Jitterbug (5 page)

The place was filling up, but not with the kind of crowd that had come there in the dry time to drink to lawlessness and the rebellious American way, or in the hard times that came after, to float away their unpaid bills on a stream of alcohol. There were women, plenty of them now that they had their own money from working in the plants and no place to go but empty houses and apartments with most of the male population in foreign stations. They were there to drink with their friends and cast hungry glances at the men in the place; some in uniform, others wearing discharge pins, still more with double hernias and flat feet: 4-Fers, and a troublesome lot when they got a couple of drinks under their belts and uncorked their opinions about how MacArthur should have handled the Philippines. There was heavy chatter, people trying hard to have a good time despite the combination of bad news and no news at all from the war theaters, and a little music from the jukebox, a red-and-green Rock-Ola trimmed in ivory Bakelite, overstocked, as usual, with Glenn Miller. While McReary was watching through the glass porthole in the front door, a reedy youth of twenty—no Detroit bartender had asked to see ID since Repeal—in peg tops and saddle shoes slid a nickel into the slot and selected “St. James Infirmary.” McReary strolled back down the street to where the black Oldsmobile was parked and planted a wing tip on the running board.

“Getting ripe,” he announced. “Give me ten minutes.”

“Somebody mouthing off?” Zagreb lit a Chesterfield off the dashboard lighter.

“Not yet, but a kid just got gutbucket going on the juke.”

“No shit. Shine? No shit.” Burke leaned forward from the backseat and folded his hairy forearms across the top of Canal’s seat.

“Not in there. You kidding? You know these kids and their nigger jazz. Those hillbilly production workers won’t sit still for much of that.”

“Any servicemen?” Zagreb asked.

“No, the army and the navy both posted this place O.L. after the last fracas.”

“Good. I hate working with those fucking M.P.s.” Canal pushed his cigar to the other corner of his mouth. It had gone out for good.

Zagreb checked his Wittnauer. “We’ll give you fifteen. It’s early.”

“What are you going to use?” Canal asked.

McReary looked glum; he was enjoying himself. “Old Reliable.”

Burke grinned for him, a wolfish snarl against his chronic five o’clock shadow. “Better make it five, Zag.”

Zagreb said nothing, ending that line of argument. When McReary left to enter Rumrunner’s, the lieutenant looked at Canal. “Got your call key?”

The big sergeant patted his pockets and looked sheepish.

“For Pete’s sake. You keep losing them we’re going to have every hophead in town calling his connection from a police box. Open the glove compartment.”

There was a collection of identical hollow-shafted keys inside. Canal put one in his vest pocket. “I don’t know why we just don’t use the radio.”

“Because every beergarden this side of the river has one,” Zagreb said. Burke sat back. “If we keep giving Baldy more time, he’s going to walk out of one of these places with his head turned backwards. Those Four-effers fight dirty.”

“So does Baldy.” Zagreb flicked his Chesterfield out the window and lit another.

There were two empty stools at the bar, but McReary didn’t like either location. He hung inside the door, pretending to be waiting for the caller in the telephone booth to finish, while a slope-shouldered Pole in a threadbare denim jacket with a block-plant tan at the base of his neck settled his bill and slid off his stool to use the men’s room; then he moved in to claim the vacancy. The drinker to his right was a skinny towhead in a leather vest, work pants, and scuffed cowboy boots, with a Confederate flag tattooed on the back of his left hand. His other neighbor was less obvious, but McReary had heard a twang when he’d ordered another round.

The bartender was a squat Corktown Irishman, built along the lines of a fire hydrant, with humorous blue eyes in a face that was otherwise as friendly as a skillet. When he asked McReary what he’d have, the officer glanced down the row of shot glasses and beer mugs lined up along the bartop and ordered a grasshopper.

“Saint James Infirmary” growled to a finish. While the bartender, without taking his eyes off his customer, assembled the primarily green ingredients, McReary left the stool, punched a nickel into the Rock-Ola, and scowled in delight when he found Bessie Smiths “Gimme a Pigfoot (and a Bottle of Beer).” He wanted to meet the man who had that juke route. As he made his way back to the bar through Bessie’s wailing opening, he heard a voice in the crowd say, “Holy shit!”

