Prologue - September 7, 1928

Two quick flashes of blue light flickered against the cool, starless night along the far bank of the Detroit River. The night was silent except for the faint back-and-forth calls of a pair of great horned owls in the distance. Charlie Laurent coaxed his lifeless hands to move, and turned the flywheel to start the Elto quad outboard motor mounted on the back of his heavily laden wooden skiff. Last summer he and his grandfather, “Pappy,” constructed the skiff for fishing, never imagining it would later serve for the illicit transportation of alcohol, a practice more commonly referred to as rum-running.

It was the summer of 1928, eight years since the Eighteenth Amendment took effect and the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol was banned in the United States. In the state of Michigan, however, Prohibition took root two years earlier than in the rest of the U.S. By 1920, Michigan rumrunners had gained a significant advantage over the rest of the country. For the past two years, Charlie and other young Detroiters like him had been devising strategies to outsmart the law and smuggle and distribute their illegal goods.

In 1928, liquor was legal across much of Canada. This, coupled with Canada’s close location to Detroit across the Detroit River, made Detroit the location of seventy-five percent of the alcohol smuggled into the U.S. during the Prohibition years. In no time at all, rum-running became Detroit’s number two industry behind automobiles and generated more than $300 million per year. With this in mind, Charlie couldn’t resist the temptation.

Charlie had to exercise extreme caution. The Detroit River crossing was fraught with danger. The U.S. Coast Guard, local police, and federal agents tightly monitored the one-mile stretch of river. On top of that, rival rumrunners posed a constant threat, often hijacking boats or seizing the cargo of unlucky smugglers. Just the week before, another young rumrunner from the neighborhood was held at gunpoint for his stash as he neared the shore. To protect himself on his next run, Charlie was considering hiring his friend, Keaton Brown, to pilot a decoy boat alongside him, hoping to outsmart both the authorities and potential hijackers.

The four-cylinder, eighteen-horsepower outboard mounted to the back of Charlie’s skiff purred like a kitten despite its heavy load of 122 bottles of Canadian Club whiskey, ten crates plus two extra “tax” bottles. This was the second and final run of the night for Charlie and his first mate, Vic Barbier. Their regular route was to cross the narrow stretch of the Detroit River between Windsor, Canada and Detroit along the eastern shore of Peche Island. This route was a bit further east than the hot bed rum-running communities of Wyandotte and Ecorse south and west down the river from Detroit. But it conveniently ended each night in Charlie’s backyard.

Charlie and his extended family lived in the riverfront community of Fairview along the eastern edge of the city. With a bit of risk and four additional hours of work per week, Charlie could quadruple his monthly wages detailing cars at Goldstein Auto Sales. 

Their first run was fast and easy. On their second run, as they came across from Windsor, Vic spotted a large streamlined shadow low in the water. “Cut the engine, might be a Coast Guard patrol boat,” Vic hastily whispered. The duo took refuge amongst the overhanging oaks and mulberry bushes along the shore of Peche Island before the patrol boat headed west, out of sight.

To counteract the increased police presence along the shoreline, groups of adolescent spies often took on the role of vigilant lookouts. Signals, like a sizable white sheet suspended on a clothesline, conveyed a clear message: “Turn back, stay away, the cops are nearby.” But now that the coast was clear and the night once again silent, Charlie fired up the motor and they continued to Fox Canal, a channelized waterway along the eastern border of the city.

At the entrance to the canal, Charlie and Vic picked up their lookout, green-eyed, freckle-faced fifteen-year-old Keaton Brown. In the tight canal with limited options for retreat, lookouts were essential for a successful run.

Entering the fifteen-foot-wide canal, Charlie cut back on the throttle and deftly threaded his way through the numerous canoes, motorboats, and row boats moored alongside the canal homes. The architectural hodgepodge included Arts and Crafts bungalows, brick Foursquares, and Prairie style homes. Many of these houses had decks overlooking the canals, or boathouses instead of garages. Some even had springboard diving platforms over the water.

