Motor City Shakedown

by D. E. Johnson

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Unless, of course, you’ve got fifty friends looking for something to do tonight.” He glanced back at the telephone—still ringing.

  I thought about the Bernsteins and their network. “I could probably come up with fifty, but you’d never get the cars back.”

  “Thanks, but no.” He picked up the telephone again. “Detroit Electric garage, Mr. Billings speaking.”

  We walked up front, listening to Billings try to assuage the concerns of another customer. Elizabeth hung the Torpedo’s key on the board, and we walked outside. This time she carried her bag. We headed up Woodward, crossing the street in the middle of hundreds of stalled vehicles.

  “Look!” Elizabeth shouted to be heard over the cacophony of blaring car horns. She pointed at an ice truck and a coal wagon parked side by side in the middle of the street. “There’s no driver in either one. Pretty soon nobody’s going to get anywhere.”

  Fortunately, once we got off Woodward the cars quieted. The streets were congested, but traffic was moving. It took us only about ten minutes to make it to the Cosmopolitan. I was a bit winded but hid it from Elizabeth. I didn’t want to provide her with any excuse for going out on her own.

  When we walked in, the old man behind the counter straightened. “Oh, my friend, come in, come in.” He bustled out from behind the counter and waddled up to me. “You Mr. Anderson, yes?”

  “What? Why?” We had used aliases when we checked in before.

  “Why you no tell me you friend of Abe?”

  I stared at him.

  “Here. I have something.” He hurried back to the counter and pulled out Elizabeth’s valise.

  She scowled at him. “You told me you hadn’t seen it.”

  He gave her a sheepish look. “I didn’ know you with boys. Sorry. Something else.” He rang up a sale on the cash register. When the drawer opened, he pulled out a piece of paper and gave it to me.

  Somebody wants to talk to you. See Mr. M at St. P. AB

  I handed it to Elizabeth. She read it and said, “Seems Abe was a step ahead of us.”

  I shook my head. “When hasn’t he been?”

  * * *

  Elizabeth came to get me at six thirty. I opened the window to check the temperature. It was still quite warm—mid-seventies perhaps—so I decided to leave the duster in the room. I pulled out the aspirin bottle and saw it contained one-gram tablets rather than powder. I chewed up four of the foul-tasting pills, made sure I had the switchblade, and checked the load in the .32. After I tucked it in my belt and pulled out my shirt to cover it, I worked the sling over my head and tossed it on the bed.

  “Will,” Elizabeth said, “you need the sling.”

  “No. I don’t want to show Abe any more weakness than necessary. I’ll put it on when we get back.”

  I fit my derby onto my head, and we headed out to grab some dinner. Whenever my arm moved, my shoulder hurt, but I tried not to show Elizabeth. At seven thirty, hoping to rendezvous with Detective Riordan prior to our meeting, we started our trek to Russell, heading toward the river among the throngs of forced pedestrians. We stopped when we reached Gratiot and looked through the crowd for Riordan. He was nowhere in sight.

  “You go in,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll wait for Detective Riordan.”

  “Why don’t I wait?” I said.

  “Abe is going to be looking for you. He won’t recognize me as a woman. Once Detective Riordan gets here, we’ll come inside and sit elsewhere—just in case Abe is thinking of trying something.”

  “Why would he try anything?”

  “Someone’s meeting you tonight. It could be Vito Adamo, and he still thinks you killed his man. I’d guess Abe’s alliance with Adamo will trump any arrangement you have with him.”

  “Good point. All right.” I took her hand. “Just be careful.”

  She nodded and gave me a little push toward the restaurant. I walked the last fifty feet to the Saint Petersburg with my head on a swivel, but I saw no sign of Riordan. A pair of men were standing in the restaurant’s little entryway, chatting away in Yiddish. Squeezing past them, I walked into the restaurant, hung my hat on the rack by the door, and sat in back at one of the few open tables.

  The restaurant was full of families eating dinner, laughing, and talking in Yiddish. I inhaled as much of the other diners’ cigarette smoke as I could and had a cup of coffee while I waited. Elizabeth walked in at five minutes after eight, gave me a mystified shrug, and took a seat at a tiny table near the front.

