Detroit Is Our Beat

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Now you’re just fishing.” The Racket Squad lieutenant waited until the Four-F sourpuss in the paper hat turned his back to the counter, then unscrewed his flask and freshened their Cokes. It was past curfew for everyone but cops and their companions. They were the only customers in the Rexall, and the man wanted to close. He’d switched off the radio in the middle of Lowell Thomas to hurry them on their way. “Speaking of bridesmaids, I’ve heard scuttlebutt.”

  “You and your stoolies,” she said. “Let’s hold off on rice rations till the Axis goes belly-up. If Jerry gets me in the family way I won’t get to see London.”

  “Neighborhood’s gone downhill since the Luftwaffe moved in, I hear. How is old Jerry? I haven’t seen him since the three-legged sack race on Belle Isle.”

  “Quit your kidding. You never met. You will, if you do me the eensy-weensy favor I dragged you down here to ask.”

  “What’s my end?”

  “Old times’ sake. You threw me over for a bottle blonde in the Club 666 right in the middle of the ‘Five O’Clock Jump.’ The way I see it, you owe me a good turn.”

  “The blonde nicked me for a fin to make change to tip the girl in the powder room and never came back. I figure I paid my debt to society.”

  “Sap. There aren’t any restroom attendants in the 666. There are barely restrooms.”

  “So I found out when I went looking for her. Okay, I was a drip. How do I square myself?”

  “I ship out next week. I want you to keep Jerry out of trouble while I’m away.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The musician kind.”

  “Sour notes?”

  “He never blows ’em. He plays second trumpet with Red Lot’s Red Hots, mixed group with a steady gig at the Ruby Lounge on Hastings.”

  “I know Red. Vice pulled him in on a muggles rap couple of months back.”

  “Does that sort of thing bother you?”

  “It bothers Vice. Those boys sit with their knees together just like their mamas told ’em. Me, I like hooch. I never get in the way of a fellow and his way to hell, so long as it don’t involve the rackets.”

  “Drugs isn’t a racket?”

  “Only on the supply side. I don’t want to know what Satchmo sounds like on Juicy Fruit and grape Nehi.”

  “I don’t mean that kind of trouble. Jerry’s a hothead, goes with the job: It takes a few hours to wind down from a good session, and when he gets a few drinks in him, he’d pick a fight with Patton’s Third Army.”

  “I did my bit for Prohibition, Shirl. I’ve got the lumps to prove it.”

  “I don’t begrudge him a bender now and then. Two sets in the Ruby would turn a teetotaler like Henry Ford into a Class A sot. I just don’t want him to catch a fist in the throat some night. He’s got his heart set on a slot with the Casa Loma Orchestra, and they aren’t hiring men with busted pipes.”

  “If he likes to fight more than he likes to blow, he should enlist.”

  “He tried. Glenn Miller said he’d give him an audition for his army band if he showed up, but a crummy doctor at the Light Guard Armory said he had a heart murmur and washed him out.”

  Zagreb had one of those, too: It kept murmuring Don’t go. Aloud he said, “I can’t babysit him for the duration. The commissioner won’t okay the cover charge.”

  “Well, what can you do?”

  “Give him an even break if he winds up in the tank.”

  “Isn’t that just going by the book?”

  “You know, I never saw a book. I thought they’d hand out copies with the shield, but there was a Depression on and I guess they had to save on the printing bill.”

  “You know what I think? There isn’t a book.”

  “You’d make a swell detective.”

  She took the straw out of her glass and slurped liquid off the end. By then it was all gin. “I don’t even know if I’ll make a good WAC. I just didn’t want to pound sheet metal at Chrysler.”

  “Guess you’ll know when you get to London.”

  “Not London. I can’t tell you where they’re sending me, but tea and crumpets aren’t in it. Can you at least promise me you’ll look in on him from time to time? Maybe put the fear of God in him when he steps over the line?”

  “What’s the skinny, Shirl? Afraid he’ll sit under the apple tree with a bottle blonde while you’re in the Aleutians?”

  She paled. “How did you—? Forget I said that. I fell for a musician. Don’t you think I know where to cut my losses? Jerry’s a good egg. All he need’s a woman who cares enough to trim some of the bark off him. Since it can’t be me, I thought I’d draft the Detroit Police Department.”

