Jitterbug

by Loren D. Estleman

  The movie program started on schedule, disappointing those who wanted the music to continue. The March of Time caught the president fishing at Warm Springs, showed Alice Faye and Phil Harris loading gear and personnel aboard a ship carrying a USO troupe to Pantelleria, and presented an “Arsenal of Democracy” feature on the bustling defense plants in California, New Jersey, Indiana, and Michigan, the sound track lost beneath applause when the audience recognized River Rouge, Willow Run, and Dodge Main. A Popeye cartoon followed, then the main feature, Lady of Burlesque. The movie, based on a murder mystery purportedly written by Gypsy Rose Lee, the stripper, failed to charm Gunther. He guessed who the murderer was thirty minutes in and found the subject matter about as sexy as a Playtex ad in a magazine. On the way home he argued about it with Susan, who found it difficult to be critical of anything from Hollywood.

  They made up, and as she snuggled in close to him he left the expressway and took the back roads. The hour was early. He knew of a clearing where they could be alone. She made no protest as he turned off the tree-lined road and bucked up over the natural berm. As he drew the brake, the truck’s lights fell on a dark patch on the ground fifty yards ahead, which lifted in a sudden, ragged cloud like a pile of dried leaves struck by a gust. The movement, and the harsh cacophony that accompanied it, startled Susan, whose nails dug into his biceps.

  He patted her hand. His own heart was fluttering, but he made his voice calm. “It’s just crows. They must have found something.”

  “What?” Her grip hadn’t relaxed.

  “A deer, probably. Someone hit it and it crawled off there and died.” As he said it he remembered how long it had been since he’d seen a deer so close to Willow Run. He reached for the door handle.

  She didn’t let go. “Don’t get out.”

  “I’d better take a look.” Gently he pried her fingers loose and opened the door and stepped down.

  A low ground mist smoked in the beams from the headlights. The bed of pine needles and last year’s leaves was damp. He hoped the moisture wouldn’t ruin his only good pair of shoes. Above him, the crows had perched in the trees, where they found courage to harangue him noisily. He smelled decayed flesh then, saw what the birds had been feeding on. He had just enough presence of mind to remember his date and step outside the light to vomit.

  PART THREE

  Is This Trip Necessary?

  chapter twenty

  CRAZY HENRY, LOOKING SHOCKINGLY frail in a full-dress tuxedo and butterfly collar too large for his wattled neck, entered the dining room of the Book-Cadillac Hotel on the arms of his wife Clara and Harry Bennett. Mrs. Ford was dressed all in black for her martyred son Edsel and the men had satin mourning bands sewn to their sleeves. It was obvious that Bennett and Clara were supporting the eighty-year-old patriarch of America’s number one automotive family between them; if they were to let go of his elbows he would collapse into a pile of brittle bones on the steps leading to the dais. Even his small sharp eyes, set deep beneath the mantel of his great bony brow, had taken on the luminescent quality of a wandering mind. He did not look like a man who had assumed complete control of his company in the wake of his son’s death. Nor had he, despite the claims of an army of press agents employed by the head office in Dearborn. Harry Bennett, bowlegged and short-coupled, had been calling all the shots from his office in the Ford Service Department since before Edsel Ford ascended to his paper presidency, and in the presence of Henrys failing health and weakening faculties had acquired authority unprecedented in the history of the one-man firm. It was Bennett who during the labor troubles of 1932 had ordered machine guns to be installed on the roofs of the Ford family residences at Fairlane and Gaukler Pointe. It was Bennett’s strikebreakers who beat up Richard Frankensteen and kicked Walter Reuther down the steps of the Miller Road overpass for distributing union literature in 1937. The fortunes of the world’s oldest and most famous manufacturer of automobiles—and now, of battleships and bombers—lay entirely in the hands of a man who didn’t know a carburetor from a chafing dish, and who could barely sign his own name to the deliveries of pornographic films he ordered by the case. Despite expensive tailoring, in evening dress he put Max Zagreb in mind of a midget wrestler at a formal wedding.

