Motor City Shakedown

by D. E. Johnson

  “All right.” He sat in his gray leather swivel chair. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to come back to work—but not in engineering. I’d like to work with you.”

  “Mmm.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek. Finally he said, “We might be able to arrange that. But first I need you to do something.”

  “What?”

  “See Dr. Miller for a complete examination.”

  “Why?”

  “Humor me. I want to be sure you’re healthy before you come back to work.”

  I shrugged. “Fine. But what sort of work might I do?”

  “Let me ponder that. There are a few special projects I haven’t been able to get to.”

  “I was thinking of a front office job. Administration. Something like that.”

  “We’ll discuss it after you see Dr. Miller,” he said. “And you must promise to follow Dr. Miller’s instructions … should he have any.”

  Again, I shrugged. “Fine.”

  He picked up the receiver of his telephone. “Wilkinson? Call Dr. Miller. Tell him Will and I will be in this afternoon.” He listened for a moment. “Yes. He said whenever I could get him there.” He hung up.

  “Today?” I said.

  “Well, yes. He told me he’d fit you in any time.”

  “All right.” My father and Dr. Miller had obviously planned this out, but I didn’t anticipate any difficulty. I’d known Dr. Miller since I was a child, and he’d helped me immeasurably in my trials with Elizabeth. I had nothing to worry about. Once I finished with Dr. Miller, I’d begin to work on my father again. He had to give me a good job.

  * * *

  “Neurasthenia,” Dr. Miller said, turning to my father. “Or ‘Americanitis,’ if you prefer. There’s no doubt.”

  “Oh, please.” I shook my head and jumped off the examination table. “There’s nothing wrong with me that a week out of jail won’t cure.”

  “I’m afraid not, Will.” The doctor flipped through the pages of his notebook, peering over his pince-nez glasses. “Dispepsia, melancholia, a tendency to addiction—I could go on.” He spread his hands in front of him. “It’s simply your body’s response to the speed of life in this country. I believe your dependence on morphine came from a subconscious desire to slow down your life and to escape from the pressure exerted on you. The human body and mind weren’t designed for this kind of strain. You need the rest cure.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Will, listen to reason,” my father said. “There are any number of nice sanitariums—Dr. Kellogg’s in Battle Creek, for instance.”

  “He’s right, Will,” Dr. Miller said. “Though I’d recommend traveling a bit farther. The Glen Springs Hotel in New York has been getting wonderful results with their radioactive mineral springs. A month or two there will give your body time to heal itself.”

  “All I’ve been doing is resting. I need to get back to work.”

  My father shook his head. “You promised to follow Dr. Miller’s instructions.”

  “Father, I’ll go crazy there. The best thing for me is to work. If we work together you’ll be able to keep your eye on me. You’ll know if I’m getting better or worse. Please.” I reached out to him with my left hand. “I need to work.”

  He sighed and turned to Dr. Miller. “Are there any other treatments?”

  “Well, there’s one possibility.” He looked thoughtful.

  “Will I be able to work right away?” I asked.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  I looked at my father. “And you’ll let me work with you?”

  He rubbed his chin with a forefinger before nodding.

  Then it didn’t matter what it was. “I’ll do it.” I looked out the window at Dr. Miller’s vegetable garden and was brought back to the day I discovered Elizabeth was addicted to heroin.

  “All right,” Dr. Miller said. “We can start immediately.”

  “Fine.” I turned to my father. “I’ll be in bright and early tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll need a few minutes,” Dr. Miller said. “I have to warm up the machine.”

  “What machine?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Dr. Miller said. “Electrotherapy is what I was talking about.”

  “That’s putting my feet in electrified water?”

  Dr. Miller chuckled. “No, of course not. Studies have proved that to be completely ineffective.”

  “Oh.” I felt a little relief. “Well then, what are you going to do?”

  “We connect a pair of electrodes to a machine.” He stepped up to me. “And we affix one here”—he touched one of my temples—“and the other to the inner angle of the eye, about here.” He pointed to my eye, just to the side of my nose.

