Motor City Shakedown (33 page)

Trying to look confident, I nodded and squeezed back. “I'll see you in a bit.” I returned to my room and sat on the edge of the bed, checking the load on my pistol and shotgun. I was ready, but I was afraid. Even if the Adamos helped us, this would be a dangerous mission. The Gianollas would be armed to the teeth and ready for trouble. We would be facing one of the most dangerous gangs in Detroit. I was putting Elizabeth squarely in the crosshairs.

Still. Killing Sam Gianolla after what he did to Joe … I was game to try it. I'd see if Elizabeth was.

She knocked on my door a few minutes later. Her fedora was pulled low over her forehead, and her black duster hung nearly to the floor. Even though she made a very small man, tonight she looked like a tough.

I slung on my duster and fit the shotgun into the lower inside pocket. Without a word, we descended the stairs and walked out of the hotel into the dark, heading toward Woodward. Clouds obscured the moon and stars. Few people were on the street. The area was quiet, little noise other than distant automobile motors, the faint sound of a crowd, a piano player banging out ragtime.

I stopped Elizabeth a block away from the Detroit Electric garage. “Wait here while I get the car.”

She nodded. I hurried to the garage and knocked on the door underneath the red metal archway. Perhaps half a minute later, Ben Carr's elfin face appeared at the bottom of the window in the door, looking up at me. I hadn't seen him for how long—two years? It didn't seem possible. But I imagined that, after I nearly got him sent to prison, he avoided me as much as my guilt made me avoid him. To his credit, his expression remained neutral when he saw me.

He unlocked and opened the door. “Mr. Anderson?” His tone was wary.

“Just picking up my car, Ben.”

“Sure.” He didn't meet my eyes.

“Could you get the door for me?”

“Sure.” He walked toward the overhead door, and I grabbed my key from the board. I scanned the room, looking for my Torpedo among the automobiles arrayed against the walls. It wasn't hard to find, being the only ugly car among the hundred or so shiny Detroit Electrics. While I started it, Ben raised the door. He gave me a halfhearted wave as I drove past him, turning up Woodward toward Elizabeth.

Before she got in, she slipped one arm out of her duster and slid the strap of the Marlin rifle off her shoulder. She placed the gun in the backseat and climbed in. We drove in silence down to Jefferson and west, past Zug Island and its massive foundry. The blast furnace threw a hellish white light over the shoreline. After we crossed the River Rouge Bridge, I took a left on Pleasant Street, and we headed down toward the docks. I switched off the Torpedo and let it glide to a stop two blocks over and three blocks back from the coal yard. When my motor shut down, a low rumble became apparent—the foundry. Once we were out near the water, the noise from the blast furnace would obscure small sounds. We'd have to be very alert.

Elizabeth pulled the .32 from the pocket of her duster and popped out the magazine. “Have you checked your weapons?” Her voice was higher than normal, tight.

“Elizabeth, you don't have to do this. Here.” I pulled the car key from the ignition and handed it to her. “Go back to the hotel. I'll see you there.”

She was quiet.

“I won't think any less of you.”

“No.” Turning to me, she said, “I have to. I have to do this.”

“Please. Go back.”

“No.” This time she sounded certain. “Do me a favor, though. Check your ammo.”

She popped the magazine out of her pistol and looked at it. I dug into my pocket, feeling bullets and shotgun shells … and something else. My hand froze in place. Two little bottles. I must have hidden them there last night while under the spell of the opiate. When I had a chance, I'd dump them. I pulled my hand from my pocket, stepped out of the car, and reached back for my shotgun. Elizabeth grabbed her rifle and hid it under her coat again. “Let's go.”

“All right. But if anything goes wrong tonight, let's meet at the car as quickly as possible.”

She nodded.

I climbed out. Flood lamps on the corners of a few buildings provided the only illumination. Staying in the shadows of the redbrick warehouses lining the road, we walked down to the coal yard. The street dead-ended at the Michigan Coal Company's office, a squat cement-block building with a few flood lamps around it. Jutting out from both sides was an eight-foot-tall wooden fence topped with barbed wire, dozens of coal pyramids backlit behind it.

