The Detroit Electric Scheme

by D. E. Johnson

  He squirmed in his chair and finally said, “Mr. Sutton mentioned your relationship with Wesley McRae. It’s simply not right.”

  “Father, Wesley is a friend. A good friend. He’s probably the best person I know.”

  My father harrumphed. “Yes, well, you know how people talk. And if two unmarried men live across the hall from each other and spend time together—”

  “Father. He’s my friend. That’s the end of it.”

  “You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry.” He took a quick drink of brandy and cleared his throat. “On a brighter note, I’ve thought about what you asked.”

  I stared at him blankly.

  “About coming back to work.”

  “Oh.” It didn’t seem so important now.

  “I’d like you to be in charge of the DADA show.”

  “Really?” I sat up straight. Now that Detroit was becoming the center of the American automotive industry, the Detroit Automobile Dealers Association was spending a fortune to prove it to the rest of the world. The only show that could compete was the original, the New York Auto Show, held at Madison Square Garden. Since Detroit had the equivalent of “short-man’s syndrome” when the subject was New York, the automobile men of Detroit would work twice as hard and spend twice as much to prove they were better. The result was the finest auto show in the country, probably the world.

  It was also the biggest sales week of the year for Detroit auto manufacturers, and the competition would be strong. My father was putting a lot on my shoulders. This show could make or break the year for Detroit Electric. He really did believe in me—though it probably didn’t hurt that the show ran from January 16 through 21. It would be finished nine days before my trial began.

  I’d still be free—assuming Judge Hume’s body wasn’t found.

  My father looked at his brandy while he swirled it around in the snifter. The rich brown liquid sparkled in the electric lights of the room. “You’ll have to coordinate with sales, choose which models to show, work with advertising, everything.”

  I thanked him.

  His head tilted back a little. “Once we get this trial behind us I’d like to get you back on track—learning the business, the whole business.”

  “Thanks. You won’t regret this. Oh, and I forgot to thank you for the tickets.” It wasn’t his fault I’d been beaten and framed for yet another murder.

  “Tickets?”

  “For the show at the Miles.”

  “I didn’t give you any tickets.” He was quiet for a moment. “Will, are you all right?”

  “I’m . . . fine.” I waved my hand in the air. “I was thinking of something else.” Of course he didn’t send me the tickets. If Frank could type out blackmail letters in my office, he could certainly get hold of a piece of Anderson stationery and an envelope. What better way to get me out of my apartment?

  My father set his glass on the blotter. “Did you hear about Byron Carter?”

  Byron Carter was the man behind the Carter-Car Company, which he had sold to General Motors a few years before. “No. What happened?”

  “He died yesterday. A few weeks ago he stopped to help a woman whose car had stalled. He didn’t check the spark first.”

  “Oh, no. What happened?”

  “When the engine backfired and the crank spun back, it broke his arm and smashed his face and jaw. Gangrene set in. He never recovered.”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry. I know you were friends.”

  “Henry Leland is beside himself. He and Byron were very close. Leland’s saying he’ll come up with a fix for the self-starter if it’s the last thing he does. He swears he won’t have his Cadillacs hurting people that way.”

  “Good for him. I’m sure Mr. Carter’s death was a real blow.”

  “It’s high time someone did something about that hand crank. It’s a menace.” He shifted in his chair and let out a sigh. He looked miserable.

  “What?” I said.

  “Well . . . I feel terrible saying this, but I’m worried about what might happen if Leland actually produces a self-starter that works.”

  “Why? People don’t buy electrics just because they’re easy to start. Gasoline automobiles are always going to have all that noise and smoke. Society women would never drive one.”

