Low Road (10 page)

Business had remained good for Joe Goines. Now well into his sixties, he had enjoyed the fruits of his labor and dedication. Dry cleaning had proved itself a worthy venture. He and Myrtle had been able to provide well for two children and would see that Joanie be given all she required until she left home. It was only a matter of time, after all, before she would marry and begin her own family. Joan and both her older siblings could truly say they had never wanted for anything material. For them to have had a need that went unmet could have only meant there had not truly been a need. In those later years, Joe began to find his own special ways to unwind at home. He had become a fan of Ray Charles, the blind pianist who was helping to develop rhythm and blues with his soulful performing and broad, expressive vocal and instrumental range. It was odd that Joe would take to the sounds of a performer who was laying the groundwork for rock and roll, but it turned out to be a musical release of sorts. Every so often, Joe would put on his ceremonial feathers and headdress. He called himself the “big chief.” As he enjoyed the pride of such moments, he would turn on the stereo, and Charles would sing “Hit the Road, Jack,” his playful and infectious hit about a contentious relationship. Nothing in the tune appeared to resemble Joe's life or his marriage to Myrtle. It might have been his strange, sacred way of communicating with his Native American ancestors. Or it might have been the alcohol accompanying the music. Either way, he was left alone. It was Joe's time to spend in whatever way that he chose to enjoy it. When time came to open the store and go back behind the counter at work, just like the sunrise, he was there. Donnie's work, on the other hand, generally started after dark. He worked the streets diligently, establishing revenue sources wherever he could.

Having returned home with Marie and her clan, while his mom's new husband continued a military bid, young Charles Joseph Glover frequently found himself in his uncle Donnie's company, and on the receiving end of unsolicited tutoring. Donnie wanted to school his nephew in the ways of the world so he wouldn't grow up to be a square. As it was, nobody in the neighborhood bothered Charles or any of the family members, out of respect for the man who they felt would repay any evil in kind. Still, Donnie wanted to prevent the kid from becoming soft. And left up to Marie, Donnie figured, the result was inevitable. So on one occasion, he and a partner decided to take Charles on a little field trip to a whorehouse on the east side near downtown. After taking him inside and attempting to persuade him into God-knows-what, they recognized that the boy was nowhere near capable of withstanding such pressure. Charles bolted, frightened, and got away from there. He could hardly wait to tell on Donnie when he saw his mother. But the price of his nervousness would be paid for some time to come. Childishly, they nicknamed him “Faggot Joey.” After all, he had literally run away from pussy—and grown-woman pussy, at that. It was unheard of, and terribly laughable, in the pimping game.

Charles often saw his uncle after he got out of school. The mood he encountered one memorable time was noticeably pensive. He sat across from his uncle, eyeing him curiously. Draped in one of the fine European suits Charles's dad had sent from abroad, Donnie was the picture of concentration, his fist glued to his chin.

“What's wrong?” Charles asked.

“Shut up!” Donnie snapped. He fidgeted and twisted about in his seat. Someplace in the distance, Charles could hear pounding and muffled noises.

“What's that?”

“Shut up!” his uncle repeated. “You ask too many damn questions!” Donnie returned to his concentration. Shortly thereafter, Myrtle entered the room. Immediately, she detected tension.

“What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.

“I'm thinkin'!” he sniped again. She left the room. In the background, Charles could still hear the pounding.

“What
is
that?” he nagged at his uncle.

