Detroit Is Our Beat

by Loren D. Estleman

  Zagreb, as angry as the squad had ever seen him, kicked one of the shackled men in the ribs. The man grunted and fell sideways, rolling himself into a tight ball. “That’s for the goddamn reefers aboard the truck,” he said. “You just had to be sure we took the bait.”

  Canal fired a short automatic burst into the trailer. Hissing, the refrigeration units poured ammonia and liquid oxygen into the air.

  “Ammo’s rationed like everything else,” said the lieutenant. “That’s coming out of your salary.”

  The sergeant took aim at the piles of books and emptied the drum. Confetti littered the surface of the lake. “Keep the change.”

  * * *

  Commissioner John Witherspoon was a sour apple of a man who parted his hair in the middle and smeared it to both sides with a butter knife. He stood behind his slab of desk at 1300 Beaubien, Detroit Police Headquarters, with his hands clasped behind him Napoleon fashion and glared through Coke-bottle spectacles at the Four Horsemen standing before him. “What’ve we got to hold them on?”

  “Sullivan rap,” Zagreb said. “Two of ’em, anyway, the trucker’s partner and one of the loaders. The goons standing guard had permits for their weapons. Frankie got them private detective licenses under Bowles. Renews ’em every year like clockwork.”

  “Wide-Open Bowles.” The man behind the desk measured out a bitter expression appropriate to a mayor removed from office for corruption. “Orr had a contract with the War Department to supply reading material to servicemen. He set up a printing press in Sandusky and offered them for pennies above cost. A front, of course, but legitimate. Who told you he was shipping anything else?”

  “C.I., sir. He’s been reliable in the past. We sweated him. I’m convinced he didn’t set us up.” If he was wrong, the snitch would be passing blood for a week for nothing.

  “Who else knew a raid was planned?”

  “Nobody outside the squad.” Zagreb stared at the commissioner, who looked away. He was a career politician and a coward who feared and despised the street cops under his command.

  “Well, someone made a serious mistake. It may be years before we have another opportunity to put Orr out of business. Meanwhile I’m reassigning your squad to riot control.”

  “That’s a uniform detail!” shot Burke.

  Witherspoon looked at Zagreb. “You’d better get your men into line. In this office, I’m addressed directly only by lieutenants and better.

  “The uniforms can use assistance,” he went on. “The defense plants pay the same wages to Negroes and white southerners, which doesn’t always sit well with the sons of the Confederacy. Security’s tight on the assembly line, but tensions boil over in the saloons between shifts. Perhaps managing a roomful of drunken bigots is not beyond your abilities.”

  * * *

  Back in the squad room, Burke spat on the linoleum. “We need to invite that walking ulcer along on beer garden detail some election year; see do his capabilities stand up to a bunch of rednecks pumped up on Rebel Yell.”

  “Shut up. For once he’s right. We got hornswoggled like a bunch of rookies.” Zagreb dropped into the nearest chair, wrung-out as a bar rag.

  McReary came forward, holding out his gold shield and .38.

  “Thanks for not throwing me to the dogs, L.T. Maybe I can make myself useful in the Pacific, as long as nobody trusts me with the invasion plans for Tokyo.”

  “That only works with the commish. Put ’em away before I take you up on it.”

  He didn’t. “I’m the one put us on dipso duty.”

  The lieutenant looked up at him. “You think you’re the only cop in the world got sucker-punched by a dame? Brother, you’re not even the only one in this conversation.”

  * * *

  Max Zagreb didn’t see Arabella Lindauer again until after the new series had run its course.

  The Confessions of Frankie Orr: Notorious Racketeer Spills All had appeared in the Times throughout the summer and into early fall, by which time the Four Horsemen weren’t the only ones battling their way back from the starting line: The Allies were encountering heavy resistance in North Africa, the Philippines, and Stalingrad.

  “Makes you wonder who Eisenhower and MacArthur been going out with,” Canal said.