  The dining room, paneled in hand-rubbed walnut and inlaid with marble and gold, had been transformed overnight with red-white-and-blue bunting and fanciful representations in pen and ink of Churchill, FDR, and Stalin looking with grim determination to the East. Even a blindfolded Justice had been inducted by way of a banner strung behind the dais, draped in Old Glory and directing squadrons of Ford B-24s and companies of Chrysler tanks with her sword. The martial atmosphere extended to the chandeliers, whose crystal pendants looked like bunches of bullets. Max Zagreb saw the spectacle for what it was and yet still felt his dick growing hard. By the same token he found it easy to sneer at Edward R. Murrow’s lump-throated descriptions of stiff-upper-lip Brits defying Goering’s Luftwaffe from the London Underground, but difficult to keep his chest from swelling with allied pride whenever he heard “The White Cliffs of Dover.”

  He was there under orders. Mayor Jeffries had directed Commissioner Witherspoon to accompany him to the black-tie event to raise money to equip GIs with gas masks on the improved design, and the commissioner had in turn issued one of his infamous memos “requesting” inspectors and better to attend. However, when a chicken-pox epidemic claimed several members of the department brass, lieutenants and even some sergeants had been pressed into service. Some of Zagreb’s ambitious peers had rented full-dress outfits. He had selected his best blue suit and the black knitted necktie he wore to civilian funerals, and was gratified to observe a number of overweight precinct commanders struggling with their cummerbunds every time they got up or sat down.

  It occurred to him, as the head table took shape, that a German potato-masher lobbed in that direction would deprive the Home Front of most of its generals. In addition to Henry, laboring to mount the steps to the platform with the help of his party, fellow auto pioneer Walter P. Chrysler, Liberty ship builder Henry Kaiser, and William Knudsen, former General Motors chief and now head of the federal Office of Production Management, and their wives had gathered behind a floral centerpiece the size of a washtub. Zagreb thought it symbolic of the new style of mechanized warfare that the only two warriors he recognized were Ford and Knudsen, and Knudsen only because he was decked out in the beribboned uniform that went with his special commission as a lieutenant general of the army. There wasn’t a Sergeant York or a T. E. Lawrence in the bunch.

  He was seated at a large round table covered in white linen with a midget version of the head table’s centerpiece blocking his view of the diners opposite him. A miniature American flag surrounded by the French tricolor, the British Union Jack, and a forest of less recognizable pennants grew out of the pot, which he was willing to bet would go to the lucky guest whose ticket bore the magic number. He hoped it wasn’t him. The incentive of bringing home such a prize had gone with his wife; and if he contrived to forget it, someone was bound to be offended, and he would retire a lieutenant. Preparing for disaster, he surveyed his neighbors for the face of someone who would accept the gift of his good fortune in the spirit in which it was not intended.

  The pickings held little promise. To his right sat a buxom woman with blinding white hair creamed and cooked into indestructible waves, with lace at her throat, silver-rimmed glasses, and so much powder on her liver spots it fell in a cloud to her dress every time she turned her head. If she accepted the centerpiece at all it would be to present it to a servant in lieu of a raise. Her escort, a pale bald man with a severe white fringe and thick glasses in heavy black frames, appeared to be withering inside his tuxedo. His starched shirt might have been the only thing preventing him from sliding under the table. He was nothing more than a fixture between the woman and the party with whom she was conducting an animated and powder-scattering conversation, the thin, well-preserved widow of an auto pioneer
who had been dead since Coolidge. The widow’s severe tailored suit and plain silver jewelry did not suggest a love for flowers.

