Detroit Is Our Beat

by Loren D. Estleman

  * * *

  Zagreb heard him out without interruption. He watched the loudspeaker the whole time and his eyes never blinked. Burke and Canal were fond of saying that that basilisk stare had broken more alibis than all the rubber hoses in the city. When McReary finished, he dealt himself a cigarette and slid the pack toward the detective.

  “I don’t smoke. You know that.”

  “Looks like I don’t know you at all. Jesus. Yank Uncle Sam’s whiskers in the middle of a goddamn war? You want to be gang-raped by a better class of con than we got in the state pen?”

  “I could be wrong, but I think I’m in the clear with the feds. Not with me, though. Should I turn myself in?”

  “That would make the sex consensual.”

  “You want the collar? It’d draw some of the fire from the squad.”

  “I’m short-handed enough as it is. You’ve seen what I got to draw from.”

  “I stumbled, L.T. I disgraced the shield.” He took out his badge folder and put it on the desk.

  “I told you I’m low on manpower. You’ve seen what I got to draw from.”

  “Any one of ’em would be better than me.”

  “Pick that up before it scratches the finish.” Zagreb extinguished his cigarette in a burn crater. “You think you’re the only cop ever stepped off the curb?”

  “I’m the first in this outfit.”

  “Don’t be so stuck on yourself. When I was on Vice I ate oysters every night on the Hotel LaSalle. Everybody was doing it. That’s why a grand jury got convened. I drew thirty day’s suspension without pay, but it was just oysters. The brass with cash were arrested or canned or both. Canal was driving a prowl car, but he got caught up in the same net for delivering policy slips on his beat. He spent six months putting blisters on his feet in Paradise Valley. Burke—oh, hell, what hasn’t Burke done?”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “I had that kind of imagination, I’d be on the radio. The point is, we got it out of our systems. I wouldn’t play poker with either one of them for big stakes, but when we bust up a brawl in a gin joint I’d rather have them at my back than the Pacific fleet. You, too—if you got this out of your system.”

  McReary blinked; one of them had to. “Yes, sir! Swear on my mother’s life.”

  “Better not, till she gets the roses back in her cheeks. And call me Zag, or Lieutenant, or L.T., or ‘Hey, you, jackass,’ but don’t call me sir. I work for a living.”

  “Yes, si-Zag.”

  “Now pick up that piece of tin before I donate it to a scrap drive.”

  He scooped up the folder and put it in his pocket. Zagreb smiled for the first time in the meeting.

  “I’ll say this: You’re the only one of us who kicked over the traces for a cut of a million. What’s Ford stock look like?”

  He described it.

  The lieutenant’s lids flickered then. “‘The Henry Ford Motor Company,’ that’s what it said? Not ‘Ford Motor Company?’”

  “I’m sure it was Henry Ford, his whole name.”

  “When did you say he bought the shares?”

  “He said nineteen oh-one. Why?”

  Zagreb laughed. The sound of it and the sight of his red face startled McReary. He’d heard his boss chuckle, snicker, let out a ‘ha-ha’ when someone got off a good one, but this was as close to losing control as the detective had ever witnessed. Canal and Burke came in just as it was winding down.

  “Let us in on it, Zag.” Canal took the slimy cigar stub out of his mouth. “We ain’t heard a Pat-and-Mike story worth repeating in weeks.”

  The lieutenant wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. “Just a history lesson, boys. Henry Ford finally hit pay dirt in nineteen oh-eight when he built the Model T. Most people don’t know he failed the first time. If you own stock issued in nineteen oh-one by The Henry Ford Motor Company, you couldn’t buy a stick of gum.”

  “Lucky I didn’t buy any.” Canal put back his cigar.

  The floor dropped out of McReary’s stomach. He’d broken the law, violated his oath, put his job and his freedom on the line, for a suitcase full of junk.

  He heard someone else laughing then. It was himself. He couldn’t have held it back with both hands.

  Burke said, “Stop trying to butter up the boss. It ain’t that funny. What’s the palaver about, anyway, we’re left out? Zag don’t care about cars and you ain’t interested in history.”

  McReary caught his breath. “I was hitting up the lieutenant for an advance. I’m busted flat.”

