Carry Me Home (63 page)

Sweating. Delirious. On his back, on his bed, in the dark, alone, needing to pee. Alone. Alone from day one, from moment one back in the land of the big PX, the pig PX. They’d snubbed him. Right down the line. Those white boys he’d sat with on the Seven-oh-Sweet Freedom Bird: moment minus one aboard, all friends and thrilled to have returned from that bad motherfucker; moment one, on the ground, “Don’t even look me up. I know we been through the same shit, Bro. I know we been close. But it won’t work back here. They won’t even let you come down my street.” Worse, honkey number two simply refusing to talk, refusing to look at him, walking away. Home. Luwan. Shut off. Keeping his daughter away from him. Randall, Phillip, all surface. Alone with them cause they couldn’t understand. Alone too, with the Captain. Not a single person to confide in. Not a single friend. Has to be. I gotta be alone. Isolate myself. I-so-late me from them hos-tile mothafuckas. Nice-looking sister! Soiled brother. Marred, Man. Diseased. Just another incurable retched niggar staring at them with their flag, them shoving that Confederate flag in my face. Kill for whitey. Killed by whitey. Brother abuses brother for The Man.

Alone like blue-eyes. Maybe she’s got it. Maybe that’s why she all the time sits like she does, like she’s holding herself in. Same as me. Cept she’s brand name. I’m generic. Yeah. Same as me. Long, straight, nice arms. Same as me cept light blue eyes and dark brown eyes. Vanilla and chocolate. We’d be perfect together. Brand name aint no better than the generic. I’ll show em. I’ll show her. When I get my piece of the pie.

How in God’s name ... this little black boy from Coal Hill who split from his baby ... Jessica, baby, Daddy gonna come back someday.... Prove your manhood. Go Airborne!

Ty rolled, grabbed an alarm bottle from before the door stile. He was high, mellow, coming down, aching, shaking, sad, afraid to go into the hall. He urinated into the bottle. His johnson burned.

OPM. OPM became his opium as much as speedballs became his addiction. OPM—other people’s money.

Ty’s second herpetic eruption lasted half as long as the initial attack. In its wake, partly because of his perception of his new vulnerability, he doubled his financial efforts, his assault on that piece of the American pie he so desperately wanted, needed, needed to assuage all the assaults and abuses by which he’d been victimized, stigmatized.

“Mr. Jackson,” Ty said, “I’m not going to play games with you.” It was the evening of Sunday, October 3, 1971. Ty was in Richmond, California, about a mile from the end of the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge. He was sitting in the comfortable living room of Elmont and Mabel Jackson, on the edge of Elmont’s large overstuffed chair with his papers, pencils and charts on the hassock before him. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson sat side by side on the sofa facing him, looking first to him, then to the papers, then to Ty’s business card and back to Ty. “Some people invest in real estate,” Ty said. “And I don’t want to discourage you from exploring that option. But allow me to point out two things. When you own a piece of property you have to maintain it, don’t you?”

Elmont nodded.

“You have to clean up after the tenants if they mess the place up, huh?”

Again Elmont nodded. He was old enough to be Ty’s father. Mabel was younger but not by much.

“And you have to pay the mortgage and taxes whether or not you collect the rent, right?”

“Honey,” Mabel said, “I been cleanin homes so long that aint gonna stop me.”

“No, Mrs. Jackson,” Ty said. “And it shouldn’t. But let me continue a minute. If you take the money your brother left you—”

“God bless his soul,” Mabel injected.

“And you buy a house and rent it ... You see, so many of these stories about buying low, letting appreciation push the price up, then selling high and making huge profits”—Elmont Jackson suppressed a smile; Ty was describing his fantasy—“well ... appreciation, actually, is the increase in cost as measured by the selling price minus your purchase price and closing costs and your selling closing costs and minus the value your money loses over that time to inflation. Most people don’t minus out the inflation. They also don’t deduct any out-of-pocket expenses for unpaid rent. Or for their labor in fixing the place back up. That’s where you get these high figures for appreciation. Look, Mr. Jackson, I’m not going to play games with you, it’s your money. I just want you to understand the alternatives.”

“Give you the money,” Elmont said, “and you turn aroun an loan it out.”

“That’s right. Totally secured. You get ten percent interest on the face value of the note. Unless you want to go the unsecured route. Then I can get you sixteen percent.”

“Sixteen!”

“Oh, yes. But I wouldn’t advise—”

“Sixteen percent a year?”