  Riordan hadn’t come?

  I had two more cups of coffee before Abe and Joey Bernstein slid into chairs across from me. They looked agitated. “’Bout time you came around,” Abe said. Joey chewed on a toothpick and gave me his normal stony stare.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been busy.”

  Abe leaned in close to me. “You heard about the war?”

  “The Sicilians?”

  “No, the Austro-Hungarians.” He sneered. “A course the wops. Geez, Anderson.”

  “Yes. I’ve heard.”

  “I got somebody here wants to talk to ya.”

  “Who?”

  “Need your gun first.”

  I sat back. “Why?”

  “He’s just bein’ careful.”

  I thought for a moment before pulling out the .32 and handing it under the table to him.

  A mellifluous voice with a strong Italian accent rang out behind me. “Hello, Mr. Anderson.”

  I turned. Ferdinand Palma stood by the kitchen door in a white suit and fedora, red handkerchief in his breast pocket and a matching carnation on his lapel. I wondered if he ever wore anything else. As one of Vito Adamo’s lackeys, he made me a bit nervous, but even Adamo wouldn’t dare try anything in a crowded restaurant. Palma nodded for the Bernsteins to get out of their chairs. They looked annoyed but did it. That told me a lot about their relationship with Palma. He kept looking at Abe. “You may go.”

  Abe looked like he was going to say something back but apparently thought better of it. “Markovitz’ll have your gun,” he said to me, and strode through the kitchen door, Joey right behind him.

  Palma sat and leaned forward, hands clasped on the table. His hair practically dripped with pomade. “Signore Adamo wants to help you.”

  I needed his help more than he needed mine, but I wasn’t going to cede all the power to Adamo. I laughed. “Sure. And the Tigers are going to win the World Series this year.”

  “I would suggest you no laugh. He wants to help you kill the Gianollas.”

  I sat back and hooked my good arm over the chair next to me. “He said he wouldn’t work with me.”

  “Yes,” Palma said. “He believed you killed Carlo Moretti. He now believes otherwise.”

  I sat up. “Why?”

  “Thomas Riordan stopped by and gave me his thoughts.” Palma must have seen the surprise on my face, because he added, “At one time I was a fellow detective. Thomas and I are not friends, but I know him to be a truthful man. Now, will you let Signore Adamo help you?”

  “Why doesn’t he do it himself?”

  Palma looked uncomfortable. “He is having…” He thought for a moment. “There are complications.”

  “In other words, he needs my help.”

  He looked away. “Sì.”

  “What does he want me to do?”

  “He needs you to set a meeting with the Gianollas and tell him the time and place. That is all.”

  “The Gianollas will kill me when they see me.”

  Palma smiled. “You must only get them the message. You will not need to go to this meeting, only tell Signore Adamo the time and place.”

  “All right. How should I get in touch with him?”

  Palma reached inside his coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Call this number when you have set the meeting. The man who answers will put you in touch with Signore Adamo.”

  I tucked the paper into my shirt pocket and nodded. Without another wo
rd, Palma stood and walked to the front. He opened the door and took a quick glance in both directions before turning right and striding away.

  Where the hell is Detective Riordan? I took a last gulp of coffee, pushed my chair back, and stood. Digging a quarter out of my pocket, I caught Elizabeth’s eye and nodded toward the door.

  Outside, a shot rang out. And then another. A man shouted, and a stream of people bolted past the front of the restaurant.

  I ran to the door, shouting to Elizabeth, “Stay here!”

  When I burst outside, people were scattering, running in all directions. On the street corner to my right, fifty feet away, lay Palma, half on the sidewalk, half in the street. His white fedora lay upside down on the pavement. A man and woman were ducking down behind a Model T roadster near him.

  Detective Riordan ran across the street toward Palma, a pistol in hand.

  What? I ran toward Palma. Riordan and I converged on the corner at the same time. “Why the hell did you shoot him?” I demanded.

  Riordan’s cold eyes met mine. He raised his gun and pointed it at my face.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Duck!” Riordan shouted.

