Sugar House (9780991192519) (38 page)

"I'm so sorry, Joe. I'm sorry I couldn't
bring your mother's sister back to her. The young priest took me to
where the villagers buried her in the church graveyard. They
erected an elegant tombstone in honor of her. I etched a copy for
your mother and gave it to her. I had it framed, and she has it
hanging in the hallway of your home. It says:

Anna Sczytski

Silna i Piekna

Ukochany corka, siostra I Matka

Joe listened to his uncle and looked out onto
the gray rushing river. Now he would never meet his mother's
cherished sister. What a waste. At least she had a headstone.

"Wait! Mother? The tombstone said 'Beloved
Sister and Mother!" Joe cried, looking at his uncle.

"Yes, Anna had a little girl. She's four
years old. That was the other reason Anna had shot the lieutenant
and tried to escape back to the village. She couldn't leave her
little girl behind with no one to care for her. A neighbor of
Anna's brought her little girl to the church steps and Anna got to
embrace her and say goodbye before she took a final breath and died
on the doorstep of her Maker."

Joe jumped up from his seat and grabbed his
uncle and pulled him out of his chair. "Did you bring her here? Did
you bring my cousin to America?"

Uncle Feliks laughed and pulled Joe off of
him.

"Yes, yes, Joe. Katalina is with your mother
as we speak. Let's take a walk down by the water, and I'll finish
my story."

The men walked to the river and sat in two
rickety wicker chairs while Uncle Feliks told the rest of the
tale.

Feliks retrieved Katalina from the family who
had taken her in, and they sailed to England for Feliks to find a
way to earn passage back for himself and his little charge. He'd
hoped he could trade his second class return ticket in for two
third class tickets. But the exchange was not equal, and he had to
raise more money to afford the return tickets.

Feliks went out every day, taking the little
girl with him door-to-door, looking for small handyman jobs that he
could perform for the English. After several months, he had almost
enough for their fare and was encouraged by a rare sunny morning in
the usually gray and rainy city. Feliks and Katalina walked a
couple miles to the next hamlet, thinking he could earn the
remainder of their passage in a new town. To his shock, the second
door they knocked on was opened by Jenney—the woman he'd traveled
with from Detroit to England. She let him in, and they made up lost
time visiting, as the three young girls played in the garden.

The house didn't belong to Jenney, as he
initially thought, but to her aunt, who had gone to a nearby town
for some shopping. Jenney and her girls were living with the aunt
because her husband had died in an explosion at the factory where
he worked, not long after she returned. Her aunt was kind, but
Jenney felt as if they were a charity case. She longed to go back
to America as she had made many friends there and loved the hustle
and bustle of Detroit. She had a little money from the insurance
compensation from the factory but not enough to set up a home for
her and her girls in the States. Feliks, now in tune enough to know
when God was leading him in the right direction, said they should
marry, and he would be father to all three girls and be a good
husband to her. It took him several weeks of courting and planning
and charming until Jenney finally agreed. They combined their
savings and bought five third class tickets for America. They had
arrived in Detroit two weeks ago.

Uncle Feliks secured a job at a dairy
processing plant in the city and had just moved his new family into
a little rental house near there. It wasn't in Joe's neighborhood,
as his new bride didn't speak Polish; but it was only fifteen
minutes away by car. Jenney was a wonderful mother to little
Katalina, and they all were adjusting well.

Feliks beamed as he finished his tale. His
pride was almost palpable. Joe thanked him for bringing back his
mother's niece and congratulated him on his new family. They
retreated indoors for a quick lunch of sandwiches.

Feliks noted the exhaustion on Joe's face
from being up all night and said it was time for him to leave.
Making promises that he would come into the city within the next
week to meet Katalina, Jenney, and her girls, Joe reached out his
hand to say goodbye.

