AHMM, November 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Canal sat with his back against a timber, cradling the Thompson in his lap. “What if they check out this place?"

  "It's a bandstand. Play ‘em a concert on that fiddle.” Zagreb re-mained standing.

  "It ain't like the Conductor to take a chance with the Feds and the Mounties both at once. This ain't the dry time, when it was only against the law on this side."

  "He's not shipping from Canada. He's following the shore up from Toledo. He knows there are guardsmen at the state line."

  "His snitches are better than ours. I hope yours wasn't pulling your leg."

  "He better not have. He's looking at three to five on a granny warrant if Frankie comes by land instead of by sea."

  "Frankie coming along, you think?"

  "Nah. He's probably polishing off a mess of spaghetti at Roma's."

  "What is it, meat or tires?"

  "One or the other. He only deals gasoline when he's strapped. One stray round during a hijack and he's out some men he can't spare. General MacArthur's got all the best."

  "Right now I'd settle for two or three more of our own, second best or no."

  "Can't risk it. You might have noticed that what we got left to draw on isn't USDA choice. Department's calling back cops it dismissed for grafting."

  "They're the ones should be drafted. If this foreign business drags on, I wouldn't give a Confederate nickel for what we end up with.” The sergeant chewed on his cold cigar.

  "Maybe you should enlist and finish it quick."

  Canal smacked the deck of the bandshell. “What, and give up music?"

  The night wore on. The wind freshened off Lake Erie, blowing away the mosquitoes and carrying a snatch of studio laughter from a radio program. It could have come all the way from the Canadian side.

  In a little while the ground trembled beneath a heavy piece of machinery shifting gears down the highway. The big man gathered his legs under him, tightening his grip on the submachine gun.

  "Keep your pants on. Could be a bread truck.” But the lieutenant forgot his craving for a Chesterfield.

  The diesel rumble increased, so that by the time the vehicle slowed to make the turn the two detectives felt it in their testicles. Canal rose and they crept to the opening he'd made in the canvas facing the highway, taking turns peering through it. A rounded radiator grille appeared in the moonlight; two slits of electric light winked on briefly from blackout headlamps, locating the twin tracks that led to the shoreline. The divided windshield of the cab was dark, with not so much as a dashboard bulb to illuminate the occupant or occupants. Behind it, sliding into line as it followed, the trailer cut a square blank out of the scatter of lighted windows belonging to what remained of the beach community on the other side of the pavement. The truck was painted dull black from stem to stern. Powerful compressors wheezed whenever the accelerator was released.

  "Refrigerator truck,” Zagreb said.

  Canal said, “Hot damn. I'm throwing a barbeque Saturday."

  The truck backed around until the end of the trailer was pointed toward the lake. Air brakes whooshed and the two men climbed down from the cab. The one from the passenger's side started toward the bandshell, training the beam of a flash on the ground to avoid turning an ankle on a chunk of driftwood or a broken beer bottle. The light reflecting off the sand outlined the square profile of a .45 pistol in his other hand.

  As the man drew near, Canal stepped back from the opening facing the lake and raised the Thompson to his hip. Zagreb thumbed back the hammer on his revolver, only then realizing he'd drawn it.

  The man with the pistol was ten feet away when the driver called out. He stopped walking, hesitated, then turned and trotted back toward the truck. The two men inside the canvas relaxed. Zagreb took the .38 off cock.

  The chugging of marine engines reached them then, laboring against the offshore current. That would be the reason for the driver's summons. The word from the underworld was Frankie Orr had bought a decomissioned World War I minesweeper and refurbished it for cargo. When the frosty moonlight limned the sharp, Dick Tracy nose of the prow, the lieutenant stuck his revolver under his flak jacket and tugged out the flare pistol.

  The chugging slowed. A thousand-candlepower spot slammed on aboard ship and swept its steely shaft across the beach. Zagreb and Canal withdrew farther into the shadows.

