Motor City Burning (29 page)

Doyle and Jimmy barely noticed. A heat wave in late June did what heat waves have always done in Detroit—it inspired a burst of violence that sent a dozen citizens to the morgue and sent every homicide detective into maximum overdrive. To make matters worse, as July wore on and the Tigers kept tearing up the American League, there was talk on the street that Armageddon II was going to erupt on the 23rd, the first anniversary of the outbreak of the riot. Word was that some of the Motor City's better-equipped bad-asses were declaring July 23 open season on anyone with white skin, especially if he or she happened to be employed by the Detroit Police Department.

Nerves, understandably, were fraying at 1300 Beaubien, and the Helen Hull investigation went back onto the back burner. But then on the eve of Armageddon II, Doyle and Jimmy worked all night to get a signed confession from a shitball named Rayfield Gaudet in the Jeffries Homes shooting during the summer's first heat wave. It was their last open case. The next morning, after a two-hour nap on the sofa in Sgt. Schroeder's office, Doyle pulled the Helen Hull file back out. An hour later, as he was reviewing his notes from his conversations with Caldwell Petty and Beulah Bledsoe, his telephone rang.

“Homicide, Doyle.”

“Got some great news, Frankie!” came Henry Hull's familiar squawk.

“Glad to hear it, Mr. Hull,” Doyle said. He needed to sleep for a week.

“Did you happen to see the eleven o'clock news last night?”

“No sir, I was busy.”

Henry told him what he'd missed. Detroit police, acting on an anonymous tip, had raided a warehouse on Riopelle and seized a small arsenal of rifles, handguns, ammunition, even a few boxes of hand grenades. This was indeed good news. The raid surely had put a large dent in the bad guys' plans for Armageddon II. A lot of Detroiters, black and white, in and out of uniform, could breathe easier this morning.

“That's terrific, Mr. Hull.”

“Hold on, I haven't even gotten to the good part yet. While I was watching the news I recognized one of the officers involved in the raid. It was Charlie Dixon.”

The uniform who was in the crime scene photo the night Helen Hull died. “I thought Charlie was assigned to the Third Precinct,” Doyle said. “What's he doing raiding a warehouse down on Riopelle?”

Riopelle dead-ended into the Detroit River a few hundred yards from where Doyle was sitting. It was where bootleggers used to unload their boatloads of Canadian whiskey during Prohibition, and it was nearly four miles south of the Harlan House Motel.

“I wondered what Charlie was doing on Riopelle myself,” Henry said, “so I picked up the phone and called him first thing this morning. Come to find out he's been reassigned to the First Precinct. He just happened to be the guy who picked up the phone when the tip came in about the warehouse full of guns. That's how he got his face on TV.”

“Go on.”

“He didn't have much time to talk, but I did get him to tell me a little about the stuff they seized. And guess what. There were some .30-caliber rifles with scopes on them. He said it's going to take a while to catalog everything, there's so much of it. How do you like them apples, Frankie?”

Doyle liked them just fine, but he didn't let on. He thanked Henry for the information and promised to be in touch. Then he scribbled a note for Jimmy to call Charlie Dixon and check the seized weapons for a possible match with the bullet that killed Helen Hull.

Feeling proud of himself—this could be the break they'd been dreaming of, and he was acting like it was just another routine lead—Doyle rode the elevator down to the stinking basement garage. All the prowl cars were signed out, so he climbed into his Bonneville and headed north.

In the front lobby of the Oakland Hills clubhouse Dick Kowalski greeted Doyle like a long-lost brother. He led the way into his office, pushed a pile of papers off a green leather chair and motioned for Doyle to have a seat. He went to a metal urn in the corner and filled two mugs with molten tar. The guy drinks this swill by the gallon, Doyle thought, just like a cop. Kowalski looked even wearier than before, the sockets of his eyes a little ashier, the slump of his shoulders a bit more pronounced. He swung his wingtips onto the desk. There was a hole in the sole of his right shoe. It looked to Doyle like babysitting rich white people and keeping tabs on their black retainers was a lot of work.

“So,” Kowalski said, “what can I do for you today? You need to talk to Bob Brewer again?”

“Actually, I'm looking for his nephew.”

“Willie? Don't tell me he's in trouble.”

“I'm not sure yet.”

“He's one of the best I've got—him and his uncle both. Well-spoken, courteous, always shows up on time and works hard. I don't even think he plays cards or shoots dice with the other guys.”

“You said on the phone he's working tonight?”

“Yeah.” Kowalski craned his neck to read a schedule taped to the wall behind him. “He's due in at four to set up for a private party for—oh, shit.”

“What's wrong?”

“The party's being thrown by Chick Murphy, world's biggest Buick dealer and second biggest blowhard. Word around the clubhouse is he thinks I'm screwing his wife.”

“Are you?”

Kowalski laughed. “That old lush? I wouldn't fuck her with somebody else's dick.”

“Why don't you tell that to this big Buick dealer?”

“You don't know Chick Murphy. I'm just keeping my head down. So. Willie's due in at four, which means he'll be showing up any minute. He's always early. Like I say—”

“He still driving that big old pink-and-black Buick?”

“I'll tell you something. Just between you and I, Detective—”

“Frank.”

“—between you and I, Frank, I make a point of not knowing what my employees drive or how they got hold of the keys. To be honest with you, I don't know how busboys and waiters and bartenders can afford to drive some of the cars parked out on our employee lot, and I don't ask. The less I know, the better. I'm sure you understand.”