  “Perhaps. But the cards are already stacked against us.” He began to tick off points on his fingers. “Gasoline automobiles are cheap. Electric automobiles are expensive. Gasoline is practically free. Electricity is expensive. A gasoline automobile can be driven anywhere the fuel can be delivered, whereas electrics are almost exclusively city cars.” He dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “For now. But rural areas are getting electrical service. And don’t forget the Edison battery. Electric cars’ average mileage going from fifty to more than a hundred?” I leaned forward and got a stab in the gut. “Father, trust me on this. Electrics will always be the choice for people who can afford them. Who wants an automobile farting noxious fumes on them if they can avoid it?”

  He looked thoughtful and nodded slowly. “You may be right. So long as we stay at the top of the range we should be fine. It’s Baker who’s got the problem, now that they’re going for the mid market.”

  By the time I left, my mind was swirling with ideas for the auto show. But I had an ominous feeling. My thoughts kept coming back to Judge Hume. His body lay under a few inches of soil in the cornfield. Assuming dogs didn’t dig him up sooner, he would certainly be found when the field was plowed in the spring. And given that he was buried in my sheet only a few hundred yards from my apartment, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out I was involved.

  I needed to get rid of the body—permanently.

  I spent the rest of the day on two tasks—trying to determine what to do with Judge Hume’s body and keeping myself from drinking.

  I nearly decided to leave the body where it was. Yes, it would be found, and yes, the evidence would point to me as the killer, but the thought of touching it again filled me with dread. Practicality finally won out. If I wanted to regain my life I had to put Judge Hume’s corpse somewhere it would never be found. I considered asking Wesley to help me, but quickly decided against it. If I were caught I would pay the price. I wouldn’t risk his life and freedom again.

  My first idea was to bury the body deeper in the cornfield, but the field was too close to my apartment and was surrounded by houses. With the hard ground, the digging would be a noisy business, and I might be heard. It was a miracle no one had phoned the police when I buried him. The body had to go somewhere else.

  I would need a large motorized vehicle, but I couldn’t turn any of my friends or family into accomplices. An electric would be ideal because of its silent motor, but the only car to which I had access was the company’s Victoria. It had a tiny trunk and a single bench seat, only large enough for two people to sit upright. I could just picture the face of the policeman who stopped us. No. I needed a truck and had no way of securing one until tomorrow. It would have to wait a day.

  For a brief moment I considered bringing the body to the factory or the garage and dumping it into the acid tank. No body, no murder. But not only was it too horrifying to seriously contemplate, with the garage manned twenty-four hours a day and guards now posted at the factory, it was also too dangerous.

  My next thought was to weigh him down and dump him in the river.

  I didn’t have a boat and couldn’t rent one without potentially messy paperwork. To have any chance of him not being found, I would have to get him out near the middle, which meant I’d have to swim his body far out into the river along with enough weights to sink it. Even in warm weather I’d be joining him at the bottom.

  I had to bury him somewhere else, and it had to be close.

  Then it hit me—Zug Island. It was just outside the city, and most of the ground was piled with garbage. Nobody would find him there. Detroit Iron Works owned the island but used only a small portion of it near the river for the
ir huge foundry. The four-lane bridge over Short Cut Canal was fenced off and guarded to limit access to the property, but a railroad bridge crossed it on both sides, which were still heaped with garbage from the island’s earlier days as a dump.

  When I was sixteen I’d gone to Zug on a dare with some prep school friends. We’d taken the tracks across the canal and sneaked through the piles of garbage to the ruins of Samuel Zug’s mansion. It was rumored to be haunted, and we were all frightened, though our teenage bravado carried us through. We continued on to the foundry, where a stink like burning rubber mixed with coal smoke overcame the powerful stench of rot soaked into the ground. We squinted against the brilliant light pouring through the massive open doors into the hellish environs of the blast furnace. We’d spent more than two hours on the island and never saw or heard a train. It should be safe to cross the bridge—but I’d do some reconnaissance before I started driving around with Judge Hume’s body.

  The task of staying sober was even more difficult.

