Zagreb looked at his Wittnauer. “Guess you boys forgot about Daylight Savings Time. We were beginning to think you joined the navy.”
“Streetcar broke down on Washington,” said McReary. “Everything’s starting to go to hell and you can’t get parts.”
The squad room at 1300 Beaubien, police headquarters, was deserted but for them; desks and chairs stood empty and rows of typewriters slumbered under rubberized covers, awaiting the return of their masters from England and the Philippines. These four men made up the Racket Squad, or what was left of it until the Second World War was won. Five months after Pearl Harbor, with the Allies stalled on both fronts, they weren’t expecting reinforcements anytime soon.
Each of them was of an age and in good enough condition to pass a military physical, but they all had draft deferments on the grounds of essential service. The Detroit News, Times, and Free Press called them the Four Horsemen; the Free Press with irony. The Herald, an opposition sheet, called them a disgrace.
* * *
The department had been promising them a new car since before the war, but with the automobile industry now devoted exclusively to military equipment they were stuck indefinitely with a 1940 Chrysler Royal four-door sedan, black, with its headlamps painted black except for narrow slits to conform during air-raid drills. Swivel spotlights mounted on both sides were designed to turn night into day. The car was tortoise shaped and resembled the tanks Chrysler was building in Warren. Burke, who did most of the driving, was determined to force a replacement and stripped the gears whenever possible.
“What’ve you got against this heap?” Zagreb asked, bracing himself against the dash. “It’s got more horsepower than the state fair and you couldn’t dent it with a baseball bat.”
“It’s uglier’n my wife’s rear end. I’m hoping for a Zephyr.”
“If you mess this one up we’ll be lucky to get an Edison electric.”
Burke double-parked next to a five-year-old DeSoto with tiger-striped upholstery (“Mexican pimpmobile,” he snarled) and he and Zagreb shared from a pack of Chesterfields while Canal lit one of his four-for-a-quarter cigars. Three windows rolled down in unison. They were waiting for the crowd in front of the Graystone to increase. Inside, Cugat’s orchestra or its warm-up band was rehearsing, the brass and marimbas audible for a block.
“Donkey music,” Burke said. “I like Wayne King. Nobody ever brawled to a waltz.”
“You always were a moldy fig.” Canal struck the beat with his big hands on the back of Zagreb’s seat.
McReary said. “Irish tenors for me. What about you, Zag?”
“I got a tin ear.”
“Right now I’d trade you that Zephyr for it.” Burke ground his teeth.
The lieutenant was having trouble getting his Ronson to light; he’d misplaced his good Zippo. McReary passed him a book of matches from the Cozy Corner Grill. He didn’t smoke, but he’d started carrying a supply to offer Zagreb. Unlike Burke, he didn’t want to retire a lowly officer and knew promotion had little to do with merit.
Canal stopped thumping the seat to crack his window and dump ash. “You ought to get hep, Burksie. There’s a lot of white faces out there amongst the coffee-and-cream.”
In fact, the Hispanic youths in their zoot suits—baggy slacks, knee-length coats, two-foot keychains, and sailbrim hats with feathers in the bands—were outnumbered, along with their dates in bright Spanish colors, by Caucasian couples, dressed more conservatively in last year’s fashions, making do to save material for uniforms, parachutes, and bandages. It was a chilly night in early May and they seemed content to huddle in the press of bodies, chattering and laughing in anticipation of the entertainment that awaited them inside.
With so many native-born bandleaders absent, in uniform or performing with the USO, Latin music had swept the country. Cugat was king, conducting with baton in one hand and his pet Chihuahua in the other, but Carmen Miranda, Noro Morales, and that smoldering young Cuban conga drummer Desi Arnaz were topping the bill in places where a dozen years earlier they might have been busing tables.
The craze had its detractors, of course, mainly in places like Los Angeles, too close for comfort to the Mexican border for many, and Detroit, where the mix of Negro and white southern defense workers was already volatile before Hispanics had begun joining them in swarms. The same sort of person who’d held that ragtime and jazz undermined society warned that hot blood and spicy music led to anarchy. It was the Home Front, threatened from within as well as from without.