“Uh-huh. Well, ah, it’s not for everyone. Actually it works out even more. See, ah, let’s say we lend out ten thousand at sixteen percent. But we don’t actually give the borrower ten thousand. They pay points up front—”

“Like I did here when we bought the house.”

“That’s right. But on these unsecured notes I can get you three points up front, so instead of you actually giving me ten thousand, you give me ninety seven hundred. But you still collect interest on the ten. So—” Ty wrote out the figures on a piece of paper on the hassock, “it’s sixteen hundred divided by ninety-seven hundred, which, ah ... Look, I’ll do those calculations later if you want but it’s probably closer to eighteen percent. And of course you get some of the loan fee too. It’s not much, maybe seventy-five—”

“That sounds—” Mabel sighed, slapped her hands on her ample thighs, “like highway robbery.”

Ty smiled sheepishly. “It does, doesn’t it?” He leaned forward. His voice was soft. “It’s not for everyone,” he almost whispered. “But the truth is, you know, as a black man, I like owning a piece of white people’s homes. They owned our homes for so long.... It’s our turn.”

“Aint that the truth,” Elmont said.

“I don’t know,” Mabel said.

“It’s time we got our piece of the pie.” Ty’s voice was soft, smooth. “You know, I’ve been overseas. In the army. America is the best hope for blacks but we’ve got to take the opportunity. We’ve got to grasp it. Grasp the legal opportunities. Otherwise your children and mine will be right down here where we at. Forever. And it’ll be our own fault.”

Mabel shifted uncomfortably. “This all legal?”

“Oh, it’s legal.” Ty nodded his head subtly. “Absolutely.”

Elmont sat up straight as if the implications of Ty’s words had just reached him. “Tyrone, you mean if I give you the nine thousand seven hundred dollars my brother left me, in a year you’ll give me back sixteen hundred and I’ll still have a note sayin I’m owed ten thousand?”

“An unsecured note,” Ty said. “I want to remind you of that. You’re protected by law, by the good name of the borrower and his legal promise to pay. But it’s not a mortgage on his house. Just like a credit card. Still, people pay their credit card bills, don’t they?”

“Yeah. Sixteen hundred the first year,” Elmont repeated, “and I don’t gotta break my back cleanin or repairin or worryin about collectin the rent!”

“That’s the way it’s been working. I can’t promise you a note for exactly that amount, you understand. It might be two notes. You don’t give me the money until I’ve got it sold.”

“Honey—” Mable fixed her eyes on Ty’s face, “you evah done this befo?”

“Oh yes,” Ty said sincerely. “All the time. Mostly to home buyers up in San Martin.” Now Ty chuckled. “There may be hardly any black families up there, but pretty soon blacks will own ten percent of the entire town.”

Elmont turned to Mabel. “What do you think, Mabe?”

“Might be nice to sit back and not worry ...”

“We’ve got a little bit”—Elmont turned from Mabel to Ty—“a little bit of savings too.”

“Oh, wait!” Ty held up his hand. “Now I don’t want you to give me all your rainy-day money.”

“Well”—Elmont was nearly bursting now to hand his money over to Ty Dorsey—”not all of it. We could go, um, maybe twelve thousand.”

Ty interrupted. “Look, this sounds like this is a bit too much for you.”

“When do you need it by?” Elmont shot back.

“I’ll need a cashier’s check on Friday,” Ty said softly.

“Mr. Ellis. Mrs. Ellis. I’m not going to play games with you....”

Again and again. “Mrs. Carr, I’m sure if your husband were still alive he’d want you to invest in the future of your children....” “Mr. Brown ... I’ve been overseas. America may have problems but it’s our best hope. I don’t want to rip it down. I’m no Panther. I’m just like you. Only I want our people to partake of their proper share.”

In San Francisco’s black neighborhoods, and in San Bruno, in Foster City, all the way south to San Jose and back north through Milpitas, Fremont, out to Martinez and across to Vallejo, Ty Dorsey’s spiel flowed, telling people what they themselves were thinking, good people aghast at the radicalism of the times, hard-working people hoping, praying to take a legal step forward. From them Ty collected funds—from generally older black men and women whom he found by searching year-old obituaries in local newspapers in municipal libraries, generally calling on the listed survivors exactly a year and a day from the death of their loved one, calling them as if by chance.

