Motor City Burning (17 page)

He told Doyle at least once a day that his dream assignment was pulling wheel duty on a Big Four, the scourge of the Detroit ghetto, a squad car with a uniform at the wheel and three plainclothes cops packing shotguns, tear gas and a ton of bad attitude. “Ain't nobody gives any shit to a Big Four,” Zap said dreamily.

As Doyle passed the West Grand Boulevard turnoff, the one he'd taken to get to the Larrow Arms, his thoughts drifted back to his last night as Zap's partner. His promotion to Homicide had come through and he was counting off his last hours in a uniform, praying for a quiet shift. They were cruising west on Davison in a radio car, Czapski at the wheel. It was muggy for a spring evening, a lot of people out. Czapski turned left on Wildemere, taking it slow, drinking in every movement on the street the way he always did, hoping something would catch his eye.

“My, my, my, what have we here?” he'd said, letting off the gas so the car was barely crawling. A young Negro male had come hurrying out of an apartment building and climbed into a car and pulled away from the curb.

“What is it, Zap?”

“That nigger.”

“What about him?”

“He's got out-of-state plates.”

“So?”

“So how you suppose some jig from Alabama paid for that nice cherry Buick? Chopping cotton?”

“I wouldn't know, Zap, but something tells me you're going to find out.”

“Damn straight I am.” He turned on the roof flasher and pulled the Buick over.

Doyle stayed in the radio car listening to the murmur of call-out codes while Czapski went to question the driver. It was only after he heard Czapski berating the guy that Doyle got out of the car and stood with his hands resting on the roof. People were coming out of buildings, standing on porches, waiting. This had become a major Motor City spectator sport—watching The Man hassle the brothers. Doyle wished Czapski would hurry up. A woman on one of the porches shouted, “What the fuck he do wrong? Leave him be!” Doyle heard a bottle break. From where he was standing he could see the driver's right arm, long and brown, resting across the top of the Buick's front seat.

And now, sailing down the deserted Lodge Freeway in the rain, Doyle saw it, the memory as vivid as a snapshot: the tops of the seats in that old Buick were red.

When he got back to headquarters he went straight to the musty records cage on the second floor and woke up the night clerk and got him to dig out the run sheets from the first week of May, 1967. Run sheets recorded every move every cop made in the course of every shift. They were not always complete or in chronological order, and Doyle couldn't remember the exact date of his last shift. But he was convinced there was a pickup waiting for him in that stack of paper.

Three hours later he found it: At 6:43
P.M.
on May 4, 1967, Patrolmen G.L. Czapski and F.A. Doyle, in Car 77, made a routine traffic stop of a 1954 two-door Buick Century at the corner of Wildemere and Tuxedo. After questioning by Patrolman Czapski, according to the run sheet, motorist was allowed to go on his way. No summons was issued. The driver's name was William Brewer Bledsoe. His local address in Detroit was the Algiers Motel. His home address was 2412 Greenwood Dr. in Tuskegee, Alabama.

Doyle made a photocopy of the run sheet and circled the driver's middle name and his hometown. He could hear Bob Brewer describing Andalusia, Alabama:
It's a little dot on the map bout halfway between Tuskegee and Mobile.

It was too good to be a coincidence. It was a pickup to end all pickups, and Doyle was so excited he went up to the fifth floor and started dialing Jimmy Robuck's home number. But he caught himself before the connection went through. It was after three o'clock in the morning and he'd just worked an eighteen-hour day. The pickup would still be there tomorrow.

By the time Doyle got home the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared. He went into the back yard to check on his garden and was surprised to find that the tomato plants already came up to his waist and the corn was knee-high. Even in the weak moonlight he could see that the garden was in bad need of weeding. The breeze brought a whispered reproach from his mother.

He poured a snifter of cognac and lit a cigar and went out onto the front porch to watch the moon and listen to the dripping night. He could see the lights of huge freighters sliding past on the river, on their way to feed the beast that never sleeps. Doyle's father, fuzzy around the edges and a little milky, was sitting in the butterscotch La-Z-Boy recliner, his old TV chair. Before Doyle could say a word, his old man said, How come you haven't brought Vicki around lately?

Because she blew me off, Doyle said. Left a note on the fridge and disappeared while I was out late working a double at the Driftwood. Well, at least Herb Silver's happy now.

What do you mean?

I heard him talking to Effie from the kitchen window one night after he saw Vicki and me walk up these porch steps holding hands. I could hear him saying, That fucking Doyle kid'll never change. First he spends all his time in Ford Park playing basketball with the coloreds. Then he goes out dancing with them. Then he gets one for a partner. And now he's screwing one. Next thing you know we're gonna have a bunch of nappy-headed thugs cutting across the front lawn and stealing our hubcaps.

Herb Silver's an asshole, the old man said. Always bragging about how many ribbons he won for his roses and how much he paid for his new Cadillac. You gotta wonder about a guy whose front lawn looks like he trims it with scissors.

Doyle laughed. Good point, he said. Herb's been talking about putting the house up for sale ever since that black couple moved in at the end of the block.

Good riddance. Let 'em move out to Southfield where they belong.

Doyle told his father about the past few days—the conversations with Charlotte Armstrong and Bob Brewer, all those For Sale signs on Normandy Street, the Vietnam angle, the picture of the Hulls in the
News
, the pickup. He didn't mention that his brother's house was lit up like Christmas. No sense pissing the old man off at this late date. Doyle said, Henry and Helen looked so happy in that picture in the paper.

They
were
happy, his father said. Two of the finest people I ever met.

We've been dead in the water for ten months, Doyle said. And now, just like that, we've got a chance.

His father asked him why things always seemed to happen
just like that.

