Canal said, “Include me out. One wah-wah and I’m suspended for unnecessary use of deadly force.”
McReary said, “What would I do with a day off? I got just enough gas stamps to make it halfway out on the Belle Isle bridge.”
“I’ll remember you monkeys when they kick me upstairs.”
Canal grinned around his cigar. “Okay if I don’t start sweating till nineteen sixty?”
The loudspeaker mounted on the wall crackled constantly between radio transmissions that had nothing to do with them. Now the soporific-sounding dispatcher came on to summon cars to an address Zagreb knew on Hastings.
“That’s the Ruby,” he said.
Canal jerked his chin at McReary. “Burksie does all his sulking by his locker. That’s where he parks his flask. Tell him we got a homicide.”
“That should cheer him up.” McReary left.
* * *
By day the nightclub looked as empty as the squad room, chairs upended on all the tables; the tobacco-and-liquor reek was a little more pronounced.
A fat, nicotine-stained manager Burke recognized from mug shots conducted them to an upstairs hallway, where they were met by the officers on the scene. One looked too young for military service. His partner was a paunchy grayhead who’d obviously been called up out of retirement. If the draft continued, the department would be excavating them from Mt. Elliott Cemetery.
“Looks open-and-shut, Lieutenant.” Grayhead jerked a thumb toward the door behind him. “We got the body and the perp.”
Zagreb asked if the detective division was recruiting uniforms that season.
Grayhead looked confused. “No, sir.”
“Just curious. If you boys are opening and shutting cases now, this trip wasn’t necessary. There’s a war on, you know. Gasoline is blood.”
“Seems to me I heard that somewhere.”
“Next time listen.”
“Yes, sir.” The response was disgruntled.
The youngster saluted smartly.
“Save it for Eisenhower. Who’s the subject?”
The junior officer produced a neat notebook. “Gerald Dugan, no middle. White male, age twenty-six. Says he’s a musician.”
“You were right not to take his word for it. What else?”
Notebook. “The vic. Griselda Rose Simone, Negro female, age twenty, according to the manager. Contusions on the throat, tongue extended, body still warm. Parallel longitudinal scars on the abdomen, possibly nail marks. Naked. Sex crime, maybe. That’s speculation, sir. I’m not a detective.”
“Can’t think why anybody’d want to be. You studying to be a doctor?”
He flushed. “Sort of, sir. I hope to enlist with the medical corps.”
“Stick around, both of you.” Zagreb opened the door.
The Ruby kept a bedroom for the manager to rest when the accounts didn’t balance before dawn; that was the official explanation, but liquor and munitions weren’t the only business in town. There was an iron-framed bed and a little sitting area to break the ice over a bottle of bonded. Jerry Dugan was sitting there in his undershirt and pegtop slacks with the bottle in one hand. His hair needed his ivory comb and gravity had pulled at his youthful features. Zagreb transferred his attention from him to the unclothed woman on the bed.
The singer wouldn’t be gyrating on any more bandstands. She lay lewdly spread-eagled, her evening gown, lacy underthings, and gold-painted heels on the floor and her eyes rolled up toward the low ceiling. Young Dr. Kildare hadn’t exaggerated the rest. Strangled bodies didn’t look as glamorous in the real world as they did in movies. Her tongue had sought escape from the constriction on her throat and the deep purple lacerations to the left of her navel looked as if they’d been made by a puma.
“Jesus.” McReary crossed himself.
“I think He knows already.” The lieutenant didn’t bother checking for a pulse. He returned to Dugan, snatched the bottle from his hand, held it out for Canal to take, and inspected both sets of fingernails. Then he slapped the trumpeter’s face methodically, forehand and backhand. Dugan groaned and tried to stare at the back of his own skull. The slapping stopped and his chin sank back onto his chest.
“Gone as the Kaiser,” Zagreb said. “Let’s talk to the manager.”
McReary fetched him. The man looked annoyed. “I run a decent place. One curfew beef, two solicitation complaints. I canned the girls. I can’t be everyplace at once.”
“I guess that’s why you made bail last time. What happened?”
