Whiskey River (5 page)

“You admit you’re a bootlegger?” I had my notebook out.

“Why the hell not? Even the coppers don’t tip a joint over unless there’s something going on there besides liquor. Nobody ever screwed a shotgun into a guy’s ribs and made him take a drink, for chrissake.”

“Can I quote you on that?”

He made an expansive gesture and picked up his sandwich. “That was a hell of a story you wrote about Little Augie.”

“Did you know him well?”

“I just paid him. He was a good driver up to the last five minutes. Ha-ha.” He took a bite and washed it down with milk from a tall glass.

“What about the Stutz?”

“It was his, I guess. I don’t notice cars much. I’m happy with my old can. Anybody pays more than six hundred for a fucking car, he’s a sucker.”

I wrote it down, editing out “fucking.’ I tapped my pencil on the edge of the pad. “Was it because of my column you invited me here for this interview?”

“Well, I was hoping you’d be a dame. Ha-ha. But the real reason you’re here is Hattie.”

“Hattie Long?” I hadn’t seen her in months. She and the rooster had set up shop in River Rouge by then.

“I was with her when the paper came out with your piece. She said you was the scribe that sat on the story when that j. p. croaked on Vernor a couple of years back. She didn’t say you wasn’t a dame. What kind of name’s Connie, anyway?”

“She said something about my getting my fingers broken if I wrote it up.”

“I don’t work like that,” he said, without conviction. “Well, that was one piss-poor night. It was a couple of them Purple Gang pukes done it, Harry Fleischman and somebody named Goldbloom or Kornstein, some kike name like that. I heard they took a boat ride.”

The Ecorse Police had gaffed a pair of bobbing corpses identified as Harold Lewellyn Fleischman and Frank Kornblum downriver a week after the poisoning at Hattie’s. Someone had tied a car battery around each man’s neck, but the weight hadn’t been enough to hold them down once they bloated. No arrests were made in the case. Naturally I wasn’t writing any of this down.

Joey was still talking. “So it was good to read the paper the next day and find out this guy, this justice of the peace—whatsizname, Wheeler?”

“Turner.”

“—this guy Turner had a coronary in his own bed. A guy gets himself poisoned in one of your joints and people catch on, it don’t do much for business. That’s why you’re here. A scribe that can keep his lip buttoned is worth looking at.”

“So this is a reward.”

“Call it anything you want. I don’t give out a whole hell of a lot of interviews. I ain’t Capone.”

I didn’t believe it. The Machine largesse was restricted to those who could do him a favor, not those who had already done him one free of charge.

“Are you in the Mafia?” I asked.

He mugged over his half-eaten sandwich at Polacki, who grinned back with all six of his teeth. “No, you got to be Sicilian to join that club. My people was Calabrese. I can’t hack the lingo. I was born in Manhattan.”

“Do you cooperate with them?”

“Just write that Sal Borneo and I stay out of each other’s pockets.”

I did. Salvatore Borneo was the president of the local branch of the Unione Siciliana, which was what they were calling themselves then. “Who killed Phil Dardanello?”

“Nobody killed Phil. He was welding a patch on a gas tank when it blew up.”

The explosion in the garage had literally torn Joey’s partner to pieces; he had been positively identified from part of a finger retrieved from an exhaust manifold. There had been a careful investigation, because on the morning of the day of the accident Joey had removed a brand-new tow truck from the garage and parked it down the street. He’d said they needed the room. In the end the coroner had ruled death by misadventure. Dardanello’s passing left Joey Machine alone in charge of the most profitable bootlegging operation east of Lake Michigan.

Something for the sports page. “Who’s your favorite ballplayer?”

“Charlie Gehringer. I support the home team.”

“Do you go to the games?”

“I got a box.”

“Do you use it often?”

“I ain’t used it yet. It’d be like painting a bull’s-eye on my forehead for the kikes.”

“What do you think of Herbert Hoover?”

“He’s getting a raw deal. They’re pinning this economy thing on him when they ought to be blaming Coolidge. Old Cal spent all his time sailing his fucking yacht up and down the Potomac, what do you expect?”

“Did you vote in the last election?”

“No. First time I voted was for Harding, and when I saw what we got I figured I didn’t deserve to have the vote.”

“Do you know Al Capone?”

“Know him. Don’t like him.”

