Sugar House (9780991192519) (41 page)

Cappie's mother had died years before, and he
had no siblings. So Joe went with Cappie's father to the lawyer's
office for the reading of the will. The will consisted of a sheet
of paper Cappie had ripped out of the back of a book. He deeded all
his investments and monies to his father; to Joe, he left his most
prized possession, his boat. Cappie's father didn't understand the
stock market. He had Joe help him sell all of Cappie's carefully
planned investments and put all the money in a safe under his bed.
Joe tried to talk the old man out of it but he insisted.

The stock market had been Joe and Cappie's
hobby and they had been putting almost half their paychecks into it
and watching their money grow. Every stock they'd invested in and
had doubled or better, and they were sitting on a huge pile of
money. Joe smiled every time he picked up the paper and read how
his shares were increasing. It seemed as if there was no end to the
amount of money he could make in the market. Joe shook his head as
he pulled up the floorboards under the old man's bed and put the
money in a safe underneath. Fifty thousand dollars should at least
be in the bank, Joe advised, but the old man refused.

Later that week, Joe took Cappie's boat out
of the boathouse and took it south toward Grosse Ile. He knew where
he was headed, but he idled slowly, allowing memories of his good
friend to sweep over him. He chuckled at the pranks they had played
on each other at the Wyandotte house—black paint on the rim of a
coffee cup, salt in the sugar bowl, siphoning the gas out of one
another's boats. Joe smiled thinking of the stories Cappie would
tell, dreams they would share before falling asleep after running
whisky down the river all night. Joe held his right wrist,
remembering how Cappie had wrapped his sprained joint the time he'd
fallen out of a tree trying to catch a glimpse of two girls
swimming in the river.

As he neared his destination, tears poured
down his cheeks as he envisioned Cappie's wide shoulders jumping in
front of Marya in a hail of bullets, pulling her down and covering
her with his body. Joe wiped the tears back and pulled into the
canal. He cut the engine and there was only silence. No tweeting
birds or croaking frogs to break the hot stillness could be heard
near the little cottage where he'd spent his first night away from
home. He pulled to the dock and tied up the boat. He picked up a
rough wooden sign he'd carved after the funeral. Joe grabbed a
hammer and nails and jumped out of the boat. When he reached the
run-down cottage, he placed the sign above the door and hammered it
into the worn siding. Joe had bought the unused property from
Charlie and was going to keep it as a fishing camp in remembrance
of his best friend. The sign read Cappie's Place.

A month after Cappie's funeral, Joe walked
into the Sugar House looking for Charlie. Abe greeted him as he
walked into the office, and Harry tipped his hat and fell back
asleep in the corner of the room.

"Charlie's had to blow town for a while, Joey
O. And Shorr, well nobody's seen him in a few days. I'm running
things for now. What can I do for you?" Abe looked up from the
newspaper he'd been reading. "Stock Market Dips but No Need for
Worry" read the headline.

"I was thinking about taking some time off,"
Joe told the lanky gangster. Joe had decided he'd had enough of the
rum running business. Cappie's death had cut him to the core. He
wanted to get out while he still could. His nest egg could provide
him with a cushion until he decided what he wanted to do next.

"Oh yeah? How much time we talking?" Abe put
the paper down on the desk in front of him.

"A few months. I've been working for the
Sugar House for over ten years now, and I was thinking it might be
a good time to take a break. What with Cappie…" Joe let his words
fall short.

Abe sat up in his chair and scowled at Joe.
"You was thinking. You was thinking, was ya? Was ya also thinking
how we got about ten guys in the clink and at least that many at
the bottom of the river? Was ya thinking how Shorr is missing—maybe
kidnapped? Was ya thinking we still got an operation to run here?
Was ya thinking that, Joey O?"

Joe took a step back, startled at Abe's
sudden hostility. Harry looked up from under his hat and looked at
Abe and then back at Joe. "There's lotsa guys who'd take my place,
Abe. Hundreds that'd love to make some good dough. You don't need
me that bad." Joe sat down uncertainly in a chair in front of the
desk.

