Jitterbug (31 page)

“Razors got no place on a dance floor,” Beatrice said.

Dwight felt Earl’s fingers in the hair at the back of his head. He looked up. The gold tooth was gleaming bright, as if it were drawing the light from Earl’s heavy-lidded eyes. “Tell Lizzie it only hurt some at first, Dwight. It don’t hurt now.”

H
E SWUNG RIGHT ONTO
Jefferson, nicking a red light and drawing an angry horn blast from the driver of a Hudson starting across the intersection. A shoe-heel moon, swollen on the horizon, stamped its image on the river and made a jagged charcoal line of the blacked-out cityscape on the Canadian side, where air-raid sirens rang out more frequently than in the U.S., in sympathy with compatriots in London. The wailing coming from the car that turned behind him might have belonged to yet another drill.

He had no doubt Mrs. Winsted was responsible for the presence of armed detectives outside his apartment. He should have foreseen it. Aura Lee was a Southern name, there was something of the faded belle about her; it was a victory for her to have outlived her Yankee husband and drawn money from the Union for so many years, money that could have been spent on arms and provisions. She was no more loyal to the country of her birth than an Irish saboteur was to Great Britain. He had suspected for some time that she was a hoarder, but had banked his suspicions because the apartment was convenient to his activities and he hadn’t wanted to spoil his home base. It was a textbook example of what could go wrong when you placed tactics ahead of strategy.

He took one hand off the wheel to spread open the copy of
Life
on the seat next to him, peeling aside Deanna Durbin’s smiling face to run a thumb along the bayonet’s smooth vane. It would find its next sheath in Aura Lee Winsted’s abdomen.

The sensation would be as satisfying as closing his fingers around the wasted neck of that woman at Ypsi State, the brittle bones popping like hollow reeds.

But first things first.

The proximity to West Jefferson had been one of the points in favor of choosing the apartment. As one of the four best routes out of the city, it led straight as a bayonet through all the downriver communities, bang-bang-bang, like rooms in a railroad flat, and westward to the open gravel roads of farm country, where he had room to maneuver in case of enemy pursuit. The cover of night was a bonus.

Traffic was light at that evening hour. He let out the Nash’s engine, changing lanes handily to get around the occasional slow-moving vehicle. The blast of cool air through the gaping hole in the windshield struck him full in the face, bringing all his brain cells to life. He had never felt so alert, not even when he was using the bayonet. He’d heard of this happening under fire. It was under just such conditions that heroism was born.

Ahead and to the right, the River Rouge leviathan hove into view with the explosive force of a convoy of battleships under full steam, stacks belching fire as its coke ovens smelted down thousands of tons of toasters, teakettles, and worn-out Model T’s and reshaped them into fleets of jeeps. Almost directly across from the enormous city of plants stood the stockade and barracks of historical Fort Wayne, the military installation built to protect Detroit from a Confederate attack that never took place, now finally serving its patriotic duty as a temporary storage place for light and heavy armored vehicles waiting their turn to be shipped overseas. That entire stretch of highway glittered like the rainbow bridge to Valhalla.

Glittered a little too much.

As he topped the low rise, red flashers dyed the car’s interior the color of blood. A pair of Detroit black-and-white prowl cars were parked nose to nose across the avenue to form a roadblock. He saw the peaked caps of the officers lined up on the other side with shotguns and revolvers leveled across the long hoods and turtleback roofs.

“Step on it.” Zagreb was leaning forward across the back of the front seat, .38 in hand. “You got an egg under your shoe?”

Burke said, “I got it against the firewall now. He must have a Spitfire under that hood.”

“I see his taillights.” McReary had both hands on the dash.

Canal said, “Bullshit. He’s got them off by now.”

Burke said, “Not at the speed he’s going. Even he ain’t that nuts.”

“Who we talking about?” Canal asked.

Zagreb told them to shut up. “That roadblock should be coming up.”

McReary said, “I wouldn’t count on it. We caught a squeal on the two-way when you two were busy collecting trash. Some kind of free-for-all on Belle Isle. There might not be any cars available.”

“That would just about take the cake. When two drunks batting each other with beer bottles get more love from this department than a maniac with a knife, it’s time to join the navy.”

“Why all the time the navy?” Canal asked the lieutenant. “What’s so fucking great about ships?”