Beats me, Doyle said. For all he knew, his old man was thinking about the way he'd died. One minute he's eating a meatloaf sandwich on the second-shift lunch break in the stamping room at the Rouge, the next minute he's face-down on the greasy concrete floor, already dead from a heart attack that would've taken down a bull elk. Doyle said, You know what I'm always saying about detective work.

Right. Luck and squealers.

So we finally caught some lucky breaks. We were damn sure due. Now if we would just hear from some squealers.

That would be nice.

Yeah, Pop, squealers are always nice.

11

S
TINGERS ALWAYS TASTED BETTER TO
C
HICK
M
URPHY AFTER A
Tigers victory. He was sitting alone at the bar in the upstairs mixed grill at Oakland Hills, getting started on his second stinger and replaying tonight's game in his head. The Tigers fell behind early and were down 2-0 after six, then they woke up and beat the Red Sox going away, 7-2. Beat 'em like a dirty rug.

“You know what I was just thinking, Cheech?” Chick Murphy said to Chi Chi, who was rubbing clean glasses with a bar cloth and swallowing a yawn.

“What, Meester Murphy?”

“I was thinking that this Tiger team is a lot like this city.”

“How you mean?”

“Well, you can get 'em down and you can keep 'em down for a long time, but somehow they always find a way to bounce back. Those sonsabitches never quit.”

“Berry true,” said Chi Chi, who didn't know a thing about baseball.

“These late-inning rallies aren't doing a damn thing for my blood pressure, but they sure as hell are exciting to watch.”

Just then Willie Bledsoe walked into the room carrying an empty bus tray and started clearing the last dirty table. Chick had liked the kid the first time he laid eyes on him. Like his uncle, Willie was hard-working, articulate, polite. He moved with the grace of a natural athlete. Kid was handsome, too, tall and fair-skinned, sharp-jawed, well-groomed. None of that greasy shit in his hair that Wiggins and some of the others used. Even that scar on his lip looked good, like he wasn't afraid to mix it up.

“Hey, Willie,” Chick called to him, stirring his brain dimmer with his right index finger, then licking the minty fingertip. “You get a chance to listen to the game tonight?”

“Naw, Mr. Murphy, we got swamped. Heard we won, though. You go?”

“Yeah, a customer gave me a coupla nice box seats down by first base. I heard every cuss word that came out of Norm's mouth. I swear to Christ, that guy never shuts up—and he could make a sailor blush!”

This, as Chick had hoped, got Willie to stop working and walk across the room. Chick knew that Norm Cash was Willie's favorite player, which was another thing he liked about the kid. While the other black guys in the clubhouse tended to favor the obvious black players, usually Willie Horton or Earl Wilson or Gates Brown, Willie developed preferences based on subtle things, like Norm Cash's soft hands and quick feet, his way of coming up with hits at the right time. The kid understood the game, and he judged players by their ability, not their race. A week or so ago Willie had told Chick he played first base in high school and college, even got a tryout with the Houston Colt .45s. When Chick had asked him what happened at the tryout, Willie said, “Nothing. I couldn't hit a big-league curveball if they hung it in front of me with clothespins. So much for my baseball career.”

Now Willie said, “How'd Cash do tonight?”

“Norm looked good. He's going to be all right soon as he stops chasing those outside curveballs. He went three-for-four, with a homer. Drove in three runs. Turned a couple of slick plays in the field, too.”

“So his batting average moved in the right direction for a change.”

For a change.
Spoken like a true Detroit fan, Chick thought, rapping the bar, his signal for Chi Chi to hit him again. Cash drives in three runs, plays flawless defense—and all people can talk about is that his batting average is nowhere near where it's supposed to be. That was something Chick loved about Detroit, the way the fans were demanding, sour, impossible to satisfy—and yet eternally loyal. They loved you but they didn't give you anything for free.

Another thing Chick liked about Willie was that he was all ears whenever Chick talked about the old Tiger teams. Most young people nowadays don't give a rat's ass about anything that happened before last Tuesday, but Willie seemed genuinely interested when Chick told him how he'd grown up worshiping Hal Newhouser, Mickey Cochrane, Schoolboy Rowe and, above all, the G-men. And Willie seemed to believe Chick when he predicted this was going to be a memorable season, maybe right up there with the two World Series championships he'd lived through, in '35 and '45.

As Willie went back to work clearing and resetting the last table, Chick thought about how the members of Oakland Hills sometimes grew attached to people on the staff, to favored waiters and bartenders, even busboys and caddies. Many of the club's members had had humble beginnings themselves, and no matter how rich and powerful they'd become, they liked to feel they were still in touch with the common man, still knew the taste of the salt of the earth. In a lunch-pail town like Detroit, it was important to remember where you came from. Chick Murphy started out washing Packards at a dealership on Gratiot during the Depression, then graduated to shoving booze in his father's bar on Dequindre. And he wasn't going to let himself or anyone else forget it.

Thinking about how far he'd come, Chick considered asking Willie about his life back home, what it was like being a Negro in a place like Alabama, a place that might as well have been on the cold side of Mars to a guy who'd never traveled farther south than the Notre Dame football stadium in Terre Haute, Indiana. Chick reached for his drink, missed it—and almost pitched off the barstool.

“Meester Murphy,” Chi Chi said, appearing out of nowhere to grab his elbow and wrestle him back onto the stool.

“Thanks, Cheech. Musta slipped. . . .”

“Is berry late. Maybe is time to go home?”

“Righto, Cheech.”

“You are dribing?”

“Actually. . . .”

That was when it hit him—one of his brilliant ideas. He turned just as Willie placed the last water goblet upside-down on the table, gave it a final inspection, and started to remove his bow tie.

“Say, Willie,” Chick called to him, “you think you could do me a huge favor?”