Whiskey River

by Loren D. Estleman

  “I read your column. I think I see you at Jack Dance’s wedding. What do you have to tell me about Buckley besides he died?”

  “I heard you killed him.”

  “Who said?”

  “What’s your answer?”

  He laughed softly. “Did you eat?”

  “Not since noon.”

  “You’ll like the dining room at the Griswold. I’ll send a car.”

  “I can drive. What time?”

  “Whenever you can come.”

  “I’m expecting a call,” I said.

  “I’ll wait.”

  I didn’t turn the game back on; baseball had lost its suspense.

  Jack called ten minutes later. I told him Joey’s plan.

  “Tell him he can hang his fat guinea ass off the Ambassador Bridge for all I care,” Jack said. “He cost me a house and a fine.”

  “He sounds on the level. I don’t know what kind of trap he can lay that Lon couldn’t see from the air. You’ve got family to look after. Vivian lost one husband. Besides, it’s a good deal.”

  “What’s he paying you?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Afterward I regretted hanging up on him. Talking to Jack, it was easy to forget what he was. I thought about Jerry the Lobo, buried somewhere in an empty lot probably, and Lewis Welker on the steel table in the Coroner’s Court Building with his lips sewed shut and a brass cartridge in his mouth. When the bell rang again I snatched up the earpiece.

  “You got such a hard-on to see me talk to Joey, you can come along,” Jack said.

  “Sure you don’t want Andy or Bass?” The soles of my feet had gone dead already. If anyone violated the truce, I was convinced it would be Jack. Life in the crossfire was bright but short.

  “You’re better company. If you ain’t there, I won’t be.”

  I stamped my feet. “When do you want to do it?”

  “Monday morning.” I could hear him grinning when he said it. “It’s his busiest time. He likes to stay in and count the policy receipts from the weekend. Friday’s the day the suckers get their wages.”

  I called Joey.

  “The kike bastard,” he said. “Tell him eleven o’clock.”

  I passed the message on to Vivian and left the apartment.

  The Griswold House was a little over a block and light years away from Joey Machine’s Acme Garage. Its dining room catered to the sporting and theater crowd, where among the silver forks and white linen one might glimpse Sophie Tucker relaxing while on tour or wave to Barney Oldfield. I left my new Oldsmobile Viking V-8 at the curb and entered a large low-lit room where a string quartet was playing. A tall old maitre d’ with a head of flowing white hair bowed slightly and took me past empty tables to a private room in back. There three men were seated at a long table draped in white with candles at both ends. The flames shook when the sliding doors were drawn shut.

  “Good you could make it, Minor.” Frankie Orr rose and grasped my hand. “We booked the place. Did you get your call?”

  I said I had. He was in evening dress with a stiff collar, a dark slender young Latin with blue-black hair smoothed back and sleepy lids and a shadow of beard showing under his olive skin. His grip was strong. It would have to be to strangle a full-grown man in broad daylight on a train crowded with commuters.

  The others were a man in his fifties, also in evening dress, with dark hair thinning on top and going iron-gray at the temples, a mealy complexion, and a prow of a nose that dipped down over a drooping moustache; and a man about my age who was running to fat and needed a haircut. He had on a blue business suit. It seemed a long table for just those three.

  “You’ve met Salvatore Borneo?” asked Frankie.

  I started. “No, I haven’t. I’m pleased, sir.”

  The older man lifted himself an inch from his seat, took my hand in a moist palm, and released it quickly. I had never seen him except in rare photographs, none a good likeness of the Unione Siciliana president, who could have passed for a Sioux chief without the moustache. He said nothing.

  “And this is Mr. Norman.”

  The fattish man made eye contact with me for an instant, then looked away. He didn’t speak or shake hands.

  “Since we’re running late, I took the liberty of ordering for you,” Frankie told me. “I hope you like London broil.”

  I said London broil would be fine. Frankie gestured toward the chair facing his and I sat down. I noticed then that only three places were set. There was no tableware in front of Borneo.

  He rose and shook Frankie’s hand. He was short for his reputation and stocky. “I’ll let you get to business.” His English was heavily accented.

