Jitterbug

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Jesus God!”

  He whirled. The man standing at the end of the aisle, thick-shouldered, with short-clipped hair and a soft roll around his middle, wore the blue twill shirt and trousers of a Hudson’s security guard. His eyes and gaping mouth were huge in a face gone watery white. Then the mouth clamped shut and his right hand swooped down toward the checked butt of the revolver in his belt holster.

  He lunged, closing the distance between them in two long strides and slicing the bayonet’s long double-edged blade around in a backhand sweep. The blue twill shirt opened straight across the guard’s soft middle, and as the glistening coils spilled out he forgot about the gun and reached with both hands to hold himself in.

  That ended the threat. As the guard’s knees buckled he swept past and around the end of the display of curtains, where he fell back into a normal pace for a busy department store, closing his poncho over his bloody weapon and the bounty he’d snatched from the woman’s bag. He was almost to the escalator when he realized he didn’t have his briefcase. He’d dropped it during the first attack.

  Just then the old man passed him, leaning on his bamboo cane. He decided not to go back. Not because of the old man, who would certainly be no more trouble than the guard, but because there were too many people too near. It was just luck that the guard had been too deep in shock to cry out before his strength left him. A soldier never sneered at chance, but neither did he ask too much of it.

  He walked up the escalator, just like any shopper for whom the mechanism was too slow. He listened for the first cry, the clanging of the alarms signaling for all the doors to be secured. Then he was out on the sidewalk.

  The uptown car was on time. Once again he had a token ready and he took a seat at the rear. The rest of the passengers crowded up front. He took off his poncho, folded the bayonet inside to avoid staining his uniform, and sat back to count the number of ration stamps he’d removed from circulation.

  He was holding a fistful of recipes clipped from newspapers.

  chapter twenty-four

  TINO THOUGHT MR. ORR’S driver, Barney, was a giant pain in the ass.

  Every time the bodyguard shifted his weight while leaning against the gleaming maroon surface of Mr. Orr’s DeSoto, the driver looked down with a scowl to see if he had managed to scratch the paint with his butt. Two years ago the little Irish fuck had been rolling Chevies on the GM test track for forty a week and now he was acting like a full partner. But Tino was in a good mood, enjoying the feel of the sun on his back and the sound of the river gurgling past the shore of Belle Isle, and he made conversation instead of a fight.

  “Think he’s carrying?”

  “Who? Mr. Orr?”

  “Shit, no. He ain’t had a piece in his hand in twelve years. I mean the twerp by the car.”

  Barney looked at the man in the uncomfortable-looking black suit standing, by the black Cadillac with government plates, parked a hundred yards farther down the gravel apron of the freshly blacktopped road that circled the island. The car was a blackout model, with all the chromework painted over. The man’s complete attention remained on the two figures standing inside the railing by the Scott Fountain.

  Barney looked away. “Sure he’s carrying. Would you keep your coat on in this heat if you weren’t?”

  “I think I’ll go talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “Things. We’re in the same line of work.”

  The man by the Cadillac didn’t move his head as Tino approached, but he was sure his eyes did behind the dark lenses of his tortoiseshell glasses. His coat was open.

  “Hiya,” Tino said.

  “Good afternoon.”

  “You Secret Service?”

  “Yes.”

  “No kidding? You protect the president?” Tino showed off his dental work. Joe Louis had knocked out all his front teeth in 1936, cinching his retirement from the ring.

  “I don’t work White House.”

  “Seen him up close, though, I bet.”

  “Lots of times.”

  “He walk at all? I see him standing with them canes when he’s giving a speech.”

  “I can’t talk about that.”

  “Top secret, huh? That’s why they call it Secret Service.”

  “Something like that.”

  “See any action?”

  The man was silent for a moment. Then he touched the nosepiece of his opaque glasses. “Took some guns off four male subjects parked by the Reflecting Pool in ’39. Said they were shooting ducks. Turned out they were Bund.”

  “Wow.”

  “I got a commendation.”

  “Bonus?”

