Detroit Is Our Beat

by Loren D. Estleman

  Canal grinned around his stogie and bent to scoop up the Thompson. The lieutenant slapped his hand.

  “Let’s try it a capella for now. That ‘heroes’ crack upstairs got my goat.”

  “So he got your goat.” Canal rubbed his hand. “You want Frankie to get the rest?”

  “Let’s give him a couple hours with Osprey. Even a cheap hood needs a laugh now and then. It won’t take more than a breadstick to bend a twig like Winston Sweet.”

  * * *

  They didn’t have access to the file, but out-of-town lawyers weren’t hard to find in Detroit. Sooner or later they got wind of the attorney-friendly staff in the bar of the Book-Cadillac Hotel, where the Recorder’s Court crowd flocked to drop their briefs after a hard day of litigating.

  At sight of the Four Horsemen entering the cool dim interior shoulder to shoulder, half a dozen bail bondsmen drained their glasses and left by the side door. The counselor from Cleveland shared a leatherette booth with a public defender Burke knew well enough to remove by his collar and propel toward the exit with a boot from behind. Zagreb shoved himself in beside Sweet and the others crammed themselves in opposite.

  “What is the meaning of this?” The fat little man righted his glass, tall and misty with a gardenia floating in it.

  Burke waggled his fingers at Canal. “He said it. Pay up.”

  Canal told him to deduct it from the fifty he owed him. “I had him down for ‘I beg your pardon.’”

  “Naw. That’s doctors. With lawyers it’s always questions.”

  The lieutenant stuck two fingers in Sweet’s drink and tasted them. “Gimlet.” He wiped his fingers on one of the man’s wide lapels. “Too late in the season. Who’s your client?”

  “Bartender! These men are annoying me.”

  The short, athletic-looking man in the green suede vest gathering empty glasses off tables nodded to Zagreb and glanced at Sweet. “It’s what they do, mister. None better.”

  “Thanks, Sully. Schlitz all around.” Zagreb smiled at the lawyer. “Sully goalied for the Red Wings, the only mick on a team full of Canucks and Russkies. He’s got more gold in his mouth than the Black Hills.”

  “I don’t follow football.”

  “That’s it. I’m shooting him on general principles.” Canal groped at the empty holster hidden under his coat. The little man squeaked.

  “Stand down, Sergeant. You might miss and hit the inventory.” Zagreb’s smile vanished. “You got us suspended, Winston. Me, I can use the sleep. Burke’s got his dames, Mac’s got his dear old white-haired mom.”

  “Redhead. She bought a five-year supply of henna the day after Pearl.”

  “His dear old flame-haired mom. It’s Canal I’m worried about. Lonely bachelor walking up and down his crummy cold-water flat, listening to The Guiding Light. You know what it’s like when a guy his size cracks down the middle?”

  Canal crunched his knuckles, creating a sound effect. Sweet jumped again, sloshing more of his drink. The top of the table was getting wet and sticky.

  “I don’t know either,” Zagreb went on, “and I don’t want to. Who’s your client?”

  “What you’re asking could get me disbarred.”

  “You think we’re going to broadcast where we got the information? There isn’t a cop in the world who don’t sit on his own personal snitch.”

  “I detest that word.”

  “That’s more like it. We’re sharing our likes and dislikes. No more small talk.”

  Conversation flagged while the bartender set out their beers. When he left, the lawyer glanced around the table, then leaned over and whispered in Zagreb’s ear.

  “That’s a reasonable request. You boys take your beers over to the bar.”

  They obeyed. McReary worried at the label on his bottle with a thumbnail. “You guys ever ashamed you’re a cop?”

  Before anyone could answer, the lieutenant threw two dollars on the table and joined them.

  “A.E. Smallwood, Cleveland Heights.”

  Canal said, “Never heard of him. What’s his racket?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “You?” Burke’s mouth hung open.

  “Sweet’s just a fat little guy in a Salvation Army suit. Probably the first job he ever had where he didn’t have to worry about smacking into the back of an ambulance. I got a heart.”

  Burke said, “What’s having a heart got to do with lawyers?”

  “That’s swell, Zag.” McReary sounded like Christmas morning.