  He lit a Chesterfield. The counterman sighed but kept mum. Black marketers had stuck him up three times for penicillin before he started letting cops order burgers on the cuff. He turned away to flush the soda taps. “You’re still aiming high,” Zagreb said. “I trained on Tommygunners and axe murderers. Playing Dutch uncle to trumpeters ought to come with combat pay.”

  She smiled; he remembered she had horse teeth, but now she looked like Katharine Hepburn. Her fingers brushed the back of his hand where it rested on the Formica. “Thanks, Max. I knew I could count on you.”

  “I didn’t—” he said; but she was giving him details.

  As they moved toward the door, Paper Hat rang up the sale, sniffed the used glasses, scowled, and plunged them into warm soapy water.

  * * *

  The Ruby Lounge had been padlocked once for operating after curfew, but the lieutenant in charge of that detail was a reasonable man with a wife who liked furs and Florida, so it had reopened immediately. It was in full swing when Zagreb dropped in, flashed his shield at the bouncer, and plowed his way to the bar. The atmosphere was so dense he thought it would hold its shape after the walls fell in, a perfect cube of noise and smoke.

  Red Lot’s Red Hots crowded the bandstand twelve pieces strong. Lot, whose facial congestion matched his thatch of flame-colored hair, leaned heavily on his bass drum, propelling the band through a high-test version of “Let Me Off Uptown.” What the girl singer, a light-skinned Negro, lacked in lung power she made up for in body movement. The gyrations of her long slender form in skintight evening dress were incendiary and violated the city ordinance against lewd and lascivious activity. But that one had been passed before a war that had put many things in a different perspective. In any case, that was Vice’s headache. Zagreb ordered a double rye and leaned his back against the bar to watch Jerry Dugan blow his horn.

  The Racket Squad lieutenant was tone deaf, but he could tell Shirley Grabowski was all wet on the subject of her fella’s abilities; he was out of his depth next to the heavyset Negro blasting away at first trumpet. That party climbed the scale to the ear-shattering crescendo with seeming ease, with Dugan stumbling behind in sweaty confusion. Evidently all the best men were in uniform or performing with the USO—or, as in the case of the silver-templed colored player, exempted by age from service until storm troopers invaded Paradise Valley.

  Zagreb had no beef with the trombones, reeds, vibes, and piano; but his taste in music began and ended with Bing Crosby.

  “Let Me Off Uptown” ended the set, of course. It would have been anticlimactic to follow it with anything but an air raid. The clientele thinned out—entertainment was the draw, not the watered-down black market booze—and Zagreb found space to sidle up next to Jerry Dugan as he called for a Schlitz.

  “I always heard you musicians fueled up on ethyl,” the lieutenant said by way of opening the conversation.

  “I promised my girl I’d ride the wagon a while.” The trumpeter was a good-looking kid and knew it. He focused on his reflection behind the bar and smoothed back a sandy lock with an ivory comb. His band jacket was cut to call attention to his narrow waist and square shoulders.

  “Tell me which wagon, it lets you blow like that.” The department oath came with a license to lie.

  “You should hear me when we’re jamm
ing. Out in the open I got to hang back or sweep these bush leaguers out the door.”

  It was going to be impossible to keep this boy out of trouble. “That other trumpeter won’t sweep easy.”

  “Well, Lungs is an institution.”

  The way he said the name indicated his listener should know it. He made a note to consult McReary. The detective third-grade was the youngest man on the squad and presumably up on current music. “We have a mutual friend. Shirley Grabowski?”

  “Shirley’s that girl I told you about.” Dugan introduced himself and reached across his body to offer his left hand. Fritz Kreisler, the violinist, protected his bow hand that way, they said; but Kreisler needn’t fear the return of better musicians when the war was over.

  “Max Zagreb.”

  “How do you know Shirley?”

  “We met on a double date. She was out with some loser.” No sense naming names.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked into the scarlet boozy face of Red Lot. “Hey, there, Lieutenant. How’s the boy?”

  The bartender had a highball all ready for the bandleader. It wasn’t his first or he wouldn’t be so chummy. They’d barely spoken while he was being released from the marijuana lockup. Before Zagreb could frame a suitable response, Red was gone with his glass, glad-handing his way from table to table.

