When I arrived at work I saw that my father had closed down the foundry operations for the day, though the rest of the men were heading for their positions as usual. I climbed the stairs of the main building to the third floor and the engineering department, my current stay on the whirlwind tour of learning the business—and truthfully, the only one to which I had any claim of belonging, with my degree from the University of Michigan.
Before I stepped into the office, I blew my nose so as to keep my sniffling to a minimum. When necessary, I’d been telling people I had a cold, and I was trying to keep the side effects from my medication as low key as possible.
When I opened the door, I stopped in my tracks. Sitting in my chair, feet up on the desk, was Patrolman Dennis Murphy, looking miserable. His face was red, his bottlebrush mustache beaded with sweat. Dark rings stained his uniform under the arms. His neck and chins bulged over his collar like he was an overstuffed muffin.
“About time, Anderson.” Murphy swung his legs off my desk and raised his bulk from my chair.
“Murphy. What do you need?” I hoped he was here with information for me, but somehow I doubted it.
“Not happy to see me, boyo?”
I glanced around the office, where six men were studiously ignoring us, every one with an ear straining in our direction. I nodded toward the door and walked out. His black boots slapped against the tile floor. I closed the office door behind him and then leaned in close. I’d bluff it out. “Did you find any of them?”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t come all the way down here for that, not even for your dough. You come to me, remember?”
“Yeah. Then what?” I met Murphy’s beady blue eyes.
“Riordan wants to see ya.”
My guts clenched. “What about?”
“I expect he’ll tell ya that himself.”
* * *
Detective Riordan leaned against the grungy plaster wall of one of the Bethune Street station’s interrogation rooms, his ice blue eyes nearly invisible in the shadow of his fedora. He wore a heavy gray wool suit even though it was ninety and humid. And he wasn’t sweating. “So, Will, what have you been up to lately?”
I stood across from him. Sitting somehow felt like capitulation. “Still recuperating,” I said. Rather than illustrate the point, I kept my right hand behind my back. The ragged purple scar angling from the left side of Riordan’s mouth to his ear looked fuzzy, smeared. This bottle seemed a bit more potent than usual. I was going to have to think through my answers.
He pulled a cigar from his waistcoat and patted himself down before glancing back at me. “Lighter? Must a left my matches in the office.”
I pulled my lighter from my coat pocket and handed it to him. He looked at it. “Nice. Gold?”
I nodded. He lit the cigar, puffing away until the tip glowed orange. Finally he lowered the cigar and held the lighter out to me. “How’s the hand?”
I took the lighter and tucked it into my pocket. “The same.”
“Hmm.” He cocked his head at me. “Why only one glove? Two wouldn’t be so noticeable.”
“Try putting on a glove when your other hand can’t grip anything, Detective.”
He nodded again and looked at me a moment longer. “How are you doing with the left?”
“So-so.” I rocked my hand in front of me. “My writing looks like an imbecilic five-year-old’s. But I can at least make myself understood.”
“How about shooting? Knife work?” He took another casual puff from the cigar.
Ah. So here’s where we’re going. I folded my arms over my chest, right arm underneath, careful to keep pressure off my hand. “Don’t have the time. Or the inclination.”
“You’re right-handed, aren’t you?”
“Was.”
“So you can’t do anything the way you used to.”
I shrugged.
“That still has to make you angry. If it weren’t for Adamo and his men helping Cooper, you wouldn’t be crippled.”
“I’m trying to get on with my life, Detective. I don’t have time for grudges, if that’s what you were alluding to.”
He drew in deeply on his cigar, tobacco seeds snapping, then pursed his lips and breathed the smoke out to the side. It was a delicate action that seemed almost sexual. “Where were you last night?”
“Why?” I tried to sound casual.
Riordan’s mouth tightened. “Humor me.”
“I spent the evening with my neighbors.”
He tilted his head back and looked at me through slits. “Are you sure about that?”
“Of course I am.”