  “Hell with him. If that Karpalov cousin he dug up is the real deal, I’m Billy Sunday.”

  “Who’s—? Aw, skip it. You guys and your washed-up movie stars.”

  When they left, Winston Sweet was drinking from the glass Zagreb had filled for him, his highball abandoned.

  * * *

  On East Jefferson, Burke coasted the Chrysler to a stop behind a black Packard with nickel wheels and set the brake. There were two men in the front seat. “He’s home. Guess his mouthpiece followed him downtown.”

  McReary said, “Could be he’s still downtown. The commish said he was brought in.”

  “That’s Rocco Marconi next to his driver,” Zagreb said. “You couldn’t pry a city block between Frankie and his nursemaid.”

  Canal looked up at the rundown building. “What’s a big cheese like Orr doing keeping his broad in a dump like this?”

  Burke said, “He owns the dump. Wait’ll you see the crib.”

  “Yeah? When were you there ever?”

  “I seen it in Good Housekeeping.”

  “Less talk, more do.” Zagreb got out, followed by the others.

  The man on the passenger’s side of the Packard saw them coming and opened the door. Canal kicked it shut, just missing his hand. “Stay put, Rocco. This is a social call.”

  The window cranked down. “Lots of lip for a cop on relief. I hear you boys got kicked off the force.” The bodyguard had cauliflower ears and a nose like a twist of rope. Canal took hold of it and twisted it back the other way. He howled. The big sergeant looked at the driver for more, but he merely folded over his Racing Form and resumed reading.

  On their way upstairs, Burke said: “You really think he knows this bird Smallwood?”

  “If he’s a rackets guy,” Zagreb said. “They’re clubby as hell.”

  A sharp-faced blonde in green lounging pajamas answered the apartment door. She was barefoot and all her nails matched the pajamas. “Uh-oh. Somebody left a cage open at the zoo.”

  Canal leered. “That’s no way to greet an old friend, Nola. I know you since you checked hats at the Oriole Ballroom.”

  “Pants, too,” Burke said.

  She started to slam the door. Zagreb stopped it with his shoulder.

  “We want five minutes with Frankie. Here or at the California, only there it’d be more like an hour.”

  “And seem like a week,” McReary said.

  Burke raised his brows at the young detective. “Hey, you’re coming along.”

  Nola Van Allen walked away from the door. The living room was done all in black-and-white and chromium. An albino zebra skin lay on the floor. As they entered, Frankie Orr came in from another room drying his jet-black hair with a towel. He wore a silk dressing gown embroidered with silver thread and slippers with heraldic crests on the toes. “Aw, c’mon, fellas,” he said. “I just scrubbed off the last of Osprey.”

  “Ox just looks like he stinks,” Zagreb said. “Simmer down, Frankie. You only kill when there’s dough involved. Who’s A.E. Smallwood?”

  Orr got rid of the towel, palmed back his hair, and took a silver-tipped cigarette from a doohickey on a bar with rubber wheels. He lit it with a platinum lighter and blew smoke at the ceiling, showing a tanned throat. “Smallwood. Sounds like a medical condition.”

  “You’re hiring better writers. Coming up in the world.” Zagreb waited.

  “Seems to me I had a drink once with an Abner Smallwood. I forget just where.”

 
“Try Cleveland Heights. After the city of the same name.”

  “You try it. I lost a good man there once. He went swimming across Lake Huron with a Hupmobile tied to his back.”

  “This Smallwood paid to get Eddie Karpalov out of hock.”

  “That so? I got a bone to pick with him then. Eddie insulted Nola.”

  “You call practically getting raped an insult?” She was sitting on the black leather sofa holding a jade cigarette holder with nothing in it. “Your friends can go piss up a rope.”

  “He wasn’t a friend. He thought he was and tried to put the arm on me for a getaway stake. Then he got fresh with my girl. But I wouldn’t sell out an enemy to the cops, dead or alive. The way I hear it, you ain’t even cops no more.”

  “Your boy Rocco heard the same thing. The way news travels in this town, it’s a wonder anyone bothers to tune in Walter Winchell. So tell us about Smallwood. We’re all civilians here.”

  “Go swipe an apple.”

