“Aw, hell. I’m all paid up till the end of the month.”
“Next time make sure the cop you give the dough to isn’t due to ship out. Where are the slips, Bob? I’d hate to bust up all this fine black market equipment looking for ’em.”
“I got a side of pork ready to barbecue. What say I treat you fellas to a feast?”
“Any of you boys hungry?”
Canal said, “I’m on a diet. Doc says I got to shed fifty pounds.”
Burke said, “I gave up meat for Lent.”
“Mac?”
McReary was still a watery shade of green. “C’mon, L.T.”
“I just ate,” Zagreb said. “Tell you what: Clue us in on what you told Asa Organdy about a bird named Smallwood, and this warrant got lost in the mail.”
“Reuben.”
When Medicine Ball turned his way, Little Bob threw him a carcass from the pile. He caught it against his chest.
“Run over to Poletown and deliver that to Mike Kubelski in the Warsaw Market. I accidentally shortchanged him yesterday.”
The man pulled a section of butcher wrap off a roller mounted on the drainboard, wrapped the chicken quickly, pulled on a leather bomber jacket, and went out the back door with the package under one arm.
Little Bob slit another carcass. “I don’t know if you fellas noticed, but that man Organdy ain’t exactly Ernie Pyle when it comes to laying down facts. I never set eyes on Smallwood.”
Zagreb said, “You know him, though. We’re just looking for a place to start, Bob. Where we got it don’t have to leave this kitchen.”
“I ain’t saying I got anything to hide. My sister’s boy Duane’s in the navy, and don’t he look fine in his whites. I don’t mess in no racket that’d deny him what he needs over there.”
“Policy slips, then. I pulled your file. You’re on parole for that bookmaking operation you ran a couple years back. You don’t want to have to finish out your time just when you got this thriving enterprise going. Somehow I don’t see Reuben managing it while you’re gone.”
“Don’t let them stitches fool you. He went through a Corsair windshield in forty-one.”
“He was a pilot?” McReary said.
“Thass open to debate. It was his first solo landing in training at Tuskegee. He was wasted there. That boy can stun a steer with just his elbow.” With a sudden movement, he switched grips on the knife, underhand to overhand, and thrust it point first into the butcher block, sinking it almost to its hilt. His eyes met Zagreb’s. “Boss, I tell you what I know about Smallwood, you tear up that warrant and don’t come round here six months. Thass the deal.”
The lieutenant slid a Chesterfield along his lower lip. “The war could be over in six months, Bob. That’s enough time to push over every colored restaurant and numbers parlor in the Midwest.”
“I’m too fat for that kind of ambition. All’s I axe is time to build my honest bidness without a gang of shirkers in uniform coming round busting it up just for sumpin to do.”
“Six weeks.”
“Three months.”
“Two.” Zagreb slid out the envelope and held it between his hands.
Little Bob Robideux tipped his boater. The lieutenant tore the envelope in half.
* * *
Back on the sidewalk, McReary asked, “What are you going to tell Judge Springer when he asks what became of his warrant?”
“Oh, we’ll serve it.” Zagreb took it out and held it up, intact. “There wasn’t anything in the envelope. I learned how to work a shell game when I was with Vice. I’ll miss this piece of paper, though. No telling how much more mileage we might’ve gotten out of it.”
Burke kicked a tire on the Chrysler parked at the curb. “I hope these skins’ll hold up to Cleveland and back.”
“Who says we’re going to Cleveland?” Zagreb asked.
“Big Little Bob just told us he swapped Smallwood half the Detroit numbers territory for half of Cleveland’s. Ain’t that ammo enough to pump Smallwood?”
“Not coming from a known criminal. Guys like Smallwood don’t go to the pictures without consulting a gang of lawyers. You want to spend the rest of the war in court?”
“Brother, I don’t want to spend it in Cleveland. Where, then?”
“The California Hotel.”
Burke said, “Why? We only go there when we got a suspect to bounce off the walls.”
“So let’s bounce Asa Organdy.”