  I dropped to the pavement as he fired off three quick shots. A bullet coming from the other direction punched into a car behind me. Another whanged off the metal lamppost. I scrambled for cover while Riordan crouched and kept firing. When I’d gotten behind the building, I saw Elizabeth running down the sidewalk toward us. “No!” I yelled. “Get out of here!”

  Riordan grabbed me and pulled me down the sidewalk toward the restaurant. “Go! I’m out of ammo!”

  Ahead of us, Elizabeth turned and ran the other way. We’d gotten only thirty feet when a gun fired behind us. The bullet ricocheted off the sidewalk in front of me, kicking up a chip of cement. The gun fired again. A bullet whizzed over my shoulder. We caught up to Elizabeth just before the restaurant’s entryway, and Riordan threw open the door and pushed her inside. The patrons were diving under tables. Slamming the door again, Riordan pressed me back against the bricks of the recessed entryway. It was just deep enough for us to stand by the side of the door without being seen. Flattening himself against the wall, Riordan pulled a big jackknife from his pocket and flipped out the blade. With his head turned toward the sidewalk, he held the knife in his fist, up near his shoulder.

  A big man rushed around the corner, and Riordan plunged the knife into his throat, hitting him hard enough that his feet slipped out from underneath him. He slammed into the door, smashing the glass, and fell to the sidewalk, gurgling and clawing at his throat. I felt a jolt of recognition. He was the hulking man who had kidnapped me for the Gianollas.

  Riordan grabbed the man’s revolver from the pavement. He glanced around the corner of the entryway and stepped out, firing the gun again and again. I peeked out and saw a man clutch his shoulder and stagger.

  When I turned back the big man was pulling a revolver from a shoulder holster, even with the knife lodged in his throat, blood pumping out around it. I dived for the gun as he swung it toward me, and it went off in a smoky explosion. I wrapped both hands around his and tried to wrench the gun away. It fired again. The bullet cracked into the doorjamb.

  Though I pushed the gun away with all my strength, he kept twisting the barrel toward me. It was pointed at my arm and tracking to the center of my chest when I swung my elbow back as hard as I could against the haft of the knife, driving it deeper into his throat.

  A gun fired. I stared at the end of his pistol as it tipped out of his hand and clattered to the pavement. Startled, I looked at his face. His right eye was gone, the socket pooling with blood. Bone shards and pieces of brain were sprayed on the bloody sidewalk to the left of his head. Elizabeth stepped through the broken door, her trembling gun still pointed at the dead man.

  Pain overwhelmed me. Searing fire burned my hand and waves of pain stabbed into my shoulder. I fell back against the wall and rolled out onto the pavement, cradling my hand and cursing. I’d grabbed hold of the gun with my right hand. The pain was incredible.

  Riordan rushed over and knelt down next to me. “Where are you hit?”

  “I wasn’t,” I gasped.

  “Elizabeth,” he said. I looked at her. Her eyes were fixed on the big man’s body. “Elizabeth,” he said again. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded but didn’t take her eyes off the man she’d killed.

  Riordan pulled me to my feet. “Get out of here. Both of you.” He pushed me away.

  I took Elizabeth’s elbow and tried to get her to move, but she was frozen.

  “Go, I said!” Riordan grabbed Elizabeth’s arm, pulled her out of the entryway, and pushed her down the sidewalk. I took her arm again. After a step or two, she began running. We passed the body of Gianolla’s other man, who lay sprawled across the sidewalk. A neat little hole was punched into his forehead, leaking blood into a pool on the pavement.

  “I’m a policeman!” Riordan shouted to someone behind us.

  We hurried past Palma’s body on the corner. His mouth was slack, a thin line of saliva stretching between his lips. The red carnation on his lapel was torn, surrounded by a larger crimson bloom, like the flower had exploded. His leg twitched, but his eyes remained shut.