  The lieutenant was drinking a beer between sets at the Cozy Corner swing joint when Arabella came in on the arm of a vapid-faced corporal in Class A uniform and found a table far enough from the dance floor for talk and a quiet drink. When the band picked up its instruments, they got up to dance to a Tommy Dorsey tune, but when it finished and the next one was a jitterbug, she shook her head and led her disappointed escort back to their table. Zagreb checked his Wittnauer several times, and when the soldier left to make curfew, he carried a fresh beer over and took the vacant seat.

  “Lindy Hop a little much?” he asked.

  Arabella, tapping a Lucky on the back of a pigskin case, gave him a cool look. “The war’s destroyed the proprieties, I see. Gentlemen used to wait for a lady’s invitation to sit down.”

  “All’s fair, I’m told.” He lit her up, then himself. “‘Racketeer tells all,’ my fanny. Frankie didn’t give you the dope on anything the statute of limitations didn’t run out on under Herbert Hoover. He’s personally responsible for four murders I know of. We’re still toting up the score on the ones he catered out.”

  “He’s a louse, but he’s not stupid.” She moved a bare shoulder. “Modern-day crimes bore readers: hoarding ration stamps, big bellies in brown shirts at Bund rallies. They like touring-car chases and choppers and bathtub gin: nostalgia stuff. Circulation’s up. The old man wants to put me on police beat. First female reporter in the city to ride in a prowl car. Without handcuffs, that is.”

  “Congratulations. No more one-legged prom queens.”

  “I turned him down.”

  “Offer come with a ticket to Atlantic City? I didn’t know you were so picky who you creased the sheets with.”

  “Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m holding out for a government assignment.”

  He lifted his glass in a toast, then drank. “Read any good books lately? Servicemen’s editions?”

  “I was wondering when you’d get around to that. I didn’t give him anything but an educated guess. You wouldn’t provide details or even confirm there was going to be a raid. The rumor was enough to get me into that private room of his at Roma’s. The rest was horse-trading over the marinara.”

  “Mac’s hairdresser friend was just a gossip. She was too dumb to know better. You’re nobody’s idea of dumb.”

  “No one got hurt. You didn’t even get demoted.”

  “I’ve been there. I didn’t mind it so much. Frankie suckered us with that refrigerator truck, just to set the hook deep. I minded that.” He smoked. “How many you think he’s hurt since you gave him his get-out-of-jail-free card?”

  “Now you sound like one of those Home Front do-gooders. Why don’t you donate a coffeepot to the aluminum drive? Give up your morning brew to help build a B-25?”

  He put out his cigarette. “Last time we discussed Frankie, you called him a snake. Whacking him with a stick was part of the reason you wanted to write about him, you said. Now he’s just a louse. Next time around, he’s a fuzzy puppy. I always knew you had a price; I just didn’t know you came so cheap.”

  “This isn’t about Frankie,” she said. “It’s about the big-time crimebuster trusting a woman and getting burned.”

  “Or not trusting her. If I’d agreed to let you ride along on that raid, you’d have sat on it till it hatched, or risk losing the scoop. Don’t tell me you didn’t think I got what was coming to me when it went bust.”

  “Listen to you: Robert Taylor in his own movies. The world doesn’t spin around you.”

  He put money on the table and rose.

  “Buy yourself a bottle of bubbly. Enjoy it while you can. Just because Frankie makes good on his debts doesn’t mean he likes it. Right now the feds are too busy chasing Fifth Co
lumn saboteurs to worry about an old-time bootlegger, but as soon as this war turns our way, all those headlines will hang on him like a bucket of rocks. A grand jury will want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t know anything that isn’t already public record.”

  “The jury won’t know that. By that time, Frankie may not be able to remember everything that passed between you. You’ve got a reputation now for wheedling information during weak moments. He’s famous for not taking chances. He didn’t with the National Guard at the Ohio state border and he won’t with a sob sister.”

  She stubbed out her lipstick-stained Lucky and smiled up at him. She wore her pillbox hat at a fashionable angle, as always.

  “I’ll buy that champagne and save it to share with you when we kick Hitler’s butt.”

  * * *

  She didn’t make it to V-E Day; she barely made it through the Battle of the Bulge. After a trial period covering the capitol in Lansing, Arabella Lindauer drew a national assignment, to cover President Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration in January 1945. Her private plane went down in a wooded area in Maryland fifty miles north of the District of Columbia, killing her, a Times photographer, and the pilot; leaky fuel line, investigators decided. She’d been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury looking into the wartime black market as soon as she got back.