By the end of 1971, Ty Dorsey had collected just under $200,000 from thirty-one sources. He had placed $160,000 in loans on which he’d grossed nearly $12,000. For the remaining $40,000 Ty issued fake notes to the sources—those he judged most gullible. From the principle he made all necessary interest payments (which not only kept everyone happy and at bay but also generated dozens more “sales” leads).

Ty Dorsey purchased two more investment properties—small, rundown Riverside subdivision homes—in his name. He purchased another with Lloyd Dunmore as a silent partner and three more in which he was only owner-mortgagee in name, under aliases: Tyrone Blackwell, Ty E. Dorsey and T. E. Wallace.

Through autumn and early winter Ty concentrated on his pyramiding real estate “empire.” His herpes infection recurred for a short bout prior to Christmas but subsided within days. He still dared not think of sexual contact, still believed, if the thought flashed across his consciousness, that he’d been sexually scarred, devalued, but he barely thought of it now. He had his stash, his kit, his work, his “works.” Carefully, very carefully, aware of the potential for robbery, for violence, for addiction, Ty pressed forward. He spread his drug purchases thin, buying only a little from any one junkie, always complaining about the price, always lamenting, “Damn, Man, I work my ass off. This drainin me, Man, a ev-rah cent.” After a purchase Ty always returned to his hotel by a different and circuitous route, never returning to his own building without entering another by one door, leaving by a second. In his room, too, he became more cautious. One day he quietly cut a hole in the plaster behind the bureau, inserted a portion of his cash and stash, sealed the hole with an old piece of wallpaper so it appeared the room had once been painted without the furniture being moved. On another evening he pulled a section of the baseboard that ran beneath the bed away from the wall, made a second hiding place. Then he found that at the back of the base of the sheet metal armoire there was an opening and if he kept the cabinet an inch from the wall he could easily insert and retrieve envelopes. He also took the precaution of leaving ninety dollars in cash, several costume-jewelry rings, and a single vial of skag in the box on the dresser—enough, he reasoned, to satisfy any creep who’d break in. Enough to keep them from searching for more.

Ty Dorsey was careful, too, in how he administered his speedballs, how much heroin and cocaine he used. Over and over, long after it had become a nightly, then a twice-daily habit, he admonished himself, “Don’t get hooked. It’ll steal our piece a the pie. Just tee-tee, Man. Just a little now and then. Take the edge off. Keeps us goin.” When his left arm became swollen and sore he taught himself to shoot with the left into the right. When those veins collapsed, he found he could shoot his thigh or the top of his foot. “Just a little, Man. If we get hooked, The Man’ll come. Take our piece a the pie. Take our portfolio.”

There is an old adage: “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.” Ty would never understand, not even years later, that perhaps the negative corollary is more valid.

“I’ve got a little problem,” Lloyd Dunmore said. It was midafternoon, mid-January. Dunmore, Dorsey and Peter Wilcox were standing in the sun, in a small parking lot in Sausalito, following lunch at the 7 Seas. Their backs were to the bay, their eyes sweeping Sausalito’s two-lane main street, taking in the tourists, hippies, street artists, shops, and colorful old homes stepping up the steep verdant hillside. From the crest above town a thick low fog was cascading down the hill.

Ty did not look at Lloyd Dunmore. “If it’s only a little problem, Lloyd, you probably wouldn’t even bring it up.”

“Well, it’s little and it isn’t,” Dunmore said slowly. He opened the door of his Mercedes, rested one arm on the roof. “I’m getting up there in years.” Ty turned, looked Lloyd in the face. Peter pretended not to hear. “Not old, mind you. But I’m financially set. Except for my youngest, the kids are grown and out of the house. What I’m saying is I want to cut back. I’m still going to be in charge of my operations but the daily management—”

“Come off it, Lloyd,” Peter interrupted. “How old are you?”

“I’m fifty-eight.”

“And you want to retire?!”

“No. No. Don’t get me wrong. Madeleine ... she’d like us to do a bit of extended traveling. Believe it or not she wants to see Asia. Most of what I’ve got going takes care of itself. But there are a couple of properties ... Look, I know you two. You’re both good men. Peter, that strip shopping center we’ve got in Terra Linda, buy me out.”

“Really?”

“Come up with a price. What it’s worth. And Peter, I’m willing to let you clip me on this one.” Lloyd laughed, patted his hand on the car roof. “Not by too much. Ha! I’ll even carry the paper.” Dunmore shifted. “And Ty, that big Victorian we’ve got way out there on Miwok ...”