  Dugan said, “Lieutenant, huh? You on leave?”

  “Can’t get a pass out of the commissioner.”

  “Oh. Cop.” There was no friendly way to say the phrase.

  “Off duty tonight. Only raid polka joints when I’m on.”

  “Come to think of it, I heard her say she knew a cop. She send you to check up on me?”

  “You need checking up on?”

  “Shirley thinks so. She don’t like to see a man enjoying himself. I’d trade her in for the sport model if she weren’t a knockout.”

  He was liking Dugan better and better—for the draft. “A lot of mugs that like to pop off sometimes could stand having a knockout like her around. I was a hell-raiser myself till my old watch captain took me in hand, and he was ugly as a bag of bricks.”

  Dugan tipped up his bottle and didn’t set it down until it gurgled empty. “Well, you can tell her Jerry-boy’s all grown up. She can serve donuts to dogfaces and not give me another thought. Maybe a V-mail now and again to remind me to wear rubbers when it rains. What’re you drinking?” The beer was having its effect. Like most mean drunks he was on his way after the second round.

  “Rye.”

  “Make it two, Ace.” Dugan slapped the bar.

  The bartender, a big Pole who looked as if he’d started out juggling short blocks at Dodge Main, set them up. “Name’s Stan. Stanislaus to you, Bugle Boy.”

  Dugan put back the shot with a jerk, then decided to get mad. Zagreb caught his fist on the cock and twisted his arm behind his back.

  “Hey, hey! That’s the money arm!” The trumpeter’s voice was shrill.

  “You should’ve thought of that before you tried to break it on a bartender named Stanislaus.” He fumbled out the folder with his shield and showed it to that individual, who nodded and straightened up from the sawed-off every mixologist in the Arsenal of Democracy kept under the bar. “You going to behave?”

  “Yeah, sure. Jesus.”

  The lieutenant let go, and was ready when Dugan spun around leading with his other fist. He ducked the blow and lifted the boy off his feet in a fireman’s carry when the follow-through put him in position. He gripped Dugan’s wrists, clamped his other arm around his legs, and opened a path through the crowd of gawkers toward the door. “Fireworks over, folks,” he said. “Your tax dollars at work. Be sure and buy war bonds.”

  * * *

  “Slow news day.” Sergeant Canal folded the Detroit Times. “You should tell a guy when you moonlight as a bouncer. You won’t let me drive a cab.”

  “Diplomatic decision. The one they have was in the can: Medical deferment. Bad prostates are winning the war for Hitler.” Zagreb plunked himself into a chair at a vacant desk, of which the squad was in good supply since before Corregidor. “How’d I come off?”

  “Little to the right of Mussolini. Lucky the Free Press wasn’t there.”

  “They’re pussies. The Herald will be screaming for my shield come the next edition.” He looked at his watch. “Dugan’s made bail by now.”

  The telephone rang on Canal’s desk. The big man answered it and held it out. “Some dame.”

  “That’ll be his bail.” He got up to take it. He was right. It was Shirley.

  “What happened, Max? Jerry says you sucker-punched him.”

  “He threw all the punches. It wasn’t his fault none of them connected. Well, it was. A guy who can’t throw a right jab or a left hook should stick to knitting socks for the marines.”

  A sigh came down the line. “He’s going to be a handful, isn’t he?”

  “A blowtop like that’s wasted outside a torpedo tube. I can’t keep the peace and sit on his head too. You need to put more men on the job, but the Hundred-and-First Airborne’s busy.”

  “Is he going to—prison?”

  “It’d be one way to keep him in check. Realistically, we could put him on ice for ninety days for assaulting a police officer, but he didn’t get that far. Anyway I didn’t write it up that way. The judge’ll probably fine him for drunk and disorderly, maybe a week shoveling out the stables at Mounted if he’s hung over when he hears the case.”

  “Thank you, Max. If I thought you were all cop I wouldn’t have asked the favor.”

  “Don’t bank on that. Jerry’s the Hindenburg waiting for a spark.”

  “But you will try to look out for him?”