Vic awkwardly stood up from his perch on the oiled cloth hiding their contraband cargo as they moved up the canal. He whispered, “Slow it down a bit for me, Charlie.” At Britz’s canal-side bar, he hopped out with two bottles in a canvas duffle slung over his right shoulder. He tapped on the black rusty steel door and was swiftly welcomed inside. Everyone traversing Fox Canal for rum-running had to pay a toll at Britz’s. Local law enforcement officers were regular patrons, and complimentary drinks served as the currency to avert their attention.

Charlie and Vic continued further along to Charlie’s house, a two-story brown and white Tudor with direct access to the canal via a wooden boat shed trimmed to match the attached house. The house had peeling trim and some worrisome moss growth on the roof. It was, however, a source of neighbor envy in the summer. Charlie’s mother Betty, an avid gardener, filled the window boxes with cascading yellow verbenas, bountiful petunias, and multiple shades of purple and pink snapdragons.

  “Get the doors, will ya?” Charlie asked Vic.

After they were safely hidden behind the clapboard boathouse doors, two hulking figures emerged from the bushes alongside the canal. In less than one minute these heavyweights transferred all ten crates to a black Ford Model T hearse covertly parked behind the garden shed. Large trucks were frequently searched by the police, but this hearse had yet to be stopped.

“Watch your route,” whispered Keaton. “Donnie got stopped last night. The coppers got them radios in the cruisers now.”

Charlie leaned into the boathouse and listened one last time to the music on W8FS, the police department radio station broadcasting from Belle Isle, a public park in the middle of the Detroit River.

“All seems clear, no chatter on the radio,” said Charlie in a barely audible voice.

Just a few months earlier, the Detroit police had become the first department in the U.S. to install one-way radio communication in their patrol cars. Since there was no dedicated police channel for dispatches, crime reports and instructions to patrol cars were broadcast along popular music. Pappy, fully aware of Charlie’s nightly activities, would listen to W8FS upstairs in the parlor whenever Charlie headed out on the river. If he heard any police reports from the area, he’d light a Coleman gas lamp in the back bedroom window, making it visible from the canal.

 With the work for the evening completed, Keaton pulled his ratty, brown wool newsboy cap down on his head, put his hands in the pockets of a hand-me-down peacoat, and headed out the side door back to his uncle’s house on Harbor Island. Charlie ascended the stairs and made the sign of the cross, thankful for once again making it home safely.

The shadowy figures were members of the Purple Gang, the dominant criminal gang in Detroit. The gang, led by the Burnstein brothers, was composed of mostly American-born children of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland. No criminal activity in the city was untouched by the Purple Gang. Rumrunners not working for the gang had to fear violent reprisal or having their boat, car, or cache hijacked by the gang.

***

That same evening across town in the Southwest Detroit immigrant community of Delray, Helen and Walter Bryndza sat on their front porch on Copland Street, enjoying a restful moment together before bed. Walter worked swing shift at the Ternstedt stamping plant on Fort Street, so each night when Walter came home around one a.m., the two would sit and quietly eat dinner, trying to not wake their four daughters and two boarders.

Although both were recent immigrants from Poland, Helen was determined to assimilate and give her kids all the advantages she never had. She started with small changes such as no longer putting the horizontal line through her sevens (this quickly identified you as European), and learning to say “thunder and lightning” not “tunder and lightning.” She was a quick learner and picked up a solid command of English by carefully examining her children’s schoolwork and forcing herself to practice by shopping outside the neighborhood. In a short period of time, she progressed to reading The Saturday Evening Post each week, cover to cover. Consistent with her efforts to make her family “more American,” Helen attempted to recreate the Norman Rockwell moments she saw in The Post with her own family. Walter, who was deeply devoted to his wife, was luckily amused rather than annoyed by this, and encouraged his four daughters to go along with her plans.

