“Roylston, Ryker, and Reed.” Zagreb kept his revolver trained on the newcomer. “Never heard of ’em.”
“Must’ve met in the same homeroom,” Canal said.
“It’s quite legal. We have evidence Mr. Karpalov was born a U.S. citizen, in Cleveland.”
Burke said, “That’s no improvement over Moscow.”
“Take a look, Mac. You studied law.”
McReary put away his weapon, took the envelope, and opened it, turning the paper toward the light. “Three weeks of night school says it’s the McCoy. Signed by Judge Springer.”
“‘Spring ’em’ Springer.” The lieutenant rammed his .38 back under his arm. “The mook that acquitted him. This your lawyer, Eddie?”
Karpalov grinned, starting his lip bleeding again. “I don’t know him from Baby Snooks. But if it means I get to stay, he gets all my business from now on.”
“Who’s paying the bill?” Zagreb asked Sweet.
“That’s privileged.”
“Well, he’s government property now. Take it up with Cashnicki and Rudd.”
“That’s Rudnicki and Cash.” The short broad marshal smiled. “No soap, Lieutenant. I didn’t finish signing the receipt.” He gave it back. “Guess we’ll take in those tulips after all.”
“Joke’s on you. They’re out of season.”
Canal snatched a look at McReary’s watch. “Nuts. Day’s fifteen minutes old and already it’s shot to hell.”
* * *
Judge Vernon Springer had been a prosecutor under Mayor Charles “Wide-Open” Bowles, racking up an impressive number of convictions for public intoxication and none at all involving the bootleggers who’d supplied the fuel. He’d resigned under threat of a grand jury investigation, gone into private practice for a few years, and won the bench after the reform ticket wore out its welcome after one term. He entertained the Four Horsemen in his chambers in the Wayne County Building, a riot of carved scrolls and statuary and decorative holes in the concrete through which a couple of million taxpayer dollars had drained away. He sat with a bright window at his back.
“Lawyer Sweet dug up a Karpalov cousin who signed an affidavit claiming he was born in his parents’ house two blocks from Lake Huron,” Springer said, pulling a tuft of hair from his long fleshy nose; another replaced it immediately, like paper towels in the men’s room. “It looks genuine, but a hearing will determine that. Meanwhile I’m ordering your men to see he makes it there upright and not feet first.”
Zagreb squinted against the sun as if it had no business in the same room with his hangover. “I kind of wish you’d told us that seven hours ago. With that start, Eddie could make Denver.”
“It was a stay of deportation, not a release. Can’t you read?”
“If I knew there was a literacy test I’d’ve joined the merchant marines.”
“Don’t give up the dream,” Springer said.
“My fault, Judge.” McReary was bright-eyed, no poisons in his blood. On sober days like this the others drew straws to see who got to give him a hotfoot. “I looked at the paper, Zag didn’t.”
“And who is Zag?”
“Lieutenant Zagreb.”
“Well, tell Zag that if Karpalov doesn’t show up in court Monday—breathing, it seems I must add—your lieutenant had better brush up on his sea chanteys.”
“Tell him yourself. He’s right in front of you.” Burke was still partly drunk, and even less fun than usual.
Springer fixed him with his peashooter eyes. “Which one are you?”
Burke stared back. “Sergeant Starvo Canal.”
“That’ll cost you twenty-five dollars for contempt, Sergeant.”
Canal glared at Burke. He’d drunk his hair of the dog for breakfast, and peppermint schnapps didn’t sit well on an empty stomach.
“I know your commissioner,” Springer said. “He’d love to have a reason to throw you all off the force into the draft.”
“Speaking of reasons, why give Karpalov life without parole, then cut him loose just because the cop was too busy doing his job to show his buzzer?”
“That was part of his job, Lieutenant. Had I presided at the first trial, I’d have directed the jury to acquit and saved this community the expense of a second.”
“Thrifty, that’s you,” Burke said.
“That will be another twenty-five dollars.”
Canal swore under his breath. Springer swung his head his way. “What’s the matter, Detective? He owe you money?”
“He does now.”
