Motown (15 page)

“Bet it didn’t cost half as much as Congo’s.”

“I thought about renting a black horse. You know, with the boots stuck backwards in the stirrups? But I didn’t want to look like a copycat.”

“It’s too much bread to spread on the dead. You going to do the same for me next time DiJesus comes around dressed like John Clawed Killy?”

“He behaved himself this morning.”

In fact Gallante’s man had not showed his face in the blind pig at all during business hours, stationing himself downstairs instead to scrutinize the customers on their way up. No one complained. Gallante had reported shortly after dawn to count the policy receipts, with DiJesus looking on. They had done a little better than the week before. Quincy was pretty sure conditions would continue to improve now that the Sicilians were in residence.

Lydell assumed Elrod Brown’s lisp. “This here’s the Jeroboam. The Nebuchadnezzar comes with bucket seats and air conditioning. You believe that shit?”

“I liked the His ’n’ Her Sweetheart Burial Plot. With the stone shaped like a big old heart.”

“Shiiit. When my time comes you can stick me in a bag and leave me out by the curb.” Lydell leaned forward out of the slipstream and lit a Kent.

Quincy considered the subject. “Not me. I want a Viking funeral. Like in
Beau Geste.
Float me out in the middle of Lake St. Clair and set me on fire. Right in front of the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club.”

“I don’t know what you see in them crummy old movies, bro.”

“Endings,” Quincy said.

The Second Baptist Church, at Monroe and Beaubien, was the oldest of its kind in Detroit, purchased from the Lutherans in 1857 and serving the needs of a Negro congregation organized in 1836. At eighty-six, the Reverend Otis R. R. Idaho had been its pastor for almost fifty years, longer than any other minister in the city. They found him standing on the chair behind his desk in his walnut-paneled study in the basement, pounding a nail into the only section of wall not already covered by a photograph in a frame. He was still wearing his white surplice from the morning services over gray pinstripe pants and white scuffed sneakers.

“Have a seat, children,” he said without turning.

Lydell sat down, stretched out his legs, and closed his eyes; the secondary reaction to the pills and liquor was setting in. Quincy wandered around the room looking at pictures. The minister was in all of them, shaking hands with local and visiting luminaries from Soupy Sales to Martin Luther King. Many of them were autographed. George Washington Carver had a large sprawling hand.

“A sinful vanity.” Idaho, who seemed to be able to see backwards, for he still hadn’t turned, finished pounding and hung a recent likeness of himself posing with the Supremes. “We’re all equal under Christ, but since the day Teddy Roosevelt pressed a nickel into my hand for opening the door for him at the Detroit Opera House in nineteen sixteen …” He trailed off. Half a century up North had taken none of the molasses out of his deep Mississippi drawl.

Quincy said, “I know what you mean. I seen Cootie Williams once at the state fair.”

The minister used the tail of his surplice to wipe a smudge off the glass and climbed down. His height surprised Quincy, who would have found himself looking up at him before Idaho’s shoulders had begun to stoop, and his grip on Quincy’s hand was firm despite the fact that all his bones showed under a thin sheeting of flesh. His ears stuck out on stalks from his head with its fringe of white hair. The cord of a hearing aid snaked down inside his clerical collar. Quincy thought he looked like Mahatma Gandhi.

“Your friend looks done in,” Idaho said.

Lydell was asleep with his ankles crossed and his hands folded on his stomach.

“He had a rough week.”

“You ought to send him home from the blind pig once in a while.”

“You know about us?”

“I baptized half the population of Twelfth Street. They tell me things they wouldn’t tell their brothers and sisters.”

“I’m surprised you agreed to see us,” Quincy said.

“A professional sinner may reclaim his soul as well as an amateur. Besides, I play three-one-nine once a year. That’s the date I was ordained. Sit down, son.”

Quincy waited for the old man to lower himself into his chair before he took a seat. “Thanks for seeing us on short notice.”

“Death is difficult to reschedule. Was Brother Kress a Baptist?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he request a Baptist ceremony?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did he attend services here?”

“I don’t think so.”

Idaho examined the hammer he had used to hang the picture and set it aside. “I assumed you were close. Not many employers would arrange a funeral for a worker. Your particular business is not known for its generosities.”

“Well, he didn’t have any people.”

“Interesting. One wonders who will come.”

