The Detroit Electric Scheme

by D. E. Johnson

  I helped the salesmen, though I’m sure I checked my watch a dozen times before it was finally eight, and at least twenty more times by nine thirty, when I decided to phone Elizabeth. Although it hadn’t been a rock-solid commitment, she said she was coming. It wasn’t like her to just not show up without an explanation. I excused myself and hurried to a pay phone at the front of the pavilion.

  Alberts answered. I asked to speak with Elizabeth.

  “Mr. Anderson?”

  I assumed this was the signal to hang up, but I tried anyway. “Yes, it’s me. Will.”

  “But . . . Miss Hume said she was meeting you at the car show. She took out the automobile at seven o’clock.”

  I hurried back through the crowd to our booth, hoping I’d find Elizabeth laughing about some traffic hitch or car problem that had delayed her. She wasn’t there. Panic began to tickle at my mind.

  I pushed through the crowd and out the front door. Visibility was perhaps twenty feet, the fog even thicker now. I ran along the streets, looking for the Humes’ black Baker Electric coupé. The curbs were lined with automobiles, more than I’d ever seen in one place, but none of them was the Humes’.

  I ran back to Wayne Gardens and through the pavilion to our booth. My father and Mr. Wilkinson were chatting with a distinguished gentleman who was leaning his bulk on a cane.

  “Father! Have you seen Elizabeth?”

  He looked annoyed at the interruption until he saw my face. He asked the man to excuse him and pulled me aside. “No, I haven’t seen her. Why?”

  “She was supposed to meet me here. I’m afraid something’s gone wrong.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder. “Calm yourself. Perhaps she just got delayed.”

  “No. She left the house three hours ago to meet me here. Something’s happened.”

  “Mm.” He turned to Wilkinson. “Why don’t you make some telephone calls—police, hospitals, et cetera. I’ll take a lap around the show with Will and see if we can find her.”

  He waved over a salesman to speak with the gentleman, and we hurried through the pavilion, looking into every booth, even shouting into the ladies’ rooms. She simply wasn’t here. Not sure what to do, we returned to the booth to wait for Wilkinson.

  My father tried to reassure me. So many things could have delayed her, he said, though he ran out of ideas once he’d offered car trouble and traffic tie-ups, neither of which would have kept her from both her home and the show for three hours.

  Wilkinson soon returned. He hadn’t gotten any information. He’d left the telephone number of the Wayne Gardens office with the police and hospitals in case she did turn up.

  I wandered the area around the convention center and phoned the Humes’ house twice more before finally leaving Wayne Gardens near midnight. Alberts had the police out looking for her, though he hadn’t said anything yet to Mrs. Hume. He was afraid that, after all that had already happened to their family, it might be too much for her. I promised to phone him if I found Elizabeth, and he said he’d try to get word to both my father and me if she came home.

  I trotted perhaps a mile along Jefferson from Wayne Gardens to the Humes’ house, the path she would have taken to get to the auto show. The fog made it difficult to see, but I could discern no trace of Elizabeth or her car. Finally I caught a streetcar back to my apartment and phoned every hospital and police station in Detroit. She wasn’t at any of the hospitals. The police had no information. I phoned Alberts again, and then my father. Neither had heard anything.

  Though I said nothing to either of them, there seemed to be only two possibilities as to why Elizabeth had disappeared for this long. The first was heroin. The second was Frank.

  I wasn’t sure which would be worse.

  Wesley got home from the Palace Gardens Ballroom around two, saw my lights on, and stopped by. When the telephone rang, we were arguing about which of us would stay by the phone while the other searched for Elizabeth.

  I ran from the parlor into the den, grabbed the phone, and shouted, “Hello!”

  Music played in the background—brassy, wild music—but no one said anything.

  “Elizabeth! Is that you?”

  “Will?” The woman’s voice was muffled, the sound throaty and lazy.

  “Elizabeth?”

  I heard breathing.

  “Are you at the Bucket?”

  No reply.

  “Elizabeth, where are you?”

  The receiver clunked onto the hook.