"You're right, Joey. There's lotsa guys who'd
kill
to make the kind of dough you've been hauling in. I was
just saying to Harry that your little brother Frank would probably
make a good runner for us. Wasn't I, Harry? He's older than you was
when you started here, isn't he, Joey?" Abe bared his teeth in an
evil smile. "What's he—seventeen, eighteen years old now?"

"Never mind, Abe. Leave Frank out of this. I
don't need a break. It was just an idea. Where you want me to go
today?"

***

Joe continued his collection route but focused his
mind on ways to get out from under the Purples that wouldn't affect
his family. The stock market had crashed three weeks later. Most of
Joe's money had been tied up in stocks, and he lost it all. He
threw his plans to leave the Sugar House aside and refocused on
trying to earn as much money as he could. The politicians were
arguing against Prohibition, and the public supported them. Women's
groups had joined the anti-temperance movement, crying that
immorality, vice, and loss of faith in the law had been caused by
the Volstead Act and that the Eighteenth Amendment should be
repealed. This time, Joe could see the writing on the wall.

Violence in the city was escalating. The
newspapers ran stories of suicides, floating bodies in the river,
and men gunned down in front of their homes daily. The public had
not protested the gang wars when they'd only been killing each
other, but citizens were getting caught in the crossfire, and the
taxpayers wanted some action from their corrupt police department.
A small girl aboard the
Columbia
on her way to Boblo was
grazed by a bullet when Federal agents chasing a bootlegger opened
fire. The Federal agents increased their raids on illegal drinking
establishments, but they didn't have the power to shut down the
almost twenty-five thousand that operated in the city alone.

Following Black Tuesday, tens of thousands of
people lost their jobs, and many more went to work but didn't get
paid. Henry Ford cut production and laid people off. Masses of
people left for the countryside, hoping to revert to their
agricultural roots, while more poured into the city looking for
work. The Capuchin priests of Detroit set up a temporary soup
kitchen to feed the hungry.

Joe's job had become extremely difficult, as
no amount of toys, groceries, charm, or booze could squeeze money
out of empty pocketbooks. He'd resorted to lighting firecrackers or
small pieces of dynamite behind still owners' houses or under their
bedroom windows and blowing them up in the middle of the night to
scare the owner to death. The following morning he'd arrive early,
while the unlucky bootlegger was still shaken up, and request the
Purples' percentage. Fortunately, his only victims were men, as
there were so many women cooking gin in their bathtubs now the
Purples had decided to look the other way out of fear of bad
publicity.

The only thing Joe didn't spend his time
worrying about was Marya. Frightened out of her mind and thinking
it was God's intervention that she hadn't died in front of that
speakeasy, she had joined the Felician Sisters two weeks after the
incident. Joe wasn't sure it would last, but with his cousin locked
up in a convent somewhere it was one less thing. He'd broke up with
Adelaide soon after, too. He thought it was better to let her go
than to have her wind up in the crosshairs of his profession.

Joe took a drink of his beer and looked around the
Bucket of Blood, a Purple Gang bar deep in the middle of one of the
city's poorest neighborhoods. Abe had told Joe to meet his brother
Ray at the grimy bar at nine o'clock. Two hours later he was still
waiting. In that time he'd seen two fistfights, one knife
pulled—countered with a broken bottle—and at least five prostitutes
leave with a "date." Red-eyed patrons smoked marijuana and passed
around joints (the only legal thing going on in the entire place).
Joe kept his mouth shut and sipped his beer, trying to decide how
much longer he was going to wait for Ray.

Ray sauntered in twenty minutes later, bought
two shots of whisky, and brought them over to Joe's table. "How's
it go, Joey O?" he said, laughing at his own joke.

"It'd be better if you'd gotten here two
hours ago like you was supposed to."

"Boy, you are wound tight! Abe told me so,
but I said nobody who brings in as much dough as you do could be.
Am I wrong?" Ray slicked back his hair and looked at Joe; his large
dark eyes looked like he hadn't slept in days.

"No, you aint wrong, Ray. So what's the
beef?"

"No beef, Joe. Just a little problem we need
some help with. Abe thought you'd be just the guy." Ray slugged
down his shot and looked at Joe. Joe made a cheers gesture and
poured it down his throat.

