The Detroit Electric Scheme

by D. E. Johnson

  Vito spread his hands in front of him. “I do not make their decisions. And I would suggest you do not call us names. I will not tolerate it again.”

  I sat back on my heels. “She can’t tell me anything when she’s like this.”

  “Then I will give you twenty-four hours. And please understand. If you are not able to convince her to tell me what I want to know, I will kill you and your friend, and give Miss Hume to Big Boy. Be assured she will tell him. As I said, I do not wish to harm Judge Hume’s family, but I must have this information.”

  He said something to Salvatore and nodded toward me before he turned and walked out of the room, followed by the other man. Without a word, Salvatore untied the knots on my wrists and left, closing the bedroom door behind him.

  I sat on the floor next to Elizabeth and put a hand on her shoulder. She had been so beautiful, so full of life. Now death hung over her like a guillotine.

  It wasn’t much of a moral dilemma: Get information about Judge Hume’s dishonesty or let Big Boy get it from her. I had to do it. If Judge Hume was extorting money from gangsters, he deserved nothing less. And if I couldn’t get Elizabeth out of here, she would die. I had to get her off the drugs before my trial.

  A door slammed. I walked over to the bedroom door and opened it a crack. Salvatore sat at the table with his arms crossed, squinty eyes glaring at me. The revolver still lay on the table. I closed the door and went back to Elizabeth.

  Later that afternoon she rolled over on her side and looked at me with a sleepy grin. “Will, what are you doing here?” Her voice was husky, the words drawn out, lazy.

  I stroked her head. “I’m here to help you, Lizzie.”

  “Help me? Help me get some more dope?” She laughed and broke into a coughing fit.

  When she quieted, I said, “No. I’m going to help you get off it.”

  She laughed and was again racked by coughs. “Good old Will. Always wants to help.”

  I ignored her sarcasm. “That’s right. I always want to help you.”

  “Then get me a drink.”

  There was nothing in the bedroom. I went to the door and asked Salvatore if he had anything.

  One side of his mouth pulled back in a sneer. “Shut ’de goddamn door.” His accent was heavier than his brother’s. He seemed a lesser version of Vito—not as handsome, probably not as smart, certainly not as commanding. Vito was the boss.

  I tried again. “She needs water. Oh, and we need a chamber pot. And another blanket.”

  He grinned. “Oh, sure. Maybe you like steak, baked potato?” He picked up the gun and aimed it at my head. “Shut ’de door, sonuvabitch.”

  I did. When I turned around, Elizabeth was tipping a small brown bottle into her mouth. I ran to her and snatched it from her hand. The label on the side read FRIEDR. BAYER & CO., and in large print HEROIN. It was empty.

  She smacked her lips and laughed. A few seconds later she quieted and lay back again, her face serene. “Will.” Her hand reached out for my arm. “You’re my friend.” Her eyes were halfway open.

  “Yes, Lizzie, I’m your friend.”

  “Mmmm.” She sighed and her eyes closed, a soft smile playing on her lips.

  Yet another night passed slowly. I was cold and sweaty, exhausted, with a leaden ache in my head. The past week seemed more a nightmare than actual time passing, my memory a hazy recollection of horror.

  It was still dark when Elizabeth shouted out in her sleep, startling me awake. I reached for her arm. She was ice cold, covered in goose bumps, and slick with sweat. I pulled her up against my chest and wrapped the blanket tightly around her.

  She slept restlessly, muttering under her breath, shivering, her legs kicking out. Finally, a gray dawn began to appear through the window. Though Elizabeth’s teeth chattered and her body was racked with shivers, another hour passed before she roused. Moving sluggishly, she pulled away from me and turned around. “Will?” She rolled over onto the mattress and covered her eyes with her hands. “Right. Will.” Her hands shook. She made them into fists. “Leave,” she said, her voice thick and dull. “I don’t want your pity. Just go.”

  “First you need to tell Adamo what he wants to know about your father.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Elizabeth, I know he’s been asking you. He’s not going to let you leave until you tell him.”

