Desperate Detroit and Stories of Other Dire Places Read online

  He was turning from the door, pistol in hand, when his head exploded.

  The coroner assigned cause of death to a blow that caved in his skull, pieces of which clung by blood and gray matter to a blackjack, discarded without fingerprints.

  Zev Issachar controlled most of the illegal gambling between Chicago and the East Coast. At seventy-two, he was retired, but there wasn’t an underground casino or unsanctioned high-stakes poker game that didn’t pay him tribute. He’d changed his name legally from Howard Needleman before applying for residency in Israel to avoid arrest. Tel Aviv had turned him down.

  He was awaiting trial for violation of the laws of interstate commerce. It was a rap he could beat, but he considered the electronic ankle tether humiliating, and it aggravated his arthritis.

  On Saturday, he boarded a van belonging to the Justice Department, bound from his modest home in Highland Park to synagogue, in the company of two U.S. deputy marshals. Inside the temple, as his manacles were being removed, a man dressed as a Hassidim shot him three times in the chest before vanishing into the crowd waiting for the inner doors to open. Zev died instantly. The marshals gave chase, but found only a coat, hat, wig, and false whiskers in a pile by the fire exit.

  “I thought we’d moved beyond all this after nine-eleven.”

  Inspector Deborah Stonesmith commanded the Detroit Major Crimes Unit, which was helping to coordinate the efforts of the three major homicide divisions involved. She was a tall, handsome black woman with reddish hair, dressed conservatively in tweeds. The only touch of femininity in her office at 1300 Beaubien, Detroit Police Headquarters, was a spray of peonies in a vase on her desk.

  “That’s just it.” Wes Crider, a homicide lieutenant, lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “These mobsters think we’re too busy looking for Islamic Fascists to bother with them.”

  “They never heard of multitasking? If this is the Russian Mafia taking on the black Mafia, or the Jewish Mafia taking on either of the others, it’s a turf war. Targeting all three makes it something else.”

  “A synagogue, yet; a place of worship. Is nothing sacred?”

  “As opposed to plain murder? Who else we got?”

  Crider took out a notebook with scraps of ragged paper sticking out of the edges at every angle, like Grandma’s cookbook. “Kim Park? Got all the massage parlors nailed down; prostitution, with a little shiatsu on the side. Korean Cosa Nostra.”

  “He’s a maybe. What about Sal Malavaggio? He’s a sitting duck in that halfway house. Security there’s to keep them in, not others out.”

  “He’s strictly a Mustache Pete. Those Sicilians went out with Pet Rocks.”

  “Let’s put a car out front, just in case. Who else?”

  Flip, flip. “Vittorio Bandolero, runs the best restaurant in Mexicantown. Smuggles illegals into the country. Last time his people thought they were being tailed, they machine-gunned the carload.”

  “Next.”

  “Jebediah Colt: Jeb the Reb, on the street. Dixie Mafia, Stolen Goods Division. Fences everything from bellybutton rings to catalytic converters.”

  Stonesmith smiled. “I’ve seen his file. Sweetbreads in his freezer is what he’s got for brains. What else?”

  “That’s the kit. All the Mafias: Russian, black, Jewish, Asian, Mexican, Dixie, and the Sicilian original. You know, if they’d just trademarked the name—”

  “They’d be Microsoft.”

  “Sí, I understand. I, too, would exit the driver’s seat of a truck when a helicopter flew overhead; however, I might have waited until a searchlight came on, just to make sure it wasn’t a traffic vehicle from a radio station.”

  Vittorio Bandolero hung up and scowled at the man seated across the desk. They were in the back room of the Mexicantown restaurant whose income he reported to the federal government for taxation purposes. “I am losing patience with Immigration. Not all of my people have the slightest interest in overthrowing the government. I merely want muchachos who can fry a tortilla and cut the occasional throat. Is that too much to ask?”

  Bandolero’s segundo, a small man with scars on both cheeks and black hair swept back from his temples—longer than those on top, like the fenders of a 1949 Mercury—moved his shoulders, paring his nails with a switchblade. “There are people to grease, jefe. We should meet with them.”

  “Dónde?”