  Soft Lights

  — AND —

  Sabotage

  “Senators are a lousy team.”

  Soft Lights and Sabotage

  McReary said, “We got Nazis.”

  “The whole world’s got Nazis,” Zagreb said, “even Africa. You see the last Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller chopping down storm troopers with a machine gun?”

  “You know, Weissmuller trained for the Olympics in the big pool at the Detroit Athletic Club,” Canal said. He was working the crossword puzzle in the Free Press and only half listening.

  Burke, looking over Canal’s shoulder, asked what kind of name Weissmuller was, anyway.

  Zagreb said, “German.”

  “Huh. I’m surprised Schicklgruber ain’t had him shot for treason.”

  “Hitler’s got his hands full just now.” Canal tapped the pencil eraser on a paragraph about Stalingrad, continued from a story on page one.

  Officer McReary, the youngest member of the Detroit Racket Squad—known popularly and unpopularly as the Four Horsemen—waited with exaggerated patience for the banter to subside. He kept his prematurely bald scalp covered indoors and out. “I mean we got Nazis right here in town. Scuttlebutt downstairs says the FBI’s appointing a new Special Agent in Charge to investigate Fifth Column activity in the defense plants.”

  “His name rhyme with mover?” Officer Burke straightened and rolled his meaty shoulders. People considered him a big man until they laid eyes on Sergeant Canal. “The way you know it’s not a false alarm is when the fat little twerp comes in by army plane with a couple hundred Washington reporters.”

  “It’s legit,” Lieutenant Zagreb said. The squad leader wore a perennially tired expression, as if his face had grown weary of supporting his large cranium. He had his hats made to order at J.L. Hudson’s to accommodate it. “The commissioner sent a memo to every division this morning. We’re supposed to put all our manpower at this guy’s disposal.”

  Canal lowered his newspaper, paying attention now. “Most of our manpower’s on active military duty. Should we send a cable to Patton asking to please loan some of it back?”

  It was quiet at 1300 Beaubien, police headquarters. In order to make things easier on the janitor, whose son was serving in the Philippines, the detail was using four desks in the middle of the big room and sharing a single wastebasket. All the other desks were unmanned for the duration of the war.

  “Let’s just cooperate, okay?” Zagreb said. “The more help we give him, the sooner he’ll be out of our hair.”

  “Speak for yourself.” McReary tugged down his hat brim.

  The telephone rang on the lieutenant’s desk. Canal happened to be sitting at it—the detectives weren’t territorial about office furniture, and kept no personal items in the drawers, to streamline the clearing-out process in case the commissioner made good on his threats to dismantle the squad—but he was still scrambling to get his size sixteens off the blotter when Burke scooped up the receiver. He listened, said, “Thanks,” and cradled it. “Grady downstairs. Washington’s on its way up.”

  “Hide the silverware,” Canal said.

  The man’s name was Holinshead. He was suspended in age somewhere between thirty-two and forty-six, with a marine crewcut and eyes as flat as pewter cuff links. His navy suit, black rayon tie, and white shirt might have come in one piece and zipped up the back. He snapped his credentials-case open and shut. “Which one’s Zagreb?”

  Zagreb unfolded himself to his feet and offered his hand. He felt brief pressure and then cold air on his empty palm.

  “I’m detaining a man at the Packard plant this afternoon,” said Holinshead. “I want to borrow one of your detectives for backup and I need a place to question the suspect outside of the federal building.”

  “Two interrogation rooms on this floor,” the lieutenant said, “no waiting.”

  “No, no place official. I want to keep him disoriented, uncertain whether he’s been taken by the law or the Gestapo working behind enemy lines or the Nazi-American Bund or a bunch of vigilantes from the American Legion. He’ll have a different set of lies for each one, so he’s bound to stumble.”

  Burke said, “What’d he do, take a shot at Wendell Willkie?”