We stopped in front of the building. “Why don't you go down that way,” I whispered, pointing to my left. “See if there's a way in. I'll look on this side. We'll meet back here.”

“Okay.”

“Be careful. They could have somebody here already.”

She nodded. We separated, and I hurried around the perimeter of the fence. It ran down into the river and out perhaps fifty feet into what I assumed would be deep water. But if we couldn't get in any other way, we could swim it. I returned to the front of the building. Elizabeth appeared a few seconds later. “It looked to me like we could swim around the fence,” I whispered. “Anything else on your side?”

“No.”

“Let's go back to the warehouse and wait for Abe.”

We walked across the street and sat on the warehouse's stoop, hidden in the shadows. I listened to the faint rumble from Zug Island, remembering my journey through the snow with Elizabeth's father's body and my fall into the icy water.

My memories, it seemed, were virtually all of bad things—tragedies, lost love, foolish blunders, missed opportunities. Surely good things had happened to me once upon a time. But I couldn't think of any without the pull of their resolution. My father believed I would be the man to carry on the family business, building it to even greater heights. I rewarded him with drunkenness, open disregard, and dereliction of duty. Elizabeth gave me her heart. I rewarded her with my stupidity and brutality, and her love for me resulted in the ruination of her life. And it indirectly caused the death of both her father and my best friend.

Elizabeth nudged me and whispered, “Someone's coming.”

*   *   *

I looked up the street and saw no one. Then a quick movement caught my eye as a shadow flitted into the gap between buildings. Taking care to be quiet, I stood, pulled my pistol, and scanned the area for perhaps five minutes. Elizabeth stood next to me doing the same.

“Hey, Anderson.” The whisper came from the edge of the stoop, only a few feet away. I must have leaped three feet into the air. Elizabeth whirled around, pointing her gun at the unseen man.

She grunted as it was torn from her hand. “Settle down there, sport,” Abe said with a smile, the glint of his teeth reflecting a far-off light. “It's only me. Got my thirty-five bucks, Anderson?”

“Are they both going to be here?”

“No. Gianollas.”

“What about Adamo?”

He shook his head. “Ain't gonna meet with ya.”

“Shit!”

I glanced at Elizabeth. Her eyes were hidden by the fedora. “Give me my gun,” she growled at Abe.

“Sure, sport,” Abe said. “Just didn't want you shooting an innocent man.” He handed the gun back to her. “Now, about my dough?”

Even though he hadn't gotten us a meeting with Vito Adamo, I pulled the full thirty-five dollars from my wallet and gave it to him. Without even looking at them, he slipped the bills into his pocket and said, “Come on.”

He trusted me. He lived in a world in which trust was dangerous, yet he trusted
me
? Must be because I posed no threat to him. He could make me disappear just as easily as the Gianollas or Adamos could. Abe was an intelligent boy with the wiles, charisma, and morals of a politician. He was going to be a formidable man.

He led us around the left side of the fence. About halfway down, he pried off a board and turned back to us. “Nobody else needs to know about this,” he whispered. “Once't in a while we need some coal.”

“No problem,” I said. “We'll keep it quiet.”

“Awright.” He rested the board against the fence. “They oughtta be here soon. From what I hear, the shipment's comin' in at two.”

“Shipment of what?”

He shrugged. “Booze? Wops? Drugs? How should I know? And what does it matter, anyway?”

“You're right. It doesn't.”

“They'll bring the truck to the docks through the gate in the middle.” He pointed over the fence toward the river.

I extended my left hand to Abe. “Thanks.”

“Don't mention it.” He took my hand and pulled me a little closer. “And I mean that.”

“Not a problem. I understand.”

“Okay then.” He let go of my hand and sauntered off, not a worry in the world.

“Will,” Elizabeth whispered. “What are we going to do?”

“I was thinking we could watch them, assess the situation. If it's only the Gianolla brothers, or we get a good chance to kill them, we should do it. Otherwise, we can just watch. Maybe we'll come up with something we can use against them.”

She didn't say anything for a moment. Finally she nodded. “You're right. Who knows if we'll get another chance.”

