The Detroit Electric Scheme (13 page)

I pulled myself to my feet. “All right, I'll leave.” I turned and headed down the walk before looking back at him. He stood at the top of the steps, finger pointing over me toward the Detroit River. I pointed back at him. “You're making a mistake.”

“I'm making a mistake?
I'm
making a mistake?” Spittle flew from his mouth in a fine mist. “You arrogant piece of dung. The only mistake I've made was not having you killed.”

He knew what I'd done to Elizabeth.

I turned away, mumbling, “I'm sorry.” I walked out the gate and headed downtown. Helping Elizabeth would be impossible. She hated me. Her father hated me. Besides, if I wanted to stay out of prison I had to find out who killed John Cooper.

As I walked down the sidewalk, eyes on the pavement, Cooper's telephoned warning went through my head.
She's in trouble, Will, big trouble.
He had paused for a second. When he resumed, anguish seemed to pour from his voice.
I can't fix it. I need your help.

John had always believed he could fix anything. And he was nearly right. But now he was dead, killed by whatever malevolent force had taken the Doyles' lives with ease and without a second thought. Elizabeth's trouble had to be intertwined with these deaths. I was sure she was in grave danger. Even so, I waffled on whether to stay or go
back to the hospital, not certain how I could help either Elizabeth or Wesley.

Finally, I decided to wait Elizabeth out. Either her mother and father would leave and I'd try again to get into the house, or she would go somewhere and I'd follow her. There was nothing I could do for Wesley, and it was only a matter of time until I was arrested and my chance to help either of them evaporated.

I limped across the street to a grassy spot a block down from the Humes' and sat in the shadows under a maple tree still half covered with dulling yellow leaves. The street was lined with automobiles and wagons parked on both sides, but I could see the Humes' house clearly through the entrance to the boat ramp, empty this time of year. I picked up a maple leaf and began to idly pick it apart, tearing the brittle ochre skin alongside the veins.

The judge's glossy black opera coach, pulled by two jet-black horses, drove off a few minutes later, his personal chauffeur at the reins. The curtains were closed, but that was nothing unusual. Fearful of assassination, Judge Hume always had the curtains closed.

I watched the white wooden swing on the Humes' porch sway in the breeze, could imagine the creak of the chains as the swing moved back and forth. The porch had been our refuge from Judge Hume, the only spot he deigned public enough for us to be alone. Elizabeth and I would sit on the swing with glasses of iced tea or lemonade, feeling the heat from the other's body, perhaps allowing our fingers to intertwine in the shadows between us.

Five years had passed since we fell in love. Though we had been seventeen, impossibly young, our love was destined, it seemed. But it was gone in an instant, an instant that destroyed both of our lives.

I crumpled the remains of the leaf and threw it aside.

The morning passed with no sign of Elizabeth or her mother. I was beginning to think about abandoning my vigil and going to see Wesley when Mrs. Hume's coupé pulled up to the curb in front of their house. It was a black 1909 Baker Electric, purchased a few months after Elizabeth had made it clear she never wanted to see me again.

A young man in white coveralls climbed out, wiped down the door
handle, and locked the car before walking west to catch a streetcar that would bring him back to the Rumsey Garage, the Baker dealer and servicer. I stood and stretched. A few minutes later Elizabeth walked out the front door with Alberts, who was dressed in a gray uniform with knee breeches. Elizabeth wore a periwinkle dress with white lace from her bosom to the dress's high collar, and a matching hat, its brim a yard wide, plumes of egret feathers falling down her back. Emaciated or not, she was breathtaking.

Alberts unlocked the passenger door, held it for Elizabeth, and climbed in the other side. They headed west toward downtown. I followed on foot. The speed limit and snarled intersections made it easy to keep the car's tall coach, not much different from the judge's horse-drawn version, in sight. They turned right on Woodward and right again on Gratiot before Alberts made a U-turn and pulled up to the curb opposite the J. L. Hudson building. Elizabeth got out and hurried into the B. Siegel clothing store. From across the street I saw her in the window watching the automobile as Alberts drove off. She turned away, and I ran across the street into the store.