  She was quiet.

  “You must know your father’s involved with Adamo,” I said. “You can’t protect him.”

  She looked back at me. Her face was drawn in the sharp lines of her skull, and her sunken green eyes showed more pain than I thought she could bear. “I don’t know what he’s doing,” she said, sniffling. “He doesn’t talk to me.”

  “Adamo says John told him you knew something.”

  She turned her head and looked out the window. “I don’t know what John was talking about. I don’t know anything.” Her voice was flat, without inflection. I’d heard her use that tone before. She was lying.

  I grabbed her arm. “He told me he’ll have Big Boy get it out of you if I can’t. Then he’ll kill me. And he’ll probably kill you.” I turned her head toward me. “Do you want that? Do you?”

  She looked at me, haunted eyes over meandering tracks where her tears had cut through the dirt. “Kill me?” Tilting her head, she looked up at the ceiling and wet her lips, seeming to taste the idea. “That might be nice.”

  Elizabeth lay on the mattress, coughing and shivering. I was cold, too. Even though the tiny stove in the other room was vented directly into this one, it had little effect, particularly with the frigid wind howling through the cracks in the ill-fitting window across from us. Only splinters remained of the windowsill, which had probably been used for firewood by a previous inhabitant during a moment of desperation.

  How many dismal lives had passed through this room? No water, no heat, no gas, no electricity, holes in the filthy plaster revealing rot and mold. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of men, women, and children spent their lives in this dreary place in a constant struggle for survival, probably feeling every bit as hopeless as I did now. And this was a two-room apartment, the equivalent of a presidential suite in this building.

  I’d never appreciated what I had—a loving family, friends, and, oh yes, money. As much as I loved the Detroit I knew, I hated this Detroit. And this was Detroit to many more people than the city in which I spent my life.

  I sat next to Elizabeth, absently stroking her hair while I smoked my last cigarette. Our choices were limited. If she didn’t tell Adamo what he wanted to know, he was going to kill us. If she did, I believed he would let us go. He seemed to have a strange sort of integrity. He didn’t want to exploit Elizabeth’s situation to resolve his problem with Judge Hume, which he could easily have done.

  Our other option was to try to escape. I glanced at the crumbling wall next to me and pried off a chunk of rotting plaster. I could break through to the apartment behind, but if we escaped Adamo would almost certainly kill Wesley.

  I had to convince Elizabeth to talk.

  I realized I was going to miss my meeting with Mr. Sutton. It was odd to even consider something like that at this point, but it made me think of something else. “Lizzie?”

  “What?”

  “When John told me you were in trouble, was he talking about this? The heroin?”

  “I told you,” she said, coughing spastically. “I’m not in trouble.” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dress.

  There was no sense facing her problems when she wouldn’t be around long enough to worry about them. Self-delusion is a wonderful thing.

  I handed her my handkerchief. “Why don’t you tell Adamo your father’s secret and then tell your father Adamo knows about it? He’ll be able to figure a way out of the situation. He’s a smart man. Surely he can do that.”

  Elizabeth tucked her head down into her chest and curled up on the mattress. “He’s my father. Let me keep a shred of dignity.”


  The last word made my blood boil. “Dignity? That’s a good one. Look at you, lying there in your own filth. That’s dignity?” I jumped up and towered over her. “If you want dignity, you’ll get cleaned up. You owe it to yourself. Hell, you owe it to me. But that’s not going to happen until you tell Adamo your father’s damnable secret. You’ve got to.”

  She rolled over just far enough to look into my eyes. “I don’t owe you anything,” she spat. “I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you.”

  “My God, Elizabeth!” I shouted, slamming my fist into the wall. “I know that! But unless you let me help you . . .” I took a deep breath and gathered myself. “Unless you let me help you, unless you tell Adamo, he’s going to kill you, Lizzie.” I dropped to the floor next to her. “I can’t let that happen. Please, Lizzie . . . What will it do to your mother and father if you never come home? They love you. You won’t just be letting Adamo help you commit suicide. You’ll be killing your parents at the same time.”

