Motor City Shakedown (38 page)

“It feels … cold. Inside. At the pit of my stomach. I took someone's life.”

“Like you said, he was going to kill me. You did what you had to do.”

She nodded and glanced at me. “I know. I keep telling myself that. It's just going to take a while.”

We headed over to the alley in which I'd spent the rest of the night, and I tucked myself back in behind the trash cans. “I'll be back soon,” Elizabeth said. She bent down and gave me a kiss on the cheek before turning and leaving the alley.

She returned about fifteen minutes later with a pair of coffee mugs in one hand and a heaping plate of scrambled eggs and toast in the other. She handed me the mugs and sat next to me. “They charged me a dollar for the plate and mugs, but I thought it a worthwhile investment,” she said. “I wouldn't give them the two dollars they wanted for silverware, so dig in.”

I gave her one of the mugs, took a piece of toast, and loaded a pile of eggs on top. I wolfed it down and sat back, savoring the coffee. “Thank you. I can't tell you how good this all tastes.”

“Funny, isn't it?” she said. “If you'd have gotten a meal like this in a normal circumstance you'd probably have complained about it. But now it's like eating at Delmonico's.”

I swallowed another precious sip of coffee. “I wouldn't know about Delmonico's, but I take your point. Our appreciation of things is relative to our circumstances.”

“Good,” she said with a smile. “Now you need to figure out how to appreciate things regardless of your circumstances.”

I wasn't in the mood for a lecture, but I just shrugged. “Did you find a phone?”

She nodded. “There's one at a store just down the block.”

“I'm going to see if I can get hold of Detective Riordan too. I hope he hasn't been arrested. We need his help.”

We lapsed into silence. When we finished eating, we left the plate and mugs out where someone would find them, and headed over to a general store. The pay telephone was screwed into the wall, like at the Cosmopolitan. I checked my pockets and came up with thirty-seven cents. I dropped a nickel into the coin slot, and the arm over the receiver released. A few seconds after I gave the operator the number, Mrs. Riordan answered the phone.

“Hello?” This time her voice was cautious from the first word.

“Mrs. Riordan, this is Will. Can you talk?”

“No, Mrs. Callaghan,” she said in an overly cheery voice. “I'm afraid I'm not up to a trip downtown at four o'clock. My little ones haven't even broken in their old shoes yet.”

Obviously, someone was listening. “How can I get in touch with your husband?” I whispered.

“Why, you'd think those children of yours were horses, Mrs. Callaghan, the way they go through shoes. You enjoy your shopping trip this evening. Bye now.” She hung up.

I set the receiver on the hook and gave Elizabeth a puzzled look. “Someone was there. Almost certainly the cops. She gave me a message, but I don't have any idea what it was.”

“What did she say?

“She called me Mrs. Callaghan and said she couldn't go shoe shopping downtown at four o'clock.”

“Four o'clock must be when Detective Riordan can meet you. Callaghan—is there a Callaghan's shoe store downtown?”

“I've never heard of it.” Then it hit me. Callaghan—shoes—horses—downtown. “She said my children must be horses to go through so many shoes. Callaghan's Livery on Fort Street. My father used to keep Comet there. Detective Riordan will be there at four.”

“Thank God he didn't get arrested.”

I nodded and dropped another nickel into the slot. I gave the operator Adamo's number this time. An Italian man answered the phone.
“Pronto.”

“I need to speak with Vito Adamo. This is Will Anderson.”

“Uno momento.”
The receiver clanked against a hard surface.

Perhaps a minute later, Vito Adamo came on the line. His normally deep voice was thin, strident. “What was your involvement in Palma's shooting?”

“What? He gave me this number, he left, and Gianolla's men shot him.” I cupped my hand over the bell of the telephone. “We killed
them
. In self-defense.”

Adamo let off a string of Italian curses ending with the word
Gianolla.
Then he said, “If you are lying to me—”

“I'm not lying. Why would I shoot Palma?”

“Because he works with me.”

“I've been trying to get you to work with
me,
remember? Last night Palma asked me to help you kill the Gianollas. I agreed to call you. He left and was shot down.”