  The shaft made two more passes and stopped—whether to identify the truck or something suspicious inside the structure where the detectives crouched, it was impossible to tell. Neither man breathed.

  Abruptly the light went out, leaving behind green and purple blossoms to spoil their night vision. They hadn't been spotted.

  The light had illuminated a pier jutting twenty feet beyond dry land, an apparition before, now revealed as new construction, the first there in many a year. As the craft approached, the pitch of the engines changed, reversing themselves. They stopped, but the ship continued under its own momentum. It ghosted alongside the pier, guided with gestures from human silhouettes visible above the railing. Water splashed; an anchor released. The ship yawed against the pull of the cable and stopped short of beaching itself. Water slapped its hull.

  Two of the silhouettes clambered over the railing and leaped to the pier, landing with a double thump. More maritime business ensued as they caught a pair of lines cast over the side by a third silhouette, pulled them taut, and maneuvered the pliable craft into position. They tied them to rings attached to posts.

  A hatch lowered, creating a ramp. The man on deck vanished, to reappear (Canal and Zagreb guessed) among two others walking down the ramp with stout boxes hoisted to their shoulders.

  "I was expecting sides of beef and pork.” Canal sounded disappointed.

  "Smaller cuts, probably. Chops and tenderloins.” But Zagreb was troubled. Something was missing, but he didn't know what.

  When the sergeant took a step toward the opening, he put a hand on his arm. “Let ‘em finish loading. It's a sin to let fresh meat spoil while our boys are eating K-rations."

  "I hope Burke can hold his water that long."

  "Mac'll keep him tame. That's half the reason I put him on this detail. I learned it from an old trainer who tied up a goat to make his racehorse quit kicking down the stall."

  "You tell Mac he's a goat?"

  "Nope. He's too good with that shotgun."

  Zagreb was only half listening to himself. His own crack about meat spoiling had told him what was missing. A boatload of perishables ought to be spilling vapor into the air, expelled by blocks of ice in the hold. There was no sign of it, or of the inhaling and exhaling of modern refrigeration aboard ship.

  Fighting a sinking sensation, he waited until the doors were shut and latched, then stuck his pistol through the opening in the canvas and raised it to a forty-five degree angle. “Get ready to blast.” He fired a rocket high over the beach.

  * * * *

  "I'm still blind in my right ear.” Canal rotated a thick finger inside it rapidly.

  McReary said, “Try cutting loose with a twelve-gauge under a dock."

  "Shut up, both of you."

  They fell silent before the lieutenant's rebuke. The flare he'd shot off still lit the beach, a miniature sun in a white sky. The men they'd arrested sat leaning forward on the sand, each with a wrist shackled to an ankle, a Four Horsemen specialty that effectively discouraged flight. There were eight, with the truck driver, his partner, the men who had helped with the loading, and the two armed guards, who had dropped their guns and surrendered when Canal and McReary had fired warnings close enough to kick sand onto them. The man with the .45, thinking himself stealthy, had earned a clubbing with Burke's service revolver when he'd drawn it at close range. He sat listless, with a hand holding a possible skull fracture. The ship's captain and what remained of his crew had slipped through the snare by reversing engines and putting out to sea, unmindful of bullets thudding against the hull.

  A half-dozen boxes lay split open on the beach where the detecti
ves had dumped them, their contents scattered across the sand: Paperbound copies of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Caesar'sConquests, Treasure Island, and the works of William Shakespeare; servicemen's editions of properties long in public domain. A thorough inspection of the cargo that had been transferred from the minesweeper to the truck would discover not so much as a pork chop, or anything else that remotely resembled contraband, while the reefers inside the trailer huffed and puffed in chortled contempt.

  Canal put an end to that with a short burst from his Thompson that struck sparks off metal and released a hiss of ammonia and liquid oxygen into the air.

  "That's coming out of your salary,” Zagreb snarled. “Ammuni-tion's rationed just like everything else."

  "Everything except books.” The sergeant emptied his drum at the heaps of books, shattering them into bits of paper that were blown shoreward by the wind from Canada. “Put them on my tab."