The World War I–era hotel was just around the corner. Walking there, McReary said, “How do you know he’s in the California? We had him on the rails headed out of town.”
“Too many people knew he was writing about Smallwood. He’s a dumb cluck, but not so dumb he’d let himself be seen at a train station with a target stamped on his forehead. He can’t go home, and the law says the hotels have to keep their registrations up to date.”
Canal grinned. “The California’s last registration book is on display at the Henry Ford Museum, with General Pershing’s name on it.”
“Organdy knows that. No thug in town would go near the place, and no cop would think to look for him in our own joint.”
“No cop except you,” McReary said.
“Yeah. I guess when my time comes they’ll have to screw me into the ground.”
* * *
The desk clerk wore a rusty morning coat over a gray vest closed with a safety pin and a collar he’d inherited from Calvin Coolidge. He combed his hair away from a widening center part with a spatula.
“You boys never stop at the desk,” he said by way of greeting. “Don’t tell me you lost your key.”
The lieutenant put his hands in his pockets. “Can’t a guy say hello to an old friend? How’s it going, Quinn? Sniff any girls’ bicycle seats lately?”
“Aw, I’m clean six years now. The shrinks cured me up in Jackson.”
“How’d you like to go back and visit?”
Quinn’s natural pallor increased. He almost faded into the wallpaper. “C’mon, you start with that? When’d I ever steer you boys wrong?”
“You’re right. Been a rough day. Where’d you stash Organdy?”
“Who’s that?”
Canal reached across the desk and lifted him by his greasy lapels. Zagreb touched his arm.
“My mistake, Sergeant. The Herald stopped running his picture when it took away his column, and he wouldn’t be using his name. Put him down.” When Canal obeyed: “Rat-faced mook, his nose shows up five minutes before the rest of him. Last seen wearing a brown leather jacket and dungarees.”
Quinn adjusted his clothes, snatched a key off the pegboard behind him, and smacked it on the desk. “You cops. I didn’t have a bad ear I’d be in a submarine instead of here.”
“What’d he pay you with?” Zagreb asked.
“He showed me a press card, said he was doing a what-you-call exposé on infractions in the hotel industry, and did I want to be the cover boy?”
The key belonged to room 1002, directly below the one the squad used for interrogation. They took positions on either side of the door, .38s in hand. Zagreb reached over and knocked. “Open up, Asa.”
“Go away!” The voice was muffled behind the door. “I got a gun!”
“Put it back in your BVDs and open up. Wash your hands first. You weren’t heeled at Thirteen Hundred, you haven’t been home, and you gave your last fin to the guy you switched clothes with. Pawnbrokers don’t take IOUs, and they don’t shake up as easy as hotel clerks.”
“Zagreb?”
“Who else? I don’t want to shoot the lock off. You’ll lose your deposit.”
“Who’s with you?”
Canal squared off in front of the door and kicked. The door flew open, taking with it part of the frame. “Guess.”
Organdy stood in the middle of the room, hands raised to his shoulders, palms forward. “Make yourself at home, fellas. You didn’t happen to bring along a bottle, by any chance?”
* * *
McReary
returned carrying a pint of Old Grand-Dad in a paper sack. The others dealt themselves Dixie cups from the bathroom dispenser and drank to the boys overseas.
Zagreb paged through his notepad. “Who gave you all these names?”
“You know I talked to Little Bob.” Organdy, sitting up in the bed with ankles crossed in his socks, drained his cup and reached again for the bottle. “I can’t give up my sources. I have to work in this town. If you can get ’em all to sign statements, you can tie an anchor around Smallwood’s neck and sink him in Lake Erie, and the sooner the better. Once they’re public property, I can show my face.”
“And get your column back,” said the lieutenant. “Even Squant can’t argue with these names. All we have to do to round ’em up is stop by the next charity event. Smallwood’s still respectable. If we play it right, we’ll get one or two of ’em to spill their connections before they find out he’s a notorious character. Some of the rest’ll cooperate when it comes to racing each other to a plea deal.”