  She hesitated, then in a voice so quiet I barely heard her, she said, “He takes bribes.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I knelt on the dirty floor next to Elizabeth. “Who does your father take bribes from?”

  “The DUR and—well, companies, mostly. But I know that every Friday a DUR man delivers lunch to my father at his office. Inside the lunch is a hundred-dollar bill.”

  It made sense. Since Mayor Pingree in the 1890s, the city had battled the streetcar companies for lower fares. When Detroit United Railway bought up all the lines to create a streetcar trust, the situation got worse. Many people couldn’t afford the nickel fare, and the population explosion in Detroit made it virtually impossible to get a seat on any car. For the past ten years, the city had been trying to break up the DUR, take over the lines, or force them to lower fares. The DUR had recently sued to keep the case from leaving circuit court. So far, even though the public continued to suffer, that court had ruled on the side of Detroit United Railway.

  Judge Hume presided over the circuit court.

  “I think it’s Friday today,” I said. “Will you tell Adamo?”

  She sniffled and wiped her nose on my handkerchief. “I don’t know.”

  A dog started barking in the apartment behind us. I reached out for Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Just do what I said. Tell your father about it. He can stop taking the money. Adamo won’t be able to get any evidence, and I’ll be able to get you the hell out of here.”

  After a moment she nodded her head.

  The barking got louder. A man in the next apartment shouted in Italian. I heard a sharp crack. The dog yelped and began whimpering.

  We waited for Vito Adamo. A woman shouted something at the man in the apartment behind us. He shouted back. They argued for a few minutes, a door slammed, and the man stomped down the hallway, his footsteps like rifle shots on the warped wooden floor. The apartment was quiet again. Elizabeth lay on the mattress, coughing and shivering, her legs shaking, kicking out.

  Around ten, Vito Adamo’s driver walked into the bedroom. Adamo followed him, twirling a black derby on his finger. “Do you have something to tell me?”

  Elizabeth pushed herself upright and shoved the greasy hair out of her face. “If I do, you’ll let us go?” Somehow, even under these circumstances, she sounded imperious.

  “Of course. I am a man of my word.”

  She explained her father’s secret to him. When she finished, Adamo consulted his pocket watch. “Perfetto. We will observe the judge today at lunch. If it is as you say, I will release you.”

  The Adamo brothers left, and the driver took Salvatore’s spot at the table. I asked Elizabeth if she was sure this happened every Friday. She said she was, though she didn’t look very certain to me. While we waited for them to return, Elizabeth lay down again. Her stomach began cramping, and she retched, over and over, nothing more than stomach acid coming up. She was becoming dehydrated.

  “We need to get you to a hospital,” I said.

  “No.” She wiped her mouth. “No hospitals.”

  “But you have to get off heroin. You have to get clean.”

  “I know.” I thought I saw some resolve in her eyes. “I will.”

  “Then let me take you to a hospital. You need medical care.”

  “I won’t do that to my family. I won’t cause them any more misery.”

  I squatted down next to her. “What are you going to do?”

  She rolled over and grasped my arm. “Stay here with me.”

  “You need a doctor. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just stay with me. Help me.”

  I tried again, and yet again, to talk her into going to a hospital, but she wouldn’t be persuaded. I had to give her credit. Even now, Elizabeth was more concerned about her family than herself.

  The Adamos finally came back around two o’clock. Vito folded his arms over his chest and looked at us with a thoughtful expression, as if he were trying to decide something. “I am satisfied. The young man who delivered the money was more interested in keeping his fingers than remaining quiet.” He bent down in front of us with his hands on his knees. “I am going to trust you. You know things about me that could cause me harm. I do not normally allow that.” An amused expression settled on his face. “For some reason, I like you. But please understand. If I even suspect you have gone to the police with this information, I will kill you. Both of you.”

  I nodded. “We’ll be quiet.”

  “Grazie. We understand each other.”

  “What about my friend?” I said.