  Canal grinned. “Yeah, I can see how a fella can get a boot out of that.”

  * * *

  The next time the Four Horsemen gathered at the California, the detective could tell right away Hank had gotten the news, probably straight from Ford, the company if not the man. His expression was more sour than usual and his grip on the lever would strangle a rhinoceros. When their gazes met, he saw that Hank saw that he knew too.

  “How’s it going, old-timer?” McReary asked.

  “Good as can be expected, punk.” The elevator started up.

  Sitting

  — DUCKS —

  “Some guys can sure hold a grudge.”

  Sitting Ducks

  The bomb went off when Officer Burke stepped on the starter button in the Chrysler. He was alone in the car.

  The dynamite was old, or had gotten wet, or hadn’t been any good to begin with, wartime conditions being what they were, so the only casualties were the hood, the window it broke on the third floor of 1300 Beaubien, Detroit Police Headquarters, and a brief but severe case of tinnitus on Burke’s part. His ears were still ringing when he and the rest of the Racket Squad banged the hood back into shape and re-hinged it. Chrysler wouldn’t be making any replacement parts for the duration.

  “Everybody knows you hate that car,” Lieutenant Zagreb told Burke. “Next time you blow it up, remember to get out first.”

  Detective Third-Grade McReary almost bought it when he parked his Model A and started across Grand Boulevard to the Fisher Theater, where his date was waiting for him in the mezzanine. He was holding his ticket, and when the wind tore it out of his hand and sent it skidding down the street he chased it. The bullet whizzed over his head when he ducked to scoop up the ticket, and smacked Rita Hayworth square between the eyes on the cover of Life in the newsstand in front of General Motors.

  “Worst part is I missed Watch on the Rhine,” McReary said.

  Sergeant Canal said, “Serves you right for being too cheap to tip the valet.”

  A Lafayette Coney Island hot dog intended for Lieutenant Zagreb had ketchup on it instead of mustard. He gave it to Canal, who hadn’t ordered anything but ate it anyway, got sick, and had a gram of arsenic pumped out of his stomach at Receiving Hospital, along with the hot dog, a gallon of Coca-Cola, a loaf of bread, and most of a ham.

  “No wonder it didn’t finish you,” said Burke. “Two hundred and fifty pounds, and half of it was breakfast.”

  Zagreb didn’t laugh. “Somebody slugged the delivery boy from behind, tied him up in an alley, and hijacked our order. The Four-F dopes downstairs didn’t look at the face under the paper hat. Let’s go pay our respects to Frankie.”

  Canal, still a little green after his release, left his cigar unlit. “It ain’t Orr’s kind of play. Einstein he ain’t, but he’s smart enough not to try to rub out a cop.”

  “Let’s go anyway. I’m getting flabby. I need to get out and play some handball.”

  But the genuine English butler in the racketeer’s suite in the Book-Cadillac Hotel told them his employer was in Florida, pursuing marlin aboard George Raft’s boat.

  They frisked the place. Canal flung open the closet doors and nodded. “Yep, his yellow gabardine’s missing. That’s his fishing outfit.”

  Burke checked the big sedan for suspicious wires and they got in. “Where to now?” He rested his hairy hands on the wheel.

  “I’d say Miami, but the commissioner won’t spri
ng for the tickets, especially when there’s a chance this punk won’t ball it up next time,” Zagreb said. “He’s been wanting to clear out the squad room for years and put in a pool table. I was Frankie, Florida’s where I’d be when it’s open season on us.”

  Canal tossed his masticated cigar out the window and replaced it with a fresh one. “I still don’t buy it. Anyway, maybe it ain’t just us. Maybe some Four-F sicko got a ticket for parking in a red zone and has it in for all cops.”

  “He’d start with some flatfoot in Stationary Traffic. So far it’s just us. Why don’t let’s—”

  “Hit the dirt!” shouted McReary.

  A truck a story and a half high—a Great War veteran, from the clanking of the chain drive—bore down on them, thundering on the wrong side of Michigan.

  There was no time to bail. McReary was already on the floor of the back seat. Canal threw himself on top of the third-grader, cracking two ribs, and Burke and Zagreb slumped down below the dash. The collision, a sound effect from a front-line newsreel, crushed the Chrysler’s radiator up against the block, sprang the hood yet again, and shoved the sedan back six feet—with Burke’s size-fourteen foot pressing the brake pedal to the firewall—into and over a motorcycle parked behind it, turning it into a bucket of spare parts.

