Motor City Shakedown

by D. E. Johnson

  Shortly thereafter, a guard pulled me out of the cell, clapped handcuffs and leg chains on me, and brought me to an interrogation room.

  Mr. Sutton was already pacing the wooden floor. He looked up when the door opened. “Hello, Will.”

  The guard stepped out of the room and closed the door. Sutton walked up close to me. He was a handsome man, trim and energetic, and looked younger than I remembered. Then I saw why. He’d trimmed back his side whiskers from the muttonchops to a pair of brown slashes in front of his ears. That alone probably took five years off him.

  “Another murder arrest?” he said. “Is this harassment?”

  I walked over to the small wooden table and sat. A few moments later, I muttered, “Yes, well … no, not exactly.”

  “What?” He hurried around the table and looked down into my face. “Did you do this?”

  I shook my head. “No. And I have an alibi.”

  “I’m listening.”

  I told him about my dinner with the Prestons.

  “What time did they leave?”

  “I don’t know—around ten, I think.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “I … I went out.” I looked up at him sheepishly. “I went to Moretti’s. But he was already dead.”

  “Oh, yes, that is a clever alibi.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say the last part.”

  “You won’t need to. The prosecutor will explain that you set up an alibi before going out to kill Moretti.”

  I shrugged.

  “You were in his apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “And an eyewitness saw you run down the hall after the incident?”

  I nodded.

  He sighed and sank into the seat opposite me. “Why were you there in the middle of the night? No, don’t tell me. This has something to do with Vito Adamo, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Moretti worked for him.”

  “Do you know who killed him?”

  “No.” And I wasn’t going to bring up the prostitute I’d seen. My association with Elizabeth was too well known to raise the possibility that Moretti had been killed by a tall, slender, auburn-haired woman. I raised my hands and awkwardly wiped my nose on my sleeve.

  Sutton took a deep breath, placed his hands on the table, and stood. “Okay, well, you know the drill. You’ll be formally charged, followed by the bail hearing and the preliminary hearing a couple of weeks later.”

  “What do you think about bail this time?”

  He rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. The judges could still be holding you at least partially responsible for Judge Hume’s death, which would be a problem. But you never know what’s going to happen.”

  “Don’t tell my parents I’m in here.”

  “If I don’t, they’re going to find out from the newspapers. You know—‘Return of the Electric Executioner,’ or some such thing.”

  “Yeah. All right. But tell them to stay away.” I thought about Elizabeth. “I don’t want any visitors.”

  “Are you all right?” Sutton was looking down at me with a great deal of concern in his eyes. “I have to tell you—you look terrible.”

  “Just not feeling well. Influenza or something.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  I thought about it for a split second before rejecting the idea. “No.”

  “You don’t need anything?”

  Oh, yes. There was something I needed. But nothing I would ask him for.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I vomited again, now only a weak stream of stomach acid burning my throat. I spit and curled up on the cold concrete floor, hands clutching my stomach. It was dark, just the dim glow of a light at the end of the corridor illuminating the cot and bucket in the tiny cell.

  My heart raced. My guts felt like they had been torn to ribbons. I groaned. Voices shouted out around me, some making fun, others telling me in no uncertain terms to shut up so they could sleep. I cursed them, their mothers, God, morphine, myself, before finally passing out.

  I woke sometime the next day and wished I hadn’t. I hurt like I never had before. My hand was nothing more than a passing interest. My stomach was filled with shards of glass. My head throbbed and pounded, ice picks stabbing behind my eyes. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think. I didn’t want morphine any longer. I only wanted death.

  I begged the guards to either get me a doctor or kill me and be done with it, but they ignored me. Eventually the men in the other cells shut up. I may have been reading too much into their reaction, but I think they actually sympathized.

  I didn’t eat, drank little, and fouled myself frequently. By the end of the third day in the cell, I could only lie on the floor, drifting in and out of consciousness, nightmares blending with reality. My pain began to fade. I was just alert enough to know it wasn’t because I was healing.

  I embraced the thought of death, welcomed it, wished for nothing else. My lucid moments disappeared.

  * * *

  Dr. Miller leaned down close to me, his kind face crinkled with concern. Lights reflected off his pince-nez glasses, making his eyes invisible. His fluffy white hair and beard made me think of clouds. He smiled. “Nice to see you’re back with us, my boy.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered. Looking past him, I saw I was in a hospital room. “Where am I?”

  “The state hospital. You nearly died.”

  I took a quick inventory of my pains. My hand had its normal burn, but the agony in my stomach and head was gone. “What happened?” I whispered.

  “Dehydration. If you’ll think back a bit, you’ll recall my instructions to keep Elizabeth hydrated. You were dying for lack of water.” He sighed. “Will, I told you to be careful with the morphine. You saw what heroin did to Elizabeth. How could you expect it to go better for you?”

  I looked away from him. “I needed medicine.”

  “You should be dead now. You’ve been given a reprieve. Use your second chance.” He gripped my forearm. “Change your life.”

  “As if it matters now. I’m never getting out of jail.”

