The Macedonian rang up the sale and sat on a stool on the other end of the bar, snapping open a Greek newspaper.
“Why put the arm on me?” Burke asked Organdy. “No friends on your rag?”
“I got fired yesterday, that’s why I went off on a bat. Before that I was four weeks off the sauce.”
“That don’t answer the question how come me.”
“Best way to make a friend is to put yourself in his debt. I’ll make good on it, don’t you worry.”
“I’m not as dumb as that bartender. You didn’t show him that fiver you picked up with the rest of your stuff.”
“Don’t you want to know why I got the sack?”
“I don’t guess that Nazi sub in the lake helped.”
“Go on, ride me. That’s why I went on the wagon. I’d been sober at the time, Zagreb and Canal wouldn’t’ve put it over. I’m giving you boys a pass on that, seeing as how it was me screwed up. I got a warning: One more slip and I might as well enlist and write for Stars and Stripes.”
“What’d you do, spot Josef Goebbels cutting a rug with Ginger Rogers in the Oriole Terrace?”
“My piece never saw print. My editor shitcanned it and me with it. It was a hundred percent accurate and he threw me out on my ass. No kill fee, no nothing. Just the air.”
Burke drank off half his beer, wiped the foam from his stubble. “You spilling military secrets now? I don’t mind bending an ordinance or two, but when it comes to treason you can step off that scaffold all on your lonesome.”
“Where would I get military secrets? It was human-interest, that’s all: a thousand words on a big-time industrialist in Cleveland. Word is he bankrolled the Norden bombsight out of his own pocket.”
“What’s his moniker, Daddy Warbucks?”
“Abner Elias Smallwood.”
“Drink up,” Burke said after a moment. “We’re going to Thirteen Hundred.”
“Whoa! I didn’t ask you to get me out of the clink just to wind up at police headquarters.”
A pair of handcuffs struck the bar with a bang. “You got three choices: Put ’em on, I put ’em on for you, you come along without ’em. Personally I’d choose number one over number two. When I put ’em on, it takes half a day to feel your fingers after you’re sprung.”
Organdy tossed back his bourbon. “Number three.”
Burke gathered up the cuffs and dropped them in his side pocket. “They always pick three. I should be a pitchman for Lux Flakes.”
* * *
“He’s in holding,” Burke told Zagreb. “I thought you’d want to talk about how we go at him first.”
“I want this bird Smallwood. I wanted him ever since he helped set up that hit on Eddie the Carp last year.”
Canal said, “Screw Karpalov. One less cop killer.”
“We almost got tagged with that one. To begin with I don’t like guys getting set up on our watch and to end with I don’t like almost getting stuck with the rap and I don’t like guys setting up kills for cash and then walking away like it didn’t happen to begin with.”
Burke shook his head. “I should’ve skipped that beer. You got me dizzy enough.”
McReary got up from his chair and paced the almost-empty squad room. “Frankie Orr says this Smallwood’s a go-between, running errands for jillionaires with procurement big shots in Washington. If he didn’t step outside his specialty to peddle Eddie’s head for a U.S. marshal, we’d never have heard of him. He’s way outside our league.”
Zagreb said, “I can’t prove it, but I got a pain in my knee says Smallwood arranged for the marshal to go down fighting arrest so he couldn’t testify against him. Bunny Belsen knocked a chip off that knee with a .32 when I was on foot patrol. It hurts when it rains or somebody pulls a fast one. I say it’s time for some interleague play.”
Burke resumed cracking his knuckles. “Let’s go down and put Organdy in the batting cage.”
They took the elevator down to third-floor Holding, where Burke goggled at the man in the cell, a middle-ager about Organdy’s build, but with a flushed face that didn’t match his.
The detective buttonholed a man who was too old for active duty and too skinny for his uniform. “Where’s the guy I put in here? I left orders not to book him.”
“He went home. His wife posted bail.”
“His wife ran off three years ago with a sword-swallower with Ringling Brothers.” Burke looked again at the man in the cell. “Where’d you get those clothes, buddy?”