“Let's go in. See how the place is laid out.”

Elizabeth nodded and slipped through the hole in the fence. I grabbed the loose board and squeezed through backwards, then propped the board into the hole. Elizabeth stood about ten feet away, surveying the landscape. We skirted a few coal piles and walked toward the river. Another fence ran parallel to the shoreline, blocking off the coal yard from entry via the river. A pair of ten-foot-wide gates stood at the center, secured in place by iron rods set into metal sleeves in the concrete. I pulled up one of the rods and swung the door out far enough for us to slip through. The hinges creaked. Three long docks, each about fifteen feet wide, cut out into the river. Empty barges sat at the two outside docks. A cement path the width of a road ran from the end of each and converged in front of the gates.

“Okay,” I said. “They'll almost certainly open both of these gates. With my weapons, I'm going to have to be close. But you can stay farther back, use the rifle. We'll catch them in the cross fire.” The farther I could keep her from the action, the better.

“There's no cover here besides the fence,” she said, gesturing around us. The coal piles were all at least fifty feet from the gate, far outside the range of the sawed-off.

“What if … What if I got down underneath the center dock? They won't be looking for anyone there. If the situation's right, I'll blow the Gianollas to pieces with the shotgun. Otherwise, I'll sit tight. You do the same.”

“You'll only shoot if the odds are with us?”

“Of course.” But that wasn't what I was thinking. This might be the only chance I got to kill the Gianollas. With them dead, my loved ones were safe. If I had to, I'd die to make that happen. We walked back into the coal yard, and I pointed toward a towering pyramid, a triangle of void, darker than the night. It just happened to be the coal pile closest to the loose board in the fence. “Use that pile for cover. If they search the yard, you'll be able to sneak out. If not, you can pick them off with the rifle.”

“Okay.” She sounded breathless.

“Listen, Elizabeth.” I took hold of her elbow. “Don't shoot until I do.”

“How will I know it's you?”

I hefted the shotgun. “You'll know.”

“Okay,” she said again.

“We'd better get into place.”

She reached out and touched my arm. “Be careful.”

“You too.” I stepped back outside the gate. Elizabeth swung it shut and rammed the iron rod back into place. I could hear her footsteps crunch on the coal dust as she moved away from me.

I caught the flash of headlamps near the office building and heard the low rumble of a gasoline engine. The Gianollas. I ran down to the river, lay down, and slipped under the center dock. My heels and the backs of my ankles were in the water, my forehead only six inches below the wooden slats. I hoped Elizabeth was well hidden.

The sound of the engine grew louder, and light from headlamps squeezed through cracks in the fence. Half a minute later, hinges creaked, and the engine revved.

They were driving out to the docks.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The sound of the engine got louder, and headlamps lit the riverfront.

It was then that I saw the spiders—hundreds of fat spiders on the underside of the dock, some within inches of my face. The activity and light had stirred them into a frenzy. One dropped onto my forehead. I swatted at it, hitting the dock as I did, rousting even more of its friends.

The engine was very close now, and the lights fixed on the dock. I froze. A pair of boots clomped onto the wooden slats, directly over me. Another spider and then another dropped onto my face and proceeded to crawl over my eyes, past my mouth, down my neck. It felt as if thousands of them were crawling over my body. The Gianollas' men walked only inches above me, but it was all I could do not to run screaming into the water. I screwed my eyes shut and tried not to move.

The men were talking, though I didn't understand a word of it. One of the voices sounded familiar, and finally I placed it—the three-fingered man who drove when they kidnapped me. With panic only seconds away, I pushed myself a little farther into the river. The cold water filled my boots and lapped at my calves. The spiders still danced their dance on my face, down into my shirt, who knew where else. I tried not to think of where else. I pushed myself down a few feet more into the river. The water was nearly at my waist now.

The kidnapper stopped directly above me. I froze again. He lit a cigarette and dropped the match into the water. It hit with a sizzle, which startled me, and I jerked my head toward the sound. A sharp pain flared in my cheek, and, without thinking, I slapped at it, spattering a juicy spider over the side of my face.