Motor City Shakedown (2 page)

Thousands of sleeping people dotted the small island, driven out of their homes in the city by the relentless heat. With my sleeve I wiped a warm film of sweat from my face. Four in the morning in the middle of the river, and I was still sweating. A streetcar rattled past over on Jefferson Avenue. The rhythmic drone of cicadas pulsed around me, rising and falling. A chorus of frogs sang across the island—delicate chirrups and clicks from tree frogs, the rumbling croaks and snores of their larger cousins. But they didn't lull me to sleep as they might have done on a normal night, even though I had finished off the last of the morphine.

Could the prostitute have killed Moretti? The wound was so deep, the cut so sure, it was hard to imagine his death being at the hand of a woman. I struggled to recall her appearance. Tall—or at least in comparison to Moretti—slender, a reddish tint to her hair. My impression of her clothing, green satin dress and matching hat, was of expensive fabric and a fashionable cut. She didn't necessarily have to be the killer. She could have merely let him in from the fire escape or distracted Moretti while the killer entered the apartment.

If the police came after me, I was sunk. I would have to find the prostitute, get the truth out of her before they caught up to me. The one thing I didn't doubt is that they
would
come after me—if not now, then soon. The police knew I hated Vito Adamo. The woman in the apartment next to Moretti's had seen my face. The hallway was dim, and she saw me only for a second, but we had locked eyes. Though it had been at least six months since I was last featured in the local papers, my face was one familiar to many Detroiters. Still, at the rate new immigrants were arriving, it was anyone's guess whether she recognized me. That she lived in Moretti's building was in my favor. She had probably been brought into the country illegally by Vito Adamo, and would therefore be unlikely to involve herself in a police matter.

It also occurred to me that my appearance had changed drastically since my picture was in the papers. I'd lost twenty pounds from my already-thin five-foot-ten-inch frame, and my face was drawn, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten a haircut. I kept my shaggy brown mop at bay with a handful of pomade every morning, but my hair hung over my ears and down my collar. Perhaps if I got it cut, it might help keep the woman from identifying me.

As I thought, I massaged my dead right hand with my left, an unconscious habit I'd picked up shortly after I left the hospital. I wasn't sure if it was just a nervous tic or if, somewhere deep down, I thought if I massaged it enough, the pain would stop. I watched the fingers spread apart and then close halfway into a fist. A new wave of pain shot like lightning up my arm.

Shit
. I shook my head. I'd planned it all out. I would surprise Moretti and get him back in his apartment. He would tell me where I could find Vito Adamo, Big Boy, and Sapphira Xanakis—the people who helped John Cooper murder Wesley McRae. They had all disappeared without a trace. I would hunt them down and kill them, or at least bring them to justice.

Seven months had passed since Wesley was murdered, and I'd gotten nowhere. Seven months of stumbling around, trying to put my life back together—all the while trying to find Vito Adamo and his accomplices. And now my only lead had been murdered, and I was certain to be a suspect.

I looked up at the sky and mouthed,
I'm sorry, Wes.
He was the best friend I could have ever had, repeatedly risking his life and finally giving it—for me, a man who had disdained him for his homosexuality. I shook my head. I never deserved a friend like Wes, and now I despaired that I would ever be able to pay back even a fraction of what he had given me.

The stars were beginning to fade, the black sky graying as dawn approached. I needed to be home before sunrise. I stood, brushed myself off, and headed back across the bridge to the city. Half an hour later I crept up the fire escape at the back of my apartment building in my stockings, just as I had exited the previous evening. I'd had my new neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Preston, over for dinner. When they were leaving, I'd made a big show of going to bed early. I had thought I was being clever to set up an alibi I'd never need.

Now I hoped it held.

CHAPTER TWO

The newsboy on the corner bawled out the day's headline: “Six dead from heat—Factories close!”