  “Why, I’m sure Sutton will be able to convince the jury of the truth, Will. You’ll be out before you know it.”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t going into it with him. “My parents haven’t seen me like this, have they?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it. The State had to let them in.”

  “Shit.” It was hard to imagine how I could hurt them any worse, but given my recent history, it seemed to be only a matter of time.

  * * *

  A week later, the police brought me to a cell at their Detroit headquarters. Physically I was weak but was feeling better than I had any right to be. My mental state was something else altogether. I had a niggling itch twenty-four hours a day. Whenever I thought of morphine my mouth turned dry, and I felt a craving digging at me that was impossible to ignore.

  They’d taken away my glove, so I had a front-row seat to watch my fingers curl inward, the muscles tightening as they had done after I’d been burned by the acid. I didn’t bother with my stretching exercises. It hurt too much, and the hand was useless anyway. No matter what I did, I’d never regain the ability to hold a pen or caress a woman’s body, not that, with the likelihood of a life sentence, the latter would ever again be a possibility.

  My parents and sisters, Elizabeth, and Edsel Ford came to the jail, asking to see me. The only person I agreed to speak with was Elizabeth.

  It was early afternoon about a week after I’d been returned to the jail. A guard chained my arms and legs before pushing me along to a small interrogation room, where Elizabeth stood near the window, wearing a yellow day dress with a matching small-brimmed hat. My heart ached. Worry lines creased her forehead. Her eyes were red and puffy. But still and all, she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  The guard closed the door behind us. Eyeing Elizabeth with a leering smile, he said, “You got five minutes.”

 
I turned back to him. “Could we have some privacy, please?”

  “No. And don’t touch her either. You stay on this side. She stays on that one.”

  I realized my mutilated hand was on display, and, as it was chained in front of me to my left hand, I had no way to hide it. I slid into the closest chair, and Elizabeth sat opposite me, her hands out on the table in front of her. I kept mine out of sight.

  “How are you, Will?” Her eyes were pooled with tears.

  I was determined to show her a brave face. “I’m fine. I have a cell to myself. It’s boring, but I’m okay. Getting better.”

  “I didn’t know about the morphine.”

  “No.” I looked away. “It was just medicine.” I glanced at her again. “My hand hurts all the time. It just got away from me a little bit.”

  “Yes.”

  I ducked my shoulders and tried to talk casually, to keep the guard from discerning any importance to my question. “Have the police been to see you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But of course I couldn’t tell them anything, other than I didn’t believe you would kill anyone. Well … anyone else.”

  “Right. Were they fishing to find accomplices or anything?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” No one but me had seen the auburn-haired woman with Moretti. Or at least no one had come forward.

  She asked if I needed anything, and we chatted for a few minutes before the guard told us our time was up. I stood and put a smile on my face. “Thanks for coming, Lizzie. But I’d appreciate it if you would stay away for now. I’ll be out of here soon. I don’t want you to see me like this. And I don’t want you ogled by these degenerates.” I glanced back at the guard. “The inmates, I mean.” I turned back and winked at Elizabeth. That got a real smile out of her.

  I think the guard knew what I did, because he hauled me out of the room, shoved me down the corridor, and threw me into my cell without removing the chains. They weren’t taken off until the next day. But that was all right.

  Whether she was involved in Moretti’s death or not, Elizabeth wasn’t a suspect.

  * * *

  Now I told Mr. Sutton again to keep everyone away. It would be humiliating enough to see them in court. We went through the preliminary hearing and bail hearing with no surprises—the prosecution had more than enough evidence to bring the case to trial, including an eyewitness who could put me at Carlo Moretti’s door at his approximate time of death. Judge Morton denied me bail even when Mayor Thompson and Governor Osborne pressured him. The judge told Mr. Sutton he wouldn’t grant bail even if he got President Taft and Pope Pius to vouch for me. Word had it that Morton had been a friend and confidant of Elizabeth’s father—Judge Hume.

  The next month dragged by. Most days I did nothing but sit on the floor of a windowless six-by-eight cell, my back propped against the redbrick wall, no one but the guards for company. My father’s position in the community kept me out of the general population, for which I was grateful, but after my previous experience I wasn’t as afraid of spending time in jail as I’d been.

  I was simply miserable, plagued with as bad a melancholy as I’ve ever had. Every night I dreamed about morphine. Most of the dreams had me taking a dose, only to panic, remembering after the fact—and before the morphine took effect—that I had quit. That realization woke me, robbing me of what I was sure would be the dream equivalent of a morphine high. I tried to negotiate with the guards for drugs or alcohol, for anything that would bring me the peace I needed, but Riordan had sent out the word—if anyone brought me anything, they’d be out on the streets. I wondered if he thought he was doing me a favor. I smoked—a lot—but it did nothing to assuage my cravings.

  I thought about the morphine in the back of my wardrobe. My father said he’d pay my rent until I was freed, however long that took. Assuming no one cleaned out my apartment too thoroughly, fifteen ounces of morphine awaited my return, which in my weak moments was enough to keep me going. But the longer I thought about it, the more often I thought of the opium addict who had seen through me. He had taken on some sort of otherworldly presence in my mind. I wasn’t even completely sure he had been real. Was he a vision of a future me—a hideous, toothless monster, frightening children and eliciting pity from the charitable?