  “The Alamo; ten o’clock, so I am told.”

  The Alamo Motel stood on East Jefferson facing the river, a dump that rented rooms by the hour. Bandolero knocked at the door he’d been directed to. It opened at the pressure of his fist. He stepped inside.

  Something swooped, tightened around his throat. He couldn’t get his hands under it. He thrashed, crooked his elbows, made no contact. His tongue slid out of his mouth just before he lost consciousness.

  The first officer on the scene reported a deceased male, apparently strangled to death with nylon fishline.

  Deborah Stonesmith stood over the body of Vittorio Bandolero, dragged into a sitting position against the wall of the motel room. The fishline was embedded two inches into his neck.

  “No more Mr. Nice Guy,” she said. “Someone’s moving in.”

  Lieutenant Crider said, “We need to open a tip line. An army of hit men can’t go unnoticed for long.”

  “So it’s an army.”

  “We got us an ice pick, a bludgeon, a gun, and a garrote. Heavy-lifters specialize. Nobody uses this much variety.”

  “One does,” she said, smoothing her tweed skirt. “I thought he was dead, or moved—or hoped so; but wishful thinking never got nobody nothing but thinking wishful.”

  Kim Park had come to the U.S. with a dollar eighty-seven in his pocket; also three hundred thousand dollars in Krugerrands in the false bottom of his suitcase, belonging to a Detroit politician who died before taking delivery. Park had invested this windfall in a string of massage parlors. He found America truly to be the Land of Opportunity.

  The girls were skilled. What did it matter if their trained hands were joined by their bodies, so long as they split the tips with the management? But then an undercover cop had found a girl willing to testify that she’d been sold into slavery by her parents. She’d managed to stumble into a number of Dumpsters between Detroit and Flint: her torso here, a leg there, and her head and hands who knew where. A man couldn’t be held responsible for the bad choices of all his employees.

  In any case, Kim Park never went anywhere without a train of vice officers making note of where he stopped and whom he spoke to. It pleased him to think of them stuck in their cars while he took a steam in one of his own places in Detroit.

  He’d just poured a dipper of water over the heated rocks when the door opened, stirring the thick vapor. He grinned, expecting a half-naked Korean girl ready to escort him to the table. His head was still wearing the grin when it rolled out of the steam room, cut off with a hunting knife found in a towel hamper, its handle wiped clean.

  Sal Malavaggio selected a cigar from the humidor on his desk, rustled it next to his ear, dropped it back into the box, and shut the lid. “Remind me to order fresh cigars. I kept better than these did.”

  “Way ahead of you,” Miriam Brewster said. “A colleague in Key West has a standing order of Montecristos. Two boxes on the way.”

  Malavaggio, short and stout, with a glossy head of dyed-black hair, had chosen Brewster out of vanity; she was an inch shorter than he was, and fatter yet in a tailored suit. But she had turned out to be a double blessing as one of the country’s foremost Constitutional scholars.

  “Tell me again about overturning RICO.” He settled himself in the upholstered leather chair, taking in the comforts of home for the first time in fifteen years.

  She sat facing the desk and crossed her chubby legs. “It will take years, and maybe a change or two on the Supreme Court, but anyone can tell you it’s a jump-wire around the Bill of Rights. The government couldn’t get your people legally, so it crooked the system. In a way it
was a victory for you.”

  “Yeah. That brought me comfort in stir, while them animals took over the works. Russian Mafia, black Mafia, Jewish Mafia, Asian Mafia. They couldn’t even come up with a name of their own. But I’m changing that.”

  He looked at his Rolex, lifted a remote off the desk, and snapped it at the new flatscreen TV mounted on the wall opposite. A local reporter stood in front of one of Kim Park’s rub-a-dub parlors, chattering breathlessly as morgue attendants carried a body bag on a stretcher out the door. “Trouble with whacking a chink,” Malavaggio said, “an hour later you want to whack another one.”

  “I didn’t hear that.” Brewster’s lips were tight. “Be patient, Sal, I beg you. What good’s winning our point when you’re doing life for murder?”

