“But . . .” He paused for dramatic effect. “The Edison battery gives us the opportunity to compete with gasoline motorcars in touring. This has been the only real obstacle in our battle against the manufacturers of internal combustion engines. But to continue to rise above the other makers of electrics, we will need to work together, striving hand in hand, to improve our quality even further, to build the best automobiles ever produced.”
He smiled again, warmly, and held out his hands as if to hug the entire group. “And the only reason this is possible is that you men are the best autoworkers in the country. Now go on, get home before your wives start searching the saloons.”
A cry went up. “Three cheers for Mr. Anderson!” As the men hurrahed, my father’s face lit up, and his blue eyes sparkled. He loved his work. He loved his men.
After the party, my father asked me to join him in his office. We sat facing each other across his desk. He was no longer grinning. “I talked to Mayor Breitmeyer and the police commissioner. They both agreed to do what they could to keep you out of the investigation into Cooper’s death. The commissioner said he would relay that message to Detective Riordan.”
“Thank you, Father.”
He shook his head. “But we can’t have this kind of distraction at the factory. You’re going on vacation. Starting tomorrow.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “All right.” It would give me time to work this out. “For how long?”
He shrugged. “Until I tell you to come back.”
“But I’ve only got a week coming.”
“You’ve got money saved, don’t you?”
“Yes, some.”
He stood, signaling the meeting was over. I followed suit.
“I won’t let you starve.” He came around to my side of the desk, put his arm around me, and steered me toward the door. “Will, I don’t believe you capable of murder, and I’ll do everything I can to help you. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to have you around here right now.”
I nodded. “I understand. Thank you for your support, sir.” We shook hands, and I left his office.
I took a streetcar to Elizabeth’s house. No lights were on, but I knocked anyway. I asked the neighbors on both sides if they knew where the Humes had gone. They had no answers. I waited on the porch for almost two hours, but no one appeared.
The streetcar ride home seemed to take only a few seconds. I was thinking about my predicament. Suspected of murder, banished from work, and unable to help Elizabeth. They say trouble comes in threes. I hoped it was true.
I put on my winter coat and sat out on the fire escape with a bottle of bourbon, smoking and thinking. I thought about John and Elizabeth, about Riordan and my father, about how I had been spiraling into the abyss ever since I ruined Elizabeth’s life. At one in the morning, dispirited and staggering drunk, I went to bed.
I finally woke the next morning after ten with a bone-dry mouth and native drums pounding in my head. I made a pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, trying to figure out how I could best help Elizabeth. Nothing of value occurred to me. When I walked out of the kitchen, I froze. A white envelope lay on the carpeting in front of my door. I picked it up cautiously, as if it might contain explosives. Just like the previous one, WILLIAM C. ANDERSON, JR.—OPEN IMMEDIATELY! was typewritten on the front. Had it been there when I first walked into the kitchen? I couldn’t remember, but as bad as I felt, that wasn’t remarkable.
I opened the door and stuck my head out into the hall. No one was there. I closed the door, ripped open the envelope, and unfolded the letter with trembling hands.
Dear Will,
I have decided to sell your clothing back to you. Bring $1,000 in an envelope to the clock tower at the downtown Michigan Central Depot at 5:00 P.M. tomorrow night.
Come alone and unarmed.
If you bring in the police or deviate in any other way from these instructions, the clothing will immediately be delivered to Detective Riordan. This is our little secret, Will.
See you tomorrow.
I didn’t have a thousand dollars. The money I had on hand and in the bank totaled just over six hundred, a tidy savings for a twenty-two-year-old with an expensive drinking habit. But where would I get another four hundred dollars?
It was unthinkable to ask my father. He would force me to tell him what was going on. My mother wouldn’t be able to get it. My sisters wouldn’t give it to me. Elwood and Joe were the only people I could think of. They weren’t wealthy by any stretch, but maybe one of them would surprise me.