Walter and Helen nibbled away at skewers of cold city chicken, the curiously named Polish American comfort food that was not chicken at all, rather cubes of breaded veal and pork on a stick. As Walter bit off the last piece off his wooden skewer, two gunshots broke the evening silence. Walter and Helen both stood up and saw a large green cabriolet roadster turn off Harbaugh to Copland from St. John Cantius Catholic Church. Walter ran down Copland and found Father Pzechowski lying on his back a few steps outside the side entrance to the church, not moving, with two expanding red circles on his chest.

Chapter 1

Frankie Jablonski cautiously navigated the eighteen-foot-long wooden canoe with an upturned pointy bow and mahogany trim along the Belle Isle Loop Canal. She was no expert, but so far, she managed to avoid hitting any of the nearby canoes. With over 40,000 rentals per year, the canoe livery was a prospering enterprise. Her two boys sat quietly in front sharing a wood slat-backed seat. Nearby, a rafted-up group of three raucous families were all laughing and having fun. In another canoe a young couple sat across from each other with the sweet melody of “You’re the Cream in My Coffee,” by Parker Gibbs emanating from the Victrola installed at the stern.

Johnny awkwardly helped his mom, using a paddle much too long for him. “Keep it steady, Johnny. Nice job, sweetheart,” Frankie warmly encouraged.

Today was Johnny’s seventh birthday. Freckle-faced and tall for his age, it was his first birthday without his father. Johnny’s mother, Frankie, was determined to make the day special and maybe kick-start some joy back into their lives. Almost one year ago, his father was accidentally electrocuted at the power plant within the not yet fully operational Ford River Rouge manufacturing complex. Time, since then, had felt stagnant for Johnny, his mother, and younger brother Eddie. A pervasive sense of loss permeated their waking lives. Laughter and happy moments were sparse. Johnny now spent most of his time looking at the ground, mainly searching for amphibians and reptiles as seven-year-old boys do, but also to avoid the persistent stares of pity from friends and neighbors.

Frankie’s husband, who confusingly to many was named Frank, had been the fun and adventurous one in the family. He was kind, never far from a smile and made people feel good. Neighbors and friends flocked to hear his outlandish stories, get a warm pat on the back, and hear his boisterous laugh.

Frankie, on the other hand, was an introvert—precise, exacting, and always paying attention. In contrast to Frank, she wasn’t the type to uplift an entire room, but she had an uncanny ability to discern the emotions of every individual present in that room. She was curious and a problem solver. If you needed someone to listen, she was it. Now that Frank was gone, Frankie was strugglng to fill his vacant roles, while dealing and not dealing with her grief.

She knew she couldn’t make herself a gregarious extrovert but she could try to be more fun. In an effort to do so, she had asked Johnny what he wanted to do for his birthday. He quickly responded, “Mudpuppy. I want to find a northern mudpuppy and see if it barks.”  Frankie was the one who added canoeing to the day’s agenda, just in case the mudpuppy proved hard to find.

Ever since a chance encounter last spring with Loretta Johnson, the scientific assistant in charge of reptiles and amphibians at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, Johnny could talk of nothing else. His face lit up for the first time in months telling anyone who would listen about Loretta’s nets, notebooks, and survey jars. She had been finishing a survey for amphibians on the shores of the Rouge and Detroit Rivers when they met in a muddy hollow just beyond the riverbank.

Loretta was almost done loading her new collected specimens into a padded wooden crate when out of nowhere a wide-eyed young boy appeared at her elbow. He politely asked, “What are you doing?” She was used to this question and was about to start her canned response when he pointed to a jar and said, “Nice chorus frog.” For the next ten minutes, Johnny excitedly shared his local knowledge of the chorus frogs, wood frogs, spring peepers, and American toads he frequently collected, and where to find them. Loretta found out that once Frank Jablonski’s son started to talk about something of interest, one had to wait it out.

