The Detroit Electric Scheme (26 page)

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Do you think your father could have been involved in John's death?”

“No.” The word seemed to come out automatically.

“Why not?”

“He loved John.”

“Loved John enough to go to prison for him?”

She didn't answer.

We left the apartment at 2:00
P.M
. With the lapels of my suit coat raised and Elizabeth enveloped in her coat, I hailed a cab to take us to Dr. Miller's. We were lucky enough to get a Yellow Bonnet to stop for us, one of the Chalmers 30 limousines, black with a bright yellow top. We sat on opposite sides. Elizabeth huddled down in her seat, glum and brooding. I looked out the window, not feeling much different.

I tried to sort out my feelings for her. I had loved her with every fiber of my being. I had grieved her loss for more than a year. And now I had thrown my life away trying to save her. Back when we were together she was intelligent and warm and fun. Now she was a drug-addicted liar. I still loved her, yet she disgusted me.

Once we emerged from the slums, I saw that the city had transformed. Christmas decorations had sprung up out of nowhere. Evergreen boughs wound around the street lamps, wreaths hung on doors of homes and businesses, tinsel adorned trees alongside the roads. But stranger yet was the stillness. The streets, normally crammed with vehicles on a Thursday afternoon, were empty. I leaned forward and asked the cabdriver why that was.

“It's Thanksgiving,” he said. “Where ya been? China?”

Thanksgiving. I had never missed a Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house and suspected Elizabeth hadn't, either. My family—mother and father, sisters and their husbands and children—was sitting down to turkey, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. Amid all this insanity, life went on.

Just not for us.

It was a quick drive to Dr. Miller's house. His butler answered the door and let us in the side entrance to the office. A few minutes later the doctor greeted us, and he and Elizabeth went into an examination room for fifteen minutes or so. When they came out he was forcing a smile. She looked miserable.

“She's going to be fine.” Dr. Miller patted Elizabeth's shoulder like a kindly grandfather. “Bed rest, food, water.” He turned her toward him.
“But it's up to you. You've done the hard part. Now you have to stay strong.”

Sighing, she nodded and looked at her feet.

The cabbie was still waiting at the curb when we left the office. I guided Elizabeth inside first and climbed in behind her. After I gave the cabbie the Humes' address, he pulled away from the curb.

I tapped the armrest with a finger and spoke casually. “Why didn't you go with Frank?”

Elizabeth's eyes darted toward me. “What?”

“He loved you. Why didn't you go with him?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Elizabeth.” I shook my head. “Don't even try. It was practically all you talked about while you were on the belladonna.”

“But I don't . . . He didn't . . .”

“It was because you didn't love him, wasn't it?”

She looked away and answered quietly. “Yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

After a brief hesitation, she said, “All right. But give me a cigarette first.”

“When did you start smoking?”

She shrugged, staring straight in front of her.

I pulled a cigarette from my case and handed it to her. Lighting it, I said, “So?”

She took a long drag. “Okay. I got a letter from him.”

I tried not to show my surprise. “When was that?”

“A few days after John was . . . you know.”

“What did he want, besides for you to come with him?”

“He said he was sorry he left without saying good-bye. He wanted me to know that he went to Denver to get away from the Employers Association, that it was turning him into a bad person.”

“Right. And how were you supposed to get hold of him?”

“He said he'd contact me.” She glanced at me and then dropped her eyes to the floor of the cab. “Frank always liked me.” She was talking so quietly I could barely hear her over the road noise and the taxi's gasoline engine. “He tried to help me out after I got addicted. He told
me John had a mistress. Frank said he'd never do that to the woman he loved.” She took another drag on the cigarette and let the smoke drift out from the corner of her mouth.

“Could I see the letter?”

“I threw it out. I like Frank. I don't love him.” She looked out the window and gave a quiet laugh. “He said he would come back for me in his merry Oldsmobile. His words.”

When she said “his merry Oldsmobile,” alarms sounded in my head. That niggling thought that had been bothering me for so long finally coalesced, hitting me like a lightning bolt. At the train station, one of the twins had been standing next to a red Oldsmobile touring car—a red Oldsmobile Palace touring car. I cursed.

“What?”

“Frank's red Oldsmobile! It was at the train station when the Doyles got killed and it was gone when I went back. Frank was involved in the bribery. He's on the run. Son of a bitch. It's Frank. Frank's the killer.”

 

Elizabeth looked bewildered. “Train station? Doyles? What are you talking about?”

“Never mind that.” I grabbed hold of her arm. “It was Frank who killed John. I'm certain of it.”

Her mouth tightened. “That's crazy. Frank wouldn't have killed John.”

“He was involved in the bribery, too, wasn't he?”

“I don't know.”

“Elizabeth!”

“I don't know.” She shook my hand off her and looked out the window. “No one ever said.”

“I'm betting he was. And that's why he killed John. Frank is a violent man. You have to stay away from him.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“If he loves you, wouldn't he do anything to be with you?”

The cab jerked to a stop. A trolley was crossing the road in front of us. “Well . . . No. Not Frank. They were friends. He looked up to John.”

“But John had you. And maybe John was going to testify against him. Frank couldn't be with you if he was spending five to ten in the penitentiary. Elizabeth, you need to wake up. Frank's a killer.”

Her brow furrowed. The cab started up again. After the clacking of
the trolley's metal wheels had faded into the distance, she said, “I don't know. Perhaps you're right.” She looked uncertain and young, too young to have to deal with this nightmare.

“I am right. If you hear from him again, you've got to tell me.”

“Well . . .”