“Easier on my piles. There it is! We got the block.”

The red glow half a mile ahead was like a stuttering sunrise.

One of the taillights disappeared.

Burke swung up the side-mounted spotlight by its handle and switched it on. Its beam shot out, striking the gray car broadside. “He’s turning.”

McReary said, “Into what, the river?”

“Fuck the river,” Zagreb said. “That’s Fort Wayne.”

The iron gate was chained and padlocked. He kept his foot on the accelerator, trying to regain the speed he’d lost when he made the turn. He struck square on. The chain held. He hit the steering wheel with his chin, chipping a tooth. Crunching the pieces, he backed up and hit it again. The hood buckled, a headlight went out. Still the chain held.

The siren was getting closer. He didn’t look that way, or the other to see if the officers from the roadblock were headed his direction. He backed all the way to Jefferson, slammed the transmission into low, accelerated steadily, shifted into second, and pushed the pedal to the floor. The other headlight went out upon impact. The gate sprang open, he downshifted to avoid stalling, then sped up again and threw the cane directly into third. The entire frame shuddered, but the engine roared, and the speedometer slid up to fifty.

Straight ahead was the Georgian pile of the barracks, a penitentiary-like building given over to a military museum. He tried to turn, but one of his tires rubbed a bent fender and he had to wrench the wheel hard to the right. He bucked up over a decorative border of whitewashed stones and across grass, inches short of the building’s granite front. He’d been trespassing a full thirty seconds before the MP stationed in the guardpost inside the gate woke up, shouldered his M-l rifle, and fired the first angry shot ever heard on the grounds of Fort Wayne. The bullet whistled high over the roof of the Nash.

The guard’s sloth enraged him. What if he were a saboteur?

The MP probably wasn’t twenty and could pass for sixteen, a real Willie Best, jug ears, freckles, and all. His white helmet looked too big for him. In his dress khakis and crisp armband he might have been a boy playing soldier. He was back in the guard box cranking up his telephone when Zagreb got out of the car and approached him, stepping around the twisted debris of the gate. He was holding his badge folder out in front of him.

“I’m a lieutenant with the Detroit Racket Squad,” he told the guard. “The man who crashed your gate is a suspect in five homicides.”

The MP silenced him with a white-gloved palm, finished his report, and hung up. Immediately a whooping siren started up and banks of stadium lights mounted on fifty-foot poles slammed on overhead, flooding the compound with their merciless white glare. Zagreb had to shout.

“Is there another gate?”

“No. He’ll have to come back this way if he’s coming out at all.”

“We’ll just go on in and make sure.”

“I don’t think so. This is a government restricted area.”

“That’s okay, son. We won’t steal anything.”

The guard raised his rifle.

Just then Canal, McReary, and Burke came up. They had their revolvers out.

Zagreb said, “Son, you don’t want to die for your country without ever getting out of it.”

“This is my detail,” the young man said. “I could get shot by firing squad anyway.”

“If they were going to do that, they’d do it for letting the nut with the Nash get by you. Lower the piece and come with us. When we nail this guy I’ll tell your CO you did it. You’ll make sergeant.”

“I am a sergeant. And I can’t leave my post.”

“Well, we’re in hot pursuit of a fugitive in a multiple-homicide case. That means where he goes, we go. Even if it’s the White House. I’d tell you to look it up in the manual, but I don’t have time. Lower the piece or I’ll shoot you as an accessory.”

“I asked for combat. They put me in charge of a parking lot.” The rifle came down.

Back in the car, Burke drove carefully over the twisted pieces of iron. “What do you think they’ll do to him?”

“Somebody has to hang by his balls, and it won’t be his commanding officer. Put on some go.” The lieutenant sat back.

They turned onto the grass, following the ruts made by the previous car. After a minute the spotlight picked up a reflection. They slowed down, then stopped. The Nash was parked past the end of the barracks. The door hung open on the driver’s side and a cloud of thick steam was hissing from the smashed radiator. Burke killed the headlights, leaving the spotlight trained on the car, and they alighted and fanned out to surround the vehicle.

Canal had brought the flashlight from the glove compartment. He stood back and shone it through the windows. When they were sure no one was inside he stepped closer and directed the beam onto the front seat. Nothing was there but a magazine, open to a spread on bathing beauties.

