The Detroit Electric Scheme (22 page)

If I was ever going to change that, I had to do it pretty soon. And in a way, my imminent death was liberating. Once my debt to Elizabeth was paid, I really didn't have a cause for fear.

But I couldn't stop shivering.

 

A woman's piercing scream cut through the noise above us. The crowd quieted and the band faltered for a moment, but seconds later the volume level was back where it had been. I had no way of telling what time it was. At some point, the saloon quieted and, despite my shivering and thirst, I caught a few moments of sleep.

In the morning, the basement door opened, and Adamo shouted down the steps, “Angelo?” and something else in Italian.

The young Italian man grunted, pushed back his chair, and stood.

Adamo walked down the steps with a swarthy man who looked to be his younger brother. They stopped in front of me. “We were able to find Miss Hume and have moved her to a safer location,” Vito Adamo said. “Are you ready to see her?”

I sat up. “Please. I can't take any more of your man's sparkling conversation.”

“Oh, a funny man, very good.” He turned to Angelo and barked out an order in Italian.

Angelo squatted down at my feet and worked the knots until the rope came free, then nodded toward the stairway.

I stood, shaking my legs to get some blood flowing, and turned to Vito Adamo. “I'm not leaving without him.” I tilted my head toward Wesley.

“Angelo will safeguard your friend until such time as I am satisfied with your effort.”

“He's got nothing to do with this, Adamo. Let him go.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Anderson, but I also need some of this
leverage
with you. Salvatore.” He nodded to his brother. “Bring the boy.” Vito Adamo began walking up the steps.

Adamo's brother shoved me toward the stairs. I glanced back at Wesley.

“Don't worry about me,” he said. “I'll be fine. Take care of Elizabeth.”

I called up the steps. “If Angelo hurts him, Adamo, you're going to pay.”

He stopped and turned around. With a smile, he said, “Your friend will be fine. So long as you do your job.”

“He better be.” I followed Adamo up the stairs and out the front door to a green Hudson roadster. Salvatore and I sat in back, with Adamo in front next to the driver, a fireplug of a man barely five feet tall, with a heavy beard and what looked to be a permanent scowl.

Vito Adamo turned around. “I apologize for the delay. It took some time to find her.”

“No apology necessary. It was a lovely night.” I don't think terror normally activates my sarcasm, but for some reason I couldn't stop.

He frowned. “I hope you find the rest of your day as humorous, Mr. Anderson.”

After a number of twists and turns, we stopped in front of a tenement in an Italian neighborhood. It was one of the old buildings—four stories of crumbling brick that was perhaps fifty years old but already falling apart. They were kind enough to allow me the use of a filthy street-side privy. As soon as I walked out the door, Salvatore pushed me inside the building to a battered wooden stairway that rose from the shadows. At the first landing, three young boys took one look at our party and bolted up the steps, leaving the pennies they'd been pitching on the floor. I tried to get a look at their faces, on the off chance one of them was the boy who took the blackmail money, but they were gone before I got a glimpse. Salvatore stopped long enough to steal their pennies
before shoving me up the next flight. It was dim, almost too dim to see the gaping holes in the stairs. I tried to tread carefully, but it was difficult to do while getting a push in the back every few steps.

He pulled me out on the third floor, and we headed down a filthy corridor, stinking of fried fish and rot. Voices surrounded us, carrying through the walls—men, women, and children all speaking or shouting in Italian. We stopped at a small apartment with yellowed walls, darkened by a half century of smoke from the candle sconces around the room and the tiny stove in a soot-blackened corner. Though none of the plank floor was clean, most of the food remnants and trash had been thrown into a moldering two-foot-high pile. The only furniture in the room was a rickety oak table and a chair. Another young Italian man sat at the table, facing a closed door. A revolver lay in front of him.

“Where is she?” I said.

Vito Adamo motioned to the door. I turned the knob with my bound hands and hurried in. Elizabeth lay facing away from me atop a stained mattress, partially covered by a thin gray blanket. She wore a dark burgundy day dress and black button-top shoes. Behind her, some of the plaster had been torn from the wall, leaving gashes here and there of bare wooden planks, wet and rotting. Trash and moldy bits of food covered the floor. A sharp animal stench filled the room.