Ninety-five yesterday and the day before, after the hottest July ever. Yet I, and every other man standing on the corner waiting for a streetcar, wore a dark wool suit. Most wore black or gray derbies, while a few older men stood out with fedoras or porkpies, and the less serious among us wore straw boaters. I'd gone with a summer-weight gray sack suit,
sans
waistcoat, with a matching derby and a white shirt that would partially hide being sweat-soaked before I even reached the office. The heat was less bothersome to me than to many, given the capful of morphine I'd swallowed.

I'd decided to go to work this morning as I would on any normal Monday and get a haircut at lunch. Today was not the day to break my routine, to do anything that might be suspicious. I'd wait until tonight to begin my search for the prostitute. Somehow I doubted she was an early riser anyway.

I squeezed myself onto a trolley, every surface sticky from the humidity, and headed for Clay Street and what was now called the Anderson Electric Car Company. Carriage sales were decreasing, and it had been time for a change. The “Anderson Carriage Company” sounded like it belonged in the last century.

When I arrived at work I saw that my father had closed down the foundry operations for the day, though the rest of the men were heading for their positions as usual. I climbed the stairs of the main building to the third floor and the engineering department, my current stay on the whirlwind tour of learning the business—and truthfully, the only one to which I had any claim of belonging, with my degree from the University of Michigan.

Before I stepped into the office, I blew my nose so as to keep my sniffling to a minimum. When necessary, I'd been telling people I had a cold, and I was trying to keep the side effects from my medication as low key as possible.

When I opened the door, I stopped in my tracks. Sitting in my chair, feet up on the desk, was Patrolman Dennis Murphy, looking miserable. His face was red, his bottlebrush mustache beaded with sweat. Dark rings stained his uniform under the arms. His neck and chins bulged over his collar like he was an overstuffed muffin.

“About time, Anderson.” Murphy swung his legs off my desk and raised his bulk from my chair.

“Murphy. What do you need?” I hoped he was here with information for me, but somehow I doubted it.

“Not happy to see me, boyo?”

I glanced around the office, where six men were studiously ignoring us, every one with an ear straining in our direction. I nodded toward the door and walked out. His black boots slapped against the tile floor. I closed the office door behind him and then leaned in close. I'd bluff it out. “Did you find any of them?”

“Nah.” He shook his head. “I wouldn't come all the way down here for that, not even for your dough. You come to me, remember?”

“Yeah. Then what?” I met Murphy's beady blue eyes.

“Riordan wants to see ya.”

My guts clenched. “What about?”

“I expect he'll tell ya that himself.”

*   *   *

Detective Riordan leaned against the grungy plaster wall of one of the Bethune Street station's interrogation rooms, his ice blue eyes nearly invisible in the shadow of his fedora. He wore a heavy gray wool suit even though it was ninety and humid. And he wasn't sweating. “So, Will, what have you been up to lately?”

I stood across from him. Sitting somehow felt like capitulation. “Still recuperating,” I said. Rather than illustrate the point, I kept my right hand behind my back. The ragged purple scar angling from the left side of Riordan's mouth to his ear looked fuzzy, smeared. This bottle seemed a bit more potent than usual. I was going to have to think through my answers.

He pulled a cigar from his waistcoat and patted himself down before glancing back at me. “Lighter? Must a left my matches in the office.”

I pulled my lighter from my coat pocket and handed it to him. He looked at it. “Nice. Gold?”

I nodded. He lit the cigar, puffing away until the tip glowed orange. Finally he lowered the cigar and held the lighter out to me. “How's the hand?”

I took the lighter and tucked it into my pocket. “The same.”

“Hmm.” He cocked his head at me. “Why only one glove? Two wouldn't be so noticeable.”

“Try putting on a glove when your other hand can't grip anything, Detective.”

He nodded again and looked at me a moment longer. “How are you doing with the left?”

“So-so.” I rocked my hand in front of me. “My writing looks like an imbecilic five-year-old's. But I can at least make myself understood.”

“How about shooting? Knife work?” He took another casual puff from the cigar.

Ah. So here's where we're going
. I folded my arms over my chest, right arm underneath, careful to keep pressure off my hand. “Don't have the time. Or the inclination.”