From the entrance, I did a quick scan and didn't see her. I trotted through the store, looking around racks of colorful dresses and row after row of ladies' hats. Turning the corner into the men's department, I caught a glimpse of periwinkle as it disappeared out the back door. I ran through the store and burst out the back just in time to see Elizabeth, holding up the hem of her dress to keep it out of the alley's mud, turn the corner of the building, and head back toward Gratiot.

My first impulse was to chase her down and force her to tell me what was going on, but I decided that following her might be more enlightening. I peeked around the corner and waited until she turned east on Gratiot, then ran through the alley after her. I expected her to turn off on Broadway, Randolph, or Brush, but she kept going, walking a few steps and then running, seeming torn between speed and inconspicuousness. She looked back a few times, but I stayed a block behind her and out of sight.

Gratiot is lined with businesses and generally safe, but now she entered a dark territory of crumbling tenements and cramped wooden
houses. When she turned down Hastings I almost broke into a run to catch her and drag her away. Gray buildings with laundry draped from broken windows slumped over a muddy dirt road filled with trash. The air was foul from the overflowing outhouses along the street. Filthy children played in the mud. Women talked and shouted to each other in Russian, Hungarian, Italian—a bouillabaisse of cultures crammed together.

Elizabeth slowed in front of a squat wooden building near the corner of Hastings and Clinton. The small sign in front simply read
DRUGS
. She stopped, and looked up and down the street. I ducked behind a horse cart buried to its axles in mud. When I looked out, she was gone. I took a few steps toward the store. The door of the drugstore banged open, and Elizabeth backed out, shouting curses at someone inside, then turned and ran to the equally decrepit wooden building on the corner. I hurried after her, but when I saw the sign over the door, I stopped short, frozen in place.

The sign, a weather-beaten board splashed with faded black paint, read
THE BUCKET
. I had never been here before, but I knew the name. The Bucket was the most notorious saloon in Detroit, its reputation for violence so great that the newspapers called it the Bucket of Blood.

 

I swallowed hard walking through the mud toward the door Elizabeth had entered. Weathered boards showed through the gray paint flaking off the outside of the building. The sound of a piano playing a surprisingly good version of Joplin's “Elite Syncopations” filtered out under the thick wooden door hanging crooked over a battered sill. I hopped up on the boardwalk, grabbed the door's handle, and pulled it open.

The piano player, a young black man with a cigarette hanging from his lips, pounded on the ivories in the corner. The room reeked of stale beer, cigars, and sweat. A gray smoke cloud hung over a dozen men sitting hunched and lifeless at a chipped walnut bar. Three surly looking white men were playing cards with a grizzled Negro at one of the cracked wooden tables scattered about in no apparent configuration. Seeing the black man at the card table stopped me for a second. There were few Negroes in Detroit, and I had never been in a saloon that allowed them as patrons.

The only women I could see were a pair of prostitutes in heavy makeup and calf-length satin dresses who stood near the card players, rooting them on.

The energetic rag ended with a flourish, and the piano player started in on “Bethena,” a mournful tune more in keeping with the environment.
The barkeep, unshaven and every bit as unkempt as the clientele, shouted at me, “He's not here.”

I walked tentatively toward him over the stained plank floor, almost on tiptoes. “Who?”

“Whoever you're looking for.”

I stopped behind a man on a stool, his head slumped atop the bar. “It's a she,” I said. “The young lady who just came in here.”

The barkeep spit tobacco juice toward an unseen spittoon and looked back at me with contempt. “She ain't here.”

“No, she is.” I tried to sound friendly, like I knew he had made a mistake. “I just saw her come in.”

“She ain't here.” He leaned over the bar and spit a brown wad on my right shoe.

I glanced at my shoe and struggled to maintain an even tone. “Look, I saw her come in here not two minutes ago. Just tell me where she is.”

He hawked up a wad of mucus, and I was pretty certain I knew where it would be headed. “Please,” I said. “I just want to get Elizabeth—”

“Big Boy!” the barkeep shouted. “Got us a tough guy!”