The crowd spilled out from under the canopy, across the sidewalk, and into Woodward Avenue. A big traffic cop, still in his double-breasted winter wool, walked along the gutter pointing at stragglers with his billy to clear the automobile lanes. Passing the big Chrysler, he glanced briefly at Zagreb through the windshield. The lieutenant nodded and poked his cigarette butt out through the window. “Break out the candy, Mac.”
As McReary hoisted a black metal toolbox from the back floorboards onto his lap, Burke unhooked the microphone from the dash and radioed for backup. Just before sirens growled and the lubberly paddy wagon came waddling around the corner, the youngest of the Four Horsemen opened the box and passed around the blackjacks.
* * *
Asa Organdy had been assistant city editor at the Detroit Herald until someone in Accounting turned over a canceled check written on expenses and recognized the name of the proprietor of a Vernor Street brothel on the endorsement. After a brief investigation Organdy was demoted to general assignment reporter and placed on probation. In his quest for redemption, he’d taken to dogging the Racket Squad with a photographer he called Speed, after the Speed Graphic camera the reporter was convinced he slept with. Organdy knew the cop who’d given Lieutenant Zagreb the high sign, and had passed him a pint of Four Roses through the window of his chalky gray Plymouth coupe for the privilege of parking beside a hydrant twenty yards behind the black Chrysler. When the excitement started, the reporter and the photographer piled out.
Speed’s favorite shot didn’t make the paper until the second day. It showed the monolithic Sergeant Canal sapping a young Hispanic, caving in his hat and twisting his face in shock and pain. Instead the photo editor decorated the front page with the four plainclothesmen wading into the crowd in hot pursuit of everyone perceived to be in guilty flight. But that shot went to the morgue when Organdy obtained the names of those who’d been arrested and found one with a military record—the same man Canal had bludgeoned in Speed’s photo of choice. After that it ran every day for a week and went out on the AP wire.
Eduardo Natalo was on medical leave from the United States Marine Corps. He’d been aboard a troop transport ship headed for active duty in the Philippines when a Japanese Zero swept down and strafed the deck, killing a dozen men and wounding seven, including Private Natalo. With a bullet in his leg, he’d helped carry men more seriously injured to safety while the plane made a second pass, chopping up deck all around him. A citation written and signed by his commanding officer credited him with uncommon valor and recommended him for the bronze star; the Purple Heart was a foregone conclusion.
* * *
“He had a cane.” Zagreb looked up from the newspaper he was reading in the echoing squad room. “Didn’t you see it?”
Canal, standing in the center of the floor with feet spread and his fists at his sides, shook his head. “He turned, I guess to keep from falling down and getting trampled. He must’ve tripped over it. I thought he was ducking so I couldn’t see him. I didn’t hit him as hard as it looks in the picture. He was falling already, away from the blackjack.”
“You look like you’re swinging for deep left field.”
“How bad’s it going to get?”
Zagreb folded the paper to an inside page and showed him a four-column cartoon of a bull-necked dick slugging a man in uniform with a fist in a chain-mail glove. The soldier’s chest was plastered with medals and the dick wore a Hitler moustache.
�
�Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Canal crossed himself.
“It don’t even make sense,” Burke said. “The guy was fighting nips, not krauts.”
“Yeah, like Popeye stands the test of truth.” The lieutenant tossed the paper onto one of the many vacant desks. “The commissioner’s on his way. It’s been good working with you fellows. Maybe we’ll meet up Over There.”
Canal said, “It’s no good you boys getting canned over me. I’ll quit first. I can always pick up security work at the Rouge plant.”
Burke cracked his hairy knuckles. “Witherspoon can’t can any of us. Who’s he got to put in our place?”
“Who says I have to put in anyone?”