“You're right-handed, aren't you?”

“Was.”

“So you can't do anything the way you used to.”

I shrugged.

“That still has to make you angry. If it weren't for Adamo and his men helping Cooper, you wouldn't be crippled.”

“I'm trying to get on with my life, Detective. I don't have time for grudges, if that's what you were alluding to.”

He drew in deeply on his cigar, tobacco seeds snapping, then pursed his lips and breathed the smoke out to the side. It was a delicate action that seemed almost sexual. “Where were you last night?”

“Why?” I tried to sound casual.

Riordan's mouth tightened. “Humor me.”

“I spent the evening with my neighbors.”

He tilted his head back and looked at me through slits. “Are you sure about that?”

“Of course I am.”

Riordan stared into my eyes while taking a pull on the cigar. When he spoke, the smoke spilled out with his words. “Can they vouch for your whereabouts?”

“I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Preston would be happy to do so.”

He nodded and stared at the lit end of his cigar. “Does the name Carlo Moretti mean anything to you?”

My stomach lurched, but I pretended to think about it before I shrugged. “Tenor with the Detroit Opera?”

He puffed on the cigar, building a hazy gray cloud between us, while he seemed to consider my answer. Finally he said, “Moretti was your old friend Vito Adamo's chauffeur when he wasn't breaking kneecaps for the Employers Association. I was sure you'd have run into him somewhere along the line.”

It hit me then that the witness hadn't come forward. Riordan was fishing. I shrugged again. “Maybe if I saw him…”

Riordan studied me, his head turned a bit to the side, the cigar crammed into the left corner of his mouth, hiding the scar. He had been handsome before the union man slashed him. “The only place you could see him now is in the morgue,” he said.

“Oh. I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Is that so?”

“That's all behind me, Detective. I'm getting on with my life now.”

He shook his head. “I wish I could believe that. You weren't too happy they got away.”

“Well, of course I'd like to see them brought to justice, but that's your job, not mine.”

Riordan put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me in close. “I gave you one break—'cause I thought you were innocent. I won't give you another.”

“I don't need a break. I haven't done anything.”

He squeezed my shoulder and leaned in closer. The lit end of his cigar smoldered an inch from my cheek. “Don't leave town. I've a feeling we're going to need to talk about this some more.”

I stared into his cold eyes. “Can I go back to work?”

Riordan sighed and walked past me to the door, then hesitated and turned around. “Will, can I give you a piece of advice?”

I shrugged.

“Your world is money and parties and pretty women. This world”—he gestured around us—“is dirty and violent and ugly. You're going to get yourself killed. Go back to your world.”

I agreed with him and must have said the right things. He told Murphy to take me back to the factory in one of the “flying squadron's” black Chalmers 30 police cars. It wasn't two years old, but the upholstery was in shreds, bare springs sticking up, and it reeked of the sour body odor brought on by fear. I knew the smell.

Murphy cut down to Grand Boulevard and headed east, back toward the factory.

“Hey, take me downtown, near the opera house. I've got some business to attend to.”

He threw me an annoyed glance over his shoulder. “What am I, your fuckin' chauffeur?” When he turned right to head downtown, he said, “Gimme a smoke.”

“Sure.” I pulled a cigarette out of my case and handed it to him.

“Got a light?”

“Of course.” I shook my head. Riordan was the only cop I'd ever met that I thought might actually pay for things himself. The rest bummed, stole, or blackmailed their way to financial independence.

Not slowing a bit, Murphy craned his neck back toward me, cigarette poking from between his lips. I lit it and another for me. “Murphy? You didn't tell Riordan about our … arrangement, did you?”

He laughed, and little bursts of smoke shot from his mouth. “Like I'd tell anybody. Most of the bosses would want a cut. Riordan, though.” Murphy shook his head. “That son of a bitch'd bring me up on charges. There's only one thing more dangerous than a cop like me, boyo.” He waited for me to take the bait, but I didn't accommodate him. After a moment, he gave me the punch line anyway. “And that's an honest one.” He roared with laughter.