  “See you tomorrow, Sal.” Frankie put a hand on his back and saw him to the door.

  He took his seat. “Hell of an old man. You know his father fought with Garibaldi?”

  “All their fathers fought with Garibaldi,” I said, “to hear them tell it.”

  “Him I believe.” He regarded me from under his lids. “I liked that piece you did about the Roman emperors when Bowles was recalled. I’m interested in the subject.”

  “My editor thought it went over readers’ heads.”

  “Most of them, probably. I’ve got a room full of books on ancient Rome. Caesar’s Conquests changed my life. Ah.”

  The doors opened and a waiter brought in our meals. Frankie had a rare filet, Mr. Norman a rack of lamb. My London broil was sliced paper-thin, swimming in champagne sauce, and garnished with fresh broccoli. The waiter poured purple wine into our glasses. When he turned to leave, Frankie got up, slipped the gold clip off a thick fold of paper currency, and laid several bills on his tray. “Divide that among the others and tell them to go home. I’ll lock up.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Frankie slid the doors together behind the waiter and shot the brass bolt. Then he sat back down and raised his glass. “Salute.”

  I waited until he drank, then took a sip. I didn’t think poison suited him. I was just careful about those things ever since Justice of the Peace Turner. Mr. Norman gulped down half of his. So far he hadn’t said boo.

  “Sal’s an old customer here,” Frankie explained. “I’ve got a thing about the serving staff eavesdropping and gossiping in the kitchen. We can talk in front of Mr. Norman. He collects the receipts for Sal in the Black Bottom. They’ve been off lately, haven’t they, Mr. Norman?” He started cutting his meat with a knife with a serrated edge.

  The fattish man forked in a mouthful of lamb. “Money’s tight. President says we’re in a depression. These niggers, they believe everything they hear on the radio.”

  “I never listen. Those announcers all sound like long-distance operators. Buckley, for instance.”

  I ate some beef. I had a hunch I wouldn’t get the chance to clean my plate.

  Frankie said, “I didn’t like Buckley, so Minor thinks I killed him. What do you think of that, Mr. Norman?”

  Mr. Norman chewed rapidly and took another gulp of wine. He still didn’t look at me.

  “I didn’t say that,” I said. “It’s something I heard.”

  “Rumor’s a dangerous thing. Look what it did to the stock market. Did you have anything invested, Minor?”

  “I owned some Locomobile stock once. I guess I still do.”

  “It’s just gambling. We do the same thing and they call us crooks. What about you, Mr. Norman? What do you do with your money?”

  “I got a mortgage.”

  “You see, Minor? We’re just people. I’ve never even seen a tommy gun close up.”

  I drank some wine. It had a smoky taste I didn’t much care for. It’s funny what you remember. “Just for the sake of argument, Mr. Orr, where were you the night Buckley was killed?”

  “Same place I am every night at that time. In bed, asleep. I keep early hours.”

  “Was anyone with you?”

  He touched his lips with his napkin and smiled. He had bad teeth, his only visible fla
w.

  “We’re all gentlemen here. If I had to I could produce someone. So far I haven’t heard why I’d have to. Maybe if you told me what you heard.”

  “I have a witness who claims he saw you leaving the LaSalle Hotel with two other men about the time Buckley hit the floor. You were putting away a gun.”

  “It’s a he?”

  “In journalism we always use he unless we’re being specific.”

  “Why didn’t this witness go to the police?”

  “You’re new here,” I said. “Maybe you don’t know our little town. We don’t run to the bulls with anything as insignificant as murder.”

  “No town’s that rotten.”

  “It isn’t worth arguing about.”

  “Who’s your witness?”

  “You know better than that, Mr. Orr.”