Riordan stared into my eyes while taking a pull on the cigar. When he spoke, the smoke spilled out with his words. “Can they vouch for your whereabouts?”
“I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Preston would be happy to do so.”
He nodded and stared at the lit end of his cigar. “Does the name Carlo Moretti mean anything to you?”
My stomach lurched, but I pretended to think about it before I shrugged. “Tenor with the Detroit Opera?”
He puffed on the cigar, building a hazy gray cloud between us, while he seemed to consider my answer. Finally he said, “Moretti was your old friend Vito Adamo’s chauffeur when he wasn’t breaking kneecaps for the Employers Association. I was sure you’d have run into him somewhere along the line.”
It hit me then that the witness hadn’t come forward. Riordan was fishing. I shrugged again. “Maybe if I saw him…”
Riordan studied me, his head turned a bit to the side, the cigar crammed into the left corner of his mouth, hiding the scar. He had been handsome before the union man slashed him. “The only place you could see him now is in the morgue,” he said.
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s all behind me, Detective. I’m getting on with my life now.”
He shook his head. “I wish I could believe that. You weren’t too happy they got away.”
“Well, of course I’d like to see them brought to justice, but that’s your job, not mine.”
Riordan put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me in close. “I gave you one break—’cause I thought you were innocent. I won’t give you another.”
“I don’t need a break. I haven’t done anything.”
He squeezed my shoulder and leaned in closer. The lit end of his cigar smoldered an inch from my cheek. “Don’t leave town. I’ve a feeling we’re going to need to talk about this some more.”
I stared into his cold eyes. “Can I go back to work?”
Riordan sighed and walked past me to the door, then hesitated and turned around. “Will, can I give you a piece of advice?”
I shrugged.
“Your world is money and parties and pretty women. This world”—he gestured around us—“is dirty and violent and ugly. You’re going to get yourself killed. Go back to your world.”
I agreed with him and must have said the right things. He told Murphy to take me back to the factory in one of the “flying squadron’s” black Chalmers 30 police cars. It wasn’t two years old, but the upholstery was in shreds, bare springs sticking up, and it reeked of the sour body odor brought on by fear. I knew the smell.
Murphy cut down to Grand Boulevard and headed east, back toward the factory.
“Hey, take me downtown, near the opera house. I’ve got some business to attend to.”
He threw me an annoyed glance over his shoulder. “What am I, your fuckin’ chauffeur?” When he turned right to head downtown, he said, “Gimme a smoke.”
“Sure.” I pulled a cigarette out of my case and handed it to him.
“Got a light?”
“Of course.” I shook my head. Riordan was the only cop I’d ever met that I thought might actually pay for things himself. The rest bummed, stole, or blackmailed their way to financial independence.
Not slowing a bit, Murphy craned his neck back toward me, cigarette poking from between h
is lips. I lit it and another for me. “Murphy? You didn’t tell Riordan about our … arrangement, did you?”
He laughed, and little bursts of smoke shot from his mouth. “Like I’d tell anybody. Most of the bosses would want a cut. Riordan, though.” Murphy shook his head. “That son of a bitch’d bring me up on charges. There’s only one thing more dangerous than a cop like me, boyo.” He waited for me to take the bait, but I didn’t accommodate him. After a moment, he gave me the punch line anyway. “And that’s an honest one.” He roared with laughter.
“And you’re going to let me know when you hear something?”
“Did you kill the wop?”
“Of course not.”
“Too bad. Information’s more expensive for murderers.” He laughed. “I’ll keep me ears open, so long’s you keep me in pin money.”
I leaned forward and slipped a twenty-dollar bill into one of his chest pockets. “Good,” I said. “Keep your eyes open too. I want Adamo.”
I sat back and looked out the window for the rest of the trip, thinking about my conversation with Detective Riordan. He’d given me some fatherly advice that, a year ago, would have made perfect sense to me—Go back to your world.
But it wasn’t my world anymore. There was no going back.