He blew out an explosive breath. “You want the Gianollas dead, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“Why?”

“We have some planning to do. I will send a car to pick you up.”

I hesitated. He had thought I was involved in Palma's shooting. But at this point what did I have to lose? With both the Gianollas and Adamos after me, I was already as good as dead. “Bagley and Third,” I said.

“Excellent.” The receiver clicked, and the line went dead.

*   *   *

We left the store and walked into the nearest alley. “Okay,” I said. “Where are you going to go? I'll come for you after this meeting.”

She laughed and shook her head. “No. I'm going with you.”

“Elizabeth, it's too—”

“—dangerous, I know,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “I'm going, and that's that.”

I decided not to waste my time arguing. We waited in the nearest alley and kept our eyes peeled. Half an hour later a dark blue E-M-F touring car edged up to the corner. I took a surreptitious glance at the inside. The top was up, the driver hidden in the shadows. I thought it was likely one of Adamo's men, but there was no way to be sure.

“Wait here a minute,” I told Elizabeth, and stepped out into the sunshine, wandering out near the road. I watched the car from the corner of my eye for a few minutes, still not sure if I should approach it. People were starting to get out into the streets, and they streamed past, heading for some holiday amusement.

“Signore Anderson,” a voice said. I turned around. Vito Adamo's brother Salvatore stood before me. I hadn't laid eyes on him in nearly two years. He was still a young man, perhaps thirty, but looked at least ten years older. Dark circles painted the undersides of his eyes, and he was thin, sickly-looking. His ragged mustaches hung over his upper lip. He looked like a man on the run. “Open your coat,” he said.

I held my coat open with my left hand. He pulled out the right side, looking for a weapon.

“Turn around.”

I did. He pulled up my coattail.

“We should go,” he said. “It's not safe.”

I nodded Elizabeth over. She ran to us, and we hurried to the E-M-F. Angelo was in the driving seat. The rest of us piled into the back. No sooner had we gotten in than the car sped away from the curb. Angelo turned down the first alley and raced into Little Italy, finally stopping in front of a warehouse. He jumped out and opened an overhead door. When he climbed back in, we bumped over the threshold into the darkened building. Angelo shut off the car and ran back to close the door.

Salvatore hopped out and flipped a switch, turning on the lights. Elizabeth and I stepped down onto the concrete floor, and Angelo gave me a thorough search. He relieved me of my switchblade and then held out his hand for Elizabeth's purse. She glanced at me. I nodded. We had to cooperate.

“That way,” Salvatore said, motioning toward the back of the building. He walked us to a wooden door, opened it, and said, “Wait here.”

I looked inside to see a small room with no furniture, probably an office when the warehouse was in use. “Why?”

“Make sure no one follow,” he said.

We walked in, and he closed the door behind us. Elizabeth crouched down and used her palm to sweep dust off a spot on the floor before sitting down. I walked over to her, put my back against the wall, and slid down to the floor.

“Don't mention anything about Riordan to the Adamos,” I whispered. “We need an ace in the hole.”

She nodded. A few moments later, she said, “My Lord, Will. Did you ever think…”

I grunted out a laugh. “Hard to imagine that only a few years ago we were a couple of rich kids without a worry in the world.”

She nodded, and after a few moments her right hand searched out my left. When she found it, she gripped it tightly. After a few minutes, I let go and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. I believe it was the first time I'd ever touched her without it being sexual. In the past, regardless of the situation, whatever touch I'd been allowed made me crazy with lust. Now it was different. Compassion? Friendship?

Salvatore and Angelo came for us perhaps half an hour later and led us to an open-bed delivery truck stacked with beer kegs. Salvatore gestured at the truck. “We will drive to my brother. Get in back.” We climbed onto the bed and sat in the center, in an open space surrounded by kegs. Salvatore climbed up after us. “You got to be blindfold.” Elizabeth and I traded a glance before we both nodded. He tied handkerchiefs around our heads.