  Zagreb took a step and hit him on the point of his chin. Orr fell back against the bar, which rolled two feet and dumped half its cargo in an explosion of liquor and crystal. He caught his balance, but his hair was in his face and his eyes lacked focus.

  “Excuse our bad manners, Frankie.” Burke ground out Orr’s cigarette on the floor. “The commish took away our guns.”

  “Yeah? Maybe telling me wasn’t so smart.”

  Zagreb sucked his knuckles. “Put your pants on. Threatening us buys you ninety days in County.”

  “You said you weren’t cops.”

  “I stretched it a little. Witherspoon just sent us off to summer camp. He thought we looked tired.”

  Orr spat blood on the zebra skin. He’d bitten his tongue.

  Nola leapt to her feet. “You cheap gangster! That won’t wash out.”

  “Shut up and go in the bedroom. Turn on the radio. Loud.”

  She threw her cigarette holder at him and ran into the next room. The door slammed. In a little while noise came out. It sounded like a pair of wrestlers falling down the service stairs.

  “Had to be ‘Drum Boogie.’” Canal shook his head. “Couldn’t be Fred Waring.”

  Orr browsed the containers left on the bar, found leaded glasses in the cabinet underneath, poured. “You boys never had stuff like this. You never even been in the same room with it.”

  “Thanks. For a thief you got a generous heart.” Zagreb jerked his down, as did Canal and Burke. McReary sipped, made a face. He was a milkshake man.

  Orr winced when his drink touched his tongue. “You can’t make that threatening charge stick.”

  “If you’re so sure, why send Nola to her room?”

  “I’m a busy man, and I already lost half my day, so here’s a crumb. Abner Elias Smallwood. He’s out of my league. If I fix things between a mug and the mayor, he fixes ’em between Shell Oil and Washington. Can’t get a defense contract? Talk to Smallwood. In a month you’re cranking out hatch hinges for the navy.”

  “What’s his end?” Zagreb asked.

  “Half a percent.”

  Canal snorted. “You built him up like he was big-time.”

  “You got any idea what just one plant cleared last year?”

  Zagreb helped himself to another drink. “What’s a minnow like Winston Sweet doing swimming with a whale like Smallwood?”

  “My guess is this Roylston, Ryker, and Reed outfit sails close to shore. No legit firm would touch the case.”

  “Why Eddie the Carp?” Zagreb drained his glass again.

  “I said Smallwood talks to the big fish for the little fish. That don’t mean it can’t work the other way. Somebody big wanted him out on the street bad enough to meet Smallwood’s price.”

  Zagreb said, “Out in the open, you mean.”

  “We’re just talking, understand. You can get to a man in the joint, but it leaves a trail. On the street it’s anybody’s game.”

  * * *

  Zagreb locked the call box on the corner and got back into the Chrysler next to Burke behind the wheel. “Smallwood’s out of town, meeting with Cordell Hull.”

  Burke said, “The attorney general?”

  “I think he’s secretary of state.”

  “Wonder who he wants rubbed out?” Canal asked.

  The lieutenant swigged from a pint he’d swiped from Orr’s bar and passed it over the seat to Canal in back. “What’s the name of that cop Eddie smoked way back when?”

  “Jim Hooper.” Canal took a pull and gave it to McReary. “He went in the front door when we busted up the Oakland Sugar House Gang in thirty-nine. I was a harness bull then same as him.”

  “Married, wasn’t he?”

  “Sure. I heard she moved in with her mother in Hamtramck.”

  Burke got the bottle from McReary, who hadn’t partaken, drank, capped it, and slid it into his coat pocket. “Hamtramck it is. I know a market there sells kielbasa under the counter, no stamps.” He started the car.

  McReary said, “Don’t that put money in Frankie’s pocket?”

  “It’s a screwy war,” Zagreb said. “We’ll get all the bugs worked out in time for the next.”

  They found Bernice Hooper packing a lunch pail in the kitchen of a small house on Joseph Campau. She was a thick-waisted woman with gray in her hair who said she was working the swing shift at Dodge Main.

  “I’m sick of having coppers in my house,” she said. “I had ’em in every house I ever lived in. My father and uncle were cops, I married a cop, I got a brother who’s a cop. I’m glad now I never had a kid. I’d be pinning his diapers on with a shield.”