  * * * *

  Commissioner John Witherspoon was a sour sphincter of a man who parted his hair in the middle and smeared it to both sides with two swipes of a butter knife. He stood behind his slab of desk at 1300 Beaubien, Detroit Police Headquarters, with his hands clasped behind him Napoleon fashion and glared through Coke-bottle spectacles at the Four Horsemen standing in his office. “What've we got to hold them on?"

  "Sullivan rap,” Zagreb said. “Two of them, anyway, the trucker's partner and one of the loaders. The goons standing guard had permits for their weapons. Frankie got them private detective licenses under Mayor Bowles and renewed them every year like clockwork."

  The man behind the desk measured out a bitter expression appropriate to the first mayor of a major North American city ever to have been recalled on grounds of corruption. “Orr had a contract to supply editions of classic literature to servicemen overseas, straight from the War Department. He set up a printing press in Sandusky and offered them at a few pennies above cost. A front, naturally, but legitimate. Who told you he was shipping anything else?"

  "Confidential source. He's been reliable in the past."

  "That leaves us with only one possibility. How many were aware a raid was planned?"

  "Nobody outside the squad, but none of us spilled anything."

  Faced with the lieutenant's calm, Witherspoon shifted his gaze to the report on his desk. The commissioner was a career politician and a coward who feared and despised the street cops under his command.

  "Well, someone made a serious mistake. It may be years before we have another opportunity to put Orr out of business. Meanwhile, I'm reassigning the Racket Squad to riot control."

  "That's a uniform detail!” Burke snapped. This drew a sharp look from Zagreb, who claimed the privilege of being the one who spoke in that office without having been addressed directly.

  Witherspoon said, “The uniforms can use assistance. The defense plants pay the same wages to Negroes and white southerners, which doesn't always sit well with the sons of the Confederacy. Security's tight on the assembly line, but tensions boil over in the saloons between shifts. Perhaps managing a roomful of drunken bigots is not beyond your abilities."

  Back in the squad room, Burke spat on the linoleum floor. “We need to invite him along on beergarden detail some election year, see do his abilities stand up to a bunch of rednecks pumped up on Rebel Yell."

  "Save something for the enemy.” Zagreb's oft-repeated advice lacked conviction. The adrenaline comedown after a stakeout always left him exhausted, but the bitter results of last night had wrung him out like a bar rag. He slumped into the nearest swivel chair.

  McReary approached, holding out his gold shield and .38. “Thanks for not throwing me to the dogs, L.T. Maybe I can make myself useful in the Pacific, if no one trusts me with the invasion plans for Tokyo."

  "Oh, put them away. No one else here can hit anything with a shotgun at range."

  "I'm the one stuck us on dipso duty."

  The lieutenant tipped back his head to look him in the eye. He was too wiped out to raise a hand to push back his hat. “You think you're the only cop in the city got a sucker punch from a dame? Brother, you're not even the only one in this conversation."

  * * * *

  Max Zagreb didn't see Arabella Lindauer again until after her new series had run its course. The Confessions of Frankie Orr: Notorious Racketeer Tells All had appeared in The Detroit Times throughout the end of the summer and into early fall, by which time the Four Horsemen weren't the only ones battling their way back from Square One: The Allies were encountering heavy resistance in North Africa, the Philippines, and Stalingrad.

  He was drinking a beer between sets at the Cozy Corner when she came in on the arm of a vapid-faced corporal in Class A uniform and found a table far enough from the dance floor for talk and a quiet drink. When the band returned, they got up to dance to a Tommy Dorsey tune, but when the next started to the thundering beat of a jitterbug she shook her head and led her disappointed escort back to their table. Zagreb checked his Wittenauer several times, and when the soldier left to make curfew he carried a fresh beer over and took the vacant seat.

  Arabella, tapping a Lucky on the back of a pigskin case, raised her eyebrows and smiled. “The war's destroyed the proprieties, I see. Gentlemen used to wait for an invitation."