* * *
Murphy dropped me off in front of the Detroit Opera House, and I began my short trek east. I studied all the women, thinking about the auburn-haired prostitute. The odds of finding her lounging around on the street were minuscule, but my mind was attuned to the search. An alarming number of women had auburn hair. When Elizabeth and I started seeing each other, her hair color was unusual. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed this before, though, to be fair, I hadn’t noticed much of anything for the past three years.
I put my head down and continued on my journey. Only a few blocks from Woodward, gaping holes pocked the street, the loose cobbles stolen for other uses. An odor of rot joined the oily stink of coal smoke. As I walked, the buildings became more and more squat, down to the single-story clapboard shop that was my destination—the Empire Pharmacy. It had taken me a number of months to find a pharmacy to my liking, that is, a pharmacy that would sell me morphine over an extended period of time without making an issue of it. Practically the only one I hadn’t tried was Adamo’s pharmacy next to the Bucket. I wasn’t going there.
A bell tinkled when I opened the door. The pharmacist, an old, stooped man I knew only as Mick, nodded when he saw me. “How many today, sir?”
“I’d like a sixteen-ounce bottle.”
“Well,” he said, a glint in his eye. “I’m not supposed to sell those except to doctors, sir.”
“What’s the difference, Mick? You don’t want to fill all those little bottles anyway, do you?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed the back of his neck and made a point of looking around furtively. “You’d have to make it worth my while. I could get in a lot of trouble.”
He normally charged me two dollars per one-ounce bottle, twice the amount charged by a respectable pharmacy. But a respectable pharmacy wouldn’t sell morphine to the likes of me. At least, not without a prescription. “I’ll give you forty bucks.”
Shaking his head, he looked down at the floor. “Sir, I don’t think I can do this.”
“Fifty.” It was at least two weeks’ pay for him.
His eyes cut to mine. “I could do that.”
I pulled my wallet from inside my coat, took out a brand new fifty-dollar bill, and placed it on the counter.
He grabbed the bill and stuck it into his trouser pocket. “Right away.” While he rooted around behind the counter, I wiped my nose.
He put the bottle in a paper bag and handed it to me. I turned to leave. As I did, I glanced up at his face and saw an expression that made me turn away even faster. His eyes were narrowed and his mouth set into a tight frown. It was a look you might give to a man who’d stolen money from his children.
Disgust.
CHAPTER THREE
A top my walnut bar, Sophie Tucker’s voice warbled out of the horn of Wesley’s Victrola—Some of these days you’re gonna miss me, honey / Some of these days, you’re gonna be so lonely.…
I cherished this Victrola and its records far more than the two thousand dollars Wesley had left me. Music was what his life had been about—writing, playing, singing. I missed him almost as much as I missed Elizabeth. The only postcard she’d sent me, with a picture of Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel’s tower on the front, had arrived three months earlier. It was still on the end table next to the sofa. I sat down and flipped it over, reading her message for the hundredth time:
Dearest Will,
I hope this note finds you well. I am feeling better since my last letter, though I must admit the thought of returning home someday still fills me with dread. Of small comfort is the fact that we won’t be doing so any time soon. My mother is nearly as overcome with melancholia as when we arrived in Europe. I’ll write again soon. I miss you.
Yours,
Elizabeth
I’d had no word from her since.
I noticed again that I was rubbing my hand. I tugged off the black kid glove a quarter-inch at a time. First to appear was the scar from the gouge on the inside of my wrist that I’d dug trying to cut the rope tied around it. Next, on my palm, a knotted mass of scar tissue, then the collection of mottled scars on all sides of my forefinger and middle finger, and the gnarled stumps of my fourth and fifth fingers, all burgundy, all disfigured—all courtesy of sulfuric acid. I didn’t bother to look at the back of the hand; it was simply more of the same. I tugged the glove on again, until my fourth and fifth fingers reached the cotton I’d stuffed inside to hide their deformity.