  “Tough break.” Canal was sincere.

  McReary had his hat off, baring his bald head. “We’re sorry for your loss.”

  “Every copper says that. It must be in the department manual.”

  Zagreb said, “Eddie Karpalov’s dead, if it helps.”

  “Gee, let me check. Jim!” she called over her shoulder. She waited, shrugged, threw a box of Sun-Maid raisins in the pail. “Nope. Still in the ground.”

  “Can you tell us where you were at seven this morning?” Zagreb asked.

  “Welding tanks, midnight till eight.”

  “You pulled a double shift?”

  “I don’t have a husband to come back to, mister. My mother talks about Jesus all the time, so I don’t figure I’m missing much in the way of conversation.”

  Burke said, “We’ll check with your foreman.”

  “Check or not, I don’t care. I’m glad he’s dead, but my life’s the same either way.”

  Zagreb paused in the midst of lighting a cigarette. “Mind telling us your maiden name?”

  * * *

  That night they reconvened in Room 1102 of the California and wolfed down kielbasa sausage and cabbage cooked by Canal on the hotplate, chasing it with beer. The big sergeant was a lifelong bachelor and the only one of the Horsemen who could apply heat to a meal without needing a fire extinguisher or a stomach pump. They were sitting around burping when the candlestick phone rang. Zagreb said “Okay” three times and pegged the receiver.

  “Washington P.D. picked up Deputy Marshal Cash an hour ago,” he said. “He rolled over on his partner, but he says all he did was drive the getaway car, a rental. He never heard of anybody named Smallwood. Deputy Marshal Rudnicki lives on the Virginia side. They’re rounding up the locals to help snag him. We’ll know in a little.”

  “Bernice Rudnicki.” McReary shook his head. “How’d you guess, Zag?”

  “I didn’t. When she said she has a brother who’s a cop, I got a hunch, but I didn’t figure Rudnicki. The Justice Department checked with his bank. He cashed in all his war bonds last month. That’s how he paid Smallwood to arrange to spring Karpalov.”

  Burke picked his teeth with a thumbnail. “It don’t make sense. They could’ve taken a crack at him on the train all the time he was in their mitts.”

  “And explain it how?” Zagreb said. “Rudnicki called in some markers to get the
assignment. The shooting team would start with that, and when it came out he was Hooper’s brother-in-law, he’d be hotter than Canal’s hotplate. This way he had a legitimate reason for being in town and a hundred other guys to take the fall, including us and everybody who ever met Eddie.”

  “Even so, I hope he gets the same break in court Eddie got.” Canal fired up a cigar.

  Zagreb got up and opened a window to let out the stench. “Not till he rolls over on Smallwood. Otherwise we can’t tie Smallwood to that phony affidavit that kept Eddie in the country. Winston Sweet’s dumb enough or scared enough to take that ride alone, and the law can’t make him give up his client under oath.”

  McReary said, “What makes you think Rudnicki will?”

  “Just the difference between time off for good behavior and life without parole. If he don’t make a fight of it tonight. Those capital cops cut their teeth on spies and saboteurs. He makes a fight of it, all we got’s another dead cop and a live fixer who makes Frankie Orr’s operation look like the Lollipop Guild.”

  The telephone rang again. Zagreb answered, listened, said “Thanks,” hung up. He dug a Chesterfield out of his pack. “He made a fight of it.”

  After a little while McReary took out the deck of cards.

  — BIG —

  Band

  “You don’t have to be Buster Crabbe to choke a dame.”

  Big Band

  Shirley Grabowski had always been one of those women the tabloids called handsome, when a picture accompanied the story and they couldn’t smuggle “beauty” past the readers. Her jaw was too square, her nose mannish, and she could never find sunglasses to fit her wide-set eyes. But that was before the war, before she joined the Women’s Army Corps. The WAC uniform, with its tailored jacket and skirt and overseas cap set at a rakish angle on her strawberry-blond head, brought everything together. She was, Max Zagreb admitted to himself ruefully, a dish.

  He told her as much. She rolled a padded shoulder and pumped the straw in her gin rickey. “It’s the government-issue frock: makes men horny, like those Scarlett O’Hara costumes bridesmaids wear. It’d make Olive Oyl look like Lana Turner.”