* * *
Zagreb put a five-dollar bill on the commissioner’s desk. “Burke saw it in Organdy’s hand, torn corner and all. The arresting officers emptied the pockets of the d-and-d in holding, and he was wearing a brown leather jacket and dungarees when they put him in with the newshawk. When Organdy found out the guy’s wife was on the way with bail, he greased his palm, switched clothes with him, and walked out with Sherlock here.”
“How did they manage it in a room filled with policemen?” Commissioner Witherspoon was looking at the skinny officer.
“It’s dark in that cell. Bulb burned out.”
“He’s right, sir,” Zagreb said. “Been that way a year. Replacements are tough to come by on account of the war.”
“Good cops, too. You’re dismissed, Officer.” Witherspoon turned to the Horsemen. “Where is the prisoner now?”
Canal said, “He left with his old lady.”
The commissioner’s face reddened. It looked like a peach pit wearing glasses. “You let him go after he helped a man break jail?”
“Technically it wasn’t a break,” Burke said. “Organdy wasn’t under arrest. I just parked him there so I could fill the lieutenant in before we questioned him on this Smallwood business.”
“I take it he changed his mind.”
“He wasn’t crazy about the idea to begin with. I didn’t exactly give him a choice.”
“So on top of embarrassing this department by losing a witness in custody, you’ve opened it up to a suit for unlawful incarceration.”
Zagreb said, “That’s a lot to hope for. If he sobered up enough to take a powder, hopping the first freight to anyplace that isn’t Detroit or Cleveland would be his next bright thought. Guys like Smallwood don’t get rich throwing their money around. He’d sooner invest in a shooter than a press agent.”
“APB, sir?” It was McReary’s first contribution to the conversation.
“Absolutely not. The less noise we make over this mess, the better. Forget Smallwood, all of you.” His scowl got worse. “Lieutenant, I’ve told you before not to smoke in this office.”
“Sorry.” Zagreb put his Chesterfield back in the pack. “I wanted to cover the stink. It’s the first time I was ordered off a case of murder in our own jurisdiction.”
“The Karpalov case is closed. The man responsible was shot to death by the police in Washington, D.C., when he resisted arrest.”
“He made a deal with Smallwood to set Karpalov up. He had a personal score to settle and he cashed in his war bonds to meet his fee.”
“All you have to base that on is the word of a slimy Ohio attorney and a dead deputy U.S. marshal, a disgrace to his shield. Organdy’s editor is right. We’ve got nothing on the man that will stick, and he’s in a position to make things hot for us if we start making accusations without evidence.”
* * *
A young uniform who was expecting his call-up any day intercepted the Four Horsemen on the stairs. He was holding a long envelope. “Messenger brought it from the county building, Lieutenant.”
Zagreb opened it, glanced at the contents, and put them and the envelope in an inside pocket. “The warrant from Springer. That one can wait.”
“What for?” McReary asked. “A little while ago we were bitching about how long it was taking.”
“A little while ago all we cared about was a shipment of black market sardines.”
“We’re ignoring a direct order from the police commissioner?”
Ca
nal lit Zagreb’s cigarette, then his own cigar. “Cheer up, rook. All he can do is sack us. We got to get all the insubordination out of our system before the draft. They shoot you for it over there.”
* * *
The Detroit Herald operated out of two floors in the Guardian Building, a brick pile designed in the modern Dutch style on Griswold. The paper’s circulation was commonly assigned to Bolsheviks, anarchists, and Republicans, who since war was declared had dropped their subscriptions to avoid showing up on subversive lists, but skulked about the sidewalk newsstands when they thought no one was looking.
The Racket Squad was a favorite target. The publisher and managing editor, Hillary Squant, retired from the National Guard with the rank of major, had a brother-in-law who’d been passed over for commissioner, and a nephew currently serving a three-year sentence in the state penitentiary in Jackson for selling contraband out of the trunk of his car in defense plant parking lots: The headlines covering his arrest in the News and Free Press had been among the first to feature the Horsemen.