“Sure.” What Doyle understood was that bartenders drive what they steal. “You happen to have a picture of Willie handy?”

“I should.” Without removing his wingtips from the desk, Kowalski dug in a drawer and produced a job application with a black-and-white photograph stapled to it. Doyle took one look at Willie Bledsoe's face and immediately thought of Jerry Czapski's description of the driver of the cherry Buick they'd pulled over at the corner of Wildemere and Tuxedo back in the spring of '67: smooth skin, not too dark, handsome enough kid. The young man staring at the camera fit the description. Solid jaw, trim Afro, full lips that curled up at the corners in a permanent smile. Doyle couldn't read that smile. Was it cockiness? Only after studying the picture for a full minute did Doyle notice the most obvious thing of all: the flaw: the scar that ran through the upper lip, near the left corner of the mouth. It was the result of a badly botched sewing job, and he tried to guess what could have caused such a nasty wound. A windshield? A knife? A nightstick? This, he told himself, was a worthy adversary. He said, “Good-looking kid.”

“And smart too,” Kowalski said, checking his watch. “It's almost three-thirty. He'll be showing up any minute if you want to talk to him.”

“No, I think I'd rather just hang around in the parking lot for a while if you don't mind.”

“Be my guest. The employees park in the far lot, up by Maple Road.”

“And one small favor, Dick. Don't let anyone know I stopped by.”

“Sure thing.”

Ten minutes later Doyle was sitting at the wheel of his Pontiac reading the tea leaves of the Tigers' box score in the
Free Press
. He looked up as an enormous sky-blue convertible turned off Maple and eased into the employee lot. When Willie Bledsoe climbed out, Doyle put his newspaper down. What the hell happened to the pink-and-black Buick?

Willie was lean, well over six feet tall, and he was wearing a charcoal-gray sport shirt and light gray slacks, creases like razors, hip but not flashy. His black loafers gleamed. His tortoise-shell sunglasses had little gold screws at the corners. If bartenders drive what they steal, Doyle thought, then maybe busboys drive—and wear—what they steal. Over his shoulder Willie carried a white jacket and a pair of tuxedo pants in a dry-cleaning bag. The man looked as sweet as Marvin Gaye, way too cool to be working for The Man out here in the burbs.

Doyle watched him glide across the parking lot. He had a fluid walk, smooth and rhythmic. He moved to music only he could hear. Doyle watched him until he disappeared into the service entrance in the clubhouse basement.

When he was gone, Doyle walked over to the blue convertible and squatted behind the back bumper. The Society of Automotive Engineers serial number on the taillight contained the numeral 67, which meant this Electra 225 was a 1967 model, just a year old. The dealership's decal was on the trunk lid:
Murphy Buick—Stay on the Right Track to 9 Mile and Mack!
Chick Murphy, the suspicious car dealer with a wandering lush for a wife.

Driving east toward St. Clair Shores, Doyle had a warm feeling. If Willie Bledsoe had swapped his '54 Buick for the blue convertible, it was a sure sign he was trying to get rid of incriminating evidence. Doyle liked having an adversary who took precautions. And he absolutely loved the moment when he first laid eyes on a suspect, when an abstraction became flesh and it was suddenly possible to imagine sitting across the Formica table from another human being in the yellow room, going through the familiar dance, the dance Doyle loved so much because he did it so well.

Chain-smoking, rattling breath mints across his teeth and talking like a machine gun, Chick Murphy couldn't seem to get it through his skull that Doyle had not come here to buy a car but to gather information in a criminal investigation. Murphy was on some kind of automatic pilot, like a wind-up doll. Doyle noticed his left pinkie was missing and his knuckles were laced with scar tissue and there were little gaps in his yellow eyebrows. The man had punched and he'd been punched, Doyle thought. No wonder Dick Kowalski was afraid of the guy.

“Whaddaya say we take her for a quick spin up the lake?” Chick Murphy said, spanking the hood of a yellow Electra 225 with a white vinyl top.

“Some other time,” Doyle said. “I'd rather have a look at the paperwork on the car Willie Bledsoe traded in.”

Chick Murphy led the way inside to the finance office. His fingertips drummed the desktop while Doyle went over the papers on the 1954 Buick Century that had been sold last week to a man named Ernest Roquemore from Wyandotte. There was a new state law that required car dealers to list the odometer reading on every used car they offered for sale, and the '54 Buick's mileage caught Doyle's eye. “A fourteen-year-old car with less than twenty-five thousand miles on it? You believe that?”

“If that's what's on the odometer, that's what I put on the paperwork,” Chick Murphy said. “It's the law.”

“The paperwork doesn't say anything about how he acquired the car.”

“No, but the title was in his name. That's all I care about. He did tell me the car was a gift, or somesuch shit.”

Doyle remembered his conversation with Beulah Bledsoe. Her saying the car was a gift to Willie from some Navy buddy of his brother's. Still studying the paperwork, he said, “The car was black?
Solid
black?”

“Blacker'n the ace of spades. I gave him some shit about driving around in a hearse. It had a cheap paintjob on it.”

“Did he paint it?”

“Don't know. Didn't ask.”

“So do you think he turned the odometer back?”

“I did at first. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because my mechanics did a compression check—and they tell me the mileage is real. I was a little pissed at myself for doubting the kid. I'm convinced he doesn't have a dishonest bone in his body.”