  The man on Zagreb’s left was an unescorted shrimp in an unpressed gray suit ten years out of date. He wore a heavy ingot class ring, University of Detroit, and slicked his muddy brown hair back Valentino style from a Greek face, all nose and pink rounded knob of a chin. He caught the lieutenant looking and hoisted the water pitcher in front of him, lifting his eyebrows in a silent offer. When Zagreb shook his head, the man filled his own glass.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me these days,” the man said. “I’m drinking water the way I used to swill hootch. I guess all the fun went out of it after Repeal.”

  Zagreb nodded, then decided comment was required. “It’s better for you, though. Water.”

  “It’s overrated. Alexander and Genghis Khan conquered the known world on wine and fermented mare’s milk. They say Attila preferred to drink plain water from a wooden cup while his men guzzled wine from goblets, but that was politics. He died of a hemorrhage brought on by alcoholic poisoning.”

  “Are you a historian?” He was mildly interested.

  “Only by default. I was a newspaperman until the news I covered became history overnight. The Twenty-first Amendment put more people out of work than the Eighteenth. Connie Minor.” He set down his glass half-empty and held out his hand.

  Zagreb took it. “I thought I recognized you. We met once, sort of. Max Zagreb.”

  “I know. I’ve seen your picture in the paper. I don’t remember us meeting, though.”

  “It was in the hallway outside the Ferguson-O’Hara grand-jury room. I was in uniform then. I testified right after you.”

  “That was four years ago. I’m surprised you remembered.”

  “You were a celebrity. Everybody in town read your column.”

  “Everybody in the country read my column. I was syndicated in four hundred newspapers. Then liquor became legal, and I couldn’t get a job as copyboy. When I testified I hadn’t been inside a city room in six years.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  Minor grinned a bitter grin. “I write advertising copy for a hardware chain.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Not if you like writing about chain saws.”

  “I thought maybe you were covering the dinner.”

  “I’ve still got a couple of friends in the business. One of them couldn’t make it. You ever chum around with hardware salesmen? A couple of conversations about Stanley hammers and you’d stick up an old lady for her ticket to some musty fund-raiser.”

  “Still feel that way?”

  “You have to have a reporter’s eye,” Minor said. “People are the only entertainment not affected by wartime shortages. I’d duck a ball game to watch Old Henry decomposing in public. What do you think, Lieutenant, does Harry Bennett still suck his eighty-year-old dick?”

  Zagreb glanced toward the head table, at Ford sitting behind his untouched plate, staring out into the emptiness of the room above, the heads of the assembled guests, and bouncy, red-haired Bennett shadowboxing for the benefit of Mrs. Chrysler, who appeared to be listening politely to a story from his pugilistic past. Clara Ford broke off her conversation with Henry Kaiser to lift her knife and fork and cut up her husband’s breast of veal (four points per pound).

  “I kind of didn’t hate him the one time we met,” Zagreb said. “He was talking about that silly-ass castle he built out by Ypsi, full of secret passages and lions and tigers in cages. He was like a kid with a wad of money.”

  “Tell that to Reuther.”

  “Reuther’s a Red.”

  The waiters, wearing gold jackets and white cotton gloves, arrived with the meals for the table. Zagreb’s veal looked underdone. The peas were khaki-colored and came from a can.

  Minor used his fork to separate the lumps from his mashed potatoes. “I’m glad I’m not rich. Can you imagine shelling out fifty bucks a plate for crap like this?”

  “I guess some of them thought they were buying gas masks for the boys.”

  “Most of them wouldn’t know what one was if they put it on their plate. If one of those boys showed up on their doorstep without a uniform they’d turn the dogs loose on him. The men are here to make deals and the women just want to get the prewar chiffon out of mothballs before someone kills Hitler.” Blackening his meal with pepper, he grinned again, this time sheepishly. “I’m kind of a Red myself.”

  They ate for a few moments in silence. Minor gave up trying to make a dent in the veal, pushed his plate away, and refilled his glass from a fresh pitcher. “Well, take a long look at them,” he said. “That’s history up there in those cartoon shirt boards. Maybe the last time the men whose names hang outside their factories will all be gathered in one place. They hung motors on buckboards and drove them out of barns straight into the twentieth century, taking the country with them. Some of them still have grease under their nails. In five years their sons will be running things—business-school grads who think a screwdriver’s something you drink.”

