Motor City Shakedown (46 page)
The albino clamped his hand down on Minna's wrist. “Not now.”
Glancing over at him, she winced and let go.
I took hold of the blade and whipped the knife at her. It hit her chest with a thud and buried to the hilt. She made a sound like a little hiccup, and the gun fired, punching a hole in the wall behind me. I dived over the table and crashed into her, wrenching the gun from her hand. Her chair went over, and I fell on top of her. I rolled and pointed the gun at the albino's chair. It was empty.
I heard the unmistakable sound of shells being racked into a shotgun.
“Put it down, Mr. Anderson,” the albino said.
I looked over the table. He stood now, holding a shotgun on Elizabeth.
Where the hell did that come from?
Waldman ran in, tracking the room with a pistol. The barrel lighted on me about the same time I aimed Minna's gun at the albino's midsection from under the table.
“Don't shoot him, Judah,” the albino said. “It won't be necessary. Will it, Mr. Anderson?”
Minna coughed up a bubble of blood.
God damn it.
I was so close. “Let Elizabeth go.”
“That is the plan,” the albino said.
“Then do it. Elizabeth, leave.”
“As soon as you give Waldman your gun,” the albino wheezed. “You may both leave.”
Minna groaned, and more blood gurgled up from her mouth.
“Your girlfriend is dying while we talk,” I said. “Let Elizabeth go.”
“Minna is no longer useful to me. She consorted with that
animal.
⦠I'm afraid I can't allow Miss Hume to leave ⦠until you give us the gun. Because once she's gone you will shoot me ⦠regardless of the danger to you. I understand you, Mr. Anderson. Put down the gun, and you both may leave. You have my word.”
My gun wavered, but I kept it aimed at the albino. A soft creak came from the wooden floor of the hallway. I glanced at Waldman. He was leaning over the table, his gun pointed at my head. The albino kept the shotgun trained on Elizabeth's torso. It would blow a very big hole through her.
If I gave them the gun, Elizabeth would probably die.
If I didn't, she would certainly die.
I set the gun on the floor and began to stand, my hands spread in front of me.
A shotgun roared, and sparks lit the room. I dived to the floor to grab Minna's pistol. Another gun fired. The shotgun thundered again, and something crashed onto the table. I snatched the gun from the floor, rolled, and aimed at the albino.
Except now he was lying on his back, still. A body slid off the table and crumpled to the floor. Waldman. Elizabeth crouched where she had stood, hands over her ears.
I looked up at the doorway. Abe and Joey stood there, smoke still rising from Joey's shotgun. He racked in two more shells and spit onto Waldman's prostrate body. Looking down at him, Joey said, “Guess I
am
a big shot, huh?”
I stood. Abe looked at me and held his hands out in front of him, keeping his gun pointed at the ceiling. “Remember, I said we ain't gonna hurt ya, but you gotta put the gun down.” Joey swung the shotgun over toward me. Abe batted it away and gave him a dark look.
My odds had improved only slightly. The minute I raised the gun, one of them would shoot me. Or Elizabeth. And I didn't really think Abe wanted to kill us. I set the gun on the table and hurried over to Elizabeth, keeping my eyes on the boys. Abe knelt down next to the albino's body and reached inside his coat. “Aw, goddamn it, Joey.” He looked back at his brother and raised the bloody corner of a hundred-dollar bill. “Ya had to shoot him in the fuckin' wallet, didn't ya? Ya dumb sonuvabitch, we ain't getting' nothin' outta this.”
I glanced at Waldman's body. The top of his head was gone, his skull a bloody crater. Shuddering, I looked away quickly. “Let's go,” I whispered to Elizabeth, pulling her toward the hallway.
“Not yet,” Abe said. He nodded to Joey. “Bring 'em out the back and wait for me.”
A cold look on his face, Joey pointed the sawed-off at my head. We walked up the hallway to the kitchen and out the back door. I kept my arm around Elizabeth. She was shaking. My mind was reeling.