  It happened faster than I could follow it, so I’m guessing. Frankie transferred his napkin to the table beside his plate. In almost the same motion, he picked up his steak knife and swept it backhanded across the top of Mr. Norman’s collar. The ease and grace of what should have been an awkward maneuver distracted my thoughts from what happened next, leaving me with impressions only. It struck me that Frankie was double-jointed or a magician with stage experience. A bright orange arterial spurt arced past my head and thumped the door four feet behind me. The slash opened like a mouth without teeth, dyeing Mr. Norman’s shirt, jacket, and tie deep scarlet. The blood covered his rack of lamb like thick marinade, welled over the edge of the plate, and fanned out across the tablecloth, making the white linen transparent as it advanced toward the corners. I stood, tipping my chair over. Mr. Norman tried to stand too, both hands reaching for his throat. Then he slid sideways and out of sight, although not out of earshot. His grunts had a yearning toward articulation. The knife had evidently torn through his voice box.

  The doors rattled. Frankie laid the glistening steak knife on the table, covered it with his napkin—a grislily comical gesture in view of the fact that the place looked like a butcher’s back room—and walked around the table, pausing to kick the grunting, thrashing man hard in the ribs. “When you get to hell, chiseler, tell them Sal gets what’s his.”

  He slid back the bolt and pulled the doors apart four inches. A set of features appeared in the opening. “Any problems?”

  “Oh, yeah, it looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Frankie, irritated. “Everybody gone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Give them ten minutes to make sure nobody forgot his hat. Then grab Leo and come back and scrape up this sack of shit. He ought to be through kicking by then.”

  He turned toward me. For once I wasn’t paralyzed. I was aware that I’d wet my pants.

  “When you Greeks were writing poetry and buggering each other all over the Parthenon, we were out conquering the world,” he said. “Some things don’t change. Forget about Buckley or I’ll feed you your fucking balls. Tell your witness the same thing. Tell him tonight.” He threw the doors open wide.

  Walking carefully in my soaked trousers, I went out. In a few days the smell of Mr. Norman’s blood left my nostrils. In a few months I even forgot all about Jerry Buckley. After nine years, though, I still can’t drive by the spot where the Griswold House stood without embarrassing myself physically.

  Chapter Sixteen

  WE HEARD THE PLANE before we saw it, a nasal whine that stopped and started in impertinent little surges, like an electric mixer with a loose plug. Then it grew out of a tiny smudge in an absolutely clear sky, widening and assuming detail as it approached, until we could see the box kite wings and the cigar-shaped fuselage and light shining through the wires and struts, the leather-helmeted head behind the windscreen. It passed over within a hundred feet, close enough to show the khaki patches on its olive-drab fabric and the way the wings bowed and flexed like a gull’s. Then it turned its nose into the wind in a long climbing loop and headed in.

  Belonging as it did to the air, the machine seemed reluctant to land. The carriage touched down twice, bounded back up, and struck with a bone-shattering bang, the wheels lurching over uneven ground until the tailskid dug in and scratched up a brown cloud that scudded over and settled in a fine layer on our shoes. The aeroplane swung into a slow turn and rolled to a stop. The motor sputtered and died. The propeller feathered, reversed, and drifted around in a half-dozen lazy circles before standing still. Quiet fell with a thud.

  Jack and I stood by Jack’s LaSalle in a field near St. Clair Shores. It was a blustery Monday morning in September, too windy for shirtsleeves, too warm for a topcoat, with the death-stench in the air that was fall in Southeastern Michigan. In half an hour Jack was due to meet Joey Machine on the Belle Isle Bridge.

  Andy Kramm climbed down from the observer’s seat behind the wings, using the bottom wing as a step. Lon Camarillo bounded out of the cockpit straight to the ground and came our way behind Andy, unbuckling his helmet. The former ace was wearing his leather aviator’s jacket and puttees, with an ivory silk scarf wound around his neck and tucked inside his collar. Andy had on his cloth cap and mackinaw. He blew on his hands.

  “Jesus, it’s cold up there,” he said. “My balls shriveled up no bigger’n cantaloupes. Anybody got a bottle?”

  I gave him my flask. Lon joined us, carrying his helmet and goggles. The lower half of his face was dark with smoke and oil. The white outline left by the goggles accentuated his skull-like features. “When do I get a new bus?” he demanded. “The only time that old Jenny’s done better than sixty since the Big Show was when they brought it up on the truck.”