  The little voice in the back of my head kept reasoning with me. I don’t have a problem. Who wouldn’t drink with all this going on? One drink won’t hurt. I’ll think more clearly. I nearly left my apartment a dozen times—Just for one, that’s all I need. But I didn’t.

  I retrieved my gun around midnight and went straight to bed. I went back to bed at two, and again at four, and again at five. Each time I was sober. Finally, overcome by exhaustion, I dropped off into a restless sleep.

  When I woke at nine o’clock, I thought, I made it one day. Now I’ll make it another. Tiny snowflakes drifted past my window, a reminder that winter was upon us. I threw the blankets to the side and made to swing my legs off the bed, but was halted by a sharp stab in my groin. Then the pain began to register from my sides, face, and stomach. After a minute, I tried again—very slowly. I slipped on my robe and forced myself to look in the mirror. My lips had returned to somewhere near their normal size, and the bruising on my face was beginning to fade. I still looked like I had tried to take on a grizzly single-handed, but I was encouraged nonetheless.

  After dressing, I went outside in the snow just long enough to buy a Herald from a newsboy on the corner. I peeked around to see if anyone was paying attention to me. It seemed a reasonable bet the police would be watching, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. When I got home I sat at my desk and looked through the paper. Since I wasn’t in jail, I knew Judge Hume’s body hadn’t been discovered. But his disappearance was big news. The speculation was that he was running to avoid prosecution. Police were searching every boat they could find on the Detroit River to try to keep him from escaping to Canada. They’d already arrested a boatload of illegal Italian immigrants crossing from Windsor in the dead of night.

  Despite the grim circumstances, I laughed. Even dead, the judge was a problem for Vito Adamo.

  For some reason that laugh forced the weight of the circumstances onto me. The remains of Elizabeth’s father lay in a field. What was she to think? Her fiancé murdered, her father vanished. Now I would defile his body again.

  I couldn’t falter. I didn’t kill Judge Hume. All I was trying to do was to survive, same as he would have. Pushing the horror from my mind, I concentrated on the task ahead. I needed to rid myself of the body and for that I would need a Detroit Electric truck. I phoned my father at his office. Wilkinson connected me.

  “Hello, Will. I thought we might see you this morning.”

  “I’m just tying up a few personal details before I begin my work on the show.” That was certainly true. “But I want to get started tonight. Have we got a 601 I could run through its paces?”

  “I would imagine. But what for?”

  “I’ve never driven one. I need to be familiar with it if I’m going to promote it.” Once, I had been proud of my honesty, but now lying seemed as natural as breathing.

  “Makes sense. I’ll have Wilkinson look into it and phone you with the details.”

  We rang off. I lay on the parlor floor stretching my sore muscles for the better part of an hour until Wilkinson called me back, saying I could pick up a 601 panel truck at the garage that evening.

  I sat at the kitchen table, gazing out the window. Pebbly snowflakes scattered before a stiff wind that shook the bare gray branches of the trees in the backyard. One limb in particular caught my eye—a skeletal arm with bony fingers reaching out to the heavens.

  An image of Sapphira’s dark eyes, high cheekbones, and lustrous black hair filled my mind. At the same time, my stomach lurched. The association of Sapphira with the night at the theater would be too strong to ever overcome. I would forget her. Anyway, people I knew had begun turning up dead much more frequently than I cared for. Since I hadn’t told her where I lived, it was unlikely she would find me. And after the exhibition I put on, it was even less likely she would try.

  I had an odd thought. Had the Dodge brothers not beaten me outside the theater, I would have spent a good portion of the night with Sapphira, and Judge Hume’s body would have been found in my apartment. I would be in jail now, never to leave.

  John and Horace Dodge had done me a favor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Half an hour later, gun tucked into the small of my back, I took a trolley downtown and then another to the corner of Jefferson and West End. From there I headed toward the river, trying to ignore the saloons lining the street and the trembling in my hands. Snowflakes plummeted down, now larger and wetter, melting to slush on the cobbles but adding to the thin graying layer on the ground. The road ended abruptly at a series of warehouses and factories, redbrick buildings darkened with soot. The factories billowed clouds of oily black smoke from chimney after chimney, the plumes drifting over the river to darken the Windsor sky.

