Jitterbug by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online

and spread his feet, blocking him from the others in the room as in a smooth ambidextrous movement he produced both his gold badge and his short-barreled Colt .38. “Police! Stay where you are!”
    The crowd’s hesitation was brief. Then it split in two directions, some patrons heading for the door, others surging toward the three men standing by the bar. Canal, who was now standing in the doorway, pointed his starter’s pistol at the ceiling and fired. The blank glass cartridge made a noise like a heavy crate hitting a sidewalk. The echo of the report rang through the silence that followed.
    Then the wagon was there, accompanied by four black-and-whites and eighteen Detroit police officers in uniform, who formed a flying wedge as they entered the building, fanning out inside and surrounding and disarming and herding the patrons across the sidewalk and into the wagon, the two men who had attacked McReary in the lead. They stopped loading when there was no more room inside. When the bar was closed, Zagreb, Burke, and Canal helped McReary out the door and into the black Oldsmobile.
    Canal got the flat pint of Old Grand-Dad out of the glove compartment and passed it over the back of the seat to Burke, who unscrewed the cap and held it out for McReary. The officer declined assistance, seizing the bottle and tipping it up. It gurgled twice. The smell of fermented grain filled the car.
    “All square?” Zagreb was watching him in the rearview mirror.
    Baldy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tested the sore spot on his neck with two fingers. “Either those hillbillies are hitting harder or I’m getting old. This what it’s like?”
    “How would we know, you little pissant?” Burke was grinning. “Maybe you need to come up with a toast that won’t rile them up so much.”
    “Yeah. Try calling Robert E. Lee a faggot.” Canal confiscated the bottle and swigged.
    “I don’t see why we need one at all,” McReary said. “Why don’t we just wait for a fight to start and come in then?”
    Zagreb said, “You can wait all night for that. This way we make an example early on. Word gets down the street, the bartenders in the other joints put the screws on, and we’re all home in time for Charlie McCarthy.”
    “Yeah, but is it legal?”
    “What’s it matter? Everybody’s looking for U-boats in the river.” The lieutenant leaned over and spun up the volume on the two-way.
    “One-ten, one-ten.” The dispatcher didn’t sound as if he had any hope of a response.
    Zagreb unhooked the microphone and thumbed up the switch. “One-ten.”
    “One-ten, see Inspector Brandon at the Wayne County Morgue.”
    “Holy shit.” Canal screwed the cap back on the bottle and returned it to the glove compartment. “I hope they want us to identify him.”

chapter six
    Z AGREB HATED CORONERS’ HANDS .
    This one’s were like all the rest, pink and puffy, with round antiseptic nails and no hair growing on the backs. They got that way from immersion in alcohol and formaldehyde. The fingers resembled bunches of scrubbed sausages and made the lieutenant think of mannequins and the newly washed hands of corpses lying in state. He didn’t mind the specialists’ coarse jokes, intended to weed out the squeamish, and the sight and even the smell of flayed human flesh had ceased to bother him, but when introductions were made he always found something to be doing with his own hands to give him an excuse to avoid grasping those naked pink fingers. The rest of the fellow was ordinary enough, although Zagreb would never get used to the extremes of age made necessary in the workforce by wartime personnel shortages. Dr. Edouard (he’d taken pains to spell it for the lieutenant) was seventy if he was a day, with a ribbon of hair combed across the top of his bald head, satin white against pink scalp, and glass blue eyes under thistly brows that had needed plucking five years ago and now required mowing. He wore his white coat over a