  “No.” It came out automatically.

  Dr. Miller glanced at my father, who said, “There’s always Glen Springs, Will.”

  Shit. “No … no, I’ll do this—the electrotherapy.” I had to protect my family.

  “I’ve done this hundreds of times, Will,” Dr. Miller said. “The charge is relatively mild. You’ve nothing to worry about.” He looked at my father and then again at me. “Okay?”

  The thought of shooting an electrical charge into my head scared me to death, not to mention that it brought back frightful memories. But what choice did I have? “Fine.”

  Dr. Miller left the room. I waited with my father until the doctor came back and escorted me into a small room with no windows. It contained a hospital bed, a small white table, a cabinet with medical supplies, and a single wooden chair. On the table was a wooden box with a pair of wires sticking out of it. It was plugged into a light socket.

  Dr. Miller asked me to sit on the bed before taking two small white disks out of the cabinet. He applied a bit of glue to the back of the disks and stuck one on my left temple and the other at the edge of my right eye. While he did, he said, “Electrotherapy is a tried-and-true technique. I prefer the rest cure because it’s less intrusive, but this is as likely to cure you. Now, lie down.”

  I lay back, and he hooked the wires to the disks glued to my head. My fingers were trembling.

  Stroking his long white beard, he said, “When we start, you will feel a tingling sensation first, and then a mild jolt that may disorient you a bit. I’ll want to watch you for a few hours and then your father can take you home.” He reached over to the box. “All right, here we go.”

  Little fingers tickled my skull and danced down my arms and legs. A second later, a bomb went off in my head.

  * * *

  I remember bits and pieces of the rest of that day—a nurse, mashed potatoes (though I don’t recall any other component of a meal), and someone tucking me into an unfamiliar bed. The next morning I got dressed and came back to my apartment. While I was standing in the hallway in front of my door, a vague memory appeared—I had tried to open a locked door and then climbed out a window. I didn’t remember how I got home.

  After unlocking my door, I walked into the foyer. The telephone in my den was ringing. I strolled in and picked up the phone. A man was on the other end, and he sounded angry, but I couldn’t make out what he was talking about. Eventually I hung up and wandered into the parlor, where I sat on the sofa and stared out the window. Throughout the day people knocked on my door, and the telephone rang numerous times, but I was content to just sit. Twice that I recall, a man twisted the knob and pounded on the door with his fist, rattling the dishes in my china cabinet, before stomping down the hall, cursing.

  I noted this somewhere in the interior of my brain, but didn’t examine it at the time and had forgotten all about it when I decided to get something to eat. My mind had cleared to the extent that I felt like I had just awakened from a night with too little sleep—dull, head heavy, my vision surrounded with darkness.

  I dressed and headed out the door, down the stairs, and out of the building. It was dark, which surprised me. I had no idea what time it was but didn’t think to look at my watch.r />
  A dark figure appeared in front of me. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back, writhing in pain. My stomach felt like it had been torn apart, but the attack was so sudden, so violent, that I didn’t know if I had been shot or hit with something.

  The man grabbed my collar and dragged me into the alley between my building and the house next door. With one hand, he lifted me to my feet and pinned me against the wall. I gasped from the pain as my stomach muscles stretched out.

  The light of the electric streetlamp cut across his forehead at an angle. One eye was in the light, the other in shadow. Even in my state, that one eye—brown, wide, bulging was all I needed to see—Sam Gianolla. He tapped me under the chin with a baseball bat. My teeth clicked together. I clenched my jaw.

  “My friend say you don’ take him serious.”

  “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Fuck you don’t.” He brought the bat up under my chin and popped me again, this time a little harder. “Joe from the Teamsters called ya this morning. Ya hung up on him.”

  “No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Listen to me, stronzo. This ain’t no game.” He let go of my collar and pushed his forearm hard against my windpipe. “You got one more chance. I liked Esposito. He wasn’ a piece a shit like you.”