“Promise me.”

She tapped her ash into the ashtray and took another pull on the cigarette. The ember was almost touching her fingers.

“Elizabeth, you've got to promise me. I just want what's best for you.”

She opened her window a crack and flicked her cigarette butt onto the street. “All right. If I hear from him again, I'll let you know.”

“But why would Frank frame . . .” Then it hit me. “Elizabeth, did you tell Frank about . . . your situation?”

She looked back at me, her eyes dull, blank, dead. “Whatever are you talking about, Will?”

“You know.”

She stared at me for at least ten seconds before turning away and looking out the window. “Not that I remember. But there's a lot I don't remember.” She was quiet for a moment. “And a lot more I wish I didn't.”

We rode the rest of the way in silence.

 

After leaving Elizabeth outside her home, I directed the cabdriver to my apartment, fantasizing about a hot bath and a change of clothes. When he turned onto Peterboro Street, I was happy to see an empty lawn in front of my building. Whether it was because of Thanksgiving or not, the reporters had given up, at least for now.

The fare came to $2.20. The cabbie waited at the curb while I ran inside to grab some more money.

Two steps in, my throat collided with a solid object. My feet flew out from under me, and I landed hard on my back. That same fat policeman leaned over me, a stupid grin underneath his bottlebrush mustache. My throat was on fire.

“That's called a clothesline, chorus boy. Remember that the next time you want to run.” He cuffed me, and he and his muscular, slack-jawed
partner dragged me to a horse-drawn paddy wagon parked off Second Street. I only now realized that I hadn't seen one of Sutton's men at the door of my building.

The cabdriver followed us, protesting all the way that I owed him money. At the back of the wagon, Bottlebrush pulled out his truncheon and tapped it against his palm while staring at the cabbie, who wisely decided to retreat. When I climbed in the back of the wagon, Slack Jaw shoved me, and I fell to the floor of the stench-ridden cage.

“Asshole,” I muttered, and pushed myself up into a seated position. The wagon rocked as the cops climbed on. The reins snapped, and the horses clopped along, moving the wagon in a hypnotic rhythm—forward, pause, forward, pause.

The rhythm didn't calm me. The longer I sat in the back of the wagon, the more enraged I became. I was innocent, yet I was headed back to jail, almost certainly because of Judge Hume. It seemed unlikely I'd be leaving again before I was sent to prison for the rest of my life. And I just kept taking it, a lamb to slaughter.

Why? Why did I accept this treatment? I wasn't afraid to die, but I continued to let Wesley, the Doyles, Mr. Sutton, fight my battle for me. Wesley had been shit on all his life and still had more fight in his pinkie than I had in my entire body. He didn't even have a stake in this game, other than his friendship with me, yet he was a samurai while I cowered in the dark, afraid of getting hurt.

I screamed out an animal roar, and another, and shook the bars at the back of the cage with all my might. I was through being everyone's patsy.

At the Bethune Street station, the policemen handed me over to a guard, who shoved me back into the jail and down a darkened redbrick corridor. I tried to shake his hand off me and was rewarded with a smack to the side of my head.

Unlike the last time I was here, the criminals in the cells we passed didn't harass me. To all appearances, I belonged here, not a swell, an easy mark. That was a start.

The guard stopped at a large cell near the beginning of the hallway, uncuffed me, and unlocked the door. Three men lay on a matching
number of benches, four others on the filthy concrete floor. Two toughs stood by the door, arms crossed over their chests, menace in their eyes.

The guard pushed me into the cell and slammed the door shut.

I ignored the men and walked toward an unclaimed section of brick wall, trying to look mean.

“Hey,” a voice called from behind me. “Mary Ann.”

I turned slowly and gave the man Wesley's dead-eyes look.

He had a week's growth of beard over a narrow face, eyes close together. His small mouth turned up in a grin, exposing a number of dark spaces where teeth should have been. He glanced at his partner, eyes wide. “Eww, he's a scary one, ain't he?” Neither of the men were particularly big, but they had the look of predators—grim sets to their mouths, tendons taut in the forearms, an unmistakable animal gleam in their eyes.

The first man looked down at my feet. “Them's some nice boots you got there. I could use some nice boots.”

I said nothing, just kept giving him the dead eyes, as I got angrier and angrier.

The man sauntered over to me, his face now inches from mine. “I bet you'd like to give me them boots for a Thanksgiving present, wouldn't you?” His breath reeked of rotting teeth.

A white-hot ball of rage rose from my gut. I kneed the man in the groin as hard as I could. His body jackknifed toward me. I grabbed hold of his greasy hair with both hands and jerked his head down as my knee thrust up again, catching him squarely in the face. He fell to the floor, groaning and cupping his genitals in his hands. I kicked him in the stomach, twice, before I was able to get control of myself.

Barely breathing hard, I stared at the other tough, eyes dead again. He looked away. I kept staring at him. “You want my boots?” I really wanted him to want them.

He didn't look at me. “Uh, no, no, my shoes is fine.”

I turned and walked over to the bench, adrenaline pumping through my veins, and sat next to a man who had managed to stay asleep through the ruckus. I looked around the cell, blank face topped by dead eyes. No one returned my gaze. I wasn't happy or exultant over my victory, but I
felt a satisfaction I never had before—pleasure derived from hurting someone.

Maybe I had a chance for survival in a place like this after all.

 

The rest of the prisoners left me alone. I sat on the bench and thought. I had to have been arrested because of Elizabeth. As soon as she talked to the police, they would let me go. Between now and then I had to keep myself in one piece.