Feliks grabbed his hand and pulled Joe into
his body. Huskily he whispered to Joe," If it weren't for you, my
nephew, I'd be at the bottom of that river we were sitting by. You
think I don't know it? When I got back to Detroit, first thing I
did was got to the Sugar House to talk to your bosses. I told them
I've gone straight and I wanted to get set up on some sort of
payment plan to pay back my debts. But your boss Charlie told me
the money had been repaid a year ago and they had no issues with
me. That's when he told me how to find you."

"The money is a non-issue with me too uncle,"
Joe said. "I'm just so thankful you found Katalina and brought her
back so my mother could have a small piece of her sister here."

His uncle squeezed him tighter and whispered
in his ear, "I am indebted to you, Joe. I thought I would spend
years trying to pay back those gangsters and Jenney and the girls
would have to go without. You have given me more than I can ever
put into words." His eyes brimmed with tears as he released Joe and
went out the front door.

"What are you doing down here, Walt? Is there a
problem with one of the boats?" Joe looked up as his old friend
walked in the door of the river house with Cappie. He was puzzled
as to why Walt would come down to Wyandotte. In the five years
since the Sugar House Gang had hired Walt to work on their fleet of
speedboats, he'd never made a visit down the river to work on them.
As was initially agreed, Joe and Cappie had brought the boats to
Detroit for Walt to fix or alter in a garage the Sugarhouse had
built at the edge of the city. Joe was twenty one years old now,
and Walt twenty three. Cappie looked as if he never aged, but and
he didn't tower over Joe as much.

"No, the Purples are having a shakeup," Walt
replied. The
Detroit News
had begun calling the men who ran
the Sugar House the Purple Gang. "The coppers are coming down hard
on them lately, and the judges take their payoffs and still let
them sit in trial after trial. With so many of the boys sitting in
jail"—"or dead" was left unsaid—"and the gang having their hands in
so many pots, they need more help in the city.

"That's right, Joe," Cappie interjected. "We
just come from meeting in the city with them. Things are gonna be
changing."

Joe didn't like the direction this
conversation was heading. He liked his life downriver with Cappie.
It was quiet and steady. Sure they had to maneuver through the
federal agents on the river, but they'd been doing it so long it
just seemed like an average day at work for Joe. He loved being on
the river and running the boat or even hauling ass in the Packard
sedan he drove over the ice in the winter. The summer before he had
had the ingenious idea to pull the liquor in nets under the boat so
if they got pulled over they would just cut the nets and let them
sink to the bottom. He attached a block of salt to each net. When
the salt dissolved a few hours later, they could return to the same
spot and find their load floating on the water and retrieve it. His
idea had saved them a least fifty loads and certainly a jail
sentence or two.

Walt was correct in saying the cops were
coming down harder now. In the past three years the Purples had
been hauled into court too many times to count, although the jury
almost always came back with a not guilty verdict. Juror
intimidation, bribery, and buying alibis had started to take up
much of the gang's time. New bosses, henchman, toughs, and bookies
had to be brought up through the ranks while others sat in their
cells. The Bernstein brothers had so far come out unscathed, but
many others had been sent to federal prison or were found floating
in the river or had been shot down on the streets of Detroit.

"They had to shut down the boat garage in the
city… to many snoops around. So Abe said I should relocate down
here," Walt continued.

"Abe? He's giving orders now?" Joe said
incredulously. "Since when?"

"Since Shorr's been indicted by the Fed's.
And Leiter just got off on that extortion case, so he's gotta lay
low for a while. Abe, Ray, and Izzy are running things now, along
with a couple of other guys." Walt grabbed two beers out of the
icebox and sat at the kitchen table. He handed one to Joe and
opened his by slamming the cap on the edge of the table.

"What other guys? I work for Charlie, not
those damn Bernstein brothers. And certainly not for nobody
else."

"You do now, Joe. Harry Keywell and Irving
Milberg are running the show with the Bernsteins, and it's all
hands on deck, as they say. They want you to report to the Sugar
House in the morning. I'm supposed to learn your route tonight.
We're supposed to have a little meeting at the distillery with the
new owners, and then I'm to drop you off on Belle Isle, where
they'll be waiting for you. You can't go against those thugs, Joe.
It'll only mean being taken for a ride, and you know it."