“Search me. They came early to rehearse a number, they said. They wanted to surprise Red Lot, so they asked to do it up here till it was ready. I trust people, that’s my problem. They’re up here ten minutes, then I hear screaming. I thought it was a jump tune at first. I got a tin ear. By the time I ran up to check, everything was what you see.”
“Dugan drunk when he came in?” Zagreb asked.
“Well, he wasn’t bouncing off walls. You can’t always tell with musicians. I didn’t have any problem with him buying a bottle; to loosen up, he said.”
“Okay, beat it.”
“No racket stuff here,” Canal said when the manager beat it. “Kick it over to Homicide?”
“An ox like Osprey’d just tie it with a cord and hand it to the prosecutor.”
Burke said, “What’s wrong with that?”
“Ten minutes isn’t much time for Dugan to drink himself half into a coma and claw up and strangle a healthy girl.”
“Manager could be wrong about the time.” McReary kept his gaze away from the corpse. He was looking a little gray. “You said yourself two drinks and Dugan’s in Oz.”
“Body’s still warm. Also his nails are clean. No skin or blood under ’em to match the claw marks on her belly. It’s a swell setup, but they worked too fast.”
Canal flicked ash off his cigar. “Who’s they?”
Someone tapped on the door. Zagreb opened it on the kid in uniform. “Band’s downstairs, Lieutenant. Send ’em home?”
“No. I’ll talk to them downstairs.”
* * *
“Holy smokes.” Red Lot, scarlet and sweating in a bright yellow Hawaiian shirt, mopped his face and neck with a silk handkerchief the size of a tablecloth. “Little Grizzy? Holy smokes.”
“Yeah.” Zagreb had asked the Red Hots to sit, and they’d taken their usual seats on the bandstand, Lot behind his drums. The lieutenant stood before them like a conductor while McReary and Canal straddled chairs they’d taken from tables on the club floor. Burke remained upstairs with Dugan and the corpse. “How did she and Dugan get along?”
“Okay, I guess,” Lot said. “I mean, I don’t let arguments get out of hand and I got a policy against dating inside the band. That’s asking for trouble. But those two never gave me worries either way. They was friendly enough, no more.”
“She have a fella?”
“She was up to her hips in stage-door johnnies every night, but she didn’t encourage ’em, or any of us either. Just between us, I think she batted left.” The bandleader struck a rimshot off his snare. A nervous chuckle rippled through the band.
“Cut that out. This isn’t Kay Kyser. We got a dead girl upstairs.”
“Sorry.” Lot laid aside his sticks.
“The manager of this joint says Dugan and Miss Simone told him they were rehearsing a number they wanted to surprise you with. You know anything about that?”
“Which one said that?”
The lieutenant looked at the fat man leaning on his forearms on the bar. “Dugan,” the manager said.
“He was pulling your leg,” said Lot. “What do I always say about duets, boys?”
The band raised their voices in chorus. “‘If I wanted most of you to sit on your hands, I’d put you in the audience and save a buck.’” The clarinetist added a fillip at the end, lowering his instrument quickly when Zagreb glared at him.
Red Lot nodded, pleased with the harmony. “I guess they cooked up that excuse to play another
kind of duet. Maybe I got her wrong, or maybe she made an exception for so-so horn men.”
“Why’d you keep him on, he was so bad?”
“Service snapped up all the good ones. Anyway, Lungs likes the kid, and Lungs is what packs ’em in here every night.”
Zagreb looked at the colored trumpeter, who took up every inch of his chair with his collar spread and a gold chain around his thick neck from which dangled a tiny gold crucifix. Chester Nelson nodded. “He’s okay. I popped off a lot when I was his age. He’ll grow out of it; but he’ll never be no horn player.”
“Did you grow out of it?”
“I guess you mean that mixup with Ellington. There wasn’t no knife, I don’t know how that got started. Just yellin’, boss, that’s all. It was his outfit, so it was me that left.” He touched the crucifix with one of his big meaty hands as if to swear on it.
“Where’ve you been the last hour?”
Lungs’s eyes widened. “Sportree’s. We always drop in there before a gig, to oil up.”
“Who’s we?”
“Us.” He swept a hand around the bandstand.