Quincy changed the subject. He had started all wrong, anticipating the usual octogenarian density. He would have liked to see the minister shoot craps against Lydell.

“You said on the phone tomorrow would be okay for the service. I want to go over the arrangements with you, see if they’re okay.”

“Have you arranged dancing?”

“No.”

“Then I’m sure they’ll be fine.” Idaho glanced at Lydell. “Your friend looks done in.”

Quincy hesitated. “He’s on medication. What’s the usual donation?”

“Three hundred dollars.” The minister uncovered a full set of false teeth. “It’s an old church. Old churches need new roofs. The last one came courtesy of a fellow who called himself Big Nabob. That would be before your time.”

“I heard about him. Joey Machine killed him.”

“I never saw such a fine funeral. People today have no imagination. Your friend looks done in.”

This time Quincy let it slide. Idaho’s brain seemed to have picked up a scratch or two like an old record, “There’ll be a choir and a lead singer. His name’s Mahomet.”

Idaho reached-up under his surplice. His hearing aid released a high-pitched squeal. Quincy flinched. He wondered how it sounded in the minister’s ear.

“Sorry. The batteries are going. What is the singer’s name?”

“Mahomet.”

“It wasn’t the batteries,” Idaho said. “No.”

“No what?”

“No Mahomet. I won’t have that man in my church.”

“It’s God’s house.”

“God doesn’t have to kick the radiator when the pipes clog.”

“If it’s his name—”

“I wouldn’t have him if his name were St. Thomas Aquinas. The last time he appeared here I almost had a riot in the congregation.”

“What’d he do?”

“He interrupted his own interpretation of ‘Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow’ to deliver an oration on the dignity of man. Specifically the black man. By the time he was finished he had the entire attendance ready to march on the City-County Building.”

“He’s big on dignity,” Quincy averred. “When I met him—”

“There is a time and place for that sort of thing. I submit that regular Sunday services at the Second Baptist Church do not answer. No Mahomet.” He placed his palms on the desk. “You’d better take your friend home now. He looks done in.”

“What about a donation of five hundred?”

Idaho had started to rise. He paused halfway out of the chair with his sharp elbows bent above his head, looking like a daddy longlegs. “You’ll see he confines his vocal exercises to the hymnal?”

“I’ll shoot him in the head if I got to.”

“Don’t hit the big crucifix.” The minister stood.

R
ICK LIKED THE NEW
apartment on Watson, but he missed the personal touch he had enjoyed at his last place of residence.

At $130 per month, the new place—three rooms with bath on the fifth floor of a turn-of-the-century brick building overlooking Woodward—fell easily within reach of his new salary, and the additional room had reunited him with some items he had placed in storage when he broke up with Charlotte; but the anonymity of apartment living took some getting used to after eleven months in the little bedroom over Mrs. Hertler’s kitchen.

Not that he spent much time on the fifth floor. After sleeping in late this Sunday, he had thrown on a T-shirt and jeans, eaten two quick scrambled eggs over
Dick Tracy,
and come down to the sun-plastered square of asphalt next to the building to inspect the lifter he had heard under the hood of the Z-28 earlier in the week. He had identified and corrected the problem in five minutes with a toothbrush and a capful of gasoline, then as long as he was there he went ahead and changed the points and drained the crankcase. Now, four hours later, he was stretched out under the car replacing the rusty bolts that held the crossover in place with a stainless steel set purchased from the hardware store on the corner. The radio was tuned to CKLW, where the disk jockey was playing the Beatles’
Revolver
album in its entirety. Rick would have switched stations if his hands weren’t full. “We had a pretty good thing going in rock ’n’ roll until the Brits came in and screwed it up,” he’d once told Charlotte. She was a fan, and that had been the beginning of the end.

“If I didn’t recognize the car, I’d still know it’s you by those kids’ shoes you wear.”

He looked at a pair of white plastic wingtips standing in front of the car. “Hello, Dan. Get WJR on, will you? Lolich is pitching.”

Dan Sugar walked around to the driver’s side. The radio went off. “Later. I was thinking maybe you lost my telephone number.”

“I’ve been going to call. Goddamnit!” The wrench slipped and he knocked the top off a knuckle. A trickle of blood tunneled through the dirt and grease on the back of his hand.