  “What murder’s that, Counselor? I was checking out of the halfway house when some feccia made that improvement in Jackie Chan’s looks. Same place I was when the Russky bought it, and the porch monkey and the Hebe. Sounds like the start of a joke, don’t it? They go into a bar?”

  “Sure, Sal. You’re clean.”

  “Cleaning house,” he said. “When I’m through, everybody’ll know there’s only one Mafia.”

  Colt’s Ponies sold campers, travel trailers, and motor homes from four locations in the Detroit metropolitan area. The business provided an income Jebediah Colt could declare on his taxes and a neat bit of camouflage: Who’d look for a trailer containing hot transmissions on a trailer lot?

  He’d declared his independence at fourteen, when he cold-cocked his father with a meat hammer, stole a car, and drove north to assemble Mustangs at Ford River Rouge. He was fired for stealing tools and parts, but by then he’d put enough away to open his own full-time business at twenty. He dealt in jewelry, rare coins, copper plumbing, and genuine factory auto parts, all stolen.

  He hadn’t much overhead. All you needed was a roof, preferably one with wheels; that way, when you got the tip a raid was coming, all you had to do was hitch up and move to another lot. Now he owned a fleet of Mustangs he hadn’t had a thing to do with in the manufacture and a house in Grosse Pointe, down the street from the Ford family itself.

  “Mr. Colt? Deborah Stonesmith. I’m an inspector with the Detroit Police Department.” The tall black woman who’d rung his doorbell showed him a shield.

  “You got a warrant?”

  “I’m not here to arrest you. I assume you’ve heard about the recent gangland killings.”

  He grinned his baggy grin, scratched the tattoo on his upper left arm. “No shit, you’re here to protect me?”

  “We’ve got a car on this block, an early response team in radio contact, and a man on each side of the house. I’m going to ask you to stay in tonight. Since this business started, no more than two nights have passed between killings. This is the third since Kim Park’s.”

  His smile vanished. “That pimp? What’s the connection?”

  “We think someone’s out to eliminate the competition in organized crime in the area. You and Salvatore Malavaggio are the only honchos left. My lieutenant is at Sal’s place in Birmingham, explaining these same arrangements.”

  “Well, I’m expecting delivery of an Airstream at my lot in Belleville, straight from the factory. I like to be there when something new comes in.”

  “You can inspect your swag another time, Jeb. Either that, or we’ll send a car to follow you; for your own safety, of course.”

  Macklin spotted the early response van first thing. The panels advertised a diaper service, a stork in a messenger’s cap with a little bundle of joy strung from its beak. There wasn’t a playset or a bicycle or anything else on the block that indicated a resident young enough to have small children. He drove past, located the unmarked car containing two plainclothesmen drinking Starbucks across the street from Colt’s house, and saw flashlight beams prowling the grounds.

  A big-box department store stood near downtown, connected with a service station. He bought a two-gallon gasoline can, put in a quart from the pump, stashed it in his trunk, and entered the store. In the liquor section he put a liter bottle of inexpensive wine into his basket. Browsing in entertainment, he came upon a James Brown retrospective on CD and a cheap player. He bought them at the front counter, along with a package of batteries and a disposable lighter from the impulse rack.

  The restrooms were located inside the foyer. Finding the men’s room empty, he unscrewed the cap from the wine bottle and dumped the contents down the sink. In the parking lot he opened his trunk, the lid blocking the view from the security camera mounted on a light pole, filled the bottle with gasoline, replaced the cap, wrapped it in an old shirt he used for a rag, tucked the bundle under his arm inside his jacket, slammed the trunk, got into the car, and drove away.

  Three blocks from Jebediah Colt’s house, a FOR SALE sign stood in the yard of a brick split-level on a corner. The inside was dark except for a tiny steady red light.

  There were no security cameras visible. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell; a househunter, hoping to catch someone at home. When no one answered after the second ring, he produced the CD player from under his coat, placed it on the doorstep, and switched it on, turning up the volume until James Brown’s lyrics were distorted beyond comprehension. He returned to the car, moving quickly now, drove around the corner, opened the gasoline-filled bottle, spilled a little onto a piece he’d torn off the old shirt, stuffed the rag into the neck, and lit it with the disposable lighter. When it was burning, he opened the driver’s window and slung the bottle at the nearest window. The security alarm went off shrilly.

