Motor City Shakedown

by D. E. Johnson

  In the last stall stood Edsel’s Model T Torpedo Runabout—a custom model he’d built with some of the men at the factory. It was an ungainly clatter-trap with a cheap blue paint job, all sharp angles and cheap fixtures, but capable of attaining mind-boggling speeds in a matter of seconds. To be fair, it was more striking than a standard Model T Runabout, though only slightly. It sat lower to the ground, the engine compartment was a bit longer, the fenders were curved so as to be somewhat less ugly, and it was equipped with an oversize eighteen-gallon gasoline tank, 50 percent larger than normal.

  And it was Edsel’s baby.

  He was polishing the hood and looked up when I came around the electrics. “I’ll hate to see her go,” he said, running a finger along the front fender.

  I playfully punched him in the arm. “I’ll let you visit her. And if you’re good, maybe I’ll allow you conjugal rights.”

  He grinned at me. “I’ll sell her to you so long as you promise to race me once I get the Speedster done.”

  “You tell me the time and place, and I’ll be there.” I pulled out my wallet and handed him five one-hundred-dollar bills.

  He pocketed the cash and gestured toward the cab. “Let me show you what I’ve done. Hop up there.”

  I climbed in through the passenger door and slid over on the seat.

  “The throttle control is over here now.” He pointed to the left side of the steering wheel.

  “Perfect.”

  “The tool kit is in the trunk.” Edsel handed me a set of keys. “Now, you do know how to drive a real automobile, don’t you?”

  I waved my hand at him. “Of course I do.”

  “I could give you a tutorial.”

  “I’m a professional driver, for God’s sake. I can handle it.”

  “Okay. Still, I’d like to point out that you are a professional driver of sedate electrics, not lightning-fast motorcars. And listen. The throttle is very sensitive. It doesn’t take much to throw you back in your seat. Be careful.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Would you like me to go on a test drive with you?” He sounded hopeful.

  “No, I’m fine. Really.”

  He looked at the car for a long moment. “Well, I’ll get her started for you.” After he raised the garage door, he came back, reached inside, and fiddled with the throttle and spark controls. Walking around to the front of the car again, he said, “Set the hand brake.” I did, and he gave the handle a crank. It didn’t catch, so he tried it again. This time the engine caught. I gave it a little more throttle, and it died. He stood off to the side of the car, glaring at me with his hands on his hips.

  “I’ve got it.” I turned back the throttle a bit. “Try it again.”

  He did, and this time the engine caught and quickly built up to a roar. I nudged the throttle the tiniest bit, let out the hand brake, and slipped the car into gear. It jumped out of the garage and tore down the driveway like a rabbit. I was only just able to turn before I plowed into the neighbor’s yard.

  “Good luck!” Edsel called out, his words nearly drowned by his laughter. As I drove away, I thought I heard him add, “You’ll need it.”

  * * *

  A minute and a half later, I was wishing I had taken Edsel up on his offer of a test drive. I stalled the car in the middle of Woodward Avenue and couldn’t get it started again. With horns honking and people shouting at me, I adjusted the spark and throttle, ran to the front of the car, and spun the crank again, and again, and yet again. Nothing. I ran back around to the cab and adjusted the levers, though I really had little idea whether I should be moving them up or down. When I spun the crank this time, a strong smell of gasoline wafted out of the engine compartment. Though I’d had little experience with gas automobiles, I knew I’d flooded the engine.

  While the commotion continued around me, I turned the throttle lever all the way down and began cranking again. Three boys, perhaps eight years old, leaned against a Peoples Ice truck parked at the curb and sneered at me, making cute observations about my mental capacity. Finally I got it started, jumped back in the cab, and drove like a spastic—fast—slow—fast—slow—nearly run into a wagon—slow again—until finally I reached the Detroit Electric garage downtown. I pulled in with a minimum of humiliation and made arrangements for the car to be housed there when I wasn’t using it. My Torpedo was the only internal combustion automobile in the garage, and of course, the men looked down their noses at it. They would never have allowed the car inside the building had I not been the owner’s son.