  Adamo paused for a moment, considering. “I will have someone bring him here. You will need to persuade him that attempting revenge will only get him killed. And you. And Miss Hume.” He straightened and turned to leave.

  “Do you swear you and your men had nothing to do with John Cooper’s death?” I said.

  He turned back to me and shook his head. “I had nothing to do with it. I enjoyed doing business with Mr. Cooper. I had no problems with him.”

  I wasn’t sure I heard him right. “You did business—What kind of business did you do with John?”

  “His employers occasionally need men for work they don’t want to do themselves. I help them.” Again, he pantomimed one hand washing the other.

  I nodded. The thugs who had beaten the IWW men at the factory now made sense to me. “How about Frank Van Dam? Did you do business with him, too?”

  “To me they were one and the same.”

  “Do you know where Frank went?”

  Adamo shrugged. “I do not.”

  “All right.” Dr. Miller had said it would take a week to purge the drug from Elizabeth’s system. If I was going to keep her away from her parents that long, we’d need to stay somewhere unexpected. Her father would have the police looking for her. “I’d like to ask a favor.”

  His smile grew larger, and he glanced at his brother, holding his hands in front of him like he was weighing a pair of melons. “The boy has grande coglione, eh?” Turning back to me, he said, “What would you like?”

  “Can we keep this room until next Thursday?”

  He agreed to rent us the room for fifty dollars, only five times the going rate for a decent hotel room. Since I didn’t have the money with me, he told me to bring it to Big Boy at the Bucket before the end of the day. I thanked him and shook his hand, wondering as I did at the incongruity of thanking the man who had kidnapped and threatened to kill us. Salvatore handed me a key to the apartment, and they left.

  I locked the door and sat with Elizabeth in the bedroom while I waited for Wesley to arrive. An hour or so later, I heard the apartment door slam. The bedroom door opened, and Wesley was shoved into the room, his hands still bound in front of him.

  “Thank God,” I said. “Wes, are you okay?”

  He shot me a grim smile. The expression clashed with the crusty blood covering one side of his face and the bruises around his eyes. “It would take someone more capable than that lot
to hurt me.” He glanced at Elizabeth lying on the floor and took in a sharp breath. “Is that Elizabeth?”

  I nodded.

  “My Lord.” His eyes didn’t leave her, but he held his hands out in front of me.

  I began working the knots loose, trying to keep from touching his broken fingers. “Can you stay with her while I get some supplies?”

  “Supplies? We need to get her out of here.”

  “No. She wants to get off the drugs, but she won’t go to a hospital.”

  “Let’s just take her.”

  I untied the final knot and unwrapped the rope from around his wrists. “Wes, I don’t know a hell of a lot about drugs, but one thing I do know is that nobody quits unless they want to. She’s saying now she wants to quit. If we force her to go to a hospital, she might change her mind. And if the newspapers got wind of it, it would kill her.”

  Wesley shook his head vehemently. “There are private hospitals for this sort of thing, Will. This is stupid.”

  “I promised her.”

  He blew out a breath in frustration. “You are one stubborn SOB.”

  I smiled at him. “Thanks. So can you stay?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I knelt down next to Elizabeth. “Lizzie?”

  Her eyes opened halfway.

  “I’ve got to leave for a little while. Wesley will be here if you need anything.”

  Her eyes, pupils dilated, darted toward me and then away. She rolled over on her side, groaning.

  After a trip to the nearby general store, I returned to the filthy apartment with a fifty-pound bag of coal, another bag filled with supplies, and a pail of water. My head was finally clear, and I felt like I had at least a modicum of energy. Before I went into the bedroom, I set the bags and water on the floor, and hung my duster on the back of the chair in the main room, careful to keep the bottles in its pockets from clanking together.

  Wesley opened the bedroom door. When he saw me, he stepped out and pushed the door shut. “She’s sleeping.” He had cleaned his face. A one-inch gash had scabbed up on his forehead, surrounded by a bruise that blended into the others around his eyes.