  He blew air. “The Ruby’s on my way home. I can use a drink after a hard day snaring saboteurs.”

  “Maybe if he hangs around you long enough some of the nice guy will rub off on him.”

  “I heard that last part,” Canal said, when he hung up.

  “What’s it to you?” He was sore at himself, but the sergeant was a bigger target.

  “Not a thing, Zag. Maybe you should hire a press agent and get the newshawks off your neck.” He sniffed one of his thick black cigars—no one ever said he wasn’t a brave man—and put a match to it, clouding the air with the stench of boiling bedpans. “This Grabowski dame must be some tomato.”

  “I was late finding it out. If I was any kind of detective there wouldn’t be any Jerry Dugan in the picture.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. I dumped a month’s salary on forty shares in Hupmobile.”

  * * *

  Two weeks went by, measured in brawl-bustings, barren stakeouts, and a honey of a double murder over a back-alley tire sale gone bad; not a saboteur to the credit of the fearsome Four Horsemen of the Racket Squad. Zagreb got a picture postcard from Shirley in San Francisco, the jumping-off point before the Aleutians (if the War Department wanted to keep that a secret it shouldn’t have stressed their importance in press releases). He dropped in on the Ruby Lounge a half-dozen times, hovering in the background over a glass while Dugan tried to catch up with Chester “Lungs” Nelson, who according to McReary had recorded four sides with Duke Ellington.

  “What the hell’s he doing playing a dive in Detroit?” Zagreb asked.

  “Scuttlebutt is he got the sack for pulling a knife on the Duke. Artistic dispute.”

  “They sure are sensitive back East. It’s how we open negotiations here.”

  In all that time the lieutenant had no direct contact with Dugan, who’d forked over fifty bucks to the county for the tussle at the bar and seemed to be minding his p’s and q’s. Anyway he was nursing his beers.

  Officer Burke, a big man by any standards that didn’t include Canal, braced Zagreb by the five-gallon coffee maker that had crossed the frontier with Fremont, holding a copy of the News folded open to the classifieds.

  “Pre-war Duesenberg,” he said, stabbing a hairy forefinger at the first column. “Four hundred bu
cks. We can swing that, between us four. I bet we get ’em down to three-fifty.”

  “Just what’s your beef with the Chrysler?” The lieutenant dropped two cubes of something that wasn’t sugar into his cup and stirred it with an iron spoon that turned reddish brown when he drew it out.

  “It looks like a chamber pot and you can smoke half a pack of Luckies waiting for it to accelerate after you stomp on the pedal. Other than that it’s swell.”

  “You want to drive a kraut car on a public street with U-boats sinking our convoys?”

  “We can paint over the insignia and call it a Liberty Car.”

  Zagreb drank something that wasn’t coffee. “Let’s just hold off on handing the commish a shovel to bury us with.”

  McReary entered the squad room as Burke steamed out. The young third-grader looked rakish as usual with his hat tilted on his sadly defoliated head. “Who spit in Burksie’s soup? He looks even uglier than always.”

  “I wasn’t listening. Got an aspirin?”

  “Nope. Hung over?”

  “Too much swing. I don’t know how you youngsters stand it.”

  “I turn down the volume on the Philco. No juke joints for me. I get in my eight hours and punch in fresh as a daisy.”

  “You’ll grow out of it.”

  The toilet down the hall flushed and Canal came in with the Racing Form under his arm. “Burke tell you his brainstorm?” he asked the lieutenant.

  “Yeah. Got an aspirin?”

  The big man shook his head. “I told him you wouldn’t go for it. Next week he’ll be asking for a Jap Zero. Hung over?”

  “Why’s everybody ask that? I heard ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ three times this week. Makes me want to puke, puke, puke.”

  “Mr. First Nighter. You can’t go wrong with Guy Lombardo.”

  Zagreb started going through drawers belonging to unoccupied desks. He found girlie magazines, newspapers folded to sports and crosswords, a half-finished jigsaw puzzle, an unopened package of Trojans, an enema tube attached to a hot-water bottle, and cartridges rolling around loose. At length he came upon an Anacin tin, but it was empty. He ran his finger around the inside and sucked on it. “I’ll give either one of you a day off to stand the next watch at the Ruby.”