  Jack said, “When we can afford a better aeroplane, we won’t need no aeroplane. What’d you see?”

  “Ask Andy. I was too busy trying to keep us in the air.”

  “That’s good hootch.” Andy returned my flask. “Looks copacetic. Seen Joey’s Chevy on the island and Joey standing on the bridge. No other cars or people close enough to do us a bother.”

  “Sure it was him?”

  “Had on that cheap coat and that hat he wears, the one like Hoover’s.”

  “Homburg,” I said.

  “That’s the one. Say, you all right? You look like you could stand a pull yourself.”

  “I had a shock.”

  Jack said, “I don’t like the coat.”

  “It’s cold on the water,” said Andy. “Anyway, Joey hires the hard stuff. He don’t do it himself.”

  “Bass is in the Doozy.” Jack flipped his head toward the dirt road that ran past the field, where the big car was parked. “You ride in back. Give us three or four blocks’ start.”

  “My chopper there?”

  “You’ll have to load it. I never did figure out how to wind up that fucking drum.”

  “Joey said one car,” I said.

  “I stopped taking orders from Joey a while back.” He was looking at me. “You sure you can do this? ’Cause if you can’t, I won’t. He can stand there till his dick rots and falls off.”

  “I’m jake.”

  “You better be. I don’t trust guys that get sick or have to go take a dump just before the shooting starts.”

  “Lewis Welker,” I reminded him.

  “What about him?”

  “Your memory’s not that short.”

  He nodded.

  I had checked with the hospitals and the morgue, but nobody answering Mr. Norman’s description had showed up at any of them, and no complaint had been filed with the police department about a mess at the Griswold House. Frankie Orr’s clean-up crew was worth whatever he paid them. I had called in sick at the Banner two days in succession. I had lost weight. Every time I thought of food I saw Mr. Norman’s rack of lamb drenched biblically in blood. Actually, I was feeling a little better that morning, although Howard Wolfman and even Jensen the cartoon editor had remarked on my appearance. I’d told them I’d been fasting.

  “I thought you were Greek Orthodox,” Jensen had said, lighting his pipe.

  Lon brought me back to the field.
“I’ll get the bird back in the hangar. It’s throwing oil like a bitch.”

  Andy started for the Duesenberg and Jack and I returned to the LaSalle. He took his matched Lugers out of the glove compartment, the converted one sporting an extra long clip that extended three inches below the hollow handle, checked their loads, and put one in each side pocket of his suitcoat. I didn’t say anything about the ban on weapons. He ground the motor into life, swung the car around, and bumped down the rutted path that led to the road.

  On the way down Jefferson he turned on the radio. He never listened to the entertainment programs that were beginning to flood the dial, just dance music. Despite the name he took, I had never seen him dance with anyone, or tap his foot when a fast tune was playing, or heard him hum during a quiet moment. For all I knew he was tone deaf. He preferred things happening, and when they weren’t he tried to create the illusion, and so the more frenetic the music the better he liked it. Jazz was a favorite, but he made no distinction between the corny trumpets and party whistles of Paul Whiteman and the smoky strains of Duke Ellington’s Cotton Club Orchestra. I always thought it was a shame he didn’t live to hear jitterbug. If he had, he might have had a better shot at dying of old age, but I doubt it. Whenever I think of him, there’s a hot number playing in the background.

  Nearing the Belle Isle Bridge, he pulled off onto the gravel apron, cut the motor, and coasted to a stop, blocking the end of the bridge. The Duesenberg glided over two blocks back and parked. Jack set the LaSalle’s brake, cut the ignition. His window was open and I heard the water, the edged waves where the Detroit River broadened into Lake St. Clair slapping the seawall.

  “Look at the son of a bitch,” Jack said. “Thinks he’s for Christ’s sake Napoleon.”

  I noticed him then, leaning with his back to the railing halfway out to the island, a figure in a long black coat too heavy for the season although it was windy out there, the gusts molding the coat to the backs of his legs and pushing the hem out in front of him so that he looked like the letter J, his pale gray homburg held in place by his hand on the crown. The wind was kicking up little whitecaps on the water like paper sailboats.