  I hung up and again raised the phone. Wesley had followed me into the den. I glanced up at him. “Get your gun.” He ran from the room. When the operator came on, I shouted, “Police headquarters! It’s an emergency!” Wesley was back standing in the doorway before the call was answered. I told him what I’d heard.

  Finally, a man grumbled into the phone, “Detroit Police.”

  “There’s been a murder at the Bucket!” I shouted. “The killer’s still there!” I doubted the police would go to the Bucket for anything less.

  I threw down the phone and grabbed my pistol. We ran out of the building and began sprinting toward the Bucket, cutting through yards and vacant lots, splashing through slushy piles of snow, taking as direct a path to the saloon as we could. Our sense of direction was hopelessly muddled in the thick fog. We made several wrong turns, only realizing our mistakes when we came upon a street sign vaguely lit by the dim white orb of a nearby street lamp. I found Brush Street and ran down the sidewalk, pausing only once to check a sign, to be sure we were going in the right direction.

  “Like last time,” Wesley panted, leaping over a puddle. “I go in . . . see what’s what . . . you follow me.”

  “No,” I wheezed. I couldn’t catch my breath, but sped ahead of him. “I’m first . . . I’m going to kill . . . that son of a bitch.”

  “I’ll be right . . . behind you,” Wesley said. “Save some for me.”

  At Adams, we left the road again and ran between the apartment buildings and businesses. Though it felt like hours, it may have taken only twenty minutes to get to the saloon. As we ran down Hastings, slipping over the thawing mud, I began to hear music—the brassy, wild music I’d heard on the telephone. The Bucket’s sign finally appeared through the fog. I slowed, only for a second, looking for police cars, motorcycles, or wagons, but there were none to be seen.

  I burst through the door, gun in my hand. After the disorientation of the fog, it was a shock to be able to see. The saloon was packed with drunken men and a handful of prostitutes. The music was louder now. Big Boy’s stool was empty.

  I shoved my way through the crowd, toward the only telephone I’d seen when I was here. In the back of the saloon, I yanked open the storeroom door, ran to the office, and kicked in the door, holding the gun in front of me.

  Vito Adamo was sitting behind the desk, his face expressionless. He held a double-barreled shotgun aimed at my chest. A dark-haired woman in a green satin dress sat facing him in one of the office chairs.

  Someone grabbed me from behind and jerked my gun hand behind my back. A big arm wrapped around my neck and squeezed. My gun was pointed at the floor. I tried to twist it back toward him, but he was too strong. I pulled the trigger anyway. The shot was loud in the small room but did nothing except splinter a floorboard. He ripped the gun from my hand, released my arm, and clamped a handkerchief over my face. I smelled science class—chloroform. I struggled against him, tried to hold my breath. It was only now I realized Wesley hadn’t followed me into the office.

  The woman turned her head and looked at me from the corner of one dark eye. A smile dimpled her cheek. It was Sapphira.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Big Boy toss Wesley’s limp body onto the floor next to me. My eyes cut to Adamo.

  “I am sorry, Mr. Anderson,” he said with a shrug, “but my business associates have to take priority.”

  My mind fogged, darkened. My motions slowed. Finally I just slumped. The man set me on the floor. Shapes and colors metamorphosed toget
her in wavy lines, blurring, bending.

  Even so, just before I passed out, I would have sworn I saw a ghost.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  A cold floor hummed under my cheek with a deep vibration. I had a tremendous headache. I smelled rotten eggs, oil, metal.

  My eyes cracked open. Metal tanks loomed over me. Pairs of red and black cables dangled from a board filled with levers and switches. Through a window I saw machines—saws, drills, welders, presses—all skyscrapers from my perspective on the floor. I was in the old battery room at the factory.

  The vibration increased, the hum getting louder. A muffled woman’s voice at the edge of hysteria rose over the sound.

  I tried to get to my knees but couldn’t seem to push myself up. My hands didn’t work. Slowly it dawned on me that they were tied behind my back. My legs were bound together as well.

  A woman screamed, soft and dull like she was far away.