The judge’s telephone rang. “Pay the clerk, Sergeant. Don’t make me jug you. Your detail hardly qualifies as a squad as it is.”
In the marble hallway, Canal stopped Burke with a big hand on his shoulder. “Fork it over, Jack Benny. Fifty smackers.”
“Take it out of the sixty you owe me for the Louis fight.”
“You characters cut the comedy.” Zagreb stuck a cigarette in his mouth and patted his pockets. McReary, who always carried matches to confirm his value to the squad, lit it for him. “Where’d Eddie hang his hat when he had a hat to hang?”
“Tip-Top Club on Twelfth,” Canal said. “The OPA pushed it in last year on a rationing beef.”
“The beef being they was charging eighteen points a girl, same as canned peaches.” Burke grinned.
“Not a help. Someplace where they aren’t rolling bandages for the Red Cross.”
“Oh, detectives!” Springer practically sang the words.
They turned in a body to see the judge’s head sticking out the open door of his chambers. “Get your sea legs ready,” he said. “That call was from Homicide. They scraped your responsibility out of a phone booth on West Lafayette half an hour ago. Two slugs in the chest, one in the head, right through the glass.”
* * *
On West Lafayette, a busy street in a busy town, sawhorses cordoned off a Rexall Drugs roughly halfway between the News and Free Press buildings. Most of the local reporters stopped there for hamburgers and Cokes sweetened from hip flasks. They stood outside looking hungry and disgruntled, frozen out of a scoop right on their doorstep.
Burke kicked the shrouded body on the linoleum. “Deader’n ragtime. Hey, Ox, every time I see one of these it’s already got a sheet over it. You run around with ’em in your pocket or what?”
“Give me the rank, Officer. Or go on report.” Lieutenant Osprey, Homicide, swigged from the pint of Ten High he carried to balance out his handcuffs and sidearm. “’Lo, Zag. Remind me not to ask you and your boys to look after my dog when I’m in Florida. He might get shot by a cat.”
“Long time no see, Oswald. I thought it was good-bye for real after the McHenry investigation.”
“Didn’t you hear? I got washed in the blood of the lamb after the last draft lottery. A little grifting don’t look so bad with all of them desks standing empty downtown.” He swung his head. “Lay off that, you big ape! You’ll spoil it for ballistics.”
Canal drew a thick forefinger from one of the jagged holes in the booth. The floor was a litter of shattered glass and wood splinters. “I don’t need calipers. These’re too small for my .45-caliber fingers.”
“Not to mention feet like torpedoes. And they call me Ox.”
“It’s not your size they’re talking about,” Zagreb said. “What about the mouthpiece, see anything?”
“He says not. He’s over by the soda fountain, drying out his drawers.”
The medical examiner arrived, a fat white-haired retiree returned to active duty, who uncovered the bloody corpse and opened his case, whistling “Popeye, the Sailor Man.” McReary put the comic book he’d been reading back in the rack. “What makes you stiff-jockeys so happy all the time?”
“Patients never gripe about the bill.”
Passing the counter, Zagreb glanced at the soda jerk, wearing a white coat and a paper hat and fingering a lump of acne under his chin. Osprey said, “In the stockroom when the ball started, he says. The shyster was sitting at the cou
nter getting his coffee juuuust right, like Goldilocks. You can see the razor display blocks the view of the entrance.” He pointed to a cardboard cutout of a smiling Robert Taylor holding up a Gillette.
“Calling a lawyer a shyster is actionable.” Winston Sweet sat at an ice-cream-parlor table in the corner, looking deflated inside his out-of-date suit. His voice sounded like an air raid siren grinding down.
“Sue my bookie,” Osprey said. “That’s where I keep my dough. These guys missed the first reel, so let’s take it from the opening titles. What was Karpalov doing here?”
“He said he wanted to call a woman.”
“What woman?” Zagreb barked.
“‘Some dame,’ that’s how he put it. He said any dame would do after a deuce in the joint. Understand, I’m using his own language. The King’s English is colorful enough for me.”
“You here for a dame too?”
“Certainly not. I’m a happily married man. I came along to see he didn’t wander off. My client insisted I keep an eye on him.”