Burke said, “It’ll take a heap of time. We got to show he’s investing his numbers capital in the black market, and getting these square citizens to pony up clearance from Washington so he can lay hold of the merchandise. The grand jury won’t adjourn before nineteen fifty.”
“Jake with me.” Zagreb put away his notebook and patted his pocket. “That’s six years we won’t be digging foxholes.”
Organdy frowned over his Dixie cup. “You fellas realize I got to keep ragging you. We kiss and make up in public, somebody’s going to tumble to the fact we’re hitched before you’re ready to make arrests, and I’ll be on my way to the bottom of the river dressed to kill in concrete. What I write won’t mean nothing, though. We’ll know we’re tight.”
“Jesus.” Canal refilled his own cup. “Asa Organdy and the Horsemen. That’s got to be the weirdest partnership since FDR and Stalin.”
Recommended Sources
I’ve been writing about Detroit for more than thirty years, and have amassed several shelves of indispensable books on the city and its history, as well as of history in general. (You’ll note I make no reference to the Internet, which is more than sporadically unreliable, and therefore useless for my purposes.) Here are a few that have contributed to the Four Horsemen stories, along with other less stationary venues:
Annis, Sheldon. Detroit: A Young Guide to the City. Detroit: Speedball, 1970.
It’s terribly outdated now, and its smart-ass approach is just annoying, but I return to it nearly as often as All Our Yesterdays (which see), for its rundown of long-established places to visit (many of them gone now) and such rebellious features as “Historical Spots Without Markers,” showcasing some local history the Chamber of Commerce would rather forget. In Studs Terkel fashion, “Four Personal Histories of Modern Detroit” allows eyewitnesses to local history to recount what they saw, heard, and felt at pivotal points, in their own words. Ordinary folks don’t know what’s important and what isn’t, so they lay it all out, and thank God for them.
Auto Editors of Consumer Guide. Cars of the Fascinating ’40s: A Decade of Challenges and Changes. Publications International, 2002.
Not as gee-whiz as the title implies, this handsome coffee-table book delivers sharp full-color and monochrome photos of hundreds of makes and models, vintage advertisements, and a lively, informative text, with an eleven-page photographic spread on the industry’s weapons of war. You’ll find the Four Horsemen’s much-maligned (by Burke) Chrysler Royal on page 8.
Barfknecht, Gary W. Murder, Michigan. Davison, Mich.: Friede Publications, 1983.
The “true crime” genre has contributed salacious voyeurism and solid investigative reporting in equal parts. This is one of its high points. The passage of any geographical place from wilderness days to our high-tech age offers its share of sanguinary episodes; the history of Detroit, for all its virtues, is a history of violence. What separates serious scholarship from exploitation is a balanced view of the eras in which atrocities took place.
Beasley, Norman, and Stark, George W. Made in Detroit. New York: Putnam’s, 1957.
Beasley wrote for the old Detroit Journal from 1907–1919, Stark for the Detroit News for more than fifty years. They’re gone now, of course, but from this enthralling book we get an on-the-scene report of a great population center’s coming-of-age, told with objectivity and attention to detail by two no-nonsense professional reporters. (By comparison, today’s “electronic journalists” appear to be in the employ of the city council.) The index is compact but utilitarian.
Bingay, Malcolm W. Detroit Is My Own Home Town. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1946.
Bingay, a beloved local journalist, was one of those eyewitnesses mentioned earlier, and the publication date of his folksy memoirs promises—and delivers—material on the 1940s local scene still fresh in mind. There’s no index, damn it, and chapter titles like “He Fell Into the River” are scarcely helpful in locating specific incidents necessary to my endeavor; but it’s the next best thing to listening to an old-timer gas on captivatingly about the past.
Bjorn, Lars, with Jim Gallert. Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit, 1920–1960. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2001.