In fact he had been quoted as saying that if that fat gorilla ever set foot in Detroit he’d send him back to Chicago in a boxcar. That didn’t alter the fact that Capone was Joey’s biggest customer for Old Log Cabin.

Already it seems strange, this eagerness to know what a cheap gangster had to say about sports and politics and the celebrity scene. I wouldn’t ask such questions of the lunks you see pictures of today climbing the courthouse steps holding their hats in front of their faces. Teapot Dome had fed us our fill of shifty-eyed Democrats and chortling Republicans, against whom the frank braggadocio of the slum rats who in a few short years had gone from stolen Fords to armor-plated Cadillacs seemed honest by comparison. You sneered at the religious hypocrisy of an Aimee Semple McPherson, but a mug accustomed to front-and-profile shots who posed shaking hands with Jack Dempsey and John Barrymore was someone to listen to. I don’t know that he wasn’t, comes to that. What were the merchants who dumped British tea into Boston Harbor, if not hijackers and bootleggers?

The interview continued in that vein, punctuated at intervals by the racing of an occasional engine below and blue exhaust rising between the floorboards. After twenty minutes I had a dull headache. How Joey stood it day after day was one for Harry Sinclair. I decided his pasty complexion was not due to lack of sun so much as monoxide poisoning.

The telephone rang again. Joey speared it and leaned back with the earpiece and candlestick receiver in one hand. “Machine.”

That was where I came in. I put away my notebook and pencil and stood up. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Machine,” I whispered. “If I hurry I can make the evening edition.”

He shook his head and pointed at the chair. I sat back down. I wasn’t going anywhere with the Polish Corridor blocking the exit anyway.

Joey had finished his sandwich. When he was through on the telephone he emptied his glass in a long draught that left a skin of cream up the side. “What kind of dough are you getting at the
Banner
?”

I’d had this conversation before.

“I tried firing a tommy gun on the police range once, Mr. Machine,” I said. “I blew out the ceiling light and they took it away from me. I’d make a lousy rumrunner.”

“That ain’t what I asked.”

I told him what they were paying me. He looked at Polacki. “Same as you, Dom.” The big man said nothing. “Dom didn’t make it past the third grade. He sits around all day waiting for the shit to hit the fan. For that I pay him as much as you, and you got talent.”

“You ought to pay him a lot more. Nobody’s asking me to take a bullet with his name on it.”

“That ain’t the point. Who’s your boss?”

“Howard Wolfman.”

“For real?” I didn’t answer and he stopped grinning. “What kind of car’s he drive?”

“I’m not sure he drives.”

“Well, how’s he dress?”

“Cashmere and gabardine.”

“I figured. A guy like that spends more on spats than he pays you. Wait a minute.”

A black iron safe with a combination dial the size of a baseball squatted on the floor behind the desk. He bent over it, swiveled the dial, and removed a brick of currency from inside. It made a solid thump when he threw it on the desk. “Count it.”

What the hell. I picked it up, wet my thumb, and riffled through the twenty-dollar bills. There were fifty.

“One now,” he said, “and one the first day of every month. Go ahead, put it in your pocket.”

I held on to it. “What am I selling?”

He sat back, drumming all his fingers. Beneath our feet a hydraulic lift let go with an asthmatic wheeze. “You used to work for the
Times,
right? You ever read it? I mean all of it?”

“Everything but fashion.”

“I’ll bet you another stack of bills just like that one you never read the reports from the Federal Reserve.”

“You’d win. Only bankers pay attention to that stuff.”

“What if I told you fifty thousand Detroiters read it every day, wouldn’t miss it?”

“I wouldn’t call you a liar with Dom standing there.”

“Not all of it,” he said. “Just the last three digits. You ever hear of the policy racket?”

“Oh, numbers. The African lottery. The coloreds in the Bottom pick three numbers from a dream book and blow streetcar fare on them. Is that how they pick the winner?”

“It’s ironclad. They publish it daily and it can’t be rigged. I know because I tried. You know what streetcar fare comes to times fifty thousand? Every day?”

“Jesus.”

“That’s just what that greaseball Borneo said when I laid it out, only he didn’t want to go partners because he’s happy with booze. He’ll lose his ass when they vote out Prohibition.”

“Think that’ll happen?”

“Got to. We got a depression on our hands and the feds are going to want to tax something. Meanwhile I’m doing my part, getting money back into circulation with the policy business. That’s how I want you to write it up.”

“You want a press agent?” I was goggling.