  “All right.” I still didn’t know what he was talking about, but denying him would only get me hurt worse. “It was a mistake. I’ll do what you want.”

  Gianolla stepped back and dropped the bat to his side. “Adamo got a warrant out on him. Your job right now is to get the Teamsters in. If this work out, we won’t have to cut him in at all.” He smiled a cold, dark smile. “Makes your job easy.” He wound up and rammed the end of the bat into my stomach.

  I fell to the ground and curled up in the fetal position, gasping for breath. Gianolla used the bat to turn my head toward him. “Only reason you not dead is my brother. Next time I gotta come here it gonna hurt a lot worse. And next time gonna be permanente.”

  * * *

  Sam Gianolla stalked off, and I picked myself up from the alleyway and stumbled, doubled over, toward the front of my building. I was nearly to the door when a pair of voices called out, “Will!”

  In the dim light of the streetlamps, I saw my mother and father hurrying up the walk. “Oh, thank God,” my mother said. “Will, dear, are you all right?”

  “Yes.” I straightened, my stomach muscles stabbing at me. “Just a little sick to my stomach.”

  They stopped in front of me. “Well, you don’t look all right,” my mother said, putting her arm around me and steering me to the door. Now seeing me in the light, she gasped. “What happened to you?”

  I pushed my hair back from my forehead and straightened my coat. “Nothing. I took a tumble.”

  “Let’s get you into bed.” She turned to my father. “William, you need to phone Dr. Miller and let him know Will’s here.”

  They fussed over me and got me back into my apartment. My mother put me to bed while my father went into my den to use the telephone. When I was situated, she left to make me a cup of tea, and my father sat in my rocking chair. “Why did you leave Dr. Miller’s?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  “His contraption malfunctioned. I don’t know how many watts you had shot through your head, but it was probably enough to power the Victoria through the entire thousand-mile endurance run.”

  I nodded. “Sounds about right.”

  “You scared Dr. Miller and your mother to death. After you disappeared, they came here to find you, but you weren’t home. She phoned me, and we both came over this afternoon and then contacted everyone we could think of, including all the hospitals.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m pretty sure I was here all day. I don’t think I got into any trouble.”

  “You should go to a sanitarium, Will.”

  “No.” I thought about it. “I’ll keep getting the treatment.”

  My father’s eyes grew wide. “You’re not serious.”

  “I’m not leaving town.”

  “See Dr. Miller again. He’ll figure something out.”

  “Fine.” I nodded back. I couldn’t go to a sanitarium. “But I’ll be in to work Monday.”

  “No. I don’t want to see you in the office next week.”

  “Be reasonable, Father.”

  He was having none of it. My mother bustled into the room with a cup of tea and shooed my father out. She plumped the pillows and took my temperature and generally did all the things mothers seem to be under contract to do. When she ran out of maternal duties, she sat on the edge of my bed and took hold of my hand. I had always borne a close resemblance to her, but she had changed. Her brunette hair was now shot with steel gray, and her long face seemed even longer, with more prominent cheekbones. Crow’s-feet were etched into the skin at the sides of her eyes, deep wrinkles cut into her forehead, and sharp semicircles curved around the edges of her mouth.

  “What happened to you, Will?”

  “Nothing, Mother. I’m fine.”

  “You know, we didn’t stop being your parents when you turned eighteen. We still love you. Let us help you.” She squeezed my hand. “We’re not stupid, Will. You’re obviously in trouble again.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You need to get out of Detroit—just get away from everything. It’s no wonder you have neurasthenia. With Wesley’s death and your trial and your … situation with Elizabeth, how could you not be plagued with melancholy?” She patted my hand. “Go to a sanitarium.”

  “No, Mother.” I pushed myself up on the bed. “That would make me worse. I need to work.” If I didn’t deliver, the Gianolla brothers would kill her, I had no doubt of that. Anger flared inside me. They threatened my mother and father. Though I said nothing, I could feel my jaw tighten. Those sons of bitches were not going to harm my family.