A minute later, Abe came out, shaking his head at Joey. “Ya fuckin' goop. Waldman had two goddamn bucks on him.” He shook two banknotes in Joey's face. “Two goddamn bucks on a five-hundred-dollar score.” As he walked past us onto the lawn, he said, “Let's get outta here. I got one more thing for ya.”
Joey pushed the barrel of the shotgun against my back. “Move.”
We cut through the lawn of the house behind and turned right at the street. Elizabeth wrapped her arm around my waist and pulled me close. Firecrackers popped down the street, answered by others all around. It was easy to imagine the fusillades coming from guns and cannon.
“Where are we going, Abe?” I said.
“Just gotta go up here a minute. Then you can leave.”
“Why'd you kill them?”
“Who?” He gestured back toward the house. “Whitey and his boy?”
“Yeah.”
“You don't got respect, you got nothin'. We weren't gonna get nothin' else out of him anyway.” He looked over his shoulder at me and laughed. “Plus, you're the craziest sonuvabitch I ever met. I wanna see what you do next.”
“Were you working for the albino all along?”
“Workin'
with
him, you mean?”
“Sure.”
“Yeah.” He grinned at me. “Unless we was workin' with Gianolla. Or Adamo.” He stopped and turned around. “See, what we do is work for ourselfs. Got to where we come from, right?”
“I suppose so.”
He started walking again and turned down an alleyway. We followed, and Joey brought up the rear. Light leaked out from a few windows above us, casting a muddy glow over the alley. Two figures sat in the shadows about a hundred feet in, on the stoop of a rear entranceâRay and Izzy.
They stood when we got close. “D'ja get it?” Izzy asked.
Abe shook his head.
“Why not?”
Abe hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward Joey. “Ask Quick Draw.” He turned back to me. “You owe me. You know that, right?”
I nodded. It was hard to argue with him on that score.
“I'm gonna need the wheels greased now and then. You got connections, so that's your job now.”
“We'll see. Depends on what you want.”
He stared into my eyes for a moment before reaching inside my coat. He pulled out my gold lighter and flipped it up in the air. “Here's a start.” He caught the lighter, tossed it into the air again, and nodded his brothers toward the alley's entrance.
Sobbing, Elizabeth threw her arms around me. I held her tightly. Over her shoulder, I watched the Bernsteins walk away. Joey and Ray fell in behind their oldest brother, but Izzy ran to him and leaped to try to catch the lighter on his next toss. Abe reached up and grabbed it just before it would have fallen into Izzy's hand.
“Hey!” Izzy shouted.
Startled, Elizabeth turned and looked at them. I kept my arms wrapped around her, and we watched the brothers walk down the alley. A tracer shot up from behind the building across the street, a white flare rising in a gentle arc.
Again, Abe flipped up the lighter. Izzy pushed him, just enough to get him off balance, and snatched it out of the air. The firework exploded in a blinding burst of white sparks.
The boys stopped and stared up at the embers showering down toward the street. When the last one burned out, Izzy began dancing around his brothers, cackling, flicking the lighter at them. Abe feinted at him and laughed when Izzy bolted away. The boys continued down the alley, their silhouettes getting smaller. Finally they turned the corner, and Abe led his brothers out of the dark alleyway and into the bright lights of Detroit.
Author's Note
Writing a historical novel requires walking a fine lineâgiving the history as you know it while dramatizing events that didn't really happen. So it is with this book. I spent a lot of time perusing the Detroit newspapers of the day and then imagining how those events might have played out with Will and Elizabeth in the mix.
Although most of it was fought in 1913, the Adamo-Gianolla war actually occurred, and the Gianollas were victorious. Along the way, Tony Gianolla was wounded, as was Ferdinand Palma, former Detroit Police detective-turned-banker-turned-interpreter at Vito Adamo's murder trial. The last mention I found of Palma during this time period came immediately after the Adamo brothers were shotgunned. He stated, from his hospital bed, his desire to get out of Detroit as quickly as possible. However, he must have reached an accommodation with the Gianollas, as he returned to Detroit and continued to run a very successful business.
