Motor City Shakedown (32 page)

I laughed out loud. Elizabeth stared at him with a stony silence. Abe spun a chair around and straddled it, his forearms resting on the chair back.

“Never mind him, Abe. I need something. And I'll pay well.”

He pantomimed smoking a cigarette. “Got a smoke?”

“Sure.” I pulled out my case, and he took one. Elizabeth declined. I held the case over my shoulder, and Joey took one as well. It made me nervous to have him standing behind us, but I was determined not to show it.

“Light?” Abe said.

I slipped the lighter out of my coat pocket, flicked it open, and lit it. He leaned forward with his cigarette in the flame, held his hands around mine, and inhaled deeply. The cigarette flared. When I snapped the lighter shut, Abe's hand closed around it. I looked up at him, surprised.

“Can I see it?”

“Yeah, okay.” I let him take it from my hand.

He examined the engraving on the sides and held it up, turning it back and forth to reflect the light. “To Will on his grad … gradua…”

“Graduation day,” I said.

His eyes flickered to mine, showing his annoyance. “I know. I was figurin' it out.” He looked at the lighter again. “From his proud parents. Nice.” He handed it back to me. “Now, whattaya want?”

The old man returned with four cups and a pot of coffee. He poured, and Abe said, “Thanks, Mr. Markovitz. My friend here”—he gestured toward me—“is payin'.”

The man nodded and hurried back into the kitchen. I flicked the lighter again and held it up over my shoulder. Fabric rustled as Joey bent down; then I heard the inhalation right next to my ear, the fire and smoke being sucked into the tube, the popping of tobacco seeds. I flipped the lighter closed and tucked it into my coat pocket, my eyes on Abe all the while. “I need you to find some people for me.”

“Who?”

I leaned in closer to him. “The Gianollas.”

He looked around before whispering, “The
Black
Hand this time? Anderson, you play in the wrong side of the sandbox.”

“So you know them?”

“Heard of 'em.”

“Can you find them?”

Holding the top of the chair with both hands, he bounced back and forth. He hit the chair of the man behind him, who did nothing more than squeeze himself closer to his table. “If they're in the city, I can find 'em. Gonna be expensive, though.”

“How expensive?”

“Fifty bucks—half now, half when I find them.”

“That's a little steep, don't you think, Abe?”

“That's what it costs. Take it or leave it.” His bright blue eyes glinted at me from under his heavy lids.

“I'll pay it if you also arrange a meeting for me with Vito Adamo.”

“You're just spoilin' for a fight, ain't ya?”

“No. I just need to talk with these guys. I think the Adamos will want to meet, but I doubt the Gianollas will, so I just need to know where they'll be at a particular time.”

“Extra twenty bucks for Adamo,” Abe said.

I nodded.

“Awright. I'll even throw in a little information for free.”

“What's that?”

He held out his hand. “Thirty-five up front.”

He may not have had a lot of education, but his math skills were fine. I eyed him for a moment before pulling my wallet from my coat and handing over the money.

He tucked it into his pocket. “What you wanted me to look into before?”

“Moretti's killer?” I said.

He nodded. “Heard it was a pro.”

“Pro?”

“Assassin.” He seemed to relish saying the word. “Expensive one.”

“Did you get a name or description?”

“Nah. People don't talk much about these guys.”

“Who paid?”

Abe shrugged. “Don' know.” He stood and walked around the side of the table. “I'll call when I find them guys.”

“No, that won't work. Tell you what. Why don't you leave a message for me at the Cosmopolitan Hotel—Rivard and Wilkins.”

He cocked his head and gave me a puzzled grin. “Little ratty for the likes of you, ain't it?”

I shrugged. “Just convenient. Now, how do I get hold of you?”

Pointing toward the kitchen door, he said, “If you're gonna be slummin' down here, leave a message with Markovitz.”

I looked him in the eyes. “What if you don't find the Gianollas? What about my money?”

He laughed. “That ain't what you should be worryin' about. You should worry about what you're gonna do when I
do
find 'em.”