But Squant was a paper tiger who hid behind his fire-breathing columns. In person, he was a meek gnome with a wrinkled bald head and a silver beard and moustache waxed into tridentlike points. He greeted the squad in his glass office, decorated with framed portraits of Horace Greeley, Joseph Pulitzer, and—for reasons known only to him—Walt Disney. He had on a double-breasted vest over a candy-striped shirt with a cutthroat Edwardian collar. “What can I do for you boys?” He raised his voice above the din of typewriters and file drawers in the city room.
The four visitors exchanged glances.
“How about giving us a hinge at that think piece that got Asa Organdy canned?” Zagreb asked.
“I’m surprised he told you about that. It’s a tragedy to see a brilliant journalistic career brought low by drink. I destroyed the article. Put it in the incinerator myself.”
“That hot to touch, was it?”
“For the future of this journal, yes. If one word of that piece ever got into print, the lawsuit would bankrupt this institution.”
Canal said, “I guess all the reliable triggermen are in uniform.”
Squant’s face darkened. “That’s just the kind of reckless statement that obliged me to let Organdy go. I don’t know what gin mill he was in when he heard all that guff, or if he just picked the man’s name out of the Social Register and decided to whip up a pulp story, but he’d have been better off making up a name and offering it to Dime Detective.”
“If you read it, you must remember what he wrote,” Zagreb said. “That’s what we’re here for, to horse-trade.”
“Why take up my time? If Organdy told you what happened, he can tell you what he wrote.”
“We were going to do just that when he took it on the ankles. His landlord hasn’t seen him and we called all his favorite bars, which I mean to tell you is a lot of nickels. You wouldn’t be hiding him, would you, a material witness in a homicide investigation?”
“Are you implying you believe his cock-and-bull story?”
“The judge did.” Zagreb slid the long envelope from his pocket and thumbed out a corner of the warrant signed by the Honorable Vernon Springer.
* * *
“That’s all?” Zagreb asked, when Squant finished talking. “Smallwood bankrolls gambling interests in Detroit?”
“That’s what Organdy wrote.”
“Horseshit,” Burke said. “Smallwood’s big-time. What he rakes off wouldn’t pay his office expenses.”
“One more reason to disregard everything in the article,” said the publisher. “I’ve held up my end of the bargain, Lieutenant. Now put away that warrant.”
“Relax, Major. Who cares if you got a drum or two of unrationed gas hid amongst the rolls of newsprint? Nobody—if you can name the source of the gambling story.”
“I resent the implication.” But the publisher chewed on the corners of his moustache. “It must never get back to him who told you. He doesn’t come downtown often, but according to the copy filed by my police reporters, he’s dangerously unstable.”
“You ought to take a crack at a Doc Savage yarn yourself,” Burke said. “They fried Pittsburgh Phil last year.”
“We don’t give up our snitches,” said Zagreb.
“A loathsome word.” Squant drummed his fingers on the desk, then leaned forward, gesturing to the lieutenant, who leaned forward also. He whispered in his ear.
* * *
The joint was on Hastings, one of those blank-faced one-story buildings with a flat roof people drove past every day on their way to work and never noticed. That description didn’t apply to the man who opened the door. He was bigger than Sergeant Canal, deep brown, with hundreds of stitches crisscrossing his shaven scalp. His head looked like a medicine ball.
The rest of the man was all slabbed muscle under a striped jersey and a pair of overalls. A meat tenderizer dangled from his left hand at his side, a steel hammer with ridges on the striking surface.
“Who wants him?” The voice rumbled like a sunken tramp steamer sliding off a submerged shoal.
“Us.” Zagreb flashed his gold shield.
“You can wait.” The door thumped into its frame. It was a fire door, brown-painted steel.
Canal reached up, rapped a nearby window, and got a dull ring. “Steel shutters. They ought to donate the place to a scrap drive.”
“Not just yet.” Zagreb pointed out a ragged line of chips in the building’s concrete façade. “Frankie Orr tried to take over the policy business back in thirty-nine; he lost half his guys and decided to lay off. That don’t mean he won’t try again when the boys are back from the fighting. Every bike messenger and scrubwoman in the Black Bottom plays numbers.”