  I touched my mother’s hand. “Trust me. I’ll stay at your house after the treatments until I’m back in my right mind.” I was going to have to figure out how to fake having the treatment. I couldn’t keep this up, what with the problems I was facing.

  She just looked at me for a moment. It was then I noticed that, with all the deep lines on her face, there were no laugh lines. She had taken a few trips to the Battle Creek San over the years. She knew what I was going through. “What about all those holes in your wall?”

  “Oh, that’s nothing. I just throw knives sometimes. It’s helping my coordination.”

  She looked at me a while longer, biting her lip. I wondered what she was thinking. Finally she nodded. “I’m spending the night.”

  “Mother, really, it’s not necessary. I’m perfectly—”

  “That’s enough of that nonsense, Will. I’m your mother.” Her tone softened. “You need someone to take care of you. You’ve been through so much. If you don’t work it out of your system, you’re going to do something you’ll regret.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Do something I’ll regret? I was looking forward to the day I would do something—anything—I wouldn’t regret.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dr. Miller came over a little while later and examined me. After apologizing a few dozen times, he declared me fit enough for home bed rest. By Sunday morning, I felt like I was back to normal. My mother stayed all day, watching over me like a hen. I had things to do, but there was no shaking her, so I exercised and stretched my hand when she let me out of bed. It also gave me time to think.

  According to Sam Gianolla, the police were after Vito Adamo. The Gianollas wanted me to concentrate on getting the Teamsters into Detroit Electric. That wasn’t going to happen, no matter what I did. If I could find Adamo, I would have options. One would be to do what the Gianollas wanted—set up Vito Adamo to be murdered. But that looked like a short-term solution. Once Adamo was out of the way, I would still have the Teamsters problem.

  I had to rid myself of the Gianollas, an
d I could think of only one way to do that. But it would require working with a man I’d sworn to kill, or at the very least, bring to justice. I wondered if I could do that. The very thought of Vito Adamo made me smolder with anger. I doubted he felt any more congeniality for me. If I could get past my feelings to make the attempt, would Adamo do the same? Perhaps, if the Gianollas presented as big a problem for him as they did for me.

  In the late afternoon I was lying on the sofa reading when the telephone rang. My mother answered it. She talked for a few minutes, and I assumed it was one of her friends. But then she called, “Will? It’s Elizabeth.”

  I felt a moment of panic. This conversation was inevitable, but I so wanted to avoid it. I went to the den, took the phone from my mother, and waited until she retreated from the room. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Will,” Elizabeth said. “How are you?”

  It wasn’t the standard reflexive “How are you?” Her voice was full of concern. My mother must have told her about the electrotherapy mishap. “I’m doing fine,” I said. “And you?”

  “Fine. There’s a new Impressionist exhibition at the art museum, and I thought, if you weren’t too busy, you might like to see it with me.”

  “No. I can’t. Between work and this treatment I’m getting, I really have to put my social life on hold for a while. I’m sorry. Maybe things will settle down in a few weeks.” I hoped we’d be able to resume our relationship when I finished with the Gianollas. I didn’t want to shut her out forever.

  “Oh. All right. I understand.”

  We talked a few minutes more before we hung up with no plans for getting together or even phoning. I was watching my chances for a happy life slip between my fingers.

  * * *

  The next morning I was able to convince my mother that I was in my right mind, or at least as near as I was going to get, and she agreed to leave me to my own devices. I tried to hide from her the sharp pains that stabbed me in the gut every time I bent over or twisted my torso, courtesy of Sam Gianolla and his baseball bat.

  At ten o’clock I left my apartment. It was cool but sunny, a perfect morning of the type that helped me forget the dark cold months of winter. My first stop was a sporting goods store, where I bought a switchblade and two .32-caliber seven-shot Colts with two boxes of bullets. I stuck the knife in my pocket, one of the guns into my belt, and when I got home, the other gun into my nightstand. Things were getting uglier, and the path I was being forced to take would be dangerous.