  * * *

  FOURTH ATTEMPT ON “HORSEMEN”! trumpeted the News, with the subhead “Gallant Racket Squad Suffers Injuries in Hit-and-Run Assassination Try.”

  The Times was less certain: QUESTION WHETHER CRASH WAS DELIBERATE OR ACCIDENT.

  The anti-administration Free Press ran an editorial pointing out that the incident took place in front of gangster Francis Oro’s hotel and speculated that the price of graft had grown too steep to pay.

  Zagreb, looking like a country preacher in his cervical collar (whiplash), said, “Actually, it was a run-and-hit. Whoever stole that truck took a powder once he got it aimed.”

  Young McReary, nursing his fractured ribs, said, “That’s what you picked to squawk about? We’re crooks in the Free Press.”

  “We’re sitting ducks in the Times.” Burke had his bandaged foot propped on a swivel chair belonging to a homicide dick currently serving in the Philippines; he’d sprained a ligament. “I don’t know which is worse.”

  Canal was the only member of the famed Four Horsemen who’d emerged without a scratch. McReary had broken his fall, and he maintained a few inches of protective blubber around a frame of thick dense bone and slabbed muscle. “What’s ‘gallant’ mean, anyway? They calling us swishes?”

  “Naw, it’s one of them words out of books, with pitchers of palookas riding nags dressed up in tin cans.” Burke winced. “Jesus, Sarge, pick up that phone, willya? You’re the sole survivor of this blitz.”

  “It ain’t ringing, Burksie. That’s what you get for not blowing up when you was supposed to.”

  “Quit riding him,” Zagreb said, reaching for the instrument, which was ringing. “We’re all chumps here.”

  The mostly empty squad room reeked of aspirin and Ben-Gay. If the military hadn’t left the department short-handed, they’d all be out on medical leave. Canal still couldn’t hold down more than half a roast.

  The lieutenant hung up. “Car’s ready, soon as the paint dries. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”

  “They don’t make ’em anymore, period,” Canal reminded him.

  Burke said nuts. “I figured totaling that rolling junkyard was the one good thing to come out of this.”

  Zagreb slid a Chesterfield between his lips, but he couldn’t spin the wheel on his Zippo on account of a pinched nerve. He flipped the lighter onto the airman’s desk he was using at the moment. “We need to nail this guy. I’m tired of getting sniped at and never getting dead.”

  “He distracts easy, that we know,” said McReary. “Won’t try the same thing twice.”

  Burke said, “Who says he’s a he? Maybe he’s a dame.”

  Canal asked Burke if he’d talked to his wife lately.

  “Uh-uh. We only talk during sex. The phone bill was murder.”

  “It better not be a dame,” Zagreb said. “If she gets lucky and clips one of us and it comes out she’s a skirt, we’ll lose the News and the Times.”

  Canal lit his cigar and blew a cloud of smoke thick enough to bale. “You’re starting to sound like the commish. I never heard you give a fig what the rags got to say.”

  “Right now they’re the only thing keeping us in civvies. If they all turn on us, he’ll stamp one-A on our foreheads faster than you can say General Patton. Which is what he’s been wanting to do right along.”

  “It ain’t a doll,” said Canal. “They can’t work the clutch on a truck.”

  “Tell that to Rosie the Riveter.” Zagreb stood, tore off the collar, and threw it in a corner. “I’d sooner have the pain in the neck. Let’s go down to Records and find out who can drive a rig, shoot a gun, lay hands on poison, and wire a bomb.”

  “That’d be Wallace Beery, Sergeant York, Lucrezia Borgia, and the Industrial Workers of the World.” McReary started to chuckle, then remembered his ribs.

  * * *

  The uniform who brought out the stack of mug books was a fat Prohibition beat cop who’d been pulled out of retirement, hearing aid and all, to help fill the hole in personnel. The Four Horsemen sat at the big scarred yellow-oak table and went through the albums of sullen faces like civilians. “I ain’t seen so many ugly pans since I washed dishes in Greektown,” Canal said. “I think half of these guys is Lon Chaney.”

