Motor City Shakedown Read Online Free Page A

I’d dug trying to cut the rope tied around it. Next, on my palm, a knotted mass of scar tissue, then the collection of mottled scars on all sides of my forefinger and middle finger, and the gnarled stumps of my fourth and fifth fingers, all burgundy, all disfigured—all courtesy of sulfuric acid. I didn’t bother to look at the back of the hand; it was simply more of the same. I tugged the glove on again, until my fourth and fifth fingers reached the cotton I’d stuffed inside to hide their deformity.
    Since it was only six o’clock, I thought I’d kill a little time before I began the hunt for the prostitute. Riordan’s question about gun and knife skills had got me thinking. I’d been shooting fairly regularly with Edsel Ford on Sunday afternoons, but I hadn’t even thought about knives. I was again going to have to drag the city’s cesspool, and I had to be prepared.
    I hung my dartboard on the parlor wall and stepped back behind the sofa. Holding my switchblade in my left hand, I took careful aim and hurled it at the wall. The knife bounced off the plaster a foot to the left of the board and clattered to the floor. Walking over to pick it up, I shook my head to clear it. I wasn’t sure I could have hit the board even if my right hand was still functional.
    I’d never taken an opiate for an extended period. All that came to mind was a couple of days of morphine for a broken wrist when I was twelve. The emotion associated with that memory was fear, though I didn’t remember why. Perhaps I was afraid I wouldn’t change back, regain my mental equilibrium. These days, it was a wish rather than a fear.
    Alcohol had been a poor substitute. It left me depressed, volatile, and sick, and served only to dull my pain, rather than assuage it. Morphine had its own set of side effects, but it brought me the peace I’d always craved.
    I walked behind the sofa to throw the knife again but stopped and closed my eyes, just listening to Sophie’s voice. Music had become a welcome accompaniment to the relaxed feeling morphine gave me. I’d found I could sit for hours with my eyes closed and just enjoy music.
    Earlier in my life, music had seemed somehow trivial in comparison to the serious considerations of commerce and manly endeavor. Now it seemed so much more valuable. Millions of men in this country hurried through their lives, believing the lessons hammered into them. From the tiny classroom of the most humble one-room schoolhouse to the ivy-covered walls of Detroit University School, we take to heart the most important lesson they can teach us—fit in, do what you’re told, don’t make waves. The nonconformist is vilified, singled out, and shunned. The rest of us learn well and perpetuate the lesson.
    I’d learned as well as anyone. But something in me had changed. The men with whom I’d been so impressed were nothing but puffed-up roosters strutting down the sidewalk pretending to be important—trying to fool themselves more than anyone else. Those breast-beaters were just as unhappy as the rest of us.
    Manly endeavor. Teddy Roosevelt’s “strenuous life.” Prove you’re a man by killing things, by besting others, by cutting a wide swath through life, regardless of whom you hurt.
    These are the things in which I used to believe.
    I spun and threw the knife again. This time it stuck, quivering, in the wall—over the Victrola. A shower of plaster fell onto the record, and the needle bounced back and forth. I walked to the bar, wiped off the record, and replaced the needle at the beginning before wrenching the knife out of the wall and returning to the sofa.
    How would these things I’d found important help me live my life? The “successful” men seemed to have found the trick to living. Was it as simple as staying so busy you don’t realize how miserable you are?
    I took another drink from the little brown