“Okay, we take it slow from here,” Zagreb said. “We got us a wounded bear.”

He didn’t feel hampered in any way by the loss of his car; quite the reverse. He was always more comfortable on foot. He kept in excellent shape with calisthenics, and his options broadened when he wasn’t loaded down with heavy machinery. The towering lights had destroyed his cover, but the compound was swarming with troops from the Quartermaster Corps sprinting toward prearranged stations, and a figure moving with assurance and an apparent knowledge of his destination drew less curiosity than someone skulking in shadow. Ahead of him, on the other side of a chain-link fence, sat rows and rows of armored vehicles, lined up in formation as if prepared to trundle toward an enemy stronghold on West Jefferson. He tucked the bayonets naked blade up his sleeve and sprinted that way.

The fence was higher than it looked from a distance, twelve feet at least. He didn’t hesitate, but started climbing quickly. He balked at the coils of barbed wire on top, then unzipped his two-tone jacket and draped it over the wire. He heard a shout then, but he kept moving, pulling himself up and over, not hastening but not wasting time either. When the first shot rang out he was on the other side of the fence and letting go. The bullet missed.

He hit the ground rolling. The impact emptied his lungs; but he knew if he paused to catch his wind he was lost. He rolled to his feet and ran, taking in air with painful stabbing sobs. The bayonet had torn his sleeve when he landed. He untangled it from the material as he ran. There was more shooting. He zigzagged, just like John Garfield in
Air Force.
Zeroes strafing him, bullets stitching up the earth at his heels.

The harsh white light made stationary monsters of the light and heavy tanks inside the compound, like a herd of mastodons flash-frozen in mid-migration by advancing glaciers. He slid between two of them, drawn instinctively into the shadows. Their molded-steel jackets were cool to the touch, the camouflage paint fresh enough to give off a strong smell of turpentine. He moved deeper into the herd, putting yards and tons of armor plate between himself and his pursuers, seeking the center of the iron womb. The proximity of so much martial machinery made his nipples hard. His erection actually put a hitch in his stride.

At length he poked the bayonet under his belt, slanting the blade backward, and clambered up onto a fender. The day’s humidity had condensed into droplets on the smooth metal; the moisture seeped through his clothes, chilling him with the thrill of risk. He was Humphrey Bogart in
Sahara,
the lone survivor of his unit wiped out in North Africa, becoming one with his tank, prepared to sell his life dear.

And now he was atop the turret, with its 37-mm gun up front and fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on a swivel at the back. He ran his hands over the hatch, found the handle. It swung up and over silently on oiled hinges. He put a foot inside, groped with it and found the rungs welded to the side. Swung his other leg inside and climbed down, into blackness. The raw steel smell was overpowering.

He touched invisible switches and handles and protuberances about which he knew nothing: the movies he’d seen had been disappointingly silent about such details. In any case the tank was hemmed in by its brothers and he couldn’t have gotten it out even if he could start it and figure out how it was propelled. He climbed back up.

The siren continued to whoop, but beneath it he heard shouts and knew they were inside the fence, searching the tanks and the spaces between. With his legs still inside the turret he hunkered behind the rear-mounted machine gun, gripping it by its fisted handle. An electric current bolted through him on contact. The black pall of sky overhanging the artificial illumination went bright, the painful blue of the cloudless canopy of the Pacific.
Bataan
, the final minute of the last reel, Robert Taylor in his tin hat and sweat-soaked fatigues, like Bogart the lone survivor of his unit, a week’s worth of black beard smudging his handsome face, itself twisted into a mask of hate, swiveling the big machine gun right and left, slamming round after round into the hordes of Japanese swarming up from the beach, hot brass shells spitting out of the ejector and splinking onto the sand, each one representing another dead enemy.

He found the trigger and squeezed. Nothing. Not even a click. The gun wasn’t loaded. He burst into tears. Then he stopped himself with a sharp snuffle of snot, crawled up over the turret, and slithered along the fender on the other side. He reached back and slid out the bayonet. The handle felt more natural than had the grip of the gun. It was the friend of so many campaigns, so many victories against the enemy at home. He couldn’t believe he’d despaired. And because he couldn’t believe it, he wiped the episode from his memory.