  “The wolf man?” McReary asked.

  “His father. Just how wet behind the ears are you?”

  “Young enough to run around an ape like you six times while you’re pulling your pants out of your crack.”

  “Can it, both of you,” Zagreb said. “The jerk we’re after don’t need the help.”

  “How about Flick Morency?” Burke planted a finger on a flat face in the book he had open. “He fired sharpshooter in France in eighteen. That slug we dug out of the newsstand could’ve come from a Browning.”

  “No dice,” Canal said. “Flick’s doing a dime in Jackson for attempted murder.”

  “Maybe he crashed out. I seen Bogie do it in a laundry truck in San Quentin.”

  The sergeant shook his big casserole-shaped head. “More like a hearse. Flick was in the infirmary last I heard: terminal cancer.”

  “How much he serve?”

  “Six years.”

  “Welsher.”

  Zagreb said, “Here’s Ragtime Charlie Potts. Drove a garbage truck, did some hijacking on the side.”

  “Right up until he ran a hot Diamond Reo into a telephone pole last year on Washington,” said Burke. “You remember that, Zag.”

  “Oh, yeah. Ruptured the gas tank. You could see the flames in Windsor. I need a change of pace. All these lugs are starting to look alike.”

  Canal said, “We been too hard on our eyeball witnesses. Next time I’ll buy ’em a Schlitz.”

  McReary tapped a dark-skinned party with a shiny shaven head. “What’s the scoop on this Mail Train Jefferson, numbers runner on the lam from slipping cyanide into his wife’s Orange Julius? Who comes up with these names, Dick Tracy?”

  Zagreb said, “Contest editor at the Times. Winner gets a toaster. Mail Train’s not our man. He couldn’t hit the Penobscot Building with a rifle. Also he’s colorblind.”

  “What’s being colorblind got to do with the price of eggs?”

  “Red and green wires,” Canal said. “You mix ’em up building a bomb, the coroner picks you up with a sponge.”

  “How come you know so much about him, L.T.?”

  “I caught him before he could burn his numbers slips when I was with Vice. He did a two-year bit as a habitual offender.”

  Other candidates were suggested and rejected. After two hours, Burke got up to stretch his legs, circling the room on crutches.

  “This is nuts. One guy can make a ten-ton truck stand up and dance a j
itterbug, but nobody’s ever seen him with a gun, he can’t get poison, and he’s scared to light a gas stove, never mind monkey with dynamite. Another mug can pick a freckle off a gnat’s nose at a hundred yards with anything that loads and fires, but he don’t know how to drive and can’t spell arsenic, let alone lay hands on it. Mail Train left the Negro football league to run numbers and work as an orderly in the hospital, where a bunch of poison went missing just about the time he gave his wife a permanent mickey and disappeared like Mandrake the Magician, but as to explosives and shooting he’s strictly from hunger. This is worse than fifty-one-card poker.”

  Zagreb rubbed his sore neck. “All these guys did time. We’ll pull their prison records, see if they all shared the same cellmate at one point, pooled information.”

  “I got a better idea.”

  They all looked at McReary, standing by an open window to duck the atmosphere of Chesterfields, Skoal, and Dutch Masters. He was the junior member of the squad, the kid they sent out for coffee; his idea of an idea was bringing donuts. “Spill,” Zagreb said.

  “They’ve got more in common than stir. We’re the ones put ’em in. L.T., you busted Mail Train, who poisoned his wife. You’re the one who was supposed to eat a loaded hot dog. Burke, you popped Manny ‘Boom-Boom’ Schultz for possession of explosive devices and booked him a bed in the criminal ward in the loony bin in Ypsi; he’s the Mad Bomber of Madison Heights, though you couldn’t make that stick. That charge in the Chrysler had your name on it. Jimmy Ray Floyd wasn’t in town long enough to pick up a colorful moniker. I nabbed him red-handed drawing a bead on a horse belonging to the Mounted Division when I was in uniform, and good thing, because he was all-state skeet-shooting champ in Kentucky. I spared that nag a bullet, and that runaway ticket spared me another last week. I got a twenty-dollar war bond says they’re all back in circulation.”