He paid for the neon-colored cocktail, counting out an inordinate number of pennies and no tip; that guaranteed no interference from behind the bar when he started getting his head kicked in. He could feel the stare the redneck on his right was giving him out the corner of his left eye as he raised his glass. The lumpy-looking number on his left was glaring down at his beer with both broken-nailed hands wrapped around the mug.

“Here’s to Eleanor Roosevelt!” said McReary, and drank.

Zagreb watched the sweep hand on the face of his Wittnauer pass the twelve. He turned to nod at Canal just as the first glass broke inside Rumrunner’s.

Canal didn’t wait for the nod. He chunked down the door handle, sprinted when he hit the sidewalk, unlocked the police call box on the corner, and called for the wagon. The others meanwhile were moving toward the door of the beer garden.

By now more glass had broken inside and the music had stopped—whether because the plug was jerked or because of a direct assault on the front of the machine had yet to be determined.

The fighting inside was not general, after the manner of a Hollywood Western saloon brawl, with customers slinging punches at whoever wandered into their path and stunt doubles jackknifing off balconies. A crowd had gathered near the end of the bar, where McReary and a narrow-gauged party in a leather vest and cowboy boots run-down at the heels were on their feet, circling each other in a cleared section of floor.

Baldy’s dour expression told Zagreb he was enjoying himself. The shitkicker had his back arched and his fists up, neither guarding his face. McReary, in a crouch, face concealed behind his hands, kept his weight on the balls of his feet and pivoted quickly whenever his back was turned to the bulky fellow seated on a stool with his elbows behind him on the bar, minimizing the latter’s opportunity to attack from ambush. There was a dark spot on McReary’s right temple, a sickly green puddle on the bar and pieces of broken glass winking on the floor in front of the rail. He had taken the first blow.

Just as Zagreb and Burke moved in, McReary ducked a shoulder, feinted with his left, and when the redneck stepped back to avoid it, resting his weight on his heels, the officer stepped forward and connected with his right, a short jab straight from the shoulder that struck the point of the other’s chin with a sound like ice cracking. The skinny towhead took two steps backward and shook his head. Then his jaw dropped, his eyes went out of focus, and he teetered forward, falling in a long clean uninterrupted arc onto his face on the hardwood floor. Zagreb felt the impact through the soles of his shoes. Then the pile of bulk seated at the bar came down off his stool and slung a ham fist into the side of McReary’s neck from behind.

The punch lacked momentum. Burke, who had had his eye on the fellow from the start, had stepped in just as the skinny man fell and drove his left forearm into the bulky man’s throat as he hit McReary. His windpipe collapsed. He wheezed to force air into his lungs, his face bug-eyed and terrified; by then Burke’s other hand was coming out of his own coat pocket. Brass gleamed as he pistoned his fist into the man’s mouth. Blood geysered.

McReary, dazed by the blow to his neck, grasped at the bar for support. Zagreb turned his back to the officer and spread his feet, blocking him from the others in the room as in a smooth ambidextrous movement he produced both his gold badge and his short-barreled Colt .38. “Police! Stay where you are!”

The crowd’s hesitation was brief. Then it split in two directions, some patrons heading for the door, others surging toward the three men standing by the bar. Canal, who was now standing in the doorway, pointed his starter’s pistol at the ceiling and fired. The blank glass cartridge made a noise like a heavy crate hitting a sidewalk. The echo of the report rang through the silence that followed.

Then the wagon was there, accompanied by four black-and-whites and eighteen Detroit police officers in uniform, who formed a flying wedge as they entered the building, fanning out inside and surrounding and disarming and herding the patrons across the sidewalk and into the wagon, the two men who had attacked McReary in the lead. They stopped loading when there was no more room inside. When the bar was closed, Zagreb, Burke, and Canal helped McReary out the door and into the black Oldsmobile.

Canal got the flat pint of Old Grand-Dad out of the glove compartment and passed it over the back of the seat to Burke, who unscrewed the cap and held it out for McReary. The officer declined assistance, seizing the bottle and tipping it up. It gurgled twice. The smell of fermented grain filled the car.

“All square?” Zagreb was watching him in the rearview mirror.

Baldy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tested the sore spot on his neck with two fingers. “Either those hillbillies are hitting harder or I’m getting old. This what it’s like?”

“How would we know, you little pissant?” Burke was grinning. “Maybe you need to come up with a toast that won’t rile them up so much.”