  The building closest to the island was a warehouse with tiny windows set high on the walls. As casually as I could muster, I cut around it and hurried to the train tracks. To the north, this track divided into dozens of branches, but only one headed south to Zug Island. Even though the wind was strong at my back, I smelled the island before I saw it. I could have found the way with my eyes closed. Past the bridge was nothing but hills of heaped trash skinned with snow, blocking the view of the foundry. Judge Hume’s body could lie there forever, and no one would be the wiser.

  The tracks were in good shape and the bridge, though still a hundred yards away, was obviously intact. I don’t know why I was worried, what with the constant flow of pig iron from the foundry to all points east and west.

  My biggest concern now was how far I’d have to carry the body. I’d come in on the closest street, and I wasn’t sure about driving onto private property with the body in the back of the truck, particularly since night watchmen were sure to be on duty here on the riverfront. I’d have to improvise, something that—clearly—was not my strong suit.

  By the time I returned to the warehouse, all that was left of my footprints were slight depressions from my weight in the grassier areas. If the snow continued, I’d leave tracks, but they would disappear quickly.

  I went back out to Jefferson and walked east. When I was about a quarter mile down the road, a train roared out from the island, dozens of gray boxcars clacking along the track. In front of me, a security guard in a wrinkled gray uniform slouched against a redbrick building underneath a sign that read SIMPKINS IMPORTS. I ambled up to him and smiled. “Good afternoon.” I shouted to be heard over the train.

  He looked at me, eyes wary. He was an older man, thin, with a deeply lined face.

  “Say, I pass by here all the time,” I said, “and I’ve always wondered what you import.” I pulled my cigarette case from my coat pocket and held it out to him.

  He took a cigarette, and I lit it for him. The sound of the train was fading into the distance. “Much obliged,” he said, and shrugged. “They import paper. Nothing worth stealing, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “No.” I laughed. “I’m not a thief. I was just curious.”

  He shr
ugged again and looked away.

  I gestured with my head toward the back of the building. “All these trains must drive you crazy.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “It’s got to be the worst at night. Just when you think you’re going to get some peace and quiet, another train comes by.”

  “Nah. Unless they’re really busy, the trains stop around six.”

  “Hmm.” I pulled out my watch and glanced at it. “Well, I’d better be going. Thanks for the conversation.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He took a drag on the cigarette, and I headed for the streetcar stop.

  I went home and spent a couple of hours reading in my office. My chair sat next to the radiator, and I moved closer, feeling the warmth cut through the winter chill. Finally, too nervous to wait around my apartment, I began to wander the streets.

  The snow continued. An inch of wet slush covered the cobblestones and sidewalks, and began to freeze as the temperature dropped. I picked my way carefully through the dark, certain a fall on the pavement would break me in two. As I moved along, my sore muscles began to loosen.

  I walked through the Detroit in which I’d grown up—stone Beaux Arts palaces, Victorian mansions, columned Greek Revivals, and brick and stone skyscrapers rising from the glow of the street lamps into the dark as if they continued on to Heaven itself. For dinner, I stopped downtown at a little French café, refusing wine though the waiter pressed me on the subject. I was determined to maintain my sobriety but understood for the first time how difficult it was going to be. Social situations—lunches, dinners, after-dinner chats with friends, parties, the theater, everything—involved drinking. It was normal and expected. To refuse was to be rude. I was in for a lifetime of awkward moments.

  After dinner, I wandered north through the falling snow past “Sauerkraut Row,” the German part of town, filled with breweries, cigar factories, marble works, and homes. Wreaths adorned most doors, and parlors shone with the Christmas trees’ sparkling glass ornaments.