  I slept little that night. The joints of my wrist and fingers ached with a deep, dull pain, like that of a toothache. When I got out of bed early the next morning, rain was pounding against the roof and windows of my apartment, driven by a howling wind. Clouds hung low and heavy over the city, and rain poured in sheets, one following another up the road.

  After I mixed two grams of aspirin into water and drank it down, I looked out the window at the gray scene. This morning I was meeting with the Bernstein brothers, who were my only hope of finding Vito Adamo. I prayed this meeting was something more than a ruse to try to steal my money. Still, there was nothing to do but to find out.

  At eight I phoned the garage and asked them to deliver the car. I wasn’t going to get soaked getting down there only to be abused while I tried to get it started. Trying to start it in the rain seemed a better alternative. Fifteen minutes later, one of the Detroit Electric “chasers” pulled my Torpedo up to the curb, jumped out, and sprinted off down Peterboro toward the streetcar stop, holding a hand up near his face to block the rain.

  I tucked one of the .32s into my belt and checked my wallet to be sure I had the money, in case the boys actually did come through. Then I grabbed my goggles, put on my waterproof tan duster and a checkered touring cap, and grabbed my umbrella. At the front of the building I paused, watching waves of rain wash over the automobile that now looked so puny against the forces of Mother Nature.

  I dashed outside to the car. By the time I got it started, my umbrella had blown inside out and I was soaked to the skin, waterproof duster or not. I started out, my rain-spotted goggles already nearly useless. The Torpedo’s leather top blocked some small percentage of the rain. My good luck was that the weather was keeping virtually everyone else off the roads. I managed to complete my journey without stalling the engine or killing anyone.

  I parked two blocks away from the Bishop Ungraded School and walked the remaining distance, slogging along the puddled sidewalk with my cap pulled down around my ears. At the school I walked around to the rear entrance, where I stood under the overhang. I reached around behind me and stretched, feeling the pistol tucked into my belt. Water cascaded over the redbrick walls and poured down in front of me like a waterfall.

  A few minutes after ten, Izzy, the newsboy, slogged up to me, water splashing around his soaked lace-up shoes and dripping down the bill of his cap. “Come on.” He turned and began walking around the building.

  I stayed where I was. “Hey, Izzy. Come here.”

  He stopped and put his hands on his hips in an exaggerated fashion, letting me know he was annoyed. “You wanna know where he is?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then follow me.” He turned and trudged away. I followed him at a distance, wary of an ambush. Izzy sloshed through the puddles to the front of the school and into the field across the street.

  After another block I caught up with him. “Where are we going?”

  He plodded along. “Friend of ours place.”

  “Where?”

  “Junkyard.”

  I hitched up my trousers and ran my hand over the grip of the .32. I hoped I didn’t have to use it or even threaten to, but with these boys it was anybody’s guess. Izzy cut across the street and marched through an opening in a corrugated sheet metal wall that ran the entire length of the block. The wall varied in height from one section to the next, with panels of faded red and green. The only paint that wasn’t
peeling was the business’s name, FLEISHERS JUNKYARD, scrawled in large black letters on either side of the entrance.

  Izzy turned right and walked down a muddy alleyway between piled collections of metal, torn from old machines, trains, and who knows what else. The rain pinged and clanged and thrummed off the junk in a percussive frenzy, surrounding me with noise. I stayed back, more wary now. The piles of junk were easily ten to twelve feet high, the pieces on top perched precariously over the narrow alley. I was beginning to feel claustrophobic. Izzy took a sudden left and then a right, and I lost sight of him.

  I pulled the gun from my belt and crept forward. At the end of the row I came to a clearing of sorts. Izzy stood under the roof of half of a Detroit City Railway streetcar, green with white trim, one of the old horse-drawn variety. The car had been cloven in two. All the windows were missing. Two other boys sat inside. I recognized Ray, the blackmail boy, on one of the wooden benches near the back.