  "All's fair, I'm told.” He lit her up, then himself. “'Racketeer Tells All,’ my fanny. Frankie didn't give you the dope on anything the statute of limitations didn't run out on under Herbert Hoover. He's personally responsible for four murders I know of. We're still totting up the score on the ones he catered out."

  "Modern-day crimes bore readers: hoarding ration stamps, big bellies in brown shirts at bund rallies. They prefer touring car chases and choppers and bathtub gin. Circulation's up. The old man wants to put me on police beat. First female reporter in the city to ride in a prowl car. Without handcuffs, that is."

  "Congratulations. No more one-legged prom queens."

  "I turned him down. I'm holding out for a government assignment."

  He raised his glass in a toast and drank. “Read any good books lately? Servicemen's editions?"

  "I was wondering how long it would take you to get around to that. I didn't give him anything but an educated guess. You wouldn't provide details or even confirm there was going to be a raid at all. The rumor was enough to get me into that private room of his at Roma's. The rest was horse trading."

  "Mac's hairdresser friend was just a gossip. She was too dumb to know better. You're nobody's idea of dumb."

  "No one got hurt. You didn't even get demoted."

  "I've been demoted. I didn't mind it too much. Frankie suckered us with that refrigerator truck, just to set the hook deep. I minded that.” He smoked. “How many do you think he's hurt since you gave him his get-out-of-jail-free card?"

  "Now you sound like one of those Home Front do-gooders. Why don't you donate a coffee pot to the aluminum drive? Give up your morning brew to help build a battleship?"

  He put out his cigarette. “The last time we discussed Frankie you called him a snake. Whacking him with a stick was part of the reason you wanted to write about him. When push came to shove you volunteered to be his authorized biographer."

  "This isn't about Frankie,” she said. “It's about the big-time crimebuster trusting a woman and getting burned."

  "Or not trusting her. If I'd agreed to let you ride along on that raid, you'd have sat on it till it hatched, or risk losing the scoop. Don't tell me you didn't think I got what was coming to me when it went bust."

  "Listen to you: Robert Taylor in his own movie. The world doesn't spin around you."

  He put money on the table and rose. “Buy yourself a bottle of bubbly and enjoy it while you can. Just because Frankie makes good on his debts doesn't mean he likes it. Right now the Feds are too busy chasing Fifth Column saboteurs to worry about an old bootlegger, but as soon as this war turns our way, all those headlines will hang on him like a bucket of rocks. A grand jury will want to talk to you."<
br />
  "I don't know anything that isn't already public record."

  "The grand jury won't know that. By that time Frankie may not be able to remember everything that passed between you. You've got a reputation now for wheedling out information during weak moments. He's famous for not taking chances. He didn't with the National Guard at the Ohio state border and he won't with a sob sister."

  She stubbed out her lipstick-stained Lucky and smiled up at him under her pillbox hat at its fashionable angle. “I'll buy that champagne and save it to share with you when we kick Hitler's butt."

  * * * *

  She didn't make it to V-E Day. After a trial period covering the capitol in Lansing, she drew a national assignment, to report on President Roosevelt's fourth inauguration in March 1945. Her private plane went down in a wooded area in Maryland fifty miles north of the District of Columbia, killing her, a Times photographer, and the pilot; a leaky fuel line, investigators decided. She'd been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury investigating the wartime black market when she got back.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Loren D. Estleman

  * * * *

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  Department: BOOKED AND PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

  In October, mystery and crime writers from across the country will gather in Baltimore for the annual convention known as Bouchercon. While Baltimore of late has been the inspiration for the popular television show The Wire, nearby Washington, D.C., and the suburbs around it, are also rife with criminal inspiration.

  This month's column looks at mysteries that find the region a capital location for crime. Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan series is set in Baltimore, Frederick Ramsay's Sheriff Ike Schwartz patrols a college town in suburban Virginia, and Ellen Crosby's wine country mysteries are set in rural Virginia.