“Lothar there ain’t holding ’em off with his toy hammer,” Burke said.
“He just softens up the gristle. His boss makes the best chitlins in town, but I wouldn’t risk eating ’em after he’s just had a run-in with the competition.”
Canal said, “If he’s such a hot ticket, how come this here’s our first visit?”
“Up till now, the only guts he’s cooked belonged to hogs and hoods.”
“How do we know that ain’t still true?”
“We don’t, which is why we’re here. Also I got a yen for collard greens.”
The door opened again and the big man stepped aside, the hammer still hanging from his fist.
Inside, a haze of smoke obscured the details of the room, which took up most of the building. The corners were stacked with stout cartons and what appeared to be party streamers hung from steel trusses overhead. Canal smacked into one of the streamers. It turned out to be a plucked chicken hanging head down, its feet tied with twine. He impugned someone’s parentage and wiped his face with a handkerchief.
A voice came from the haze. “Ain’t no way to greet a man in his place of bidness.”
Zagreb said, “Jesus, Little Bob. You think you might open a window?” His eyes stung and his nose was running from the fried-pepper fumes lacing the smell of hot grease.
“Reuben.”
Metal clanked, a hinge squeaked. Gradually the fog of smoke dissipated, drawn into the draft from the open shutters. Little by little, the room identified itself as a vast kitchen, containing a twelve-burner stove, a heavy oaken door with a thick pane of frosted glass, and a white enamel sink big enough to conduct an autopsy. The dead fowl strung up from the beams stirred in the current of air.
“Little Bob. Sergeant Canal and Detectives Burke and McReary. Boys, say hello to Robert Robideux, the Chef Boy-Ar-Dee of the Black Bottom.”
“Nuts to that. What I cook would eat right through the can.”
The black man stood behind a butcher block bigger than the commissioner’s desk, but he still had to bend almost double to flay open the carcass atop it from belly to gullet with one swift motion; the curved blade was as big as a bowie’s but looked like a penknife in his grasp. He was nearly as broad as he was tall, all hard fat in a
bloodstained apron that could double as a sheet and a straw boater tipped to one side. His face was round, ringed with extra chins, and seemed about to break into a barn-door grin, but never did while the Racket Squad was in his presence.
Canal whistled. “If you’re Little Bob, I’m Prince Kong.”
“They called me that ever since my daddy was alive. He was Big Nabob to folks that knew him.”
Burke said, “I thought I saw the resemblance. I was there when they put Big Nabob into the ground in a piano crate.”
“Thass a damn lie. The boys chipped in and had it made special in a furniture factory in Grand Rapids. Solid African hardwood with a pink satin lining, cost thirty grand.”
“Not to mention what it set you back to plug all those holes Frankie Orr put in him,” Zagreb said. “Of course, numbers is just Little Bob’s hobby now. He supplies every colored restaurant in the state.”
“Not just yet. Coupla places in the Thumb ain’t got the message yet.”
“Just don’t throw any pineapples in Detroit, that’s all we ask.” The lieutenant pointed his chin at the big pile of entrails in the sink. “Anybody we know?”
“Ain’t nobody here but us chickens, boss. I’m catering Linus Washington’s wedding Saturday. I done all his nuptials since the first. Damn!” The chicken he was gutting stirred suddenly. He strangled it one-handed without laying down the knife. “Thass a shame. She’d of made good breeding stock for cockfights.”
McReary excused himself and went out. He came back in a few moments later, just in time to see Reuben pounding the freshly killed hen with his steel hammer. He excused himself again.
“Department’s recruiting vegetarians now, I reckon,” Little Bob said when he returned, pale as a pillowcase. The big man mopped his bloody hands on his apron. “What can I do for you gents today?”
Zagreb drew the envelope out of his pocket. “Vice is even shorter-handed than we are. This is a warrant to search the joint for gambling paraphernalia.”
Detroit Is Our Beat Page 20
