-down V's and his brown hair was rather long and combed slickly back.
He said to Savage, "What the hell is this?"
"Ask that fella over there," Savage said, smiling faintly, pointing to Ness.
The bearlike man swaggered over and placed himself in front of Ness, saying, "What the fuck's the idea?"
"I take it you're in charge. What's your name?"
The cupid mouth formed a little sneer. "Dick Cooper is my name, and you're goddamn right I'm in charge. My old man's head of the detectives in this burg. Just who the fuck do you think you are?"
"Eliot Ness."
The bear blanched. He swallowed, looking hard at Ness, squinting. "You look different in the papers."
"I guess you never saw me in color before."
The sleepy eyes tried to open wide. He stumbled back and bumped into a blackjack table. He fumbled for a chair, pulled it up, and sat heavily.
He looked at Ness oddly, like he was having trouble focusing his eyes. "Don't you, uh… go with my sister?"
"I used to," Ness said.
Dick Cooper thought about that, as he sat at the table leaning on his elbow, his hand covering his lower face like a mask. Ness went to the bar and used the phone. He called the Central Police Station and ordered up a paddy wagon and some patrolmen to help take the statements of the detained patrons.
"I'll question you myself," Ness said to Cooper, looming over the heavyset young man who sulked at a blackjack table.
"I want to make a telephone call."
"Go ahead," Ness said, and nodded back toward the bar.
"I want to make it in my room."
"Where's that?"
"There's apartments over the restaurant. One of them's mine."
"Are you denying you run this place? You said you were in charge."
The cupid lips smiled nervously. "I meant, I own the building. I don't know nothin' about this activity here."
"I see."
"I rent the place to a guy named Nick for sixty bucks a month."
"You've never been back here before?"
"Can I make that phone call?"
"In your room?"
"Yeah."
"Mind if I come along?"
"I guess not."
"Good," Ness said, and took Cooper by his fleshy arm and guided him across the room to the connecting door. Ness had, after all, made this raid without notification to the local precinct and without obtaining a search war-rant. His excuse for doing neither of those things was that he was merely responding in person to Councilman Vehovic's charges that the Black Swan and other clubs were running wide open in the Fourteenth Precinct. Young Cooper's invitation to look at his apartment was nice to have, in lieu of a search warrant.
Cooper led him through a narrow hall to the stairway. Ness followed the man up. At the top, Cooper said, "You gonna search this whole building?"
"I expect," Ness said, who hadn't been planning any such thing.
Cooper gave Ness a blank, sleepy-eyed look and nodded once and turned to the right and knocked on a door.
"If it's your room," Ness said, getting suspicious, "why are you knocking?"
"I gotta check in with a friend of mine."
"Just use the phone in your room, okay?"
The door Cooper had knocked upon cracked open, however, and a slice of unshaven face peered out.
"What is it?" The voice that went with the unshaven bulldog face was a pleasant baritone, despite the irritation it conveyed. Something about the face tugged at Ness' memory…
"I don't think we can get together tonight," Cooper said.
"Huh?"
The suspect sketch, Ness thought. This guy definitely resembled the cemetery scam-artist Wild's cartoonist had sketched, but some other bell was ringing, too…
"The Swan got raided and I'm gonna be tied up," Cooper was saying. "The cops are here havin' a look around."
"Okay," the guy said, and shut the door.
Cooper smiled at Ness and pointed to the door opposite. "Sorry. I'll just go use the phone, okay?"
Ness brushed the big man aside and knocked on the door.
No answer.
He glared back at Cooper, who shrugged. He quickly pulled the fat young man to the railing of the stairs and handcuffed him there. Then he yanked his revolver from his shoulder harness and stood before the closed door, yelling: "Open up! Police!"
As if in response, a gunshot cracked the air.
Ness reflexively ducked to one side, but if a gun had been fired at the door, the shooter had missed: no bullet holes splintered the wood.
Then he remembered-Curry was still out back.
Maybe the shot was fired out a window at Curry.
Ness kicked the door open and dove inside. From the cold wood floor, he looked up and aimed his gun, but all he saw was an open window.
He got up and rushed over and leaned out. The man had jumped over to the roof of the addition to the building, and was now edging along the slant of the roof, belly down, 38 in his right hand, having made the leap, obviously, because the smaller Black Swan building might be easier to climb or jump down from.
Ness yelled out the window. "Curry! Are you all right?"
Curry's voice came from below. "I'm okay!"
Ness looked down. He could see Curry splayed against the side of the Black Swan, around the corner from where the guy was doing his rooftop tango.
And the guy with the bulldog face was looking back at Ness, and squinting.
"I don't believe it!" Joe Fusca said, almost shouting. "I don't fucking well believe it!"
And he swung his arm around and shot at Ness, who ducked back in the window, as the shot and another and another and another chewed up the sill.
Ness smiled.
Long time no see, Joe, he thought.
He lifted his fedora by two fingers gently up into the line of fire, and a bullet tore a hole in the hat and whipped it out of his fingers; another bullet chewed up more sill.
He slipped out of his topcoat; he slipped out of his jacket. Then he slipped out of the window, revolver in his left hand, jumping for that nearby roof.
He hit hard and started to slip off the asphalt tile of the roof, but the toes of his shoes caught the lip of a rain gutter, and he held on, and got his footing, his balance.
Fusca was pointing the. 38 at him, but Ness said, "You've had your six. I haven't used any of mine." Pointing the revolver at him.
"I can't believe it," Fusca said, shaking his head, eyes wide. "Ness. Ness."
Ness felt himself smiling, eyes narrowing. "Nice to see you, too, Joe. Glad you could drop by."
Fusca made an animal sound deep in his throat, and hurled his revolver at Ness, who batted it away with his left forearm, sending it flying, though it hit hard and the pain momentarily stunned him.
His eyes were shut, in fact, when his thick-set opponent lost his balance from throwing the gun and went flailing off the edge of the roof and landed below, on his neck. Ness heard the sound of the man's neck snapping, like the branch of a tree.