"Can I get you a beer, Ray?" Joe signaled to
the bartender, who brought two frothy mugs to the table. "So what's
the scat?"

"There's three guys from Chi-town that have
been edging in on our territory. They were working for us at first
and giving us a nice kickback too, but they've decided they're too
good for that now. They want to go out on their own. They've
muscled in on our deal with the River Gang and are selling them the
liquor they hijacked from us. Last month they tried shaking down a
couple of our gambling rackets, and they owe us more than fifteen
G's in back liquor money. Abe's had it. He wants the money now. So
he set up a meeting with the three hoods tomorrow at some
apartment. They say they got the dough, and all we gotta do is go
and get it."

"So what do you need me for?" Joe asked. He
looked toward the bar, where yet another fistfight had begun. The
bartender grabbed one guy by the neck and pulled out his gun on the
other. "Take it outside" was all he said, and the two brawlers
left.

"Ain't nobody home in that head of yours,
Joe? That's a lot of dough to be pulling out of an apartment in
broad daylight. And you never know what the palookas might try. We
need manpower in case there's a showdown. I got Harry and Milberg
coming, and with you that makes four, see? We'll outnumber them by
one. But not more than that, so they don't get too itchy."

"What time you want me to meet you?" Joe knew
better than to fight it. Might as well go along and try to keep his
head low.

"Pick us up at the Sugar House at six o'clock
tomorrow night. Ya want another beer?" Ray looked at Joe's empty
mug.

"Sure," he replied. If he looked like he was
in a hurry to leave, Ray would only prolong the meeting. They sat
and drank for another hour. Joe listened to Ray's female exploits
and made up some of his own for Ray's amusement. Joe left the bar
after midnight and drove home. Joe cracked the window of his car
and let in some fresh air. Joe's eyes burned from the dope and
cigars, and he coughed a few times trying to air out his lung. He
looked out at the streets as he drove through the city. Millions of
flashing electric lights marred his vision as he passed club after
bar after tavern. A cop car sped past him, and he had to swerve to
avoid a drunk crossing the street.

A pile of furniture was heaped in the alley
two doors down from his house. Another eviction. The landlords were
throwing tenants out of their homes at a record rate. It'd been a
year and half since Black Tuesday. Things were getting bad.
Shoeless children were wandering the streets, and women holding
babies begged on the corners.

Uncle Alexy had been laid off from the Ford
plant and couldn't find a job. Joe had saved a bit since the crash
and was helping them make do, but Pauline had to leave college and
find work. Joe had found her a job at a bottle factory; he didn't
mention that the Purples bought all their bottles from there. The
gang continued to increase their profit margins by cutting whisky
with dangerous dilutants in cutting warehouses all over the
city.

Joe fell into an uneasy sleep that night,
wishing Abe would just leave him his regular work and wishing
Charlie would return from wherever the hell he'd gone. He didn't
think of Shorr, who he was sure was at the bottom of the river. If
he believed the rumors, it had been by Charlie's own hand.

Ray was sitting in the passenger seat next to
Joe, and Milberg and Harry were in the back. Joe was driving slowly
through the city, fighting the traffic and pedestrians. He drove
west on Woodward to the outskirts of the city. Ray told him to turn
south on Atkinson Street. Harry was retelling a counterfeiting
story that had been in the paper that afternoon. A little girl had
walked to the local market and tried to pay for some candy with a
quarter. The grocery store clerk looked the quarter over and stated
it looked a little funny to him. Ray jumped in saying, "Hey I read
that! The little girl says, 'It should be fine. My daddy just
cooked it!'" The dark eyed gangster burst into guffaws and Joe
turned to look at him. Joe looked past Ray out the car window and
saw a house he remembered seeing as a child. It was Ty Cobb's
house. Memories of the baseball game he'd gone to with his father
came rushing back.

"Hey Joey! Where you going?" Harry yelled
from the back. "You gotta turn right here. Damn, Ray! What'd ya
have the Polack drive for?" Joe took a sharp right and turned west
onto Lawton Street.