“I told you to shut up!” Donnie paused. “You better keep your damn mouth shut if I tell you this.” Charles listened. “We got this nigger tied up in the trunk…” As soon as Donnie began, it made sense; his uncle was crazy, Charles decided. That's all. Crazy. No other explanation. Like Joanie before him, Charles had been forced to witness the shooting up, Donnie's needle-injection demonstration. After several years, he was still watchful, in his perverse way, when it came to the children. Charles had also observed with interest Donnie's outrageous sky-blue suit and other pimp-wear. Soon-to-be film characters, like the ignorant and buffoonish 1970s pimp “Dolemite,” with his kung fu–kicking prostitutes, were only pretenders to the style and life Donnie actually portrayed on the streets of Detroit. His nephew had witnessed the double-duty shoplifting missions that Donnie took his whores on at local grocery stores. Donnie and his bitches had shocked the sheltered boy as he sat out in the car. His uncle would go into the market wearing oversized coats that held secret compartments sewn into the lining. The girls might put a few items into a grocery basket—it wasn't exactly the kind of work they'd signed up for, but they took direction—then they'd all get in the checkout line. Standing behind them, Donnie whistled and glanced around as if lost for the moment in his own thoughts. He played the role of casual customer to the hilt. They'd pay for the few items presented to the cashier and walk out innocently to the parking lot. Victoriously, Donnie would open the trunk before snatching out an alarming number of steaks and packages of meat from his coat's lining. The food had been carefully concealed between the fabric of his outerwear and the shape of his inconspicuous frame.

“That's boosting!” he would proudly brag to his nephew. “I could teach you that, but you don't wanna know nothin' 'bout it!” Charles had also marveled at Uncle Donnie's sense of humor. His favorite show was
Bewitched.
He often sat with Charles and watched the antics of the sitcom's main character, Samantha, toward her mild-mannered husband Darrin, who was portrayed by eventual Michigan transplant Dick York.

“He's a punk!” Donnie would say, almost talking to the television.

“It's a TV show,” Charles matter-of-factly explained.

“Aw man, he's a punk! He lets her walk all over him! He's a punk!” The rules of pimpology would probably not have applied to Darrin and Samantha's marriage anyway, but the mind-set, to Donnie, was all the same.

Charles reasoned with the macho pimp: “It's a
TV show.
” Donnie enjoyed smoking reefer while he watched the program. Joan had a canary, whose cage sat next to Donnie's favorite chair in the living room. The bird would sing and whistle happily:
“Whrr-whrr-whrr, whrr-whrrr.”
Donnie got a kick out of blowing reefer smoke into the cage. He'd take a puff, lean toward the bird, then exhale. Charles watched as the cheerful house pet received a contact high. This particular time, Donnie was feeling more devilish than usual.

“Watch this, Joey,” he told Charles as he grinned at the bird. Donnie began his ritual: puff, lean, blow. He began to focus on the bird during
Bewitched
commercials. Puff, lean, blow. As if bewildered, now the bird chirped inconsistently.

“Whrr…”

After a while, Charles noticed that the bird was silent. He and Donnie got up, looked into the cage and saw it frozen on its perch. Donnie thumped the cage, and the poor thing fell over dead. Obviously, Joanie was at loss for laughter when she returned home from her job. Donnie got an earful like his sister had given him on only rare occasions. He responded in his usual sensitive fashion, saying that it was “just a bird.”

Yep, crazy,
Charles thought. That about summed it up. He listened to his uncle's dilemma concerning the man trapped outside in the car.

“I'm tryin' to decide whether we're gonna kill 'im or drop 'im off naked beside the road somewhere.” He pondered the options the way a stockbroker would ponder an investment. Charles didn't bother to seek details about what transgression the poor fool at his uncle's mercy had committed. The fourteen-year-old reversed roles with his uncle, feeling that Donnie obviously needed a rational voice to help balance his thinking.

“You don't wanna kill him,” Charles said, as if he'd made the decision at least a hundred times before. “Don't kill him.”

Donnie sighed.

“Yeah. You're right. I don't need no murder case right now.”

Charles never heard any more. Once he saw that Donnie agreed with his recommendation there was little left to say. But safest wagers would have had it that a naked man somewhere was left to find his way home after sundown. Donnie knew he could accomplish plenty on reputation alone. If he was respected as the bad ass he portrayed himself to be, there would be little need for him to work at supporting the image. Conserving energy and maximizing resources were just as important in the streets as anywhere. Advertising took on a slightly different form, though. Word of mouth could be more effective than any business card. Even so, Donnie never set out in search of trouble. He attempted to make it known, though, that any motherfucker who chose to test him would have a challenge on his or her hands. A little intimidation could go a long way.