*   *   *

When we returned to the Cosmopolitan, we stopped in the lobby to use the pay phone. I dropped a nickel into the coin slot and the metal clamp over the receiver sprang open. Detective Riordan answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

“It's Will,” I said, my hand cupped over the bell of the telephone.

“Good. You're all right?”

“Yes.”

“Elizabeth too?”

“Yes.” My hand throbbed. I tried not to think about it.

“I talked to your father. You and Elizabeth need to get out of town, right—”

“Forget it. You can't do this by yourself. You've never even seen these people.”

“Will.” He sounded like he was trying to hold his temper. “Elizabeth doesn't belong in this.”

“Would you like to try talking her out of it?”

He grunted. “No. Your father said she wouldn't listen. But you have to keep her safe.”

I glanced back at Elizabeth. From behind, her small stature made her look like a boy playing grown-up in a suit and hat. “I will,” I said.

“I had warrants sworn out for Pinsky and Sam Gianolla,” Riordan said. “You gave the testimony, by the way. I'm sure I botched your signature, but it was good enough to get the ball rolling.”

“Good.”

“You two stay out of sight while I figure this out.”

“I'm not making any promises. I want the Gianollas.”

“Let me find them. You are in so far over your head you can't see the surface.”

I thought about my dream. “I'm used to it.”

He sighed. “All right. Call me tomorrow night.”

“Sure.”

“Is there a number I can get you?”

“I'm not sure where we'll be.” I didn't want to tell him where we were, in case he thought he ought to lock us up for our own good.

“Okay. But, Will?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“You too.” I hung up the telephone and turned to Elizabeth. “It's early yet. Would you like to take a walk?”

“Sure,” she said.

My hand had begun to really hurt. I excused myself to urinate, though what I did instead was duck into the bathroom for a sip of morphine. I wasn't sure I'd gotten enough, so I finished the bottle. We walked outside, and I looked up at the cerulean sky. Sunset was near. I filled her in on my conversation with Detective Riordan while we wandered down to Jefferson and along the riverbank.

The delicious fuzziness began to envelop me. We sat on a bench overlooking the river and just looked out at the water. As more of the morphine worked its way into my bloodstream, my mind began to soar, over the river, into the sky. My eyes closed.

“What's wrong with you?”

I opened my eyes and was surprised to see a young man sitting next to me. He wore a dark fedora and a black duster.
Oh, shit,
the little voice in the back of my mind said.
That's Elizabeth. I took too much
. The voice that so often hounded me was afraid, but it was barely a whisper in the roar of the freight train running through my head.

“Well…” My tongue felt too large for my mouth. I thought about that.

“Are you all right?”

I sat up straighter, tried to look alert. “Oh, yeah, just … thinking.”

“About what?”

“You know. This af-afternoon.” My tongue kept getting in the way.

“Are you on drugs?”

“No.” I tried to summon some indignation, but it was all I could do to speak intelligibly. “Of course not. I'm just … in shock.” I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself. “Aren't you?”

She looked at me a bit longer before turning back to the river. “If you say so.”

The next time I turned my head to say something to her, she was gone.

*   *   *

I was lying fully clothed in my bed at the Cosmopolitan when a knock on the door awakened me.

“Will?” Elizabeth called quietly.

“Mmph.” I cleared my throat and tried again. “Just a minute.” Remembering the night before, I felt a moment of sheer terror.
She knows.
“I'm not decent. Give me a few minutes.”

“All right,” she said. “I'll wait in the lobby.”

She walked off down the hallway, and I lay back with my hands over my eyes. Elizabeth knew I'd been taking drugs. I was going to lose her again. I pushed myself up in the bed, my back against the wall, and looked out the window to see a light rain falling. It was frightening how easily I'd fallen again into the morphine habit. It was natural, almost instinctive, at this point. But I was done. I had to be.

