H.J. Gaudreau - Jim Crenshaw 02 - The Collingwood Legacy by H.J. Gaudreau

Keywell. Gradually leadership fell to Abe Axler and Eddie Fletcher. Abe and Eddie were loyal soldiers, but they weren’t very smart. They began to make mistakes. The loss of leadership, manpower and influence at City Hall was like blood in the water to a Great White shark. The competition began to move in and the Purples were helpless to stop it.
    The biggest threat came from the Italians. The Eastside gang was tied into the New York Mafia and Capone’s Chicago gang. Slowly they were becoming the dominant gang in Detroit. “Black” Bill Tocco had a special hate for the Purples and pressured them across the city. Muscling in on their gambling operations, prostitution and most of all the alcohol smuggling routes. Imports were down, hijackings were up and ‘runners’, the boys who delivered the booze to the speakeasies and beer gardens across the city were being killed, disappearing or quitting.
    Dolly didn’t know of the turmoil in the Detroit underworld that winter. She spent her time thinking about the boat. She’d have to find it. She was convinced Sol had hidden the money on the big Chris-Craft, she just needed time alone with the boat and she’d find it. But that was the issue wasn’t it? How to find the boat. Dolly didn’t know Detroit.  She’d only been to the river once before that night and in their panic and the darkness she certainly hadn’t kept track of street names. All Dolly knew was that the boat was in a small boathouse on the Detroit river.
    She got another break in mid-December. A truck driver stopped at the diner for breakfast before loading onto one of the ferries crossing the lake. He ate his breakfast, drank his coffee and paid his bill and drove down to the docks. Dolly cleaned up his table and found a packet of maps laying on the seat where the man had been sitting.
    She picked the packet up and stuffed it down deep in her apron pocket. Then Dolly poured coffee and waited tables for the rest of the day, the packet totally forgotten.
    That evening Dolly took off her shoes and her apron, counted her tips and began to think about making dinner. Suddenly she remembered the packet. Untying the string and unfolding the leather case she found road maps of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.
    There was also a detailed street map of Detroit. Dolly stared at this map for several minutes. This was important, this could help her. Dolly wasn’t exactly sure why this was important, but the feeling was more than a suspicion, it was a certainty. She had never seen a map and didn’t know how to use one, but she wasn’t stupid and she could read. She would figure this out.
    She cleared the small table which served as kitchen counter, dining room table, ironing board, and occasionally living room coffee table, and spread the map out flat. Carefully she examined the thing. Slowly she began to understand what she was looking at. After a while it began to make sense. It was just a big picture of the city.
    Eventually she found the address of the old boardinghouse she had lived in. She placed her finger on the map. She closed her eyes and imagined walking down the steps, turning left and walking to the corner grocery. She traced her finger along the map. He finger came to a street intersection. If she was doing this right it would be Bagley Street. She searched for the street name. Bagley Street, she’d done it.
    Excited, she began finding other places she knew from her year in the city. She found the library, the museum, the streets where she knew the clubs. Then the importance of the map came to her. She could find the boathouse.
    Dolly quickly found the Detroit River and began to trace the streets that ran parallel to the river. She remembered a park and the city water works. She’d run past both. Her finger ran along the river. Jefferson. She had run along Jefferson Avenue. Past the water works and, there it was, Memorial Park. That meant the dirt road was somewhere…here. She stabbed the map with her