“You did a swell job. Who’s your client?”
“That’s privileged.”
“Nuts,” Zagreb said. “Murder’s got its own set of rules and clamming up ain’t in it.”
“I’d argue that in court and win.”
“Where’d you and Eddie go after you left the train station?”
“An awful place called the Ruby Lounge. I think the trumpets were hooked up to air horns.”
“On Hastings?”
“I have no idea. I’m from Cleveland.”
“Admitting that is the first step on the way to health,” said Canal.
Burke gripped the edges of the table and leaned in close to Sweet’s face. “You can do better than that, Counselor. We padlocked the Ruby six weeks ago for operating after curfew.”
Canal said, “It’s open again.”
“Since when?”
“Since five weeks ago. I guess it took ’em a week to sweep up the pieces.”
“You might tell a guy.”
“You wouldn’t’ve liked it. Sweet’s right about the trumpets.”
“After that,” Sweet said, “we went to an even worse place in a basement, where the music came from a jukebox and I think they made their own whiskey. I poured most of mine into a fire bucket. Then we went to an apartment where a friend of his lived, only after a few drinks he wasn’t very friendly and they got into a fight.”
Zagreb asked what friend.
“Frank somebody. Karpalov tried to pull this Frank’s woman onto his lap and Frank told him to lay off and Karpalov threw a punch at him, but Frank ducked under his arm and twisted it behind him and threw him out into the hall. I went out right behind him. By then the sun was up and we came here so he could make that call. He wasn’t in the booth ten seconds when I heard shooting. A bullet smacked into that wall and I fell off the stool and stayed on the floor until I heard sirens.”
Zagreb looked at the hole in the lath. “What was the name of this Frankie’s girl?”
“An exotic sort of name.” Sweet massaged his temples. A vein throbbed in one. “Nola.”
“Nola Van Allen,” Canal said. “Blonde in the chorus at the Broadway-Capitol. Dances like a duck with a wooden leg, but it don’t matter because of who runs the stagehands’ union.”
“Frankie Orr.” Zagreb found his Zippo and lit up before McReary could act. “Whenever the wife and kid hang on him like a cheap suit, he scrams that crypt in Grosse Pointe and makes a beeline to that apartment. He was twisting arms for Joey Machine at the same time Eddie tailgunned for him along the river. How about it, Sweet, was Frankie sore enough to follow him here?”
“This is a farce.” The lawyer looked at Osprey. “Lieutenant, I want to swear out a complaint against this man and the three thugs who work for him.”
“What’s the squeal, no regard for the King’s English?”
“I believe they murdered my client.”
* * *
“It’s still Thursday,” Canal said. “Who had it in the pool?”
“Nobody, that’s who.” Burke stroked his wire-brush stubble.
“Let’s roll it over on what day we all draw one-A.”
“Thursday.” Zagreb, Burke, and McReary spoke together.
“No sweat,” Burke added. “They’ll have to bust us out of stir to get us into basic.”
“Eddie bit the linoleum about seven,” Zagreb said. “We all met in Springer’s chambers at seven-thirty. Who was where when?”
“After we finished tying one on at Sportree’s I caught up with my dame and left her place at seven,” Burke said, “but I’d sure hate to see her have to say it for the record.”
“On account of your wife?” McReary said.
“On account of her husband.”
Canal bit the end off a cigar and spat it into a cuspidor next to the oaken bench. They were waiting outside the commissioner’s office. “Hell, Burksie, you don’t need to worry about prison. Somebody’ll shoot you long before then.”
“Canal?” Zagreb looked at him.
“When I can’t sleep I go to the Pussycat Theater on Telegraph. Grindhouse: stag films twenty-four hours a day.”
McReary shook his head. “I’m serious. You and Burke have got to go to the circus once in a while.”
“Ringling don’t give free passes to cops,” Canal said.
Zagreb asked him what was playing.
“Search me. I was out like the Charleston as soon as the lights came down. I told you I go there when I can’t sleep.”
“Mac?”
“I went straight home.”
“Anybody see you?”
“My mother.”
“An unimpeachable witness, I don’t think. Well, I’m no better off. I went back to my place and nodded off counting roaches.”