Loretta was impressed. In exchange she gave Johnny an old collecting net and told him about the elusive giant amphibian native to the Detroit River, the northern mudpuppy. She explained that, unlike other amphibians, they never lose the pair of bushy, bright-red gills on the sides of their head. This, her favorite amphibian, earned its name from its ability to produce bark-like noises even when submerged in water. However, Loretta herself had never heard this bark and wondered if this was true. From that point on, Johnny wanted to find out for himself.

Winter, when water temperatures were lower, was the best time to look for mudpuppies. But, Loretta explained, sometimes one got lucky in the spring or summer during the early hours of the morning. She recommended looking along the eastern shore of Belle Isle. This was how Frankie found herself loading the boys into the car before sunrise on a Saturday morning and driving from Southwest Detroit across the concrete-arched bridge to the island park in the middle of the Detroit River.

Frankie was the only one in her extended family with a car. Two years ago, Frank hit on the numbers, the illegal underground lottery, and used the winnings to purchase a new stove for Frankie and a used 1922 dark blue Detroit Electric Model 90 coupe for himself. Despite working for Ford, he was never a fan of the combustion engine. He thought the future of motoring was with electric cars. Smartly, he kept this opinion to himself at work. He converted a pigeon coop in the backyard to a garage, keeping the car hidden in the alley when not in use. Ford workers were Ford supporters and parking a competitor’s car outside your house was not a good idea.

The aluminum-bodied four-passenger car had a top speed of twenty-five miles per hour, and rechargeable lead-acid batteries with a seventy- to one-hundred-mile range. The lack of radiator grill, and tall, curved side windows gave the car a simple elegance. It was reliable, fast-starting, and easy to maintain. Sadly, the very thing that ended Frank’s life, electricity, is what he thought was the key to the future.

Mudpuppy hunting required taking off your shoes, rolling up your pants or skirt above your knees, carefully searching the muddy banks, and flipping over rock after rock. The search spanned several hours with a break for egg salad sandwiches, poppy seed roll cake, and milk. As the sun filled the sky and air started to warm, Johnny exclaimed, “I found one!” His tiny hands soon emerged from the water clutching a large, wriggling brown creature. It had a smooth body, pair of bushy bright-red gills alongside its head, and a paddle-shaped tail. Holding the frightened animal up to his face he cordially asked, “Do you bark?” The animal looked up at him with pleading round eyes and didn’t make a sound.

Eddie and Frankie hobbled on their bare feet over to Johnny and the mudpuppy. All three looked at the creature, suddenly ripped from its existence without warning, and could think only of their father. They exchanged a knowing glance before Johnny carefully put the large salamander back into the water. Today was not the day to find out if mudpuppies bark. More importantly, for the first time since Frank’s passing, they felt they had the power to control something. They overwhelmingly agreed on mercy. As they held hands and walked away from the water’s edge, Frankie felt something she had not felt in a long time, hope.

Now as she paddled along the canal with the boys, an unexpected gust of wind rocked the canoe, blowing off her straw cloche hat. It landed gracefully on the water within reach of the couple with the Victrola. From the surprise in the couple’s eyes, Frankie knew her most arresting feature had been revealed. Throughout history few things were ever as perfect as Frankie Jablonski’s hair.

From a young age, the now twenty-eight-year-old Frankie knew her cascade of long, thick, auburn curls were something to be admired and never forgotten. Even though the style of the day was a short bob, Frankie never considered cutting her hair. It was what first drew Frank’s attention and what kept his eyes always on her. Her curls complemented a round face, cornflower-blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a slightly upturned nose. The combination lent her a resemblance to Myrna Loy that was hard to miss. 

To keep up with fashion, most days she wore her hair pinned back and under in a fake bob of sorts. Whether in this style, or with a low bun and wave of curls plaited to her forehead, or an improvised updo with loose hanging tendrils, her hair turned heads. Humidity, often dreaded by young Midwestern women, surprisingly transformed her coarse curls into a softer, more defined, and bouncy texture, defying the typical outcome of flatness and frizz. Furthermore, her hair was immune to the standard impacts—hats, days at the beach, rainstorms—it just always looked good. Under the midday sun now shining on the canal, her hair caught reflections from the water and intermittently twinkled like tinsel garlands on a Christmas tree.