“All of you?” It was a Negro bar. The owner only let the Horsemen in to discourage stickups.
The trumpeter grinned broadly. “They’re all honorary coloreds when they’re with me.”
“Speak for yourself,” said one of the men in the trombone section. “I’m temperance.”
Zagreb asked him to stand. He was only an inch taller than when sitting, a hollow-cheeked shrimp with arms no bigger around than copper pipe. “Sit down. You couldn’t strangle a chipmunk.”
“You ain’t exactly Tarzan yourself, copper.”
“I said sit down. You want us to frisk you for muggles?”
The man sat down. McReary got up and tugged on Zagreb’s coattails, gesturing for him to bend down from the stand. He whispered in his ear. The lieutenant straightened, smiling sourly.
“My colleague reminds me Sportree’s is only a five-minute walk from here. There’s a fire escape out back, so the manager didn’t have to see anything. Any of you guys step out for a leak?”
Lungs said, “Me. I got weak kidneys. I wasn’t gone three minutes.”
“That sound about right?” The other musicians shrugged. “Anyone go to parochial school?” A few nods. “Okay, you can explain it to the rest. We’re checking your nails.”
Canal took charge without being asked. He was the least likely member of the squad to encounter resistance. After a few minutes he stepped off the bandstand. “Clean, Zag. Of blood and skin, anyways. Some of these boys could use a lesson in hygiene. Boy on vibes chews his to the elbow.” He spoke low.
Zagreb kept his volume down as well. “What about Lungs?”
“Whitest thing about him. He don’t leave his barber’s without a manicure.”
“We can eliminate the slobs. The rest had plenty of time to tidy up.” He stared at the sergeant. “You okay?”
“Fine ’n’ dandy.” His speech was slurred.
Zagreb frowned, then raised his voice to the band. “Leave your names and addresses with Detective McReary, and stick close to home. No show tonight. The place is closed.”
“Hey!” The manager stiffened behind the bar.
The lieutenant had already seen his nails. He wouldn’t ask the man to make him a sandwich, but it was just dirt. “Tell it to the marines. No, wait—they placed the Ruby off-limits, didn’t they?”
Red Lot struck another one off the rim. The fat man flushed and left the room.
The uniforms took Dugan down to 1300, Detroit Police Headquarters, with Zagreb’s instructions to book him for suspicion. The trumpeter negotiated the stairs with rubber ankles and an officer holding up each arm. In a little while the medical examiner showed up, humming as he ascended the stairs. The squad repaired to the Chrysler, where the lieutenant touched Burke’s arm behind the wheel. “You dating a meter maid?”
“I’m riding the fidelity train just now. Sadie found a cocktail napkin with a phone number in my pocket. Why a meter maid?”
“They aren’t making new cars any more. You strip those gears, you’ll need to borrow a scooter.”
“Be an improvement.” But he worked the clutch gently.
“I got a sawbuck says it’s Lot,” Canal said. “See how red and sweaty he was? Like he just went ten rounds with a fire escape.”
Zagreb said, “He always looks like that. My dough’s on Lungs. Those hands could throttle a coconut.”
“Nuts,” said McReary. “Famous people don’t do murder.”
“Tell it to John Wilkes Booth.” Burke flashed his Clark Gable grin at a pair of nurses in a crosswalk. One smiled back. Her companion grabbed her wrist and jerked it like a leash.
“He was just famous on account of he bumped Lincoln.”
“He was already boffo box-office in the Raymond Massey picture.” Canal blew cigar exhaust out his window.
Not enough. The lieutenant rolled down his, preferring the street odor. It was garbage day. “Anybody can duck out of a dive like Sportree’s without being noticed, even a big shot like Lungs. Maybe he objected to Dugan messing with a colored girl.”
Burke said, “So why not kill Dugan?”
“He’d be just as sore at them both. Framing Dugan punished him too and took Lungs off the hook for Simone.”
“Lucky for him Dugan got a snootful,” Burke said.
“It didn’t take much. He’s an amateur drinker.”
“So let’s lean on Lungs,” Canal said.
“Maybe wait to hear from the M.E.” McReary studied law nights. “He’ll get the size of the killer’s hands from the marks on the neck. You don’t have to be Buster Crabbe to choke a dame. That midget on trombone could’ve done it if he had time.”