  “No. Treasury doesn’t do that.”

  “Pisser. What kind of piece you carry?”

  “Army .45.”

  “Hey, me too. Ever fire it?”

  “Just on the range.”

  Tino pointed up at the fountain, at a pigeon cleaning its feathers on top of one of the marble lions’ heads. “Can you pick off that bird from here?”

  “Sure.”

  He pointed toward the Italianate arches of the Belle Isle Casino, where a woman held the leash while her wirehair terrier lifted its leg against a low hedge. “Hit that dog?”

  “I like dogs.”

  “You could hit it, though.”

  “Sure.”

  “Me too.” After another little silence Tino said, “How do you put in for a job with the Secret Service?”

  “To begin with, you can’t have a criminal record.”

  “What makes you think I got a record?”

  For answer the Secret Service man pointed at Frankie Orr, leaning on the iron railing next to Frank Murphy, Justice of the Supreme Court and former attorney general of the United States.

  “How much money you make?” Tino asked then.

  “I pay my bills.”

  “That’s the only difference between you and me, bo. My boss pays mine.” He turned around and went back to stand next to Barney. “High-hat government fuck.”

  “Watch the paint,” Barney said.

  Frank Murphy had a forehead that was outgrowing his scanty hair and thick black-Irish brows thatching the soft dark eyes of a shanty tenor. They masked a machinelike brain and a will of granite. Before vacating the office of attorney general to accept his seat on the Supreme Court, he had been a Detroit Recorder’s Court judge, mayor of Detroit following the recall of Charles “Wide Open” Bowles, governor of Michigan, and high commissioner of the Philippines, where he had served for two years as governor-general. He had fought in the trenches of France at the same time Frankie was doing his stretch in the New York State Reformatory at Elmira for putting out the eye of a Rothstein tough named Jake the Kike with a nail in a board during a scrap in the Garment District. In Frankie’s mind this made them fellow veterans.

  “I should get back here more often,” Murphy was saying. The baroque white-marble fountain gushed behind them as they leaned on the iron railing overlooking the pyramid of steps. From their base the grass spread like green felt, beyond which sparkled the river, and beyond that rose the buildings of Windsor and Hiram Walkers distillery, an old Orr associate. “Summer’s a sorry time in Washington. It won’t let you forget it was built in the middle of a swamp.” Murphy’s Corktown brogue was evident only when he spoke of Detroit. It would have raised eyebrows among the preening Ivy Leaguers of the Brain Trust.

  “Bitch in winter, though,” Frankie said. “Michigan.”

  “That’s your ancestry speaking. You lack sod in your blood.” Frankie made no reply to that, not knowing what it meant. He was the only one of the pair dressed for the weather, in one of his trademark dove gray snapbrims, a Dobbs Airweight with ventilator holes above the band, blue summer worsted, solid blue tie on a gray silk shirt with a monogram, and woven Italian leather loafers, hundred bucks a pop since the embargo. The justice was turned out like an Irish civil servant: rumpled black suit, cheap white cotton shirt, lace-up brogans with thick rubber s
oles. But then Frankie thought it would be a shame to hide swell clothes under a black robe.

  “Friend of mine owns a cabin up on Walloon Lake,” he said. “Hemingway had the place next door. Why don’t I send the key around? You could fish for three months, forget all about Washington till September.”

  “I can’t picture you with a friend who fishes.”

  “Okay, the joint’s mine. I was going to turn it into a roadhouse, but then the war came along and I couldn’t get the material. It ain’t in my name.”

  “A rose by any other. Only you’re no rose.”

  “Roses are for saps. I always send orchids. What about it, Your Honor?”

  “Thank you. I prefer to buy my fish in a market. The price is much less dear.”

  “Not with rationing. Well, suit yourself.” Irony was lost on Frankie. “Where you staying, the Book-Cadillac? They give you the presidential? What am I talking about, sure they did. I know a penthouse suite makes it look like a dump. The manager owes me a favor. He’ll keep your name off the register. Reporters in this town are a pain in the ass.”