“Yeah. Try calling Robert E. Lee a faggot.” Canal confiscated the bottle and swigged.

“I don’t see why we need one at all,” McReary said. “Why don’t we just wait for a fight to start and come in then?”

Zagreb said, “You can wait all night for that. This way we make an example early on. Word gets down the street, the bartenders in the other joints put the screws on, and we’re all home in time for Charlie McCarthy.”

“Yeah, but is it legal?”

“What’s it matter? Everybody’s looking for U-boats in the river.” The lieutenant leaned over and spun up the volume on the two-way.

“One-ten, one-ten.” The dispatcher didn’t sound as if he had any hope of a response.

Zagreb unhooked the microphone and thumbed up the switch. “One-ten.”

“One-ten, see Inspector Brandon at the Wayne County Morgue.”

“Holy shit.” Canal screwed the cap back on the bottle and returned it to the glove compartment. “I hope they want us to identify him.”

Z
AGREB HATED CORONERS’ HANDS
.

This one’s were like all the rest, pink and puffy, with round antiseptic nails and no hair growing on the backs. They got that way from immersion in alcohol and formaldehyde. The fingers resembled bunches of scrubbed sausages and made the lieutenant think of mannequins and the newly washed hands of corpses lying in state. He didn’t mind the specialists’ coarse jokes, intended to weed out the squeamish, and the sight and even the smell of flayed human flesh had ceased to bother him, but when introductions were made he always found something to be doing with his own hands to give him an excuse to avoid grasping those naked pink fingers. The rest of the fellow was ordinary enough, although Zagreb would never get used to the extremes of age made necessary in the workforce by wartime personnel shortages. Dr. Edouard (he’d taken pains to spell it for the lieutenant) was seventy if he was a day, with a ribbon of hair combed across the top of his bald head, satin white against pink scalp, and glass blue eyes under thistly brows that had needed plucking five years ago and now required mowing. He wore his white coat over a tweed vest that made Zagreb itch on sight, with a row of stubby yellow pencils poking out of one of the pockets and a red bow tie, the kind you tied, with yellow polka dots.

“County pulled Edouard out of retirement,” said Inspector Brandon, in his trademark Panama hat and gray double-breasted. “He owns a mortuary, which his son runs. He worked in the old morgue when it moved into the basement of the County Building in 1905.”

“Busy first week. Omnibus ran into a horse trolley.” The old man laughed without making a sound. His chest bellowed and he opened his mouth to display a horseshoe of gold molars.

Zagreb made a noise that seemed appropriate and the three went into one of the three autopsy rooms, bypassing both the viewing room with its comforting furnishings, chosen to lessen survivors’ shock, and the long, low-ceilinged cold storage room where unclaimed corpses awaited identification behind refrigerator doors. The medium-size room where they ended up gleamed with white porcelain and ceramic tile and contained a fixture that was more sink than table, white enamel with a dull zinc lining, a faucet at one end, and a drainpipe running into the floor. The metal shade of a hydraulically operated lamp hung suspended above the naked male carcass stretched out inside. The dead man was about sixty and balding, the gray skin of his face shiny where the bones seemed to be wearing through. His eyes were half-open and sunken into their sockets. His fingers and toes were long and bony, barnacled with callus, and his circumcised penis lay to one side of his deflated scrotum. His torso from collarbone to pelvis was an open, empty cavity in which Zagreb could see the inside of his ribs. A pile of entrails lay atop a rolling steel cart parked next to the table. It was a sight that never failed to remind the lieutenant of his annual hunting trip north to Grayling and the process of dressing out a slain deer. The fishy smell of stale blood and butchered meat, washed down with carbolic, was a presence in the room, very nearly alive.

Edouard’s bright eyes were on Zagreb as they entered the room. The lieutenant’s reaction to the corpse, or rather his lack of it, seemed to disappoint the specialist, who promptly lost interest. He hung back at the door, hauled out a thick pocket watch with a nicked steel case, and held it in the pink palm of his hand throughout the visit as if he were timing it.

“Simeon Yegerov.” Brandon read from a spiral pad he took from an inside pocket. “We’re still waiting for a positive, but that was the name on the papers in his wallet. He owned Empire Cleaners on Twelfth. We found him six blocks away, dead maybe ten minutes. Probably on his way home.”