Jitterbug by Loren D. Estleman Page B

touch up her lipstick.

chapter eight
    R ESTAURANTS IN GENERAL ASPIRE to be more than they are. Roma Cafe—“Roma’s” popularly, the possessive case assigned by mass mutual agreement—aspired to be less. Its name and location, in the 3400 block of Riopelle north of the Eastern Market, home of sows ears, fresh goat meat, and dead fowl with the feathers on, suggested an old-fashioned Italian eatery. The red-and-white-checked tablecloths and basketed Chianti bottles suspended from the ceiling managed to capture the flavor of an unprepossessing establishment where a family of four could get in and out for under fifty dollars. In reality there were cases of Mumm’s champagne in the storeroom, boxes of imported squid packed in dry ice in the walk-in refrigerator, and even a superficial total of the prices on the menu customarily handed to the head of each party resembled a bid for a defense contract.
    The restaurant’s history was the history of Detroit in the twentieth century. It had been in operation since 1907, had seen the city evolve from the Stove Capital of the United States to the world’s premier automobile vendor, and witnessed the laying of the first course of bricks on the first skyscraper downtown. Theodore Roosevelt had dined there in 1916 after delivering his famous, “Damn the mollycoddles” speech at the Detroit Opera House. The next year the proprietors had hosted a party for the doughboys of the 31st Infantry before they shipped out for France. Walter Reuther and Richard T. Frankensteen, bruised and bleeding from the “Battle of the Overpass” with Harry Bennett’s Ford Motor Company strikebreakers, had wolfed down plates of pasta in the kitchen at the exact moment the Ford goons were celebrating their victory with red wine and calamari in the dining room. Rallies had taken place there to elect William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, and campaign workers in straw hats and armbands reading REPEAL THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT had drunk smuggled Canadian whiskey and huddled around a Philco Cathedral radio set brought in to monitor the FDR landslide in 1932. Caruso and Garibaldi lived still in frames on the wall behind the bar. The Caruso was signed. General MacArthur fell two inches shy of covering the faded rectangle where Mussolini’s likeness had quietly been removed on the Day of Infamy.
    Carlo, the maître d’, had been in residence since shortly after Roma opened, working his way up from busboy to wine steward in a little over eighteen months—a performance that lost some of its shine upon consideration that he was a cousin of one of the proprietors. The final leap, from silver cup to reservation stand, had taken twelve years, and was accomplished only upon the death of the original maître d’, who had held that position in the second oldest restaurant in Florence from 1872 until he fled to escape execution for murdering his brother-in-law in a vendetta. Some customers, knowing only part of the story, mistook Carlo for the vendetta killer, but this was understandable. His predecessor, whose photograph in a silver frame decorated the wall beside the stand, had been a mild-looking white-haired fellow with ruddy cheeks and a cherub’s smile, whereas Carlo was lean and sallow with iron gray in his brushed-back hair and a five-inch scar on his right cheek where a tumor had been removed. He never smiled, the surgery having damaged the nerve that worked the required muscles, and his unblinking stare had silenced the bluster of many a would-be diner who claimed his reservation was lost. Very few people knew he sent most of his salary to his sister in Sardinia, that he attended confession three times a week, and that he hadn’t missed a Sunday Mass at Most Holy Trinity in thirty years.
    Max Zagreb, who was one of those who knew, asked Carlo if he had a table for four. It was a polite question; the restaurant was nearly empty at that hour. The stragglers that remained were nursing last sips of coffee