I sat at the kitchen table and reread the note. In the first letter the blackmailer addressed me as Mr. Anderson. This time he called me Will. That seemed to indicate he knew me. I knew no one in the AFL or the IWW. I came back to Ben Carr and Wesley McRae. Ben was the only person who knew I had taken out the Victoria. He would have been able to follow me to the factory and then gone to my building. He could have seen me come out with the clothing. I couldn’t imagine he had anything to do with John’s death, but if the killer and blackmailer were two different people it might be possible. He didn’t have much money. A thousand dollars would be a year’s pay for him.
No. I was being paranoid. I had known Ben most of my life. He was a nice guy, an honest guy. Besides, he could never have written the notes. The grammar and vocabulary suggested a highly educated person, which he certainly was not. I doubted Ben even had access to a typewriter. I decided to forget those suspicions. It wasn’t Ben.
Could it be Wesley? He was educated and articulate, and he knew I was out that night. His friendliness could be a ruse, an attempt to throw off suspicion. To get the letter up to my apartment, the blackmailer had to have access to the building. He either lived here or knew the trick to opening the back door.
But that wasn’t exactly a secret. Anyway, Wesley had been friendly since I’d moved into my apartment. No one would wait a year and a half to spring a blackmail scheme. And a thousand dollars would be insignificant to him. He had plenty of money, that was certain. Just the settee and chairs I’d seen through his doorway were worth as much as my parents’ entire houseful of furniture.
My mind reeled as I tried to think who else it might be. I had so little to go on. For a split second, I considered bringing the notes to Riordan, but that seemed like the worst thing I could do. Once he got my clothes, I was on my way to prison.
I would have to pay the blackmailer. If I got the clothing back, it might be possible to worm my way out of this. If not . . .
That afternoon, I crammed on board a streetcar, trying to ignore the irritating Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum advertisements pasted everywhere. You couldn’t turn around without seeing some sort of advertising for this gum. Wrigley was wasting an incredible amount of money trying to promote a flavor no one wanted.
A few minutes later, I hopped off and jumped another trolley that took me up Michigan Avenue. I figured I’d try Joe first, given that he was the elder of the two. Hopefully, he’d been able to put away some money. I walked the last two blocks, down Twenty-second Street to his house, a narrow white clapboard two-story with an enclosed brick porch on the front.
A metallic pounding on the other side of the house caught my attention. I walked up the drive, where I could see Joe’s legs sticking out from underneath an old delivery wagon propped up on jacks.
“Joe?”
He slid out from underneath the wagon, a quizzical expression on his face. “Will. Hi.”
“Have you got a minute?”
He pushed himself to his feet and wiped grease off his hands with a rag hanging on the side of the wagon. “Sure. What can I do you for?”
I leaned in close to him. “If you’ve got it, I need to borrow some money. Quite a lot of it.”
“Sure. What do you need?” He pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his trousers.
I hesitated. This was stupid. But I’d come all the way down here. “Four hundred.”
“Dollars?” He was incredulous. “Wh
at do I look like? J. P. Morgan?”
It was as I thought. Still, my heart sank. “Yeah, sorry. Never mind.”
“I could maybe come up with twenty bucks. But that’s about it.”
“No, that’s all right. Don’t worry about it.”
With fear beginning to fog my mind, I took a streetcar to Elwood’s house—same result. I was out of ideas. I returned home and paced the floor, much too nervous to sit. My father was my only hope. But he’d never give me the money unless I told him where it was going. No plausible lie occurred to me, and I couldn’t tell him the truth. He’d involve the police, force me to tell them what I’d seen that night. Riordan would never believe it. I’d be going to jail for the rest of my life.
The blackmailer wasn’t my only concern. I called the Humes’ house, and Alberts answered. When I asked for Elizabeth, he said she wasn’t home and declared in a frosty voice that he would inform her I had called. Should she be interested in speaking with me, she would call back.
I hung up and grabbed a bourbon bottle.