At some point, Donnie decided he would take his pimp show on the road. With girls in tow, he left Detroit for the first time since his return from the air force. Donnie traveled out of state, heading westward in search of new trick money in places where he felt there'd be a demand. As personal experience had taught him, military personnel in need could be reliable customers. Donnie learned about a base in Kansas, where there would likely be men who were willing to part with their money for a piece of quality ass. He set up in the area for a while, until he drew the attention of local authorities. Not only that, but he managed to gain notice from the FBI, which opened a file on Donnie for what was peculiarly called “white slavery,” that is, transporting prostitutes across state lines. The last thing he needed was a federal charge, which could mess up not only his game, but his prospects for running it. Fucking with a stiff federal sentence would obviously prohibit the money-making empire he envisioned himself in the process of building. Aware of the risks, when things heated up and his prospects changed, he went back in the direction of home. In Flint, about ninety minutes north of Detroit, he set up again. But it wasn't long before the movements of the stranger in town caught up with him once more. Cops didn't leave Donnie much room to breathe. No later than 1959, he was on Detroit soil once more. Now, however, Donnie was prepared to explore new ways to make a gain. There were surely quicker and simpler ways to get paid, without having to keep track of women. The money he spent on overhead, such as clothing and places to stay, could be direct-deposited into his pockets. Donnie's next major move would be designed to produce quicker and simpler dividends.

Numbers had a legacy and complexity that separated it from every other hustle in the ghetto. Its presence among the masses was far-reaching in both appeal and scope. Even many of the otherwise law-abiding citizens of black communities would occasionally “play the numbers” in hopes that their wagers would put them ahead enough to buy a new piece of furniture or maybe get ahead on the coming month's rent. Called “policy” around certain parts, like Chicago, the numbers game was the most carefully organized lottery system ever established by non-state, self-appointed authorities. It was said to have been brought over from the Caribbean by Afro-West Indians, who took and placed bets in barbershops and other small establishments that served as front stations for the lottery. Cities like Harlem, which attracted large numbers of immigrants, incorporated numbers into their subcultures as the newcomers learned of the affordability and simplicity of participating. Policy houses, where bets were taken and where the winners collected, were located on numerous blocks of northern cities. The winning numbers were chosen through various methods. New York used an already-established form of gambling as the source of its underground wage making: horse races. The numbers of the top three horses for each day served as the winning combination for bettors in Harlem. During another stage of the racket's evolution, the last three digits of the New York Stock Exchange's total trade volume was used to determine payout. Chicago had The Wheel, a roulette-style device that functioned as the proverbial magic lamp for numbers participants. Each day, players and policy organizers gathered at the selected location, perhaps a basement apartment or similar discreet place, and the wheel was spun before an anxious, enthusiastic—and usually packed—house. Though farther away in proximity from Harlem, Detroit numbers also went the way of the horse races in determining winners and losers.

What every city had in common was a basic structure, from bottom to top, of the players, ticket takers, operators, and financers involved with policy operation. Ticket takers, called “numbers runners,” made their rounds to homes, street corners, shoeshine stands, soda shops, anyplace in the neighborhood where black folks gathered. The runners represented the first phase of monetary exchange, accepting bets that ranged from pennies to considerably larger amounts. Not uncommonly, these were teenagers who proved themselves responsible in keeping the dictates of the code. They began the process of recycling the healthy cash pool that constantly flowed from the pockets and purses of lower-income hopefuls into the hands of bank-rolling gangsters or benevolent hustlers—who were sometimes one and the same—and then back into the ghetto again. Tickets took the form of small betting slips that were carried back to policy collectors. In certain areas, the slips took three-by-five-inch dimensions and were yellow in color, with carbon paper in between each for transference. The players kept the originals; delivery staff retained the copies. Other runners, called “pencils,” avoided the use of tickets altogether, preferring to write bets on their arms to carry them back to stations. If cops suspected them of the illegal courier work they conducted, with one lick of a fingertip and a smudging of the lead, the evidence was destroyed. A brilliant, select few were even more cautious: They memorized the numbers they took from dozens of customers to collectors in waiting. The collectors supervised daily management of the games. Employing the collectors as their management staff were the bankers, who financed the games.