Joe did know it. He'd heard rumors that
Keywell was at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and was named by a
Chicago landlady as renting a room across the street from the
garage where the murders occurred. Harry Keywell had been convicted
of extortion, for which he received only probation, and was known
as a brute with no conscience. Milberg had been involved with the
gang for years but was not widely known.

"So now you're gonna be running booze, Walt?
That's against your agreement you had with Charlie. What do you
know about this, Cappie?"

Cappie said that he'd heard it same as Walt.
Joe was furious. He'd gotten Walt the job, and now he was putting
his friend in jeopardy.

"Agreements change, Joe. I'm no baby anymore,
and neither are you. I've been thinking about joining the rum
running gig for a while now. Don't know if you heard, but I'm
married now and got a little one on the way. I could use the kind
of dough you've been making." Walt smiled and slugged Joe on the
shoulder. "I heard you've been making a killing in the stock
market."

"Oh, a little here and there… Cappie and I
have a lot of time on our hands down here, so we read the papers
and play in the market a bit. Seems like it just keeps going up and
up. And I heard about you getting hitched. Sorry I couldn't make it
to the wedding. Congratulations, I'm sure she's real swell. So you
and Cappie are gonna stay down here while I… do what?"

"You know I wouldn't be privileged to that
type of information, Joe. Just got my orders, and I'm repeating
same as I heard them. Well, you ready to take a ride in that fine
speedboat of yours?"

The men grabbed their guns and went down to
the boathouse for Joe's final run up the river. The late autumn
night was cold, and the harvest moon was a glorious orange globe
that hung low above the Canadian side. Walt related the details of
the meeting to Joe on the trip up to Walkerville. Recently the
distillery had begun to allow airplanes to fly liquor out of the
country, and the federal agents were getting red-assed from the
aerial acrobatics of planes flying over the river day and night. It
was against Canadian law to export liquor by airplane, and the
Canadian officers were adding heat to the fire. Joe and Cappie were
to make an arrangement with the Canadian Club owners to halt the
aerial distribution.

Going under the Ambassador Bridge was still a
thrill for Joe. He pointed out the large trucks that were most
likely smuggling liquor over it to Walt. Joe and Walt pulled into
the docks behind Cappie's boat and threw their ropes to the dock
men. They climbed onto the shore and were shown a door on the side
of the distillery that led to the basement.

Cappie opened a heavy wooden door, and Joe
and Walt followed him into a circular room. Warm, red brick made up
the walls, and thick wooden beams supported the ceiling. A large
bar stood against the right side of the room, and an enormous round
table with twelve chairs dominated the space. A painting of a black
thoroughbred horse hung on the far wall. Two men in business attire
sat at the table and stood when the trio entered. Joe immediately
felt like a second-hand player, dressed as he was in his waders and
a flannel jacket.

A distinguished man in his forties, Harold C.
Hatch had bought the operation from Hiram Walker's sons a couple
years before and was training his son Clifford in the distillery
business. The self-made millionaire and his son were the
no-nonsense type. After offering the three rumrunners a glass of
twenty year reserve, they got to the business at hand.

"Where's Bernstein?" the older man asked. "I
was told this meeting was going to be with him and his
associates."

"Abe couldn't make it. He's got some heat on
him in the city, so he sent us. Your men know Joe and Cappie well.
This is just a small conversation that never happened anyway,
right?" Walt replied. He sounded nervous. Joe gave a look to Cappie
to encourage him to take over the meeting.

Cappie straightened out all six foot four
inches of his frame in the chair and began, "Mr. Hatch, the Sugar
House has come into some heat due to all the aero planes that have
been flying in and out of Walkerville. The U.S. government has set
up sessions with the Canadian parliament to discuss why they're
allowing this to go on when it is against their own laws. Now we've
got a good thing going here—all of us—and we don't need no nosy
politicians in here trying to make a name for themselves by
stirring up a bunch of trouble." Cappie took a sip of the smooth,
amber liquid, set it down, and looked Harold straight in the
eye.