King of the Corner by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online Page A

Listening to a distracted announcer on the Philco trying to simulate Hank Greenburg’s virile connecting swing by clapping two sticks together hardly compared to an afternoon in the sun with a cold beer and a hot dog.
    But a paltry ticket to one game would not do for Mrs. MacGryff. Such a day could only prickle her palate and render the unavoidable return to her mop-and-bucket existence unbearable.
    Loyola MacGryff wanted season tickets.
    Not just for her, but for her whole family, which now numbered five with the latest still in diapers. Just knowing that the entire brood could on a moment’s notice pile into the Model A, rumble seat and all, and tool down to that green place where men in baggy uniforms played a boys’ game under the sky would be the beacon that lit their way through the dark days yet to come.
    Obsessed with obtaining capital, Mrs. MacGryff cleared garage and attic of bric-a-brac, stuck price tags on the lot, and set her oldest son to work painting and posting signs for blocks around advertising a yard sale.
    At Horace’s pleading, she made certain to drape a sheet over his priceless collection of salt and pepper shakers stored in the garage, the passion of a lifetime, lest any of the pieces be damaged or stolen in the confusion of commerce.
    The sale was an enormous success by Depression standards. The McGriff cleared thirty-seven dollars, enough to purchase season tickets for the neighborhood, with enough left over for souvenirs and refreshments.
    It was scarcely the fault of the family in those less cautious times that a victim of hard luck, mistaken for a straggling browser, showed Mrs. MacGryff an old black revolver while she was counting the profits and made off with them.
    The police were sympathetic, but explained that the bandit had as like as not already departed Detroit on the same freight train he had come in on. The money was irretrievable.
    This is one MacGryff story with a happy ending, however.
    On the following Saturday they held another sale; and while the proceeds from Horace’s cherished shaker collection fell somewhat short of the previous weekend’s total, they were more than adequate to treat parents and children all to a season in the bleachers.
    “You should have seen the look on Horace’s face when he found out,” reminisces the widow. “I don’t mind telling you I was so happy I cried right along with him.”
    (to be continued)

PART TWO
Change-Up

Chapter 6
    P ETER Y. K UBITSKI, D OC’S parole officer, was one of these comfortable avuncular types in a mohair jacket that had worn to fit his angular construction and a nubby knitted tie on a blue button-down shirt. His hair, receding on either side of the widow’s peak, was salt-and-pepper and fluffed out at the temples and he had a long pale face and one of those noses that looked as if he had slept on it wrong; when he put on his reading glasses he had to come around a corner. A pair of tiny blue-black eyes like gooseberries glittered under the moss cliff of his brows. Doc disliked him on sight.
    His office, on the third floor of Detroit Police Headquarters at 1300 Beaubien, was small and overheated and smelled of the rotting bindings of social science books in glass cases and apple-scented pipe tobacco, Doc’s least favorite kind. Kubitski had all the irritating habits of a pipe smoker: the constant fussing with the charred blob of brier, charging and recharging and tamping and lighting and relighting, the browsing in the dilapidated leather pouch, the business of pointing the stem at his visitor when he was making an observation and then biting down on it as if stamping the whole thing in granite. Sparky Anderson smoked a pipe too, and Doc had never gotten on with the aging Tigers manager.
    Kubitski seated him in an uncomfortable chair facing the desk and kept him waiting while he read Doc’s file spread out on the blotter. At length he sat back, communed for a full minute with his pipe, and said, “You’re