  Something was in my mouth. I tried to spit it out but couldn’t. A gag. A handkerchief separated my jaws and cut into my cheeks. I raised my knees to my chest, rolled over, got my legs under me. Leaning back against a tank, I pushed myself to my feet. The room spun. I steadied myself until the sensation passed.

  The vibration deepened, got stronger. The hum kept getting louder.

  I began to remember Adamo’s office and Sapphira. The voice seemed closer now, familiar-sounding. Motion through the doorway caught my attention. A large man set a woman on the floor perhaps thirty feet from me, her legs bound, hands tied behind her back. Her head jerked from side to side, long dark hair twisting. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew it was Elizabeth.

  The man—Big Boy—straightened and lumbered to a machine. My mind was fogged, but I was sure Wesley had eliminated him as a suspect. He said Big Boy moved differently than the murderer, but he was here, right in front of me.

  He bent down next to the machine and tugged on some ropes. Now I saw a pair of legs—a man’s legs—hanging down from the top, no, the middle, of the machine, a press.

  The roof press.

  A rope around the man’s ankles bound them to the base of the machine. His arms hung off the sides, wrists tied, elbows bent back from the pressure. As I watched, his hands became fists and strained against the ropes, jerking and pulling to no effect. Big Boy checked each rope. Seeming satisfied, he leaned against the side of a welding machine, waiting.

  I hopped toward the press. A chain rattled behind me. The man on the press lifted his head a couple of inches—Wesley.

  A chill ran through me. A rope around his neck pulled his head back against the bottom plate of the press. He saw me looking at him and cut his eyes toward Elizabeth. He was trying to talk to me, his voice urgent, but the gag in his mouth made it impossible to understand him. Still, I knew he was saying to forget about him, save Elizabeth.

  I had to save both of them. I took another hop toward Wesley. My hands jerked back, and I lost my balance. I slammed sideways into the base of one of the tanks and crashed to the floor. Twisting around, I tried to see behind me. My wrists were bound together with rope. A metal chain with a padlock was looped between them and around a leg of one of the tanks—the acid tank. The chain that locked the top of the tank in place was missing. My eyes darted to the nail by the door that normally held the padlock keys. They were gone.

  I kicked my legs out, trying to free them from the bonds. It was useless. I had no more success with the rope around my wrists. I leaned back against the tank and pushed against it, hoping to raise it enough to slide out the chain. The tank didn’t budge. My heart pounded in my ears. There had to be some other way. I eyed the bin of iron rods outside the battery room door, each one longer and heavier than a baseball bat. If I could get free, I might have a chance. I worked myself to my feet again and began to scrape the rope against the metal edge at the top of the acid tank. The chain clanged against the side. I pushed back against it to muffle the sound and kept scraping. My right wrist grated against the metal, the edge cutting into my skin.

  Elizabeth jerked her head around and looked at me. Her eyes widened. She thrashed against the ropes and shouted into the gag cutting across her mouth. A long rope was coiled up next to her, one end tied in a noose.

  The hum kept getting louder. The press was warming up.

  I caught just a hint of the echoes of leather soles slapping against the concrete floor outside the machining room. I dared to hope it was help—the police or my father’s security guards coming to our rescue.

  Big Boy’s eyes fixed on the wide doorway leading in from the rest of the factory.

  A huge man in a dark suit walked in, movements sure, calm. He passed in and out of the shadows from the pillars and pulleys, striding down the aisle. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “That was too bad,” he said to Big Boy, and stepped out into the light, exposing his handsome face and muscular frame. “I didn’t want to kill the guard.”

  I could only stare.

  It was John Cooper.

  Cooper strolled over to Big Boy and pressed a wad of cash into his hand. Big Boy stuffed the money in his pocket and said, “Are we finished?”

  Cooper nodded, and Big Boy walked out of the machining room without a look back. Once he was gone, Cooper moved around to the side of the press and bent down to look at the pressure gauge. “We’re getting there,” he said. “Only a few more minutes.” He tilted his head toward me. “Of course, I could use a second opinion. I’ve only used this thing once.”