Since it was only six o’clock, I thought I’d kill a little time before I began the hunt for the prostitute. Riordan’s question about gun and knife skills had got me thinking. I’d been shooting fairly regularly with Edsel Ford on Sunday afternoons, but I hadn’t even thought about knives. I was again going to have to drag the city’s cesspool, and I had to be prepared.
I hung my dartboard on the parlor wall and stepped back behind the sofa. Holding my switchblade in my left hand, I took careful aim and hurled it at the wall. The knife bounced off the plaster a foot to the left of the board and clattered to the floor. Walking over to pick it up, I shook my head to clear it. I wasn’t sure I could have hit the board even if my right hand was still functional.
I’d never taken an opiate for an extended period. All that came to mind was a couple of days of morphine for a broken wrist when I was twelve. The emotion associated with that memory was fear, though I didn’t remember why. Perhaps I was afraid I wouldn’t change back, regain my mental equilibrium. These days, it was a wish rather than a fear.
Alcohol had been a poor substitute. It left me depressed, volatile, and sick, and served only to dull my pain, rather than assuage it. Morphine had its own set of side effects, but it brought me the peace I’d always craved.
I walked behind the sofa to throw the knife again but stopped and closed my eyes, just listening to Sophie’s voice. Music had become a welcome accompaniment to the relaxed feeling morphine gave me. I’d found I could sit for hours with my eyes closed and just enjoy music.
Earlier in my life, music had seemed somehow trivial in comparison to the serious considerations of commerce and manly endeavor. Now it seemed so much more valuable. Millions of men in this country hurried through their lives, believing the lessons hammered into them. From the tiny classroom of the most humble one-room schoolhouse to the ivy-covered walls of Detroit University School, we take to heart the most important lesson they can teach us—fit in, do what you’re told, don’t make waves. The nonconformist is vilified, singled out, and shunned. The rest of us learn well and perpetuate the lesson.
I’d learned as well as anyone. But something in me had changed. The men with whom I’d been so impressed were nothing but puffed-up roosters strutting down the sidewalk pretending to b
e important—trying to fool themselves more than anyone else. Those breast-beaters were just as unhappy as the rest of us.
Manly endeavor. Teddy Roosevelt’s “strenuous life.” Prove you’re a man by killing things, by besting others, by cutting a wide swath through life, regardless of whom you hurt.
These are the things in which I used to believe.
I spun and threw the knife again. This time it stuck, quivering, in the wall—over the Victrola. A shower of plaster fell onto the record, and the needle bounced back and forth. I walked to the bar, wiped off the record, and replaced the needle at the beginning before wrenching the knife out of the wall and returning to the sofa.
How would these things I’d found important help me live my life? The “successful” men seemed to have found the trick to living. Was it as simple as staying so busy you don’t realize how miserable you are?
I took another drink from the little brown bottle, closed my eyes, and let Sophie’s deep voice wash over me.
* * *
The doorbell rang twice before I realized what it was. Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” had ended—half an hour ago? Clicks and pops came from the Victrola as the needle bounced back and forth at the end of the record. It wasn’t dark out yet, but everything seemed gray, out of focus. I looked at my watch—eight o’clock.
The bell rang again. I pocketed the bottle and hurried to the foyer, wobbling as I did. I flipped on the light and opened the door. Elizabeth Hume stood before me with a grin on her face. My breath caught in my throat. She was magnificent—high cheekbones, plump lips, those alluring green eyes. With her auburn hair piled under a sky blue narrow-brimmed hat and a matching silk dress with lace at the throat and sleeves, she was the first day of spring, Christmas morning, a cool breeze on a hot summer day.
“My God, Elizabeth, you’re back. You’re … stunning.” I was mortified to hear a slur in my words.
“Hello, Will. It’s so nice to see you.”
“Please, Elizabeth. Come in.” Trying to look alert, I opened my eyes wide and stepped to the side of the door, my right hand behind my back.
Motor City Shakedown Page 2
