Motown, page 19
When, the day after their brief first acquaintance, a turnkey opened his cell door and told him that Springfield had bailed him out, he’d experienced a lightning revelation of the sort that he had only read of in eighteenth-century British novels: Only your own will look out for you. Nothing he had learned since joining Springfield’s loyal little group had changed that impression. Certainly not Krystal, who had formed the habit early of sharing with Mahomet the cash that Springfield gave her in hopes she might spend some of it in shops that wouldn’t dress her like a Twelfth Street whore.
He had invested some of that money in the suit he was wearing, white linen with a pinched waist and flared trousers, woven so tight it felt like cool silk against his hot skin. Walking along with the jacket flung over his shoulder, he admired his reflection in store windows. The contrast between white vest and pink shirtsleeves and tie made a bold statement that matched the defiance of his verbal message. The fag tailor had tried to sell him a Panama, but he’d refused; hats left ugly ledges in his painstakingly relaxed and brilliantined hair, like laminated porcupine quills. The suit, along with the high-heeled black patent-leather boots he always insisted on regardless of the condition of his finances, added inches to his stature.
The talk had gone well. Wilson McCoy, a firebrand barely out of his teens whom Mahomet distrusted instinctively, had been enthusiastic about the