Vito Adamo did turn himself in to the police and was exonerated for the killing of Carlo Callego, a move that may have signaled to the Gianollas once and for all that they had the upper hand. The murder of the Adamo brothers actually happened in November, during the day, just down the street from Vito's house. Inside, the police found a notepad with writing in Italian and crude pictures of stilettos plunging into men's backs. They thought this would give them insight into the gang war until they had it interpreted and discovered that Vito Adamo was writing a dime novel starring himself as the wrongly persecuted boy.
Strangest of allâfor me, anywayâis that the Adamos and Gianollas did have groceries across the street from each other in Ford City, a village that has since been swallowed by the city of Wyandotte. Did the war start because of “a thumb on the meat scale or a price war on lettuce”? Probably not. More likely it was the old story of greed and ambition.
As for Detroit Electric, the Fords, F. W. Taylor, and the labor movement, most of the events depicted in this book did take place, though I have moved things around a bit to serve the story. Contrary to popular belief, the Model T was made in a variety of colors prior to Ford's “perfecting” of the assembly line, which required the change to black in order for the paint to dry in time.
A note for Detroiters who may think I'm geographically challengedâthe Merrill Fountain originally stood at the corner of Woodward and Monroe, in front of the old Detroit Opera House. It was moved to Palmer Park in 1926.
Finally, a plea for the legacy of Edsel Ford. The man was smart. He was kind. He was generous. Above all, he was loyal, working his whole life for his father, who berated and humiliated him time and again until he put Edsel in an early grave from stomach cancer caused by ulcers. It's bad enough they named that car after him. (Although, to be fair, it was meant to be a tribute.)
Let's remember Edsel Ford as he wasâa hell of a guy.
Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank my early readers, and they are many: my lovely wife, Shelly Johnson; my daughters Nicole, Grace, and Hannah; Yvonne Cooper; and a pack of voracious writers known as the West Michigan Writers Workshop, including, but not limited to, Steve Beckwith, Albert Bell, Patrick Cook, Greg Dunn, Vic Foerster, Jane Griffioen, Fred Johnson, Norma Lewis, Karen Lubbers, Roger Meyer, Paul Robinson, Dawn Schout, and Nathan TerMolen.
Once again, a shout-out to the amazing research facilities around the Detroit area, particularly the Benson Ford Research Center and its wonderful director, Judy Endelman, and the Detroit Public Library and its National Automotive History Collection. Thanks to Tony Barnes for help with the legal aspects of the story, to Yvonne Cooper and Emilie Savas for their medical knowledge, to Galen Handy for his assistance with Detroit Electric history, and to Jack Beatty for allowing me to ride in his beautifully restored 1916 Detroit Electric coupé and helping me in other ways.
Thanks to Cherry Weiner for gaining me the opportunity, and to Daniela Rapp for her patience, kindness, and encouragement while trying to wrench this book out of my mind.
Finally, I'd like to thank Richard Bak, a fine writer who gave me great insight into Detroit history and helped me appreciate Edsel Ford.
Also by D. E. Johnson
The Detroit Electric Scheme
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
MOTOR CITY SHAKEDOWN
. Copyright © 2011 by D. E. Johnson. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson, D. E. (Dan E.)
Motor City shakedown / D. E. Johnson.â1st ed.
        p. cm.
e-ISBN 9781429973731
  1.  MurderâInvestigationâFiction.  2.  Automobile industry and tradeâFiction.  3.  Organized crimeâFiction.  4.  Detroit (Mich.)âFiction.  I.  Title.
PS3610.O328M68 2011
813'.6âdc22
2011018770
First Edition: September 2011