I pulled up the bedclothes and rooted around in the hole I'd cut in the mattress. Nothing. I dug deeper. Still no bottles. I struggled to remember returning to the room last night. Had I thrown them away then, or had someone found the bottles and stolen them? I sat on the edge of the bed and thought. It didn't matter. They were gone. Now I could get on with it.

Trying to ignore the throbbing in my hand, I put on my immigrant clothing. Even with the rain, the morning was hot and humid, so I left my duster in the room when I headed out. An old woman now sat behind the desk in the lobby, assembling corsages of silk flowers—no doubt how she paid the bills left unpaid by her hotel wages. She looked up at me when I passed, and I saw she was toothless, her mouth sunken in on itself.

I smiled at her and tipped my derby. “Good morning.”

She didn't reply, just bent once again over her materials, her jaw working back and forth as she sucked on her lower lip while fitting a needle into tiny stems.

I continued on to Elizabeth, who stood by the door. “Good morning, sir.”

She turned and appraised me. “You sound a bit better than you did last night.”

“Yes, I—I don't know what was wrong with me. Maybe yesterday hit me harder than I thought.”

Her eyes gave me nothing. “Okay.”

I looked away. “How about some breakfast?”

She nodded and ducked out into the rain. I followed her to a little restaurant across the street from the Eastern Market. While we ate, I glanced at her, trying to see her as a man. She would have been maybe sixteen, a short, slight young man, perhaps an artist or a teacher. No, she was too damn pretty for that. I gave up. “What should we do today?”

She swallowed the scrambled eggs in her mouth and said, “You should check with Mr. Wilkinson to see if your father has been in touch.”

“Right. What else?”

“I don't know. I thought you were the criminal mastermind.”

I thought about it. “Do you want to look around Little Italy? See if we can scare up the Gianollas?”

“Makes as much sense as anything else,” she said. “Until we hear from Abe I don't know what we can do.”

After we ate, I called my father's office from the Cosmopolitan's lobby and got Mr. Wilkinson on the phone. “This is Will. Have you heard from my father?”

“Yes. He sent a telegram.” He was quiet for a moment while papers rustled. “‘Tell Will to get out of Detroit, stop. We are on our way to safe place, stop.' Does that make any sense to you?”

“Yes. Excellent.” I thanked him and hung up.

We spent most of the day waiting at the hotel for word from Abe Bernstein, and the rest slogging around Little Italy in the rain, ostensibly to look for Gianollas, but in reality doing nothing but killing time. The rain had finally stopped when we returned to the hotel for good just after eight o'clock.

The little fat man was back on duty. He opened his eyes long enough to say, “Message,” and pushed a folded piece of paper across the counter to me. I picked it up and read it.

Tawked to both. Mich Coal Co docks 2 AM Bring my 35 AB

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A tingling sensation spread through my body. Tonight we'd meet with Abe and presumably at least one of the gangs. If it was both, we could end this. The Adamos wouldn't bypass an opportunity to kill the Gianolla brothers, regardless of who was providing the intelligence. I tucked the paper into my pocket and nodded toward the stairs. We hurried up to Elizabeth's room, and I handed her the message.

She glanced at it and looked up at me. “Can we trust him? Who's to say they don't just kill us?”

“Abe likes my money. I don't think he'd sell us out. Assuming he's arranged for both gangs to be there, this could be our chance to rid ourselves of the Gianollas once and for all. Can you … that is, are you sure you can do this?”

“I'll be fine. It's you I'm worried about.”

I didn't meet her eyes. “I'm fine.”

“You're not taking anything, are you?”

I didn't have to think too long to know what she was talking about. “No.” I met her eyes again.

She studied me for a long moment before turning away. “All right. I'm going to get some rest. Should we phone Detective Riordan first?”

“Maybe we should wait until tomorrow to talk with him. It's possible our problem will be solved tonight, and he won't need to get involved at all. And he certainly doesn't need to know what we're doing tonight.”

She looked doubtful but finally nodded. “Okay. I'll come get you at midnight. We should get there early.”

“Good. We'll pick up my car at the garage.”

She smiled and reached over, squeezing my good hand. “We can do this.”