  “Get your ass in here,” Izzy said.

  The gun still in my hand, I walked over and hopped up into the car. The rain pounded against the top, like the sound of heavy surf at the ocean. Izzy slipped past me and sat next to Ray. A young man of perhaps seventeen, to all appearances a real tough, sat behind them, one arm flung over the back of the bench seat while he looked at me with amusement. His eyes were brilliant blue.

  I nodded toward him. “You the boss?”

  “You could say that.” He cocked his head to the side, and I spotted a resemblance between him and the Bernstein boys.

  “Are you another brother?”

  “Yeah. Abe. You got the money?”

  “You got the information?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The dough first.”

  “Not until I see him.”

  He gave me a lazy smile. “You don’t trust us?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Then maybe I’ll take it.”

  “Is that so?” I held up the gun.

  Abe smiled. “Wouldn’t do that if I was you.” He tilted his head to his left. “Joey might think you was threatenin’ me. You wouldn’t want him getting any crazy idears like that now, would ya?”

  I glanced off to my right. Joey Bernstein stood outside the car, perhaps fifteen feet away from me, rain dripping off his derby, with a sawed-off shotgun pointed at my head.

  “So why don’t you put down that peashooter,” Abe said with a grin, “and gimme the dough.”

  I smiled at him, trying to show a lot more confidence than I felt. “Maybe I’ll put a bullet in you first.”

  He barked out a laugh. “Joey wouldn’t like that.” Still staring at me with that insolent grin, he called out, “If he shoots me, put one in his shoulder. Before he bleeds out, make him hurt—a lot.”

  Out in the rain, Joey Bernstein snorted. “Lemme kill him, Abe. Let’s split up the dough and get outta here.”

  Abe didn’t even look at him. “Shut up, Joey.” Speaking to me again, he said, “We do odd jobs for the dagos. Adamo can’t know it was us.”

  I nodded. “No problem.”

  I could see on his face he’d already made the decision. “All right. Izzy’ll show you where Adamo’s holin’ up.”

  “One thing,” I said to him.

  “Yeah?”

  “How’d you meet John Cooper?”

  Shrugging, Abe said, “Never did.”

  “Then how did he set up the blackmail drop?”

  “Wop set it up.”

  “Adamo?”

  “No.”

  “One of his men?”

  He shrugged again. “I’da know.”

  I studied him, trying to decide if he was telling me the truth, but I was certain he’d had enough experience telling falsehoods that he’d be pretty good at it. Abe nodded to his littlest brother, who slid over into the aisle, jumped off the end of the trolley, and landed in a puddle with a splash.

  I lowered the gun and turned around to follow him.

  “Anderson?” Abe said.

  I stopped and looked back at him.

  “Give him the money when you get there. And—if Adamo hears word one about us helping you, you’re dead. One thing you don’t wanna learn the hard way is what happens when you make me mad.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Izzy and I slogged out of the junkyard and headed south. We crossed Hastings Street to Rivard, and Izzy stopped under the overhang of a building at the corner of Rivard and Mullett.

  He nodded toward a saloon on the first floor of a redbrick two-story across the street. “Adamo’s been holing up there. A wop name a Mirabile owns the joint. Abe says he’s a crook too.”

  I took out my wallet and gave him a ten and a five. “When I see him I’ll give you the other fifteen. I’m good for it.”

  “That wasn’t the deal.” For the first time, Izzy looked uncomfortable. “It’s thirty bucks.”

  “Not until I see him.”

  “Abe said thirty bucks. He’s gonna want the dough. Today.”

  “If you’re telling me the truth, I’ll pay.”

  “No!” he shouted. “Thirty bucks!”

  “Look,” I said, taking him by the arm. “I told you I’d pay if you’re telling me the truth. I will.”

  He shook his head, turned, and gave me a disgusted wave. “Your funeral.” He walked off into the pouring rain.