  We ran up Russell, crossed the street, and cut down the first alley. Between the pain and the shadows, it was hard to see anything. I careened from a garbage can into a pile of wooden crates but kept my feet, kept my grip on Elizabeth. At the end of the alley, we stopped, and I peered around the corner before bolting across the street and down another darkened alleyway. I tried to elevate my right hand, but it hurt my shoulder too much. My shirt was sticking to my back. My heartbeat pounded in my hand. My fingers felt like they were going to explode.

  We zigzagged through alleys, putting as much space between us and the Saint Petersburg as possible. Finally, perhaps ten blocks away, I spotted a wooden frame stairway leading to a rear entrance. We crawled underneath it and slid back into the shadows.

  I put my arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders. Her whole body was trembling. “We need to think, honey,” I whispered. “What should we do?”

  “I … I don’t know.” She sounded small, breathless. “How did they know we were going to be there?”

  “I don’t think they did. They must have followed Palma. If they knew we were here they would have killed us at the same time.”

  A shiver went through her.

  “We’ll be okay,” I said. “Detective Riordan will keep us out of it.” I remembered my derby on the hat rack, but there was nothing to tie it to me. “So long as we’re not identified by witnesses, the Gianollas won’t know we…”

  “Killed their man,” Elizabeth finished in a wooden voice.

  “We’ve got to get off the streets,” I whispered. “But we can’t go home or back to the hotel. It’s not safe.” Every beat of my heart set a new wave of fire burning up my arm. I swallowed the groans that wanted to force themselves from my mouth.

  “The mission,” Elizabeth said. “We can stay there.”

  “But that’s for men. What will you do?”

  “The sisters will let me in. I’ll stay with one of them.”

  The McGregor Mission sounded like a good idea to me. It was close, and it was full of men who looked at least as bad as I did. And nobody was going to look for us there. Tonight we’d be safe, and tomorrow we’d call Vito Adamo and work up a plan.

  I remembered the aspirin and swallowed half a dozen; then we crawled out from under the stairs and stood in the light of the streetlamp, looking each other over. Her dress was rumpled, but other than that she looked fine, so long as you stayed away from her eyes. She thought I looked enough of a bum to fit in at the mission. I wasn’t sure if it was her sense of humor coming back or if she was serious, but I left it.

  Few people were on the streets, but we struggled to look like a couple out for a stroll. As much as my hand and shoulder hurt, I don’t think I pulled it off very well,
but no one stopped us. We threaded through back alleys for fifteen minutes before turning a corner and seeing the McGregor Mission, a narrow three-story red-brick building. A line of perhaps twenty men stood outside, shuffling forward as another of their ilk was either allowed in for the night or sent away with a stern admonition.

  Elizabeth put a hand on my arm. “I’ll wait until you get inside and then go around back. If the father doesn’t let you in we’ll have to figure out something else.”

  “Why wouldn’t he let me in?”

  She shrugged. “He’s not always the most rational sort. Now go.” She gave me a little push.

  “When will we meet up?”

  “They roust everyone at six for breakfast. We’ll talk then.”

  I held my arms out and took a step toward her, ignoring the flare in my shoulder. She let me hug her and returned it, though her grip was tentative. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said. “If you need anything, you know where to find me.”

  “No offense, Will, but the sisters might be better company for me tonight.”

  I nodded and walked to the end of the line. Father McGregor’s booming Scottish brogue cut through the murmured conversation around me. “Paddy! Good to see you again, lad. How’s the missus?” A minute later, “No, sir, not drunk! Be gone with you!” An old man walked past me, away from the mission, muttering curses. McGregor kept up the patter as I moved forward one step at a time, staring at the pavement. I peeked up when he started talking to the man in front of me. The priest’s long gray hair bobbed in rhythm with his speech. He didn’t quite have a John the Baptist look, but he was tall and thin with wide eyes, a bony face, and a somewhat fevered countenance—the kind of man who might cause you to think about moving to the other side of the street if you saw him approaching.

  The man in front of me walked inside the mission with McGregor’s blessing, and the father cast his gaze on me. “Yeh’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

  I shook my head. “No, sir.” I did my best to sound like a poor man. My accent struck me as somewhere between Black Irish and Black Death.

  He cupped his chin in his hand, studying me. “How do I know ya then?”