“What do you think of Porter? I know you met, on account of one of my boys saw you leave the office together yesterday.”

Rick sucked the knuckle. “Who was he watching, me or Porter?”

“Hey, I plug the holes. That’s why I got sixteen people under me, seventeen counting you. So is he a flake or what?”

“He’s not any part of a flake. I haven’t got a handle on him yet, but I know that much. And you can forget that stuff about him not knowing anything about cars. He’s either the best driver I ever saw or the luckiest.”

“Where’d he take you?”

“To a farm.”

“You mean like with cows and turnips? What’s the matter, the fresh produce at the A & P ain’t good enough for the Boy Wonder? It ain’t safe enough for him, maybe.”

Rick tightened the last bolt and wriggled out from under the car. Sugar had on white flared slacks to go with the shoes, a yellow bowling shirt with
Dan
stitched over the pocket in green script—the tail out to cover his gun—and a pair of wraparound sunglasses that made him look like Gort the robot in
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
His big raw face was cherry red in the sunlight.

“He’s got his own proving ground up in Macomb County.” Rick wiped his hands off on a streaked yellow chamois. The knuckle was still seeping. “His security’s a joke, but the tests he runs there are your real threat. Everything else is just numbers.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s for the boys in Legal. What about Porter, his slip showing yet?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s not running a white slavery racket on Whittier, but I’ve only been working there two days. Jesus Christ, Dan.”

“How long’s it take to get the scent? You’re a little rusty, maybe.”

“Undercover isn’t like Nescafé. You have to bring people along. That doesn’t happen overnight.”

“We ain’t got much longer than overnight. Washington wants a goat before November and we’re it unless we can discredit Porter first. This
I Led Three Lives
shit don’t cut it.”

Rick wiped a spot of grease off the Camaro’s fender and slammed down the hood. “I already blew off one source for pushing too hard. I can get it for you fast or I can get it for you good. Take your pick.”

“Just get it. You let me worry about making it good.” Sugar produced a spiral notebook from his hip pocket and leafed through it. “What about this broad works for him, this Kohler dame? I hear she’s a looker, anything in that?”

“That’s the source I blew off. I’m working on it.”

“He spends more time at the office than he does with his wife, the high-class lawyer. I bet them desks see more action than the beds at Howard Johnson’s.”

“It’s promising, but don’t count on it. He’s pretty caught up in his work.”

“Maybe he’s queer.”

“You’re wasting my day off, Dan.”

“Yeah, we shouldn’t be seen together out in the open anyway.” He ran a finger along the Camaro’s silver finish. “Nice. I kind of liked the yellow.”

“I can tell by your shirt.”

“Spiffy, ain’t it? I had it custom done in this little place in Hamtramck. I’m thinking of starting up a team at GM, call ourselves the Security Sleuths. You can join after you finish this job.”

“What’s your average?”

“I don’t get you.”

“Do you bowl?”

“Never tried. Can’t be too hard, with so many Polacks doing it.”

Rick gathered up his tools. “I’ll call when I have something.”

“Call anyway,” Sugar said. “You give me a toothpick, I’ll build a cabin.”

After he’d gone, Rick went upstairs, took a shower, and put a Band-Aid on his injured knuckle, which had begun to throb. He changed into a clean shirt and sweatpants, punched holes in a can of Schlitz, and watched two innings of the baseball game on TV. When Kaline grounded into a double play to retire the Tigers in the seventh his mind wandered.

Everything in this world that walks or flies or swims has got to shit somewhere; it’s only a matter of time before they pick the wrong place. Everybody fucks up.

Where do the Wendell Porters of this world go to fuck up?

Maybe they don’t have to go anywhere. Maybe somebody fucks up for them.

He had a sudden thirst for knowledge.

It was the way of these infrequent attacks that they occurred invariably on Sundays and holidays, when the library was closed.

He watched the game a few minutes longer, then turned off the set and went into the bedroom, where he pulled a faded Stroh’s beer case from the back of the closet.

It contained most of the magazines he had held on to over the past several years—mostly
Motor Trend
and
Popular Mechanics
—along with the inevitable dross that got swept up in any unorganized collection: a
Newsweek
with Khrushchev on the cover, several
Photoplays,
the special
Life
JFK issue following the assassination, and some
Cosmopolitans.
Those and the movie magazines had belonged to Charlotte.