Motor City Shakedown (31 page)

God damn it
. I sat up and turned to her. “You're going to stay?”

She looked away and nodded.

I took a deep breath. “All right. I'll call in Joe's … I'll call Detective Riordan.”

“He has to help us,” Elizabeth murmured. “We have to kill them.”

“He won't do that. He's not going to break the law.”

She glanced up at me again. “Then who
is
going to help us?”

I grimaced. “There's the Adamos—maybe. But when it comes right down to it, it's you and me now, Elizabeth.” I took her hand. “Can you do it? Can you help me kill the Gianollas?”

She sat up and wiped her nose with her handkerchief. With her mouth set in a grim line, she said, “It doesn't matter if I can. I have to.”

*   *   *

I left Elizabeth on the bench and walked over to the Casino, where I used a pay telephone in the lobby to call the Bethune Street police station. Again using a disguised voice, I asked for Detective Riordan. He wasn't available. I hung up and tried his home number.

Mrs. Riordan answered. “Good afternoon.”

“It's Will Anderson. Is Detective Riordan in, please?”

“He's not here,” she said quietly. “He said if you called to tell you to phone back after eight tonight.”

“All right. But … I need some help now. A friend of mine was—” My throat constricted. My eyes burned. I burst out sobbing, unable to speak, tears streaming down my face. It was as if a dam had burst inside me.

“Shh,” she said over and over. “What's the matter?”

“God,” I was finally able to choke out in a strangled voice. “I'm sorry.” I wiped off my face with my sleeves. “A friend of mine was murdered. I don't want the police to just go in and make their standard mess of things. I was hoping your husband could—”

“Tell me the name and address,” she said. “I'll get word to him.”

I gave her the information.

“Phone back tonight,” she said.

“I will.”

After I hung up I phoned the Detroit Electric garage and asked them to send a chaser to pick up the car. I didn't want to drive it back to the garage myself, nor could I leave it where it was—or virtually anywhere in the city, for that matter. I was fortunate it hadn't disappeared from in front of my parents' house. This was Detroit, after all, the automobile-theft capital of America.

Before I returned to Elizabeth, I checked the contents of the morphine bottle—less than a quarter full. A trip to the pharmacy had to be in my near future. Elizabeth and I walked back to the car. I put my shotgun into her valise, hefted it, and made one more attempt to talk her out of continuing this quest. “It's not too late,” I said. “Let me take you to your aunt's.”

She shook her head and began walking toward the road. We caught a trolley down to Jefferson and stopped at the Western Union office just down the block to send my father a telegram. It read:

JOE CURTISS WAS MURDERED STOP DO NOT COME BACK TO DETROIT STOP TELL WILKINSON WHERE YOU ARE STOP I WILL BE IN TOUCH

WILL

We exited the building and walked down the sidewalk toward the trolley stop on the corner. “All right, Elizabeth. What do you say we find a place to stay?”

With her eyes glued to the concrete in front of her, she nodded.

“Do you have any ideas?” I had some of my own, but I had to draw her out of her head, get her thinking about something other than Joe.

She brushed her hair away from her eyes and glanced up at me. “How about somewhere around Eastern Market? It's close to Little Italy, but everyone there is Russian, so we don't have to worry about someone telling the Gianollas—or Adamos, for that matter—that we're there.”

“Good idea.” Good. I had her talking, at least a little. She still looked terrible—not like her heroin days, but pale and sad and tired. Very tired.

We climbed on the first trolley, changed cars once, and hopped off on Riopelle, just down from the Eastern Market. The sidewalks were packed with pushcart vendors, their sales pitches blending one over the top of another:

“Roasted sweet potaaatoooes!”

“Jewelry for the missus, cheaper'n stealin'.”

“Getcher veg! Beans! Peppers! Carrots!”

A three-story grayish clapboard hotel, dubiously named the Cosmopolitan, sat on a corner a block up the road. I shouldered through the crowd on the sidewalk into the dimly lit lobby and walked past three rickety wooden chairs to the counter. Behind it, a little man sat slumped on a stool, his belly like a medicine ball under his shirt.

