“Don’t apologize. It was just a surprise. It’s been two years since I’ve seen Leonard, and almost that long since I’ve thought about him. I don’t know how I can help you.”
“Just now I’m sweeping up whatever’s lying around. I’ll sort it out later. I need some stuff on his life before January 1934.”
“That isn’t a story for the telephone, Mr. Walker.”
There was something in her tone. I played around with it for a second, then poked it into a drawer. “If you have a few minutes this evening I’d like to come talk to you about it,” I said.
“How big is your car trunk?”
“Would you say that again, Mrs. Shinstone? We have a bad connection.”
“I’m giving up the house here and moving to an apartment in Royal Oak. I have one or two things left to move. If your trunk’s big enough I can dismiss the cab I have waiting.” She gave me her address.
I said, “I’ll put the spare tire in the back seat.”
I paused with my hand on the receiver, then unhooked it again and used another quarter to call my service. Lieutenant Alderdyce had tried to reach me and wanted me to call him back. I dialed his extension at Headquarters.
“I spoke to Mrs. Blum a little while ago,” he said. “You’re fired.”
“Funny, you don’t sound like her.”
“She’ll tell you the same thing. Blum’s death is starting not to look like suicide and that means you can go back to your bench and leave the field to the first string.”
“How much not like suicide is it starting to look?”
“Just for the hell of it we ran Blum’s prints. We got a positive.”
“He told me he’d never been printed.”
“He must’ve forgot,” Alderdyce said. “We didn’t mess with the FBI. They destroy their records once a subject turns seventy. We got a match in a box of stuff on its way to the incinerator because it was too old to bother feeding into the computer. There is no Leonard Blum. But Leo Goldblum got to know these halls during Prohibition, whenever the old racket squad found it prudent to round up the Purple Gang and ask questions.”
“Blum was a Purple?”
“Nice Jewish boys, those. When they weren’t gunning each other down and commuting to Chicago to pull off the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre for Capone they found time to ship bootleg hootch across the river from Canada. That was Goldblum’s specialty. He was arrested twice for transporting liquor from the Ecorse docks and drew a year’s probation in ’29 on a Sullivan rap. Had a revolver in his pocket.”
“Explains why he never registered his guns,” I said. Licenses aren’t issued to convicted felons. “That was a long time ago, John.”
“Yeah, well, there’s something else. Ever hear of Bloody July?”
“Sounds like the name of a punk rock group. No, wasn’t that when they killed Jerry Buckley?”
“The golden boy of radio. Changed his stand on the mayor’s recall on July 22, 1930, and a few hours later three Purples left him in a pool of blood in the lobby of the Hotel LaSalle. And during the first two weeks of the month the gang got frisky and put holes in ten of their mob playmates. It was a good month not to be a cop.”
“All this history is leading someplace, I guess.”
“Yeah. We got a lot of eager young uniforms here. One of them spent a couple of hours after his shift was over pawing through dusty records in the basement and matched the bullet that killed Blum with the ballistics report on the shooting of one Emmanuel Eckleberg, D.O.A. at St. Mary’s Hospital July 6,1930.”
“Yesterday was July sixth,” I said. “You’re telling me someone waited all these years to avenge Manny Whatsizname on the anniversary of his death with the same gun that was used to kill him?”
“Eckleberg. You want someone to tell you that, call Hollywood. I just read you what we’ve got. You’re walking, right?”
“Give me some time to square away a couple of things for my report.”
He might have said “Uh-oh.” I can’t be sure because I was hanging up. It was getting to be a hell of a case, all right.
The address I wanted in Birmingham belonged to a small crackerbox with blue aluminum siding and a rosebush that had outgrown its bed under the picture window. My watch read seven-thirty and the sky showed no signs of darkening. You get a lot more for your money by hiring a private investigator in the summertime.
My knock was answered by a tall slim woman in sweats with blond streaks in her gray hair drawn up under a knotted handkerchief. She had taken the time to put on lipstick and rub rouge into her cheeks, but she really didn’t need it. She had to be in her early seventies but looked twenty years younger. Her eyes were flat blue.
She smiled. “You look like you were expecting granny glasses and a ball of yam.”
“I was sort of looking forward to it,” I said, taking off my hat. “No one seems to knit any more except football players.”
“I never could get the knack. Come in.”
The place looked bigger inside, mainly because there was hardly any furniture in it and the walls and floor were bare. She led me to a heavy oak table with the round top removed and leaning against the pedestal base. “Will it fit?” she asked.
“Search me. I flunked physics.” I put my hat back on and got to work.
It was awkward, but the top eventually slid onto the ledge where the spare belonged and the pedestal fit diagonally into the well. She carried out a carton of books and slid it onto the back seat. “Take Telegraph down to Twelve Mile,” she said, getting in on the passenger’s side in front.
On the road I asked if Mr. Shinstone was waiting for her in Royal Oak.
“He died in ’78. I would have sold the place then, but my sister got sick and I took her in. She passed away six weeks ago.”
I said I was sorry. She shrugged. “You were married to Leonard Blum when he was Leo Goldblum?” I asked.
She looked at me, then untied her handkerchief and shook her hair loose. She kept it short. “You’ve been doing your homework. Have you got a cigarette?”
I got two out, lit them from the dash lighter, and gave her one. She blew smoke into the slipstream outside her window. “I started seeing him when I was in high school,” she said. “He was twenty and very dashing. They all were; handsome boys in sharp suits and shiny new automobiles. We thought they were Robin Hoods. Never mind that people got killed, it was all for a good cause. The right to get hung over. The world was different then.”
“Just the suits and automobiles,” I put in. “Prohibition was repealed in December 1933. In January 1934, Goldblum shortened his name and invested his bootlegging profits in construction.”
“He and Ed Klagan, Sr. had a previous understanding. I don’t know how many buildings downtown are still being held up by people Leo didn’t get on with. Mind you, I only suspected these things at the time.”
“Was Manny Eckleberg one of them?”
“Who was he?”
I told her as much as I knew. We were stopped at a light and I was watching her. She was studying the horizontal suburban scenery. “I think I remember it. It was during that terrible July. Leo and some others were questioned by the police. Somebody was convicted for it. Abe Somebody; my sister dated him once or twice. Leo and I were married soon after and I remember hoping it wouldn’t mean a postponement.”
“Why was he killed?”
“A territorial dispute, I suppose. It was a long time ago.”
“Did you divorce Blum because of his past?”
“I could say that and sound noble. But I just got tired of being married to him. That was twenty years ago and he was already turning into an old crab. From what I saw of him during the times I ran into him since I’d say he never changed. Turn right here.”