The commissioner’s secretary called them in. John H. Witherspoon was a small man in a big job, with bicycle-shaped spectacles and the kind of face that made lemons pucker. He asked the squad the same questions Zagreb had asked, but didn’t appear to hear the answers. He had a file open on a desk the size of a Murphy bed.
“In his complaint, Winston Sweet says Karpalov told him you men made statements of a threatening nature.”
“Balls,” Burke said.
“Eloquent, Officer, but hardly satisfying.” He pursed his lips at Zagreb. “Did you tell your prisoner that if he tried to come back on the Queen Mary you’d give that information to the Germans?”
“That was a rib. My butcher’s the only kraut I know, and he’s a Jew.”
“Beside the point. I’m not accusing you of high treason.” His face registered regret for that omission. “Officer Burke. Did you tell the prisoner he should be marched down a hall and shot in the back?”
“That’s what the Russkies do, I said. It was a joke, Commish.”
“Commissioner. Sergeant Canal. Did you brandish your revolver and make a remark about DOA within the prisoner’s hearing?”
“Jeez. Who knew the little snake had such big ears?”
“I’ll take that as an affirmative.”
“I was just kidding around.”
“You men were on an assignment, not Amos ’n’ Andy. What about you, Detective Third-Grade?”
McReary sat up straight. “I never said a word to the prisoner.”
“Why not? Everyone else had a turn. Were you afraid your words might come back to incriminate you?”
Zagreb scraped back his chair. “Now we’re on the hook for what we didn’t say. If that’s all you got, can we get back on the job? Letting killers run loose is sloppy police work, even when it’s Eddie the Carp on the slab.”
“Keep your seat, Lieutenant. I didn’t say that’s all I’ve got.” Witherspoon turned the page. “All the slugs fired in the drugstore were .38s. Ballistics tested your guns, all .38s. The results were inconclusive.”
“Zero for four’s low,” Zagreb said. “They better not try moonlighting at Briggs Stadium.”
&nb
sp; “The bullet they dug out of the wall was misshapen. The three the medical examiner got from the corpse were in fragments. Comparing the striations was impossible.”
Canal said, “Dum-dums. Frankie Orr’s practically got the patent.”
“Lieutenant Osprey’s bringing him in for questioning. Three of your weapons have been eliminated; dust had accumulated in the barrels since their last cleaning. The fourth was in bandbox condition. Ordinarily I commend taking care of one’s sidearm. In your case, McReary, this morning’s session with the rag could mean a life sentence in Jackson.”
McReary paled. “I clean and oil it regular.”
“That’s no baloney. The kid takes care of his piece like it was a dame.” Burke was bristling.
The commissioner slapped shut the folder. “All your alibis stink. The squad’s suspended until all the facts are in. With pay, it pains me to add. Karpalov belongs to Homicide.”
“Sweeter words were never spoken,” Zagreb said. “What about our guns?”
“Impounded, and give me your shields. That should keep you heroes off the streets until the police clean up your mess.”
The four rose and flipped the leather wallets containing their gold badges onto the desk. Witherspoon opened the belly drawer, scooped them inside like a poker player gathering in his winnings, and slammed the drawer shut.
Down on the street, Canal stopped chewing his cigar and set fire to it. “Well, we ain’t in combat boots.”
“Stripes neither,” Zagreb said. “Just a bunch of guys on a busman’s holiday.”
McReary’s eyes went round. “You mean we’re investigating?”
“Ox can’t find his fly, much less a triggerman. Jackson’s no place for us. We’re the reason the warden made quota.”
“I don’t know, L.T.,” Burke said. “I’m naked without my piece.”
“No one wants to see that.” Zagreb put his hand in the side pocket of Burke’s coat, got his keys, and popped the trunk of the Chrysler parked at the curb. Inside were two pump shotguns, a Thompson submachine gun with three drum magazines, a box of smoke bombs, and assorted blackjacks and brass knuckles. “Careless of Witherspoon to overlook these,” he said. “He was a better bean-counter before he came down with a bad case of politics.”
Detroit Is Our Beat Page 11