  John Cooper—alive? Then everything clicked into place. Other than Frank’s car, every piece of evidence that had convinced me Frank was the killer—the need to escape prosecution in the bribery scandal, the other large man’s fingerprints, the conspiracy with Sapphira—pointed to John as much as they did Frank. It just depended on which of them was still alive. A telephone call, a class ring, and a monogram had been enough to make me believe it was John in the press.

  He walked over to the battery room’s door. I stood still. John crossed his arms and leaned against the frame. I pulled against the rope, but it didn’t give at all. Blood flowed down my hands.

  “You know, Will, I’m really sorry you had to be the fall guy. You were a good friend, at least until you ruined Elizabeth. Since then, well, you really haven’t been anybody’s friend, least of all your own. I was shocked when she finally told me. Will Anderson? A rapist?” He shrugged. “You had to pay for that.”

  I scraped the rope against the edge, moving my body as little as possible. The roof press stood only twenty feet away, directly across from me through the open doors. Wesley’s arms and legs strained against the ropes. Elizabeth tossed from side to side on the floor nearby, trying to free herself.

  “I’ve missed you, Will,” John said, tucking a long brown curl behind his ear. “But I don’t mind telling you that you’ve created a lot of difficulty for me. The Pinkertons and the law are right on my tail. I can’t hide anymore.” He raised a big forefinger. “Now, if you’ll keep quiet I’ll take off the gag. But I’m not going to listen to screaming and begging.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward Elizabeth. “I’ve had my fill.”

  I nodded. He reached over my head, untied the gag, and pulled it away from my mouth.

  “John, why are you doing this?” I said.

  He walked back to the press and bent down, looking again at the gauge. I scraped harder and faster. The press sounded like it was nearly ready. John lifted a welder’s mask from the chair next to the machine and fit it onto his head, the mask tilted back so I could see his face.

  Wesley’s arms and legs twisted and pulled. He arched his back, trying to free his head, but the loop around his neck cut into his throat as he did. I kept scraping, but had to slow again so John wouldn’t notice. My wrist burned with pain.

  With a rueful smile, John said, “One thing leads to another. You know? I didn’t really have a choice. Frank told me the Staties were talking to him about Judge Hume. I didn’t want to bribe the old fool in
the first place, but I had to follow orders. It’s not a team if everyone doesn’t do their part. It was obvious I’d be going to jail. I wasn’t going to do that. Anyway, everybody would think John Cooper was a crook. That couldn’t happen. I’ve always been the good guy.”

  He looked off and chewed on the inside of his cheek. Elizabeth hadn’t stopped shouting into the gag since I’d awoken, but now she was quiet. The hum of the huge press was the only sound I could hear.

  I had to keep him talking. “You don’t have to do this, John. We won’t say anything. You can still get away.”

  The chain clanged against the side of the tank again. John’s eyes cut back to me. I stood still.

  “I wish it were that simple, Will, I really do. Unfortunately, I do have to do this. Unless it’s crystal clear to the police that you killed Judge Hume and me, they’re going to keep looking for Frank. Sooner or later they’re going to find me.”

  “The police will figure this out. They’ll catch you.”

  “No,” he said. “The pieces fit together too well. The story will be that killing me and Elizabeth’s father wasn’t enough. You couldn’t live without her. In a fit of jealousy, you return to the scene and kill the woman who jilted you, along with her lover.” Nodding at the length of rope on the floor, he said, “Then you commit suicide.” He pulled a piece of paper from his coat pocket. “And you even typed out a letter to that effect. A tragic story, but only too believable after you killed me the same way. Elizabeth would have been enough. It’s unfortunate you brought someone with you.” He nodded toward Wesley. “Obviously, I can’t let him live, either. That’s your fault, not mine.” He bent down and looked at the pressure gauge again.

  I pressed the rope against the tank as hard as I could and worked my hands back and forth, everything slippery from the blood. I couldn’t let Wesley die.

  John straightened abruptly and turned back to me. I slowed the scraping but pressed back hard against the tank. “By the way, how did you ever get rid of Judge Hume’s body? I thought that one would nail down your conviction for sure.”