“If that’s what it’s called. If that fat slob in Chicago can open up soup kitchens, Joey Machine can spread the wealth. It’ll keep them reform biddies off my neck.”

I put the sheaf of bills on the desk. “Thanks, Mr. Machine. I’m not your man.”

“Honesty jag, eh?”

“Not hardly. I’ve got a living to make in this town and you might not always be here.”

“Know something I don’t?” He grinned and winked at Dom Polacki.

“It would be like you trying to pass off that yak sweat they stir up in Hamtramck as the real Canadian. Pretty soon nobody’d believe you even if you served the McCoy.”

When he made no response, I took out my notebook and flipped it on top of the bills. “I guess that means no exclusive either. I’m sorry I wasted your time.” I stood.

“Write up the piece.”

I left the notebook where it was. “Strings?”

“Just one.”

I waited.

“I got a guy working for me wants to be a newspaper writer. He begged me for this job but I wanted a pro. Okay, so I give him a chance. They ain’t filled your old spot yet at the
Times;
I checked. I figure a letter of introduction from you will square it for him.”

“You’re overestimating my drag. They were plenty sore when I left.”

“All the more reason to hire somebody you put up.”

I rubbed my eyes. The atmosphere in the room was making them water. “You had this in mind all along, right? You never thought I’d take the job.”

“I don’t play games with dough. What about it?”

“What if the guy stinks? We’re still talking about my reputation.”

“What’s it worth to you?”

“Not money.” I leaned on my hands on the desk. Polacki didn’t stir from the door. I didn’t know if that was an honor or an insult.

“I want to go on your next run to Canada,” I said. “No reporter has ever gone on one. I want to be the first.”

He blinked. “You said you wasn’t no rumrunner.”

“I’m not. I won’t use any names. I just want to see how it works and write about it.”

“That’s if you don’t get shot first. Or fall through the ice like Augie.”

“I can’t believe you’re worried about that.”

“I am, though. They’d say I had you croaked, like Capone did Jake Lingle.”

“I’ll be careful.”

A big truck coughed and started in the garage below, making the desk vibrate and drowning out any further discussion. Joey put the bills in the safe, locked it, and spun the dial. The motor died. He sat back.

“I’ll call you.”

Thirty minutes later, he did.

O
N THE DAY OF
the Canada run, I got into the office early, knocked out a column based on an interview with Colonel H. W. Aldjen of the Rapid Transit Commission about a rumor that Henry Ford and Walter P. Chrysler were conspiring to squeeze out the city’s streetcar system, and went home at noon to sleep. I was to hook up with the motorcade in front of the Acme Garage at 11:00
P.M
.

My alarm jangled at 9:00. By then I’d been awake for some time, listening to cars swishing through the slush on John R and trying to talk myself out of the growing conviction that I’d made a mistake. Even Joey Machine paid combat wages to border parties, and here I was waiting to join one for the same yard and a half I made taking notes in some bureaucrat’s heated office in the County Building. Falling through the ice was the least of my worries. Hijackers didn’t hold their fire to check for noncombatants. In a kind of demi-dream I saw my riddled body turning in the gray current, covered with hoarfrost.

At length I rose, showered, and dressed in long flannels, two pairs of thick socks, canvas work pants, a heavy blue turtleneck pullover, navy pea jacket, watchcap, and galoshes. I felt like Valentino preparing for a bullfight in
Blood and Sand.
From my top bureau drawer I took a hammered silver flask, filled it with rye from a pinch bottle I’d been saving since Christmas, and slid it into a slash pocket. Finally I pulled on a pair of fleece-lined gloves and went out. The cold made me gasp. The thermometer was crowding zero and there was only a thin sheeting of cloud between the earth and frozen outer space.

The ten-minute walk to the garage on Griswold might as well have taken an hour. Stiff winds slapped me around on street corners and, as I trudged along with my chin tucked into my collar, the air prickled in my nostrils. My face was a numb mask. I tried not to think about what it would be like out on the lake.

Eight cars were parked against the curb in front of the garage, big square antiquated sedans and ragtops with chains on their tires and toolboxes, spare tires, and gasoline cans lashed to the running boards. They looked black and grainy behind swarming bits of bitter snow blown up from the ground, like a newsreel I had once seen of an army convoy crossing Siberia. I had just stepped under the light of an electric sign when a man the size of Dom Polacki wearing a fur hat and a raccoon coat moved in front of me. He had both hands in his pockets.