“We'd like two rooms, please,” I said, setting Elizabeth's valise on the floor.

He eyed me suspiciously, then looked at Elizabeth before turning the register around to me. I wrote in
Edward Smith
and
Esther James,
the first two names I thought of.

“Fifty cent a night a room. Two day in advance,” the man said in barely understandable English.

I handed him five dollars. “Keep it. I'm not sure how long we'll be here.”

He gave me a pair of keys but continued looking at me under a furrowed brow. We didn't belong here.

As we walked to the stairs, I noted a pay telephone screwed into the wall on the other side of the lobby. We climbed to the second floor, where I unlocked Elizabeth's door and opened it for her. She wandered in and sat on the bed. After closing the door, I sat next to her. I thought I'd give it one more try. “I could still take you to Flint. Your mother could join you. She needs your help anyway.”

Elizabeth looked at the floor. “I can't. I can't leave.” She turned back to me. “Give me an hour. I'll be ready to go.”

“All right. Rest.”

She didn't reply.

I left her room and closed the door softly before heading back down the stairway to the first floor. The Empire pharmacy was only a few blocks away.

*   *   *

Mick's prices had gone up slightly. He charged me five dollars for two bottles of morphine. I didn't complain. The first thing I did when I got back to my room was cut a small hole in the side of the mattress and tuck the bottles inside. I didn't want to carry them around, nor did I want them discovered by anyone else, not that I expected maid service at the Cosmopolitan. I drank another capful of morphine and settled in.

After a few minutes, I gazed out the window. The ubiquitous coal dust painting the redbrick buildings shone softly with rainbow coronas. Where I had seen age, now I saw a quiet majesty. Where I had seen neglect and disrepair, now I saw beauty in the sacrifices these buildings had made for their inhabitants. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, marveling at the sight.

When the hour had passed, I climbed out of bed, walked down to Elizabeth's room, and knocked. The door swung open. My jaw dropped. “E—Elizabeth?” Her hair had been sawed off to only a few inches long. Her beautiful auburn tresses lay in a pile on the floor behind her.

She looked away. “I need some new clothes.” Her voice was quiet, barely more than a whisper.

I glanced up and down the hall. “Can I come in for a minute?”

She stepped back out of the doorway, and I slipped inside, studying her face. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. I just … I just don't want anyone to know I'm me. I want to dress as a man.”

“That's a good idea,” I said in a soothing voice. “You already look different. Once we get you some clothes, no one will suspect.”

Brushing the hair from her forehead, she said, “I need some pomade, and we both need clothing. We have to pass as men who belong here.”

“Sure. I'll go down to the market.”

“Boots, trousers, shirts, underwear, the works. Used is better than new.” She paused, frowning. “Except the underwear. Definitely new underwear.”

I nodded. “No argument from me.”

“Could you get me a corset? If I'm going to pass as a man, I've got to tone down my figure.”

I arched my eyebrows. “I didn't
think
you were wearing one.” That prompted a ghost of a smile from her. Then I thought about what she'd said. “Wait. Me? Buy a corset?”

Her face brightened a bit at the thought. “What? Are you afraid people are going to think it's for you?”

“Well, I wouldn't be the first. But, all right, fine. What else do you need?”

“A duster with lots of inside pockets.”

“Okay. But you're all right?”

“I'm fine, Will.” She tried to put on a smile, but it was nothing more than a grimace. “Go on.”

“Okay. But I'm worried about you.”

“Don't be.”

I looked at her a moment longer. “Stay here. Lock your door.”

She nodded. I left her room and descended the stairs, walking out into the sunshine, heading for the Eastern Market. It seemed every pushcart vendor in town was here restocking his cart. Voices rose and fell—Russian, Italian, Greek, with heavily accented English as the middle ground.