  “That was the idea, wasn’t it? Everybody wants something better for their kids.”

  “Bullshit. If they didn’t have to die they wouldn’t bother having them.”

  It was Zagreb’s turn to grin. “I can’t tell if you love them or hate them.”

  “Neither can I. That’s what makes me so mad at the sons of bitches.” He sat back and rattled the ice in his glass. “You’re working the Kilroy case.” It wasn’t a question.

  The lieutenant nodded and speared a pea.

  “The papers say you’re putting the arm on Frankie Orr. Anything in it?”

  “Orr runs the black market.”

  “You really think this guy’s selling the ration stamps?”

  “He’s not using them for himself. Nobody has that many friends. Not even Bob Hope.”

  “Maybe he’s not doing anything with them.”

  “Then why take them?”

  “I don’t know. I gave up trying to think like killers a long time ago.”

  “No good at it?”

  “Too good at it. You never know where a thing like that will stop. But I think you’re barking down the wrong hole. This guy doesn’t give a shit about stamps or money. He’s in it for the boot.”

  “Thrill killer?”

  “He doesn’t know it himself. He might even have talked himself into believing he’s doing it all for a good cause. Jack the Ripper thought he was hosing all the filth out of the East End. You’re wasting your time with Frankie. He and Kilroy aren’t in the same league. Hell, they’re not even in the same sport.”

  Zagreb slid his knife and fork into his plate and sat back. “Who have you been talking to?”

  “How close did I come?”

  “You’ve been doing a lot of thinking like a reporter for someone who claims he isn’t one anymore.”

  “I’ve made my peace with that. In my day, reporters were the scum of the earth and we knew it. We rolled in it. I got my first job because I was small enough to crawl through a window and steal a picture of a murder victim off the mantel while my partner was talking to the widow on the porch. They’re still the scum of the earth, only now they cloak themselves in the dignity of a profession. When the Fourth Estate picks up as many hypocrites as the other three, it’s time for all of us to start selling bug-zappers and garden rakes. That doesn’t mean the instinct goes away. There were reporters before there were newspapers. Newspapers are just an excuse to ask questions no one wants to answer.”

  “So this conversation is off the record.”

  Minor’s mouth twisted. “Not at all. It’ll be the lead in the next issue of the Paint-Mixers’ Gazette. I thought all you dicks were good listeners.”

  “We’ve got reason to believe Kilroy talks his way into his victims’ confidence by pretending to sell magazine subscriptions for the war effort. We’re pretty sure he wears some kind of uniform and poses as a veteran.”


  “It makes sense. Jack Dance once put on a police uniform to kidnap one of Joey Machine’s lugs. What uniform?”

  “We don’t know. He killed a dry cleaner, and there was a uniform missing from his inventory, the record didn’t say what kind. We figure the cleaner got suspicious.”

  “Kind of thin. The country’s full of men in uniform.”

  “We’ve got a request in to all the area installations for a list of personnel unaccounted for at the times of the murders.”

  “You think he’s genuine?”

  “Killing is soldiers’ work. Where better for a killer to hide than among killers?”

  A waiter came with a tray of ice-cream cups and they stopped talking. Minor declined, explaining that sweets made him giddy. When the waiter left: “I like it better that he’s not genuine.”

  “Why?” Zagreb sank a spoon into his vanilla.

  “If he were a soldier, he’d have an outlet. There’s nothing like mowing down a line of Japs with a tommy gun if you like spilling blood. My guess is the uniform is more than just an icebreaker. He wears it because it makes him feel good.”

  “When I was in uniform I couldn’t wait to get out.”

  “You must’ve wanted it at some point or you wouldn’t have joined the department. How would you have felt if they turned you down?”

  “I wouldn’t’ve gone around pretending I was a cop.”