A man, well, more like a mountain, stood up at the other end of the bar and sauntered over to me with an amused smile on his face. He was tall, easily six-four, and huge, two hundred fifty-plus pounds of solid muscle. His head, the shape of an engine block and probably just as hard, had closely shorn dark hair exposing tiny ears. “I like playing with tough guys,” he rumbled, “but you look like you might be a disappointment.”

I held up my hands in front of me and backed away. “I don't want trouble. Really. I'm just looking for a girl.”

“Ain't we all.” He wore a sleeveless undershirt that exposed bulging biceps and triceps and a number of other muscles I was quite sure I didn't even have. I kept backing up until I reached the wall, and he stopped only when his chest touched my chin. Something cold and hard pushed against my ear. Without turning my head, I cut my eyes in that direction. A very large revolver was pointed at the side of my head. My guts roiled.

“We get a lot of hoodlums in here,” the giant said. “But we don't get a lot of swells.” The cold barrel of the gun caressed my cheek. “And
when they get out alive, they never come back.” He smiled. His big teeth stood out like pickets.

“Please,” I said. “You don't understand. She's in trouble, and I need to help her.”

He stepped back and used the revolver to turn me toward the door. The barrel jabbed me hard in the back, and I stumbled forward.

“If she wasn't in trouble before she came in here,” the deep voice whispered in my ear, “then she sure is now.”

He grabbed hold of my neck and slammed me against the door face-first. My nose crunched and exploded with pain. Bright lights flared in front of me. He tossed me out onto the street, and I collapsed in the mud, tears mixing with the blood streaming from my nose. It was quite a while before I could collect myself enough to stand. I gingerly touched my nose and almost fell back into the mud from the pain.

I didn't know what to do. To go back in would be suicide. Finally, reckoning a live coward had a better chance of rescuing Elizabeth than a dead hero, I crossed the street, hid at the side of an abandoned livery stable, and watched the door. I tilted my head back and pressed my handkerchief against my nostrils, trying to ignore the pounding in my head and the crimson blotches spreading on my shirt.

A few minutes later I heard a muffled scream. I ran toward the saloon, and the screams got louder. When I was halfway across the street, the door burst open, and the giant, holding Elizabeth by the hair, pushed her through it. Screaming hysterically, she flailed her arms at him to no effect.

“Hey!” I shouted, running up to them. “Let go of her!”

The bouncer pulled the big revolver again and stuck it in my face while continuing to hold Elizabeth at arm's length. She thrashed and shouted out vile curses.

A deep voice with an Italian accent purred, “No, Big Boy. Let him take Miss Hume away from here. She might need more motivation.” A handsome man around thirty years old sauntered out the door, fitting a gray derby onto his head. He had an olive complexion, waxed mustaches framed by a sharp nose and a small mouth, and a thick shock of black hair.

Elizabeth reached around and slashed her fingernails across the giant's face. He backhanded her, and she flew onto the muddy street. I jumped toward him, but stopped when he thumbed back the hammer on the huge gun.

“I thought I told you to get out of here,” he said, and threw a short left into my stomach that felt like it went all the way through me. I landed on the street near Elizabeth. My chest heaved as I struggled for air, a strange groaning noise coming from deep in my diaphragm.

The Italian man leaned over the edge of the boardwalk, careful not to get his shiny black shoes muddy, and looked into Elizabeth's face. “Think about my proposal, Miss Hume. I can make you happy again.”

She screamed and leaped to her feet, swinging her fists, but the giant put a hand against her sternum and shoved her off the boardwalk, knocking her on her back again. This time she stayed there. The two men walked back inside the saloon.

Eventually I caught my breath and picked myself up from the mud. Elizabeth was still lying on the street, sobbing. I helped her up, pulled her hat out of the mud, and began walking her toward Gratiot, speaking in a soothing tone. “It's going to be okay. We'll get through this.” My nasal voice sounded like someone else.

Elizabeth's body was shaking. I took my first good look at her face. Her eyes were wide, pupils huge. Her face glistened with perspiration, and a line of clear mucus ran from her nose.

“We need to get you to a doctor.”

“No, Will,” she murmured. “Just leave me alone.”