The engine started, the overhead door screeched, and the truck pulled onto the road. From the sound of the engine echoing off the tall brick walls, I could tell we spent more time in alleys than we did on roads. After a number of turns, the truck finally stopped. I pulled off the blindfold. We were in an alleyway between a pair of three-story redbrick buildings. We could have been anywhere.

We climbed down and walked into the back entrance of the building to the left of the truck. After climbing two flights of stairs in silence, we walked about thirty feet down a hallway. Salvatore knocked on a door—three fast knocks, two slow.

Filipo Busolato cracked open the door and peered out. A moment later, Vito Adamo stood in front of us, holding his derby with both hands like a man asking for a handout. “I apologize, Mr. Anderson, Miss Hume, for the inconveniences. It is an unfortunate but necessary part of my life at the moment.”

He stepped back and held out his arm toward a kitchen table. I looked around as I took the two steps necessary to reach it. We were in a small one-room apartment with four cots in the back, a large shelf along a side wall filled with supplies, and a single table in the front of the room with a chair on each side. I glanced out the window. A redbrick wall stood perhaps thirty feet away. We were in a Detroit apartment building, almost certainly in Little Italy, perhaps the same one Carlo Moretti had lived in. It was almost funny that Vito Adamo had been forced to live like this. I turned back to him, unable to resist a jab. “Nice place.”

He smiled a weary smile. “Believe me that I would prefer to be with my wife and children.”

He still looked good. The skin on his handsome face was perfect, his mustaches were firmly waxed in place, and not a single strand was awry in his thick shock of black hair. He wore a stylish gray suit with an ivory silk waistcoat. Dark curls spilled over the open neck of his shirt. This was the first time I'd seen him without a tie. His eyes looked haunted. I could see that his edges were beginning to fray.

He turned to his men and said something in Italian. Angelo and Busolato left. Salvatore stood near the door, watching us.

Elizabeth and I sat at the table. A notepad lay atop it, open to an amateurish pencil drawing of a stiletto plunging into someone's back. An Italian caption had been written in underneath. Adamo sat across from us, flipped the notepad shut, and gave us a sheepish smile. “At times I fancy myself to be a writer. I am trying my hand at the dime novel.”

“Really,” I said. “What's it about?”

“Oh”—he waved at me, embarrassed—“it's only childish nonsense.”

“No, really. I'm interested.”

He shook his head slightly but said, “It's the story of a boy who is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, and the revenge he takes on the men who wronged him.”

I looked at him through narrowed eyes. “The story sounds familiar.”

A hint of a smile played around his mouth. “Well, I suppose I have to get my inspiration somewhere.”

I looked at him for a moment before saying, “So now you believe I didn't kill Moretti?”

“Yes. Though if Ferdinand was wrong I will kill you myself.” He tossed off the sentence as casually as if he were commenting on the weather. “But that is not why we are here. I would like to apologize to you, Miss Hume, and you, Mr. Anderson, for the problems I have caused you. Miss Hume, I truly liked your father and, believe it or not, considered him a friend. I had no idea who killed him until after the … rest of your ordeal.”

She didn't respond.

He turned to me. “And Mr. Anderson. If I could take back the history between us, I would. But, of course, that is not possible. So here we are, all targeted for murder by those
contadinos.
”

My face must have shown my confusion because he added, “Peasants. The Gianollas”—he feigned spitting on the floor—“are nothing but peasants, brutal and stupid.” He looked at me again. “Mr. Anderson, I am a bit confused about your involvement in this matter. I believe the Gianollas had Esposito confess to Carlo's murder, thereby making you beholden to them. But what did they have to gain?”

“The Gianollas wanted me to get the Teamsters Union into Detroit Electric. And they wanted me to help them kill you.”

He smiled once more. “And how were you supposed to do that?”

“They were going to offer you a piece of the Teamsters. When you got comfortable, they'd kill you and wipe out your operation.”

Nodding, he said, “You must help me rid the world of their stink.” His eyes shone. “We will kill them together.”

“How?” I asked.

He sat back in his chair, looking down at the table. A few seconds later, he glanced up at me again. “You are going to give them exactly what they want.”