No one seemed to pay me any attention as I purchased a small tin of pomade and a pile of used clothing— two pairs of black wool work trousers, a pair of white shirts, stockings, garters, and boots, and a corset and a black oilskin duster for Elizabeth. I added a beat-up black derby for myself and a black snap-brim fedora for her. It would shade her face better than a derby. No one who saw her clearly could possibly believe she was a man. As promised, the underwear I bought was new (purportedly, anyway). All this for less than five dollars.

When I returned to the hotel, I gave Elizabeth her new clothing, and she set to cutting down the corset so it would cover only her chest. I wished I hadn't left the hacksaw in the car. It would have come in handy. We took turns sawing away at the fabric with our knives, ripping out the whalebone supports, and generally stripping the garment of most of its purpose. When we finished, she asked me to leave, saying she'd come get me when she was ready. I retreated to my room to change. About twenty minutes later, a quiet knock sounded against my door. I opened it to find a reasonable approximation of a short, slight, very young man with a five o'clock shadow, dressed in immigrant garb with a black duster and fedora. The young man held Elizabeth's valise in his hand.

I stared at “him” for a moment before nodding. “Pretty good. If I didn't know you…” I ran a finger across her jawline and glanced at the faint gray smudge.

“Coal black.” She slipped past me into the room, set the valise on the bed, and opened it up. Turning back to me, she said, “You have the thirty-two, right?”

I nodded.

She pulled the sawed-off shotgun, a box of shotgun shells, and a box of bullets from the bag and handed them all to me. “Fill up an outside pocket with ammo.”

I dumped half a dozen shells and at least twice that many bullets into the left-hand pocket of my duster.

“Do you have a knife? Or anything else?”

“Jackknife,” I said. “That's it.”

She pulled one of the switchblades from the bag and handed it to me. I pressed the blade-release button on the knife, and a four-inch blade zipped out from the haft. The balance felt good—for a switchblade. I flipped it up into the air and caught it. “Nice.”

Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor in silence. Finally, shaking her head, she looked up at me. Her eyes were the green of a stormy sea. “If we can get Detective Riordan coming from one side and the Adamo gang coming from another, we can do this. We can send the Gianolla brothers back to Hell.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

We walked to the Saint Petersburg Restaurant, a small storefront in a three-story redbrick apartment building. It held perhaps fifteen tables, sturdy oak with no tablecloths, and smelled sour and musty. It was crowded with families, everyone speaking Yiddish. Elizabeth and I headed for an open table in the back.

I took a seat against the back wall, expecting Elizabeth to sit on the other side of the table. Instead, she pulled out the chair next to me and sat. I believe I smiled, because she gave me a look. “You don't expect me to sit with my back to the door, do you?”

“No.”

“So I can sit next to you even though I'm a ‘man'?”

I laughed. “I'm not too worried about people thinking I'm a homosexual.”

“Because you're so manly?”

“No. Because I don't care.” Whatever concern I had left after befriending Wesley was erased by the morphine. I looked up to see a few men staring at us. I smiled back at them.

I nudged Elizabeth and whispered, “We can't let the Bernsteins know what our plans are. They've worked with the Adamos. They may have an affiliation with the Gianollas too.”

Elizabeth nodded.

An older man with a white apron tied at his waist bustled out the kitchen door behind us. He had wisps of white hair around the sides of his head and was probably in his seventies, but he looked as strong as a bull. “Can I help you?” He had a heavy accent, and the
h
sound was strong and percussive, like he was clearing his throat.

“Coffee,” Elizabeth said. I nodded for the same.

He walked back through the door, which opened again almost immediately. I looked back. Joey Bernstein leaned against the wall behind us, silent, his eyes scanning the room. He knocked twice on the kitchen door. A few seconds later, Abe walked out. “So, Anderson, you wanted to see me?”

“Have a seat,” I said, motioning toward the chair across from me.

He walked around to the other side of the table and stood for a moment, looking back and forth between Elizabeth and me. “Who's your friend?”

“Just a friend,” I said. Elizabeth stayed quiet.

Abe stared at her for at least ten seconds before he began to smile. “Wait a minute. Is this one of them she-shes?”

“What?”

“One of them dames that likes other dames.”