The Republican mayor he replaced, Harry L. Davis, had used his two years to turn Cleveland into a wide-open town, with the loosest of standards at City Hall. Not only had crime increased, particularly gambling and vice, but the business of government had, through Davis' patronage tactics, gone all but bankrupt. Scrip was issued to meet city payrolls. Deficiency taxes were levied in order to have some cash on hand. Meanwhile, Davis spent much of his time out of town, and the newspapers, with which he'd feuded from the beginning, gleefully, and correctly, labeled him an absentee mayor.

Burton had promised a return to efficiency in government; he had promised to bring a businesslike approach to City Hall.

But he had promised more than that.

He stalked the office, puffing the cigar, checking his watch. At four-thirty, he checked with his secretary.

"When Ness arrives," he told her over the intercom, "send him right in."

"Mr. Ness has been here for ten minutes, Your Honor."

He didn't snap at the girl; he hadn't been in office long enough for his staff to learn to read his mind. He'd give them another week to do that.

"Send him in," he said, and clicked off the intercom and put out his cigar. He smoothed his suit as best he could, and walked to the door to greet Ness as he came in. The slim man in the tan camel-hair topcoat, open to reveal a rather natty gray-striped double-breasted suit and maroon tie, slipped in, hat in hand, from among a horde of waiting politicos and job-seekers, the likes of which had thronged Burton's office doorstep for weeks.

Burton hoped his disappointment didn't show. From all he'd heard about Eliot Ness in the past two weeks, he had expected someone more physically impressive. In his mind's eye, he'd been picturing, foolishly, he knew, the movie actor Chester Morris. But this was no movie tough guy.