  I stood under the overhang for a few minutes, watching the saloon. A sullen-looking man, his head hunched against the rain, hands shoved deep into his pockets, threw open the saloon’s door and disappeared inside. With no brilliant plan or confederates to assist me, I reckoned a frontal assault was my best bet. I sloshed across the street and walked inside the saloon.

  It was a dark, quiet place, the only sounds murmured conversation in Italian and peanut shells crunching under my shoes. A few men sat at the bar under a thick cloud of cigarette smoke. I found an open spot at the bar and waited for the bartender, a jovial-looking man with thinning hair, to notice me. When he did, he came over and looked at me with a smile and arched eyebrows.

  I took off my hat. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Mirabile, please.”

  His face shut down. “I don’ know him.”

  “How about Vito Adamo?”

  He turned away and began wiping a glass with a dishcloth.

  “Look, I’m not going to cause them any trouble.”

  Nothing.

  I pulled a five-dollar bill from my wallet, slid it across the bar, and rapped my knuckles on the wood. He turned back to me. “Tell Adamo that Will Anderson wants to talk about a mutual enemy. He’ll want to see me.”

  The bartender slipped the bill into his pocket, but I didn’t think I’d actually bought myself anything.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow. Tell him.” Fitting my hat onto my head, I walked out the door. I trudged along in the cold rain that poured down onto the gray city—Mother Nature’s vain attempt to clean these streets. I could have told her. The filth was permanent.

  * * *

  I walked to the corner the next morning for a paper, expecting Izzy to harass me for the other fifteen dollars, though I didn’t plan to pay until I confirmed he’d been telling the truth. He wasn’t there, nor was the redhead, so I headed down the block for a Free Press. When I returned home, I sat in the parlor with the paper and a cup of coffee. One of the first articles I saw made me choke.

  The headline read, MURDER SUSPECTS TURN SELVES IN. My curiosity turned to amazement as I read the article. Yesterday afternoon, Vito Adamo and Filipo Busolato had walked into police headquarters and given themselves up for the murder of Carlo Callego. According to the writer, Mr. Adamo did not speak English, when in fact I knew him to be more erudite than the majority of American natives. A quote from his interpreter—Ferdinand Palma, the former police detective turned banker turned interpreter for Maria Cansalvo—concluded the article:

  Mr. Adamo, a poverty-stricken delivery truck driver

  (that made me laugh out loud
)

  is confused by these charges but wishes to let it be known that he is completely innocent. He wants only to be exonerated and is asking for a speedy trial so that he may return to his wife and children.

  It could hardly be a coincidence that Palma was translating for Vito Adamo. It only made sense that the man who had interpreted Maria Cansalvo’s damning testimony against me would be helping him. But I didn’t see Adamo’s angle in turning himself in. The Gianollas must have been getting too close.

  Well, I knew where Vito Adamo was now. Today would be as good a day as any to stop by the jail, have a chat, assuming the police agreed to let me talk with him. And I couldn’t forget to pay the Bernstein boys. As far as I knew, they delivered on what they said they would.

  Now, how to get in the jail? I set the paper down on the coffee table. Murphy. He’d pulled strings before. So long as I paid, he’d do it again.

  My father and I were going to the Tigers game at one, which gave me only a couple of hours to get this done. I called the Bethune Street station and, posing as Murphy’s brother, asked if he was on duty. My Irish accent was dismal, though apparently passable, as the fourth man to whom I was transferred finally told me that Murphy was out on patrol until 10 A.M. He’d be back then. It was already half past nine. I plunked a derby onto my head and ran out to the streetcar stop. Sunday-morning traffic uptown wasn’t heavy, as most of the riders were heading the other direction, to one of the churches on Piety Hill.

  I stood outside the station between the driveway and the front entrance until one of the Chalmers police cars pulled up, Murphy in the passenger seat. A lanky middle-aged cop with a sagging face and handlebar mustaches to match unfolded himself from the driving seat and walked inside.