I drank and I thought. Eventually I just drank. By that evening, my apartment had begun to feel like a cell, so I climbed out the window and sat on the fire escape with my bottle, looking out over the back lawn, huddling down inside my greatcoat to stay warm. Three or four blocks away, a small fire flickered through the darkness. The faint odor of burning leaves carried over the wind.
The first time I saw Elizabeth, her face was lit by the dancing flames of a bonfire. We were seventeen. I’d come to a Halloween party with some school friends. Perhaps two dozen people stood around the fire, but I saw only one.
I couldn’t breathe. I’d heard men say that a woman’s beauty took their breath away, but I’d always considered the idea to be a mawkish exaggeration. Yet I couldn’t catch my breath. Her auburn hair hung in soft curls around her finely cut face—a perfect face with large eyes, high cheekbones, soft lips—a face at once aristocratic and kind.
One of my friends nudged me. “Will?”
“Wha—huh?”
“She said hello.”
I realized my mouth was hanging open. “Uh, hello,” I said.
She wore a long woolen coat that fit her form, a form that promised the same perfection as her face.
I took a step forward and nodded. “Will Anderson. Pleased to meet you.”
She beamed at me. I found myself breathless again. Her smile was open and warm, not at all the usual coquettish look of a seventeen-year-old girl. She held out a delicate hand, encased in a dove gray glove of kid leather. “Elizabeth Hume.” She cocked her head to the side. “You’re a handsome boy, Will Anderson.”
“Lizzie!” the girl next to her exclaimed.
Elizabeth let go of my hand and glanced at her friend with a naughty smile. “Well, he is.”
I didn’t leave her side the rest of the night. The next evening I met her parents.
She had been mine for almost four years.
I pulled out Elizabeth’s note and held it up in front of the window, reading it again and again by the lamplight.
A man’s voice called up to me. “Hey, Will.” In the dark, I could just make out Wesley McRae standing below me, his head tilted back.
I stuffed the note into my coat pocket.
“Mind if I come up for a snort?” he said.
The liquor had dulled my mind to the extent that no excuse occurred to me. “Sure, why not?” I stood, wobbling a little, and began walking down the steps to drop the last length of stairs. “Give me a minute.”
“Stay there,” Wesley said, pulling his porkpie hat down farther on his head. He jumped into the air, grabbed hold of the metal edge of the landing, and swung himself onto the fire escape like a monkey.
The landing had to have been four feet over his head. “Son of a bitch. How’d you do that?”
He laughed as he climbed the steps. “Gymnastics training. When you’re an entertainer, you’ve got to be ready for any opportunity that comes along.” He stopped in front of me, and the light pouring through my window illuminated his feminine features—full lips, large brown eyes, no hint of a beard. His long blond hair curled behind his ears.
I was suddenly uncomfortable, remembering the times I’d seen an older man leaving his apartment early in the morning.
He held out his hand for the bottle. There wasn’t anything I could do about it now, so I gave it to him. I hoped he didn’t have any diseases I could catch.
Taking a seat in the corner opposite me, he tipped back his head, took a swig, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Whew! Old Tub, huh? I’m a Scotch man myself, but that’s good bourbon.” He held out the bottle. “Thanks.”
Nodding, I took it from him and surreptitiously turned the top of the bottle against my trousers. He brought out a cigarette case from his jacket pocket and offered me one. I accepted it, though not without some trepidation. He lit mine and then one for himself.
“So.” He turned his head and looked out over Second Street. “Nice view up here. I can see why you come out.” His breath swirled from his mouth in clouds.
I took a big swallow and handed the bottle back to him.
“Much obliged.” He took another drink. “So, Will. What were you reading?”
“Huh?”
“When I was down there.” He hooked his thumb toward the lawn. “You were reading something.”
“Oh. Nothing.”
An uncomfortable silence hovered over us for a few moments before Wesley said, “I couldn’t help but notice you’ve been suffering from a bout of melancholy for, oh, more or less since you moved in. But lately it’s been worse, hasn’t it?”