Although I take issue with their title, which suggests that the city’s brief love affair with 1960s soul was more significant than its six decades on the jazz scene, Bjorn and Gallert provide invaluable information on the artists, clubs, and theaters that made the Motor City jump throughout its heyday. It’s always fun to plop Zagreb, Canal, Burke, and McReary inside one of these smoky, splashy, blaring places and see what develops.
Board of County Auditors. Manual County of Wayne 1930. Detroit: (publisher unknown), 1930.
One of my best finds, a sturdy leather-bound volume “compiled with the intent of providing a reliable and authoritative source of information relative to the activities of the county government” (from a letter written by the secretary of the Wayne County Board of Auditors to Chris Wagner, an executive with the legendary Kern’s department store; tipped into my copy along with an envelope bearing a two-cent stamp). Depression-era pictures, names of officials, and a breakdown of all branches of the government of the county where Detroit resides, appear nowhere else in this quantity and in this much detail. I return most often to the section on the Coroner’s Court Building (better known as the Wayne County Morgue), which is still operating after more than ninety years. The Four Horsemen would have known the place well.
The Book of Knowledge: The Children’s Encyclopedia. New York: Grolier, 1963.
I can’t speak too highly of this source. My parents bought it for their sons on the installment plan, one volume at a time until we had all twenty. It’s aimed toward elementary-school pupils; but anyone who knows children’s literature knows the importance of clarity and accuracy. I turn to it as often as Random House’s American College Dictionary, also a gift from my parents, and found detailed information lacking in every other encyclopedia I’ve consulted. Detroit alone figures in four volumes, with a concise one-paragraph description of the city in the index.
Box, Rob de la Rive. The Complete Encyclopedia of Antique Cars. Edison, NJ: Chartwell, 1998.
I’ve devoted many years to filling my shelves with automotive books for research, and this is the first that’s suited all my requirements. Alphabetical by the names of the manufacturers, then broken down year by model year from the beginning to nearly the close of the twentieth century. Too much of this literature is devoted to foreign makes—pretty pieces of work, but technically inferior to the USA’s.
Catton, Bruce. Michigan: A Bicentennial History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1976.
Catton, a native Upper Peninsulan whose multiple-volume history of the Civil War is the last word on its subject (sorry, Shelby Foote), accepted a commission to write this breezy, meticulously researched chronicle as part of the States and the Nation Series, and I’ve found none to equal it. There were no scales on Catton’s eyes: He wrote early in the scandalous
career of Mayor Coleman A. Young, and had a prescient idea of where Detroit and its state were headed under that kind of leadership.
Collier, Peter, and Horowitz, David. The Fords: An American Epic. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.
To do this seminal family complete justice would require an encyclopedic study; but this compelling book is as thorough a one-volume history of the American automobile industry as the researcher can hope for. “The Elevator Man” in particular owes much to it, as well as my entire Detroit Series of historical fiction.
Detroit Institute of Arts, 5200 Woodward Avenue, Detroit.
Art and historical treasures from around the globe, classic films, rare documentaries, and an accommodating staff make this world-class museum one of the city’s best-kept secrets.
Detroit Public Library Main Branch, 5201 Woodward Avenue, Detroit.
A no-brainer, it would seem; libraries are the human circulatory system of the research world; but I’d place this institution in competition with the best in the world. Its location directly across the street from the Detroit Institute of Arts guarantees a day lost from whatever else you’re doing with your life. I’ve worn a path on the marble floor from the entrance to the microfilm section. The staff is enthusiastic and wonderfully helpful.
Ferry, W. Hawkins. The Legacy of Albert Kahn. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970.
Kahn spent fifty years stamping his personal trademark on the city. His soaring, sprawling neoclassical and Art Deco buildings, including the Fisher, the structures that formerly housed the News and Free Press, the police department, all of the auto factories, and the Ford Willow Run aircraft plant (among scores of others), pay tribute to an era of overweening confidence in America’s future. Even in Detroit’s present extremity, a stroll downtown among his towering skyscrapers reminds one on a visceral level that it was once great. (Reference books without indexes, like this one, are a pet peeve; but the table of contents is specific and helps make up for that omission.)
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