At the new voice McReary, who wasn’t long out of a blue uniform, got up quickly, almost tipping over his chair. Zagreb and Burke remained seated. Police Commissioner John H. Witherspoon stood in the open door to the hallway with his hands folded behind him. No one had ever seen him actually enter that room. He seemed smaller than he was, too small for the three-piece suit that had been tailored to his measure, too small for the building, too small for the responsibilities of his office. He parted his hair in the center and wore round-lensed Harold Lloyd spectacles.
“This squad was created originally to break up the Purple Gang,” Witherspoon went on, his Adam’s apple bobbing at each full stop. “The repeal of Prohibition achieved that. It’s occurred to me that a prescription for a disease that no longer exists can be worse than the disease.”
Zagreb said, “Sir, you’re forgetting a little thing called the black market.”
“An understandable omission, as I’ve seen no report of a single tire-smuggling operation smashed apart by your hand.” The commissioner took a thick fold of newsprint from the side pocket of his coat. It fell open to the length of a child’s letter to Santa. “This is a galley proof of an editorial that will appear in tomorrow’s Herald. Corporal Natalo—his promotion just came through—was visiting friends in Detroit. He’s an El Paso native. His friends call him Eddie. His family has lived in this country for three generations. How far back does yours go, Sergeant?”
“My father came through Ellis Island in ought-three.”
“The editorial asks what right you have to conclude on the basis of a man’s appearance that he is an illegal.”
Zagreb struck twice at his lighter, failed to get a spark, and let his cigarette dangle. “I guess the same one you had to ask Louis Armstrong for a menu when he sat in at the Tuxedo Grill last year.”
Color spotted Witherspoon’s gray cheeks. “Sergeant Canal, you’re suspended without pay pending a hearing to discuss your dismissal from this department. The rest of you are on report.” He folded and pocketed the sheet and turned to leave.
The lieutenant unsnapped his holster from his belt, tucked the flap of the folder containing his shield inside, leaned over in his chair, and slid revolver, holster, and shield across the floor. They stopped two feet short of Witherspoon’s shoe.
“Pick it up!” he said. “It’s city property.”
“So’s this.” Burke leaned and slid sidearm, holster, and shield behind Zagreb’s. They fell an additional four inches short.
“Not enough body English,” Zagreb said.
Canal stooped, put his badge and weapon on the floor, and kicked them with a toe. They passed Burke’s but not the lieutenant’s.
McReary’s wound up closer to the commissioner’s foot than all the rest. “Next time let’s play for money,” he said.
A tight smile curdled Witherspoon’s face. “A picturesque gesture, but bootless. You men provide an essential service. You can’t resign without the permission of the War Reserve Board.”
Zagreb stood, took out his wallet, and went over to hand him a letter printed on rag paper with the War Department seal on the top. “Picked it up this morning,” he said. “I used to go out with the local director’s secretary.”
“This is extortion. You know the department can’t spare four experienced men during wartime.”
“We can’t spare one. Three Horsemen? Forget it.”
Witherspoon slapped the letter into Zagreb’s palm. “Sergeant, you will apologize publicly to Corporal Natalo at the press conference this afternoon. Your rank depends on it.”
“Sure.”
“The rest of you will back him up.”
“Sure,” Zagreb said.
A crease appeared above the nosepiece of the spectacles. “It will be sincere.”
“Natch. Anything for the boys in uniform.”
* * *
The press conference took place on the front steps of headquarters, to accommodate the radio equipment and newsreel cameras. Witherspoon was present, with Mayor Jeffries and members of the legal firm that represented the city. Zagreb spoke last.
Asa Organdy pressed forward, with Speed popping his flashgun in the lieutenant’s face. “What’s crow taste like?”
“Kind of like chicken. How was the hooker?”
He knew the exchange would never reach the public.
A reporter from WXYZ radio asked him why Eddie Natalo was being detained.
“For his own safety,” interjected the commissioner. “There are some benighted individuals who wish him harm.”
“Worse than what Canal did to him?” Organdy asked.
Canal lurched toward the man from the Herald. He was stopped by the blinding flash from Speed’s camera and the rest of the Racket Squad, who gripped his arms.