I knelt down next to her. “Elizabeth?” I nudged her shoulder. “Elizabeth?”

Her hand fluttered toward me and then settled back down at her side. She mumbled something, but I couldn't make it out. I leaned in closer. She stank of urine and a sour body odor. “Elizabeth. Talk to me.”

“Go 'way,” she muttered. “Leave me . . .”

I reached out and turned her onto her back. What I saw made my eyes close for a moment. A string of saliva stretched from her slack mouth to her shoulder. Dark half-moons painted her face underneath her eyes. Her cheekbones stood out in sharp relief from her skeletal face.

My heart ached. Slowly, she raised an arm and covered her eyes.

“Elizabeth? Lizzie?”

No response.

I looked up at the Adamos with venom in my eyes. “You sons of bitches. How can you do this to another human being?”

Vito spread his hands in front of him. “I do not make their decisions. And I would suggest you do not call us names. I will not tolerate it again.”

I sat back on my heels. “She can't tell me anything when she's like this.”

“Then I will give you twenty-four hours. And please understand. If you are not able to convince her to tell me what I want to know, I will kill you and your friend, and give Miss Hume to Big Boy. Be assured she
will
tell him. As I said, I do not wish to harm Judge Hume's family, but I must have this information.”

He said something to Salvatore and nodded toward me before he turned and walked out of the room, followed by the other man. Without a word, Salvatore untied the knots on my wrists and left, closing the bedroom door behind him.

I sat on the floor next to Elizabeth and put a hand on her shoulder. She had been so beautiful, so full of life. Now death hung over her like a guillotine.

It wasn't much of a moral dilemma: Get information about Judge Hume's dishonesty or let Big Boy get it from her. I had to do it. If Judge Hume was extorting money from gangsters, he deserved nothing less. And if I couldn't get Elizabeth out of here, she would die. I had to get her off the drugs before my trial.

A door slammed. I walked over to the bedroom door and opened it a crack. Salvatore sat at the table with his arms crossed, squinty eyes glaring at me. The revolver still lay on the table. I closed the door and went back to Elizabeth.

Later that afternoon she rolled over on her side and looked at me with a sleepy grin. “Will, what are you doing here?” Her voice was husky, the words drawn out, lazy.

I stroked her head. “I'm here to help you, Lizzie.”

“Help me? Help me get some more dope?” She laughed and broke into a coughing fit.

When she quieted, I said, “No. I'm going to help you get off it.”

She laughed and was again racked by coughs. “Good old Will. Always wants to help.”

I ignored her sarcasm. “That's right. I always want to help you.”

“Then get me a drink.”

There was nothing in the bedroom. I went to the door and asked Salvatore if he had anything.

One side of his mouth pulled back in a sneer. “Shut 'de goddamn door.” His accent was heavier than his brother's. He seemed a lesser version of Vito—not as handsome, probably not as smart, certainly not as commanding. Vito was the boss.

I tried again. “She needs water. Oh, and we need a chamber pot. And another blanket.”

He grinned. “Oh, sure. Maybe you like steak, baked potato?” He picked up the gun and aimed it at my head. “Shut 'de door, sonuvabitch.”

I did. When I turned around, Elizabeth was tipping a small brown bottle into her mouth. I ran to her and snatched it from her hand. The label on the side read
FRIEDR. BAYER & CO
., and in large print
HEROIN
. It was empty.

She smacked her lips and laughed. A few seconds later she quieted and lay back again, her face serene. “Will.” Her hand reached out for my arm. “You're my friend.” Her eyes were halfway open.

“Yes, Lizzie, I'm your friend.”

“Mmmm.” She sighed and her eyes closed, a soft smile playing on her lips.

 

Yet another night passed slowly. I was cold and sweaty, exhausted, with a leaden ache in my head. The past week seemed more a nightmare than actual time passing, my memory a hazy recollection of horror.