  I had to free myself from the drug.

  Mr. Sutton petitioned the court for a change of venue, arguing that it would be impossible to find twelve men in Detroit capable of trying my case without prejudice either for or against me. He argued that any man who was unaware of my fame had to be illiterate and deaf, and one who hadn’t formed an opinion regarding my innocence or guilt had to be an imbecile.

  Judge Morton rejected the petition out of hand. Sutton filed motion after motion with no result. It was clear to me that without some breakthrough, I had no chance whatsoever.

  * * *

  A guard wearing a filthy blue wool uniform with no top button shoved me to a small interrogation room—four plaster walls that at some point long ago had been white, with a heavy oak table and a pair of chairs on the scuffed plank floor.

  Sutton was pacing the back of the room. His briefcase lay open on the table. “Ah, Will.” Sutton, a human perpetual motion machine, crossed the floor to me in an instant and shook my left hand. He closed the door behind me and gestured toward a chair.

  I shook my head. Standing gave me a better view out the window of a Detroit street scene—cars, trucks, and people racing by, some glancing nervously toward the police station. Life. As opposed to whatever this was.

  Sutton resumed his pacing. “We need to make this a case of mistaken identity. No one is going to believe that you just happened upon the body. The papers have already raised too many questions about that mess with John Cooper. We have to convince the jury you weren’t there.”

  “What about the truth?”

  “My Lord, Will.” He stopped abruptly and pointed at me. “You were seen running from Moretti’s apartment. Shortly thereafter his body was discovered. Any extenuating circumstances will be thrown out the window.”

  “But no one saw me with a knife. The man who killed Moretti would have been soaked in blood. I didn’t have any on me.”

  “Perhaps that would be enough if your name were Sister Mary Theresa of the Blessed Sacrament. But your name is Will Anderson, the Electric Executioner, a man who has admitted to killing once already.”

  “In self-defense.”

  “Yes, in self-defense against a man who was allegedly being helped by this man—a man whose head was nearly cut off. For all anyone knows—hell, for all I know—you went there with the intent of killing Moretti, but someone beat you to the punch.”

  I started to protest, but he held up his hands. “It doesn’t matter. At least you were smart enough this time to keep your mouth shut, so we can present our case any way we want. We have no choice but to go with a flat-out denial. You weren’t there. Only one witness can identify you—Maria Cansalvo, a nineteen-year-old illegal immigrant who lives alone and works as a housekeeper. She doesn’t speak English, and she didn’t get past primary school. I can destroy her credibility.”

  “How are you going to do that?” I thought of the girl.

  “It’s common knowledge that organized gangs are bringing in the illegals. We can’t prove it was Adamo, but we can certainly establish it as a possibility. Given that a single phone call could get her deported, the people who brought her in have a great deal of control over her actions. She could very well be doing the bidding of Vito Adamo in identifying you as the man who killed Moretti.”

  “But … it’s not right.”

  Sutton stopped pacing. “Listen, Will. After the trial, she’s going back to Sicily whether you go to prison or not. What do you say to being a free man when she leaves?”

  A blue Newcomb-Endicott delivery truck, a Detroit Electric, passed through my view of the street. “What do you think my chances are?”

  He smiled. “Good. You just need to relax and let m
e do the work.”

  “All right.” I was glad he was confident, but I was still concerned about the girl.

  Sutton clapped me on the back. “Look at the bright side. If all else fails, we have excellent grounds for appeal based on Morton denying the change of venue.”

  “That’s the bright side?” I said. “To have to go through this twice?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  One morning, while lying on my cot, I realized that once I went to prison I would be in with the general population, and it would likely be at the state prison in Jackson—the worst prison in the state, with the most heinous criminals the Michigan state justice system could cull from the public. My safety would be entirely up to me. In my condition I’d be somebody’s rag doll, barely worth a cigarette. My hand would make it difficult for me to defend myself if I was completely fit, and I was far from fit.

  I dropped to the floor and did a hundred sit-ups. It took me all morning, but what else did I have to do? After lunch I started on squat thrusts and running in place, before starting again on my hand-stretching exercises. The next morning I woke almost unable to move, but I did another hundred sit-ups. This time my sore stomach muscles stabbed me with every one, but I gritted my teeth and took it. By the end of the month I was up to two hundred sit-ups, one hundred squat thrusts, and an hour (approximately, since I had no watch) of running in place. I was also able to almost completely straighten the fingers of my right hand.

  Now I needed upper body strength. I started working on push-ups. Using my right hand to support myself was incredibly painful, but I worked through it. At first I struggled through ten, then twenty, then fifty, then a hundred, then two hundred. About two months in I realized I was no longer exercising out of fear, but because it made me feel good, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

  My mind became alert, and I stopped constantly thinking about morphine. I started taking visitors, and spent time with my family and friends. I began reading again. Elizabeth and my parents brought me books and magazines—Elizabeth leaned toward Upton Sinclair, Jane Addams, and Mother Jones; my mother to Mary Johnston and Booth Tarkington. My father brought me trade magazines—The Automobile and Horseless Age.