  “Where would that be, the Griswold House?”

  Frankie’s face went plank flat. “They tore down the Griswold,” he said.

  Murphy, watching him out of the corner of his eye, chuckled. “I never really bought that story, about you cutting a man’s throat in the Griswold dining room. I thought you spread it yourself to scare the other wops into line. But you know something, Oro?” He pronounced the name with sinister foreignness. “You’re a rotten poker player. There’s a Friday night foursome at the Columbia Arms would peel you down to your guinea ass: Harry Hopkins, Buckminster Fuller, John O’Hara, and Francis L. Murphy. A button man in silk undies is still just a button man.”

  “I never was brought up on that charge.” His tone was dead dull.

  “It don’t signify, boyo. I’m not in the fight now. I got Pendergast out of Kansas City where he’d been dug in like a crab for thirty years and put him in Leavenworth. I nailed that Red Earl Browder and pulled Marty Manton by his ears off the federal bench for graft and threw him behind bars. I’d have got you, too, if Pierce Butler didn’t croak just when he did and leave an opening on the Court. The devil was looking out for you that day.”

  “You too. You’d have gone down the shitter trying to get me.”

  “Well, we’ll never know now, will we?”

  Frankie slid back behind his bluff mask. “Let’s not fight, Your Honor. Who delivered the vote for you in Detroit when you went for governor?”

  “That’s because you were afraid I’d run again for mayor if I lost. You knew I couldn’t touch you from Lansing.”

  Frankie was impressed. He hadn’t thought the mick bastard was smart enough to figure out his philosophy: If you can’t buy ’em, kill ’em. If you can’t kill ’em, promote ’em. The Orr triple play. In another minute Murphy would be calling to have Justice Butler’s body exhumed. He’d almost have been proud to claim credit for that one; but as Murphy had said, that time the devil was looking out for him. He’d take his support from wherever it came. It was the secret of his survival. Omerta, vendetta, the Code of the Underworld—call it what you will—had filled the graveyards and penitentiaries with honorable men, and Frankie was still standing. It was amazing what you could accomplish once you put aside honor.

  He changed his tack. “I been following your career. I’m a fan. I read where you’re a champion of individual liberty. That means you’re for the little guy.”

  “You were reading about Huey Long, not me. I happen to think the big guy has just as many rights as everyone else.”

  “That include protection from a crazy cop?”

  “Don’t shit a shitter. I was a Recorder’s Court judge for seven years. I know how things work down here.”

  “This is a special case. I got a Racket Squad lieutenant threatening to beat me to death in a hotel room if I don’t bail him out on a case he can’t handle.”

  “What’s the case?”

  “This Kilroy thing. I don’t know if you heard about it in Washington.”

  “The wire services picked it up. If Kilroy’s selling to you, I’m with the lieutenant.”

  “That’s just it—I checked all my people. Nobody’s bought a single ration stamp since before this nut started. My decision. They’re too easily traced, not like hard merchandise at all. I’d cooperate if I could, but I got enough on my plate with this phony government prostitution beef. Cops and crooks been busting my balls for twenty years. That maniac Jack Dance threatened to pull the plug on my boy Patsy when he was in an incubator. I can look out for myself. I can’t if all my enterprises are shut down.”

  “So put your people on Kilroy. You might win points.”

  “They’re on him now. No dice. This bird’s an independent. He don’t even live in the same world, but try telling that to this bug Zagreb.”

  “Max Zagreb?”

  “Yeah. You know him?”

  “Only by reputation.” Murphy pushed himself away from the railing. He was wearing a little smile. “My advice? Suspend operations. Put all your people on the street and keep them there until they come up with something. A bone. Anything.”

  “I can’t do that. I got overhead.”

  “Bullshit. The money’s nothing to what you stand to lose if Zagreb thinks you’re fucking with him. You want overhead? Try six tons of concrete out at Willow Run.”

  “Put it that way, I don’t see no difference between Zagreb and Kilroy.”