I took a deep drag off the cigarette and nodded, keeping my eyes pointed away from him.
“Want to talk about it?”
I grunted out a laugh. “No, but thanks.”
He nudged my knee with the bottle. I took it back from him. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve been in plenty of tough situations. Talking always helps. When you talk about it, you think better. And who knows? Maybe I can help.”
I cocked my head at him. He was rich. Maybe he could help. “Well, I need some money.”
“How much?”
“Four hundred dollars.”
He was blowing smoke out the side of his mouth and stopped mid-exhale. “Four hundred?” He blew out the remaining smoke and shrugged. “Sure, no problem. But I’ll have to get to the bank. Tomorrow soon enough?”
I nodded but couldn’t say anything, dumbfounded that he’d agreed without a second thought.
“Why don’t you stop by Crowley Milner tomorrow? I’ll be there from noon until four. Or I could just bring it back tomorrow night, but I won’t be home until late. I’m singing at the Palace Gardens Ballroom.”
“I’ll come by Crowley Milner. Thanks, Wesley. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”
He waved me off. “Whenever you’ve got the money to spare. God knows, I’ve got more than I know what to do with.”
Whatever suspicions I’d had regarding Wesley blackmailing me disappeared. My blackmailer certainly wouldn’t be lending me money.
We sat up there for quite a while, talking some but mostly drinking. I told him about my father’s company and a little about Elizabeth, but I skirted the subject of my current problems. He didn’t press the point. When he said he needed to get to bed and started back down the steps, I stopped him and asked him inside for one more drink.
He turned, clearly surprised. “Sure. That’d be nice.”
We climbed in the window to the parlor. Seeing it as I imagined it would look from Wesley’s eyes, the room was less than impressive. The wallpaper was dull blue. An aged green chenille sofa faced two white upholstered chairs across a small cherrywood coffee table. Flanking the sofa were a pair of scratched end tables. The only other furniture in the room was an old oak bar where I kept my “show liquor”—the single bottles of Scotch, bourbon, rye, Tennessee whiskey, and brandy that were only used when I had guests. My re
al drinking whiskey stayed in the kitchen cupboard.
Wesley looked around the room. “Nice place.”
“Thanks.” I asked him to sit, then poured him a splash of Scotch and myself a shot of bourbon. We talked a few minutes longer before he finished his drink and announced it really was time for him to leave.
I led him out of the parlor into the foyer and opened the door for him. The hall was empty, which was more of a relief than I’d care to admit.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next morning I woke at five thirty with a hangover. I was already so keyed up I couldn’t think. Assuming Wesley really was going to lend me the money, in less than twelve hours I would be paying a blackmailer, possibly the man who’d killed John Cooper. This was insane. My mind whirled. Pay him. Go to the police. Leave town. Buy a gun and kill him. Pay him. . . . I had to pay him. It was my only chance of getting out of this and still having the hope of a normal life afterward.
I called Elizabeth again. Alberts said he’d given her the message and refused to answer my questions. With a curt “Good day,” he hung up on me.
At eleven I headed to the streetcar stop to go to Crowley Milner, the newest department store in downtown Detroit, hoping to catch Wesley before he started work. The first two trolleys were crammed so full I wouldn’t have been able to squeeze on with a shoehorn, so by the time I got there it was nearly noon.
I walked in through a brass-trimmed door onto a floor of polished rose-colored marble, the air fresh and clear with just a hint of perfume. European imports filled the mahogany cabinets, and salesmen and -women, their manners as impeccable as their dress, waited around every corner. I asked where I might find Wesley and was directed to the middle of the first floor, declining three offers of assistance before I saw him. He was sitting at a glossy white grand piano, arranging his music, a small crowd fanned out in chairs to his right. An easel next to the piano held a sign that read, THE GUS EDWARDS MUSIC COMPANY IS PROUD TO PRESENT . . . WESLEY MCRAE, THE SCOTTISH SONGSTER!
The Detroit Electric Scheme Page 7