He was half dead when the rope slackened. The boat had stopped. Frantically flapping his arms to hold his head above water, he heard a loud motorboat passing in the dark. His blood ran colder than the water. A veteran of whisky crossings—and a savage hijacker himself—St. Louis Pete knew what the Purples would do next. In about two seconds, he would be drowning again, but not so slowly.
• • •
IN THE COCKPIT of the Purple Gang’s speedboat, the Jewish Navy’s “Admiral Abe” Weintraub had lost interest in St. Louis Pete Berelli.
“Shut up . . . Listen!”
Weintraub thought he heard what sounded like a very big boat on a night run to Detroit. There it roared again, motors straining to move a heavy load.
“Get him!” he shouted at his driver, and they tore after it.
His boat was a powerful Gar Wood with monster Allison supercharged motors and a semi-displacement hull. Towing the River Gang boat they had just hijacked, and the Sicilian behind it, diminished its speed by very little. But, oddly, while they caught up close enough to see the red glare of the nightrunner’s exhaust pipes, they couldn’t quite overtake it.
“Faster!” Admiral Abe yelled.
The driver, a loan shark enforcer by day, feared Admiral Abe as every sensible gangster did. He coaxed every bit he could out of his engines.
Suddenly, the red glare they were following disappeared. The Gar Wood was enveloped in a dark cloud of thick, choking smoke. They were coughing on the smoke when the boat they were chasing fell silent.
“Where’d he go?”
“Stop!”
The driver jerked back his throttles. The bow dropped into the water, and the Gar Wood slowed so quickly that the boat they were towing crashed into their stern with an impact that splintered mahogany and knocked all but Admiral Abe off their feet.
“Kill ’em!” he yelled, pulling a heavy Colt Navy automatic and shooting into the dark where he sensed a long black hull sliding alongside. A searchlight blazed, and in the half second before it blinded him, he saw a Lewis machine gun on a sturdy mount. It spat fire in short bursts that cut his men down even as they pulled pistols. The noise was deafening and then over.
The black boat slammed alongside. Fighting men swarmed aboard, scooped the fallen gangsters off the decks, and threw them in the river. A rifle barrel knocked Weintraub’s gun out of his hand. Men grabbed him. He fought. They beat him to the deck and hog-tied him, with his wrists behind his back and tight to his ankles.
“Who are you bastards?”
A tall, lean figure with his face masked smashed a blackjack against Weintraub’s mouth.
The searchlight went out.
Abe Weintraub spat blood and teeth. “I said, who are you bastards?”
“New partners.”
Weintraub spat another tooth. “I don’t need a partner.”
“Not your partner,” came the scornful reply, “your boss’s partner. Who is he?”
“We’re the Purple Gang,” Weintraub shot back. “Leave the booze and run while you can.”
They looped a line to the rope that tied his wrists to his ankles and threw him in the water. Weintraub held his breath, waiting for them to pull him out, waiting for the rope to jerk his wrists and drag him toward air. He waited until he could wait no more and had to breathe. He gulped for air but inhaled water.
They jerked his head out of the water. He gasped, coughed, gagged, and threw up. They dropped him back in the water. The second time they pulled his head back to air, the guy who had knocked his teeth out leaned over the side of the boat and addressed him conversationally. “There’s a drowned guy hanging off the boat you were towing. Any idea who he was?”
Weintraub answered—the wop didn’t matter, and it would buy time before they dunked him again. “St. Louis Pete.”
“With what gang was Mr. Pete affiliated?”
“What?”
“Who’d he hang with?”
“River Gang.”
“Poor Mr. Pete. Horrible way to die. Put him back under!”
They brought him up sooner than before, but he was gagging out of control. It seemed to take forever to get actual air in his lungs. When he could speak, Abe Weintraub said, “We’re the Purple Gang. We own the river. We own the city. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Doing? I am terrorizing you. What do you think I’m doing?”
“Why?”
“To beat you into submission. Do you want to die slowly? Or would you prefer to be beaten into submission?”
“No one beats Abe Weintraub.”
“There’s a first time for everything, Mr. Weintraub. You’re looking at yours. You will turn on the phonograph and tell me who’s your boss.”
“What’s the difference? You’ll kill me either way.”
“There is a third way. Work for me. Trespasses are forgiven if you’re my man. Would you like that?”
“Go to hell.”
“Put him back under.”
24
AN ELECTRIC SIGN of multicolored bulbs as dazzling as any in Asbury Park glared atop a fresh-painted, veranda-draped hotel on an all-weather highway ten miles outside Detroit:
TEXAS WALT’S HIGH SOCIETY ROADHOUSE
The parking lot was full of Pierce-Arrows, Packards, Cadillacs, Rolls-Royces, Marmons, and Minervas, and it looked like a safe bet there were movie stars inside. If they were, then a new kind of lighted sign imported from Paris—neon gas set aglow inside clear tubes shaped like a martini glass—left no doubt they were drinking cocktails. Music gushed from the open windows, a sweet tune from a Broadway hit. It was played by Detroit’s favorite twelve-piece society band, Leroy Smith’s, and the cream of the Motor City’s fast and rich spilled onto the verandas, dancing and singing along with “Kansas Nightingale” Amber Edwards:
“TILL IT WILTED SHE WORE IT,
SHE’LL ALWAYS ADORE IT
HER SWEET LITTLE