Reaching for the hat with her wiry, athletic arms, her dress caught on the seat of the canoe, tearing slightly. Another thing to mend, she thought to herself. Frankie was a deft seamstress, dressing herself in fashionable garments created from odds and ends from her paying clients. Today, her lightweight pale-blue cotton dress had a drop waist with boat neck and cap sleeves. The loose bodice featured intricate embroidery of poppies and lilies of the valley, honoring her Polish heritage. Frankie was proud of her ancestry and not afraid to show it.

Much to the annoyance of his companion, the young man retrieved the hat, paddled over to Frankie and the boys, and blushed as he said, “Here you go, miss.” Frankie thanked the couple with a warm smile, tucked her hair back under the hat and continued paddling through the park toward the magnificent Belle Isle Casino. Glancing up at the well-dressed young couples seeking shade from the sun on the second-floor veranda, Frankie was reminded of a warm summer night when Frank first whispered, “I love you” in a quiet corner of the dance floor.

After returning the canoe, Eddie asked, “Could we go look at the lions?” With a curly mop of blond curls, and hazel eyes, Eddie was a spitting image of his late father. Sometimes it took Frankie’s breath away. She still had lots to do that afternoon. The entire extended family was coming over for dinner to celebrate Johnny’s birthday. This was the first time she was hosting everyone since Frank’s death and she still needed to roll, stuff, and boil the pierogi, the Eastern European dumplings favored by many Poles. Nevertheless, she was determined to hold on to their newfound sense of simple joy, and after all, it was just a brief walk.

On the western end of the island, four larger than life marble lion waterspouts perched in a sphinx-like posture around the James Scott Memorial Fountain. Frankie and the boys made their way through the crowd to cool off in the mist emanating from the massive five-tiered fountain.

As they finished their stroll around the fountain’s perimeter, the three sang out in unison, “One hundred and nine!” ending their tradition of counting the playful mix of water spouts featuring the likenesses of Neptune, giddy cherubs, dolphins, frogs, turtles, and goats.

On their way back to the car they passed by a statue of James Scott himself, seated inconspicuously at the back of the fountain.

“He looks just like Uncle Caz,” Eddie remarked.

Frankie, controlling her giggles, thought how displeased her brother-in-law would be to learn he shared a likeness with one of Detroit’s most unpopular characters. Although Scott was known as an unfriendly, lazy playboy, the city accepted his posthumous gift of $200,000 for the fountain, along with his stipulation that a life-size statue of him be included. The city complied with a simple likeness of him seated apart from the fountain, gazing at its whimsical menagerie of animals and mythical creatures, almost as if he were a naughty schoolboy relegated to the corner.

Wet from accidentally falling off the edge into the shallow lower bowl of the fountain, Eddie let his mom dry him off with the skirt of her now much maligned dress before they piled back into the car and headed home. As she quietly motored west along Jefferson Avenue surrounded by the Detroit cityscape, Frankie maintained her left hand on the speed control and right hand on the steering bar.

Looking around, Frankie almost didn’t recognize the Detroit from her youth. Fueled by the immense wealth pouring in from the rapidly growing automotive industry, Detroit was changing. In just a few short years, a steady stream of opulent hotels, office towers, and residences had sprung up seemingly overnight—many in the fashionable Art Deco style, but others drawing from neo-Gothic, Beaux-Arts, and beyond. Each new structure seemed determined to outdo the last, leaving its own distinctive mark on the evolving city skyline.

With the towering skyscrapers behind her, she softly began to sing the boys’ favorite Polish lullaby, “A, a, a, Kotki dwa, Szaro-bure obydwa.” Both boys were fast asleep before she could even begin the second verse.