  The FBI man ran his dull metallic eyes over the officer, lingering on his tie hanging at half-mast and sleeves turned back to expose the thick hair carpeting his wrists. “It’s not what he’s done. It’s what he might do.”

  “We arresting ’em for that now?”

  The eyes slid to the big man who’d asked the question, still seated with the Free Press spread on his lap. “Name and rank?”

  “Starvo Canal, Supreme Knight, Knights of Columbus.”

  “Sergeant,” supplied Zagreb, looking wearily at Canal.

  “Stand up, please, Sergeant. Put out the cigar.”

  Canal looked at the lieutenant, who rolled his eyes and nodded. He set aside the newspaper, took a long last pull on the smoldering black stump, pressed it out in an old burn crater on the desk, and rose. Before the war had suspended such amusements he’d rejected offers from several other divisions to join them and play for their side in the annual intradepartmental football tournament. He was a defensive line all by himself.

  The Special Agent in Charge shook his head. “Too intimidating. If he sees you coming he may bolt and fall under a drill press.” As the sergeant resumed his seat and picked up the dead cigar, Holinshead turned to McReary. “You. At least you look like you’ve been near an ironing board recently.”

  The young man snapped to attention. “Sir, Daniel McReary, sir. Detective third-grade.”

  “At ease, son. I’m not MacArthur. Take off your hat.”

  McReary uncovered his pink scalp.

  “Keep it on when we enter the plant. You’ll look less like a CPA. Does any of you own a suit that isn’t black?”

  “I don’t own this one,” Burke said. “I borrowed it from my uncle before they buried him.”

  “We don’t get a uniform allowance.” Zagreb took a key off a ring from his pocket and gave it to the agent. “Room eleven-oh-two, the California. It’s in the Negro section.”

  “Satisfactory. These fascists fear the colored man.”

  “What’s this kraut’s name?” Zagreb asked.

  “Fred Taylor.”

  “Fred Taylor?” Canal struck a match. “I partnered with a Taylor in a prowl car. He was as German as a fox hunt.”

  “It was Alfred Schneider before he changed it. These Fifth Columnists are clever at assimilating. You won’t trip them up by asking them who won the World Series.”

  Burke said, “Do you know who won the Series?”<
br />
  “The Yankees.”

  “Wrong, mein fuhrer! It was the Cardinals.”

  Holinshead looked at Zagreb. “Lieutenant, if you can’t control your men, I’ll ask the commissioner to do it for you.”

  “Phone’s free.”

  After a pleasing season of silence, Zagreb spoke to Burke. “Sit down and shut up.”

  The officer shrugged and obeyed.

  “Taylor’s burrowed in deep,” the FBI man said. “Before Pearl Harbor he hung doors on Packards while contributing to the North American Aryan Alliance, a group that funneled money directly to the Reich. Now he puts bushings on Rolls-Royce aircraft engines. All he has to do is drop a wrench on the right spot to send a bunch of our boys crashing to the ground.”

  Zagreb said, “It’s that easy?”

  “I was simplifying, to make my point. Surely you see the danger.”

  “Danger’s right. Those line workers are rough as hard times. Two of you enough?”

  “We’re stopping at the federal building to pick up Junkers and Dial, experienced men in the field. We’ll handle it. Let’s go, Detective.”

  “He’s right, by the way.”

  The agent stopped in mid-turn. “I beg your pardon?”

  “What Burke said about the Series,” Zagreb said. “Four games to one, St. Louis. DiMaggio did bupkus.”

  Nothing appeared to be happening between the pewter studs in Holinshead’s face. “I’m a Senators rooter myself.”

  After the FBI man left with McReary, Burke yawned. “You don’t get fruitcake from him come Christmas.”

  “None of us will be here come Christmas if you don’t learn to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Sorry, Zag.”

  “You, too, Canal. You don’t even belong to the Knights of Columbus.”

  “They kicked me out when they found out I was Greek Orthodox.” The big sergeant was puffing up gales of thoughtful smoke. “I worked a kidnapping with Junkers and Dial when I was with Missing Persons. They was always talking about the old days in Chicago. Once, they tied up a barber they thought was harboring John Dillinger, took off his shoes and socks and put a hot iron to the soles of his feet.”