  The bottle exploded with a whump and the flame spread. He drove away at a respectable speed, hearing the Godfather of Soul screaming at the top of his lungs from the direction of the burning house.

  Police on stakeout might ignore a house fire, expecting local units and the fire department to take care of it; but someone screaming in the flames was another story. The early response team reported the hysterical noises over the radio, and within five minutes Jeb “the Reb” Colt was a man alone.

  The sirens started up with a whoop, loud enough to make him jump up from in front of the NASCAR channel and draw aside his front curtains. The noises were fading away. He got his nunchuks from the drawer, turned off the lights to avoid being framed in the doorway, and stepped onto his front porch.

  He saw an orange glow three blocks away and lights going on in his neighbors’ houses. Shrugging, he swung the chuks together in his fist and turned to go inside. Someone stood between him and the doorway. The heel of a hand swept up, driving bone splinters from his nose into his brain.

  Miriam Brewster switched off the flatscreen and turned to Malavaggio, leaning back in his desk chair with his pudgy hands folded across his broad stomach and his lids drifted nearly shut. He looked like a toad. “I don’t suppose you know anything about this.”

  “The arson? Insurance job, probably. Guy can’t keep up his mortgage, he torches the place for case dough.”

  “I mean Jeb Colt.”

  “One cracker more or less don’t mean much to the world.”

  “You must have squirreled away plenty before you went to prison. Six hits in ten days, all professionally done. That doesn’t come cheap, even on double-coupon days.”

  “Even so, I arranged a discount. Why pay for finished work? What’s he going to repossess?”

  She made him stop before sharing any details.

  Macklin had several ways of knowing when someone had entered his house when he was gone. Whoever it was, cop or killer, had stumbled on the one least subtle, forgetting which lights he’d left on and which he’d turned off. He didn’t even have to stop his car. The windows told him everything.

  In the crowded parking lot of a cineplex, he used his burn phone one last time to call Leo Dorfman.

  “How’d he know where I live?” he asked.

  The lawyer didn’t ask who. “I never told him; but his outfit’s got its thumbs in lots of places,
why not realty agencies?”

  “I need to have been somewhere else when most of those packages were delivered.”

  “Most, or all?”

  “All would look like planning. I can tell ’em I went to the movies for the others.”

  “Okay.”

  The parking lot exit passed over an ornamental bridge leading to the highway. Macklin threw the phone out the window into the swift little stream.

  Dorfman would take care of the cops; if it was cops. If it was a killer, all he had to do was cut off the source of income.

  Salvatore Malavaggio snipped the end off a crisp Montecristo, got it going with a platinum lighter, and blew a smoke ring at the acoustical ceiling in his home office. It had been a good first week out of stir. The Russian, the black, the Jew, the Mexican, the chink, and the hillbilly were gone, leaving a void only an experienced don could fill. His former associates would know the truth. There would be some resistance, but he’d struck too fast and too deep not to have put the fear of Sal into them all. Even Miriam, as cold-blooded a dame as he’d known, had looked at him with new respect after the mug shots of all six rivals appeared on the TV report capping recent events.

  There was only one Mafia. There was no room in it for Slavs, coloreds, kikes, greasers, chinks, or inbred morons. Those outsiders only got such big ideas when the Sicilians became careless and gave incriminating orders direct to unreliable street soldiers instead of going through buffers. Malavaggio had used Dorfman, never laying eyes on this Macklin, who was familiar by reputation. The law, too, would know what happened, but it could never prove a connection, no matter what the chump said when he was arrested.

  Which was how they’d done things in the old country. Omerta was for equals only.

  From now on, if you couldn’t point at that island off the toe of the boot and name the birthplace of every one of your ancestors, you’re just the guy we send out for coffee. Napolitano? Ha! Calabrese? As if! Sola Siciliana, per sempre.

  Something clinked in the next room: Miriam, setting down the latest of who knew how many glasses of his best grappa. He hoped she wasn’t turning into a lush. She needed all her senses to get the Supreme Court to act and return La Cosa Nostra to its days of glory.