The mayor cleared his baritone throat. “We are all Americans since Pearl Harbor. Some of our citizens could do with enlightenment on that score.”
Organdy said, “My paper would like to know if this administration thinks it can sweep an outrage like this under the rug just by having the man responsible mutter a few words in public.”
A murmur rumbled through the reporters. Canal stirred; Zagreb and the others tightened their grip on his arms. He shook them off just by flexing.
“Hell,” he said. “I’ll tell the kid I’m sorry to his face.”
* * *
Eddie Natalo was under guard in a luxury suite at the Book-Cadillac Hotel, all expenses paid by the city of Detroit. It was supposed to be a secure location, but a number of men in rough clothes stood at the entrance. The placards some were holding ran to the “America for Americans” sentiment. The Chrysler was still rocking on its springs when Zagreb got out and placed a hand on the shoulder of a man whose forearms were furred with prison tattoos.
“When’d you get out, Ricky?”
“Last month. I served my stretch. I got a right to be here.” He balled his fists at his sides.
“Not with this bunch. I drove two of ’em in the paddy when we busted up the Black Legion. What’s your parole officer got to say about your hanging out with the Klan?”
By now the Four Horsemen stood shoulder to shoulder facing the group. It dispersed.
“No kidding, you were in on that?” Canal asked.
“I was pounding a beat on Belle Isle. But it stands to reason they’d send a delegation.”
The officers guarding the entrance told Zagreb they were under instructions to let only Canal inside.
“There goes the manager’s vote. Good luck, Sergeant.”
“No sweat. If he wants to spit in my eye, I got it coming.” Canal handed him his revolver.
The lieutenant stuck it under his belt and produced a pint of Old Grand-Dad from his hip pocket. “Never send a man into a dangerous situation unarmed. Remember that when you head up your own squad.”
Canal grinned, slid the flat bottle into a side pocket, and pushed through the revolving door. The men in uniform closed ranks to keep out the reporters who’d followed from headquarters. One of the officers shoved Speed aside when he raised his camera.
Twenty minutes later a shot was heard upstairs.
* * *
At his own insistence—pride, probably—Corporal Natalo had only one guard at the door of his suite, a fellow marine in dress blues with a sidearm
in a white flap holster. He admitted he’d let Canal inside without searching him after the sergeant spread his coat to show the empty holster on his belt, although he’d challenged him on the bulge in his coat pocket and the sergeant had shown him the pint of whiskey. When he heard the shot, a sharp crack, the guard drew his pistol, kicked open the door, and threw down on Canal, who was standing over the dead man. Natalo lay on his back on the floor with a bullet in his forehead, fired at close range from a semiautomatic .25-caliber pistol found on the floor near the body; ballistics confirmed it. The marine held Canal until police arrived to take him into custody.
During interrogation at police headquarters, the sergeant said he’d apologized sincerely to Natalo, and when at length the man accepted, took out the pint of Old Grand-Dad, and “got spifflicated with the boy.” They’d hit it right off, he said, one fighting man to another. According to Canal, when Canal excused himself to use the john, Natalo had asked him to go for him as well; they were the last words the pair exchanged. When the sergeant finished and washed his hands, he came out to find the war hero dead and the pistol on the floor. It was tiny; he’d have thought it was one of those novelty cigarette lighters if it weren’t for the corpse and the stink of spent powder. That was when the guard broke in.
Zagreb asked him why he didn’t hear the shot.
“It must’ve been when I flushed the toilet. Them hotel jobs are loud.”
“Pretty thin.”
“I didn’t do it, Zag.”
The Homicide man, Powers, tagged in. He was one of Commissioner Witherspoon’s boys, cleanly handsome with a hair trigger. “The pistol was wiped clean. It’s untraceable; someone gouged out the serial number. Just filing it off isn’t enough to keep the boys in the lab from bringing it out.”
“I know that.”
“Sure you do, that’s why you gouged it out. Everyone knows your kind of cop always carries throwaway in his sock. Comes in handy when you shoot an unarmed man and you want to make it look like self-defense.”
Detroit Is Our Beat Page 2