“This dame looked plenty healthy on the bandstand,” Zagreb said. “Let’s drop in on Lungs.”
“You’re forgetting his fingernails passed inspection. Everybody’s did.”
The lieutenant looked at the third-grader in the rearview. “You want everything to go together slick as spit, get a job with Ford.”
Burke looked at his watch. “He might not be home yet.”
“Even better.” Zagreb opened the glove compartment and took out a ring of skeleton keys.
* * *
Chester “Lungs” Nelson kept an apartment on Erskine, above a rib joint they could smell the moment they turned into the block. When they stepped out of the car, Canal stumbled on the curb and caught himself noisily against a cluster of trash cans. Zagreb stared. “You drunk?”
“Just a slug, Zag, honest.” The sergeant slid the bottle they’d taken from Dugan out of his coat. Zagreb grabbed it, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed at the contents. “Back in the car,” he said.
“What about Lungs?” Burke asked.
“Lungs can wait. We’re going to a drugstore.”
The nearest drugstore happened to be the one where Zagreb had drunk gin rickeys with Shirley Grabowski. The soda jerk in the paper hat wasn’t on duty, but their business was with the pharmacist, a chubby sixty with humorous eyes who heard the request and said, “Don’t you boys have your own chemists?”
“Clear up in Lansing,” Zagreb said. “Two weeks’ minimum. An hour’d be better.”
“Well, I don’t know. There’s so many possibilities, and a different test for each. I’m a little rusty. Mostly I just fill little pill bottles from big ones.”
“Start with all the common stuff. We’re not looking for Fu Manchu.”
The man took the bottle and said he’d do what he could. The Four Horsemen stopped at the counter long enough for Canal to gulp down three cups of coffee, then returned to the squad room and waited for the phone to ring.
Burke shook his head. “How do you do it, Zag? You just yank the handle and the pinball does the rest. Dope in the bottle proves Dugan was set up, just like you said.”
“Unless he killed the girl first, then doped himself to make it play that way. But the toilet’
s on the ground floor, so where’d he clean his nails without the manager seeing him?”
McReary said, “I thought that wasn’t important.”
“He didn’t say that,” Burke said. “Manager in on it?”
“Or did it himself,” Zagreb said, “but why?”
“Same reason as Lungs. He don’t mix his whites with his coloreds. He provided the bottle, didn’t he?”
Zagreb said, “It was waiting in the room for the next customer. Anyone who knew what they were up to could’ve snuck in, spiked the booze, and went back out onto the fire escape to wait for it to work. I’m eliminating Dugan again. No motive.”
“It wasn’t Lungs.”
Everyone looked at Canal, whose voice sounded like a motor trying to start. His broad face was pale and shiny: The cure was worse than the condition. “That’s too long to be away from the band at Sportree’s and still have time to clean up. Somebody would’ve noticed he’d been in the can a long time.”
“Sure, they’d all cover for him,” Burke said. “He’s their star attraction.”
The phone rang. Zagreb took the call, listened, said thanks, and forked the receiver. “Chloral hydrate. Knockout drops. There was enough in the bottle to stun a moose.”
“Lucky it was Canal drunk it,” Burke said.
The lieutenant remained seated with the candlestick phone in his lap and his hands resting on it. “Who’s good for a search warrant?”
Burke said, “You mean a judge we ain’t ticked off lately? Blake just got back from Canada. He was gone a month hunting bears.”
“Tail, you mean. We gave him a pass on that underage intern last Christmas. Time to collect.” Zagreb started dialing.
Canal rubbed his temples. “What we looking for?”
“I’m not just sure, but it’ll be nasty.”
* * *
They tossed the Ruby Lounge from top to bottom, starting with the murder room—minus a corpse now—and finishing in the basement, a dusty monument to Prohibition with what was left of a copper still after the last scrap drive, empty Old Log Cabin crates, and buckets of fusel oil. Canal, recovering now, said he could get up a swell victory party from that alone. But nothing they found was evidence in a homicide investigation.
Detroit Is Our Beat Page 14