  “Sure there is. Kilroy doesn’t have a license to hunt. Mother of God. You don’t see it, do you?”

  “I guess I’m stupid.”

  “Not stupid. Not you. Just stuck on yourself. It’s not just the murders. Hell, it’s not the murders at all; if Kilroy takes a life every day for the rest of the year, the body count won’t match five minutes in the Pacific Theater alone. Ration theft is wartime priority. Last month, Roosevelt put an end to the rubber strike in Akron by threatening to try the leaders for treason and hang them. If I’d done that up in Flint when the UAW pitched a full-scale riot in the Chevy plant, the Supreme Court would have had me skinned and stuffed and sent around the country on a flatbed truck as a warning to other governors. But that was 1937. Have you got so self-important you think your government cares if a black marketeer gets himself beaten to death in a hotel room for refusing to cooperate with the authorities in a matter of national security?”

  “I got rights like everybody else.”

  “Is that why you set up this meeting? To tell me you have rights?’

  “You’re the only person in Washington I know anymore. They shuffle in and out of there like an automat.”

  Murphy held up a hand. The Secret Service man standing by the Cadillac started that way on the trot. “I don’t believe it. What did you think, I’d come down on Zagreb with all the weight of my high office to protect your pinballs and slot machines? Just what in our past history made you think I’d offer to do that?”

  “I saved your life.”

  “What?”

  “When you got in as mayor and started pushing over Joey Machines breweries, he petitioned the Unione Siciliana to hang a tag on you. I was president. I told him you don’t kill politicians, the heat ain’t worth it. He damned and helled me and called me a yellow pimp, but he wasn’t in a position to buck the Unione. Later, when you came back from the Philippines and threw your hat in for governor, he petitioned us again. I said relax, the governor has no authority in Detroit. By then he was raking so much out of the policy racket in Niggertown he thought he was bigger than everybody, the Unione included. He said you was one dead mick whether we said yes or no. That was in October 1935. Remember?”

  “That was the month Machine got shot to pieces with two of his men on a restaurant staircase. Tommy-gun job. Pretty messy for post-Repeal. I thought you were cleaning up the operation.”

  “You knew Joey. He had to go out the way he lived. Point is you owe me.”


  “You should’ve tried to collect then.”

  Frankie watched Murphy descending the steps to where the Secret Service man was waiting. The bald spot on the back of the justice’s head had already begun to burn in the sun.

  “That’s all you got to say about me and Zagreb?” Frankie called out. “Bend over and grab my ankles?”

  “It only hurts for a minute.”

  chapter twenty-five

  CANAL BREATHED ON THE filmy window and shook out his handkerchief to rub at it. The linen stuck. He wondered how many cartons of cigarettes it took to turn a pane of glass into flypaper.

  “I’ll miss this shithole,” he” said. “It’s the first place I felt at home since my old man and old lady moved us out of the boxcar.”

  Zagreb said, “We wouldn’t be leaving it if you and Burke didn’t go around telling every punk in the city about the California.”

  Burke was sitting on the exposed springs of the bedstead with his hands on his knees. “Frankie already knew all about it. You should of seen him when we mentioned it. He shit his pants.”

  “He’ll just have his tailor run up another pair. Anyway too many people know about the place. I’m surprised the press wasn’t camping out in front when we pulled up. I saw a Pathé truck parked outside Hudson’s.”

  McReary was leaning back against the door. With his shoulder covering part of the sign that was permanently fixed there, the legend advised guests to SPIT ON THE FLOOR. The condition of the narrow cherrywood planks suggested that its point had been taken. “I never heard of anything like it. This asshole must have balls as big as B-17s.” His sister worked at Studebaker.

  “How sure are we this asshole is our asshole?” Canal asked.

  “We go through this every time.” Zagreb repositioned one of the chairs, then changed his mind and went on pacing. He hadn’t sat anywhere but in the car longer than five minutes since the call came in. “You want one of these fuckers to fuck with, or a fucking platoon? Let me know when you’ve made up your fucking mind. I’ll be in a fucking submarine.”