It was still dark when Elizabeth shouted out in her sleep, startling me awake. I reached for her arm. She was ice cold, covered in goose bumps, and slick with sweat. I pulled her up against my chest and wrapped the blanket tightly around her.

She slept restlessly, muttering under her breath, shivering, her legs
kicking out. Finally, a gray dawn began to appear through the window. Though Elizabeth's teeth chattered and her body was racked with shivers, another hour passed before she roused. Moving sluggishly, she pulled away from me and turned around. “Will?” She rolled over onto the mattress and covered her eyes with her hands. “Right. Will.” Her hands shook. She made them into fists. “Leave,” she said, her voice thick and dull. “I don't want your pity. Just go.”

“First you need to tell Adamo what he wants to know about your father.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Elizabeth, I know he's been asking you. He's not going to let you leave until you tell him.”

She was quiet.

“You must know your father's involved with Adamo,” I said. “You can't protect him.”

She looked back at me. Her face was drawn in the sharp lines of her skull, and her sunken green eyes showed more pain than I thought she could bear. “I don't know what he's doing,” she said, sniffling. “He doesn't talk to me.”

“Adamo says John told him you knew something.”

She turned her head and looked out the window. “I don't know what John was talking about. I don't know anything.” Her voice was flat, without inflection. I'd heard her use that tone before. She was lying.

I grabbed her arm. “He told me he'll have Big Boy get it out of you if I can't. Then he'll kill me. And he'll probably kill you.” I turned her head toward me. “Do you want that? Do you?”

She looked at me, haunted eyes over meandering tracks where her tears had cut through the dirt. “Kill me?” Tilting her head, she looked up at the ceiling and wet her lips, seeming to taste the idea. “That might be nice.”

 

Elizabeth lay on the mattress, coughing and shivering. I was cold, too. Even though the tiny stove in the other room was vented directly into this one, it had little effect, particularly with the frigid wind howling
through the cracks in the ill-fitting window across from us. Only splinters remained of the windowsill, which had probably been used for firewood by a previous inhabitant during a moment of desperation.

How many dismal lives had passed through this room? No water, no heat, no gas, no electricity, holes in the filthy plaster revealing rot and mold. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of men, women, and children spent their lives in this dreary place in a constant struggle for survival, probably feeling every bit as hopeless as I did now. And this was a two-room apartment, the equivalent of a presidential suite in this building.

I'd never appreciated what I had—a loving family, friends, and, oh yes, money. As much as I loved the Detroit I knew, I hated this Detroit. And this was Detroit to many more people than the city in which I spent my life.

I sat next to Elizabeth, absently stroking her hair while I smoked my last cigarette. Our choices were limited. If she didn't tell Adamo what he wanted to know, he was going to kill us. If she did, I believed he would let us go. He seemed to have a strange sort of integrity. He didn't want to exploit Elizabeth's situation to resolve his problem with Judge Hume, which he could easily have done.

Our other option was to try to escape. I glanced at the crumbling wall next to me and pried off a chunk of rotting plaster. I could break through to the apartment behind, but if we escaped Adamo would almost certainly kill Wesley.

I had to convince Elizabeth to talk.

I realized I was going to miss my meeting with Mr. Sutton. It was odd to even consider something like that at this point, but it made me think of something else. “Lizzie?”

“What?”

“When John told me you were in trouble, was he talking about this? The heroin?”

“I told you,” she said, coughing spastically. “I'm not in trouble.” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dress.

There was no sense facing her problems when she wouldn't be around long enough to worry about them. Self-delusion is a wonderful thing.

I handed her my handkerchief. “Why don't you tell Adamo your father's
secret and then tell your father Adamo knows about it? He'll be able to figure a way out of the situation. He's a smart man. Surely he can do that.”

Elizabeth tucked her head down into her chest and curled up on the mattress. “He's my father. Let me keep a shred of dignity.”

The last word made my blood boil. “Dignity? That's a good one. Look at you, lying there in your own filth. That's dignity?” I jumped up and towered over her. “If you want dignity, you'll get cleaned up. You owe it to yourself. Hell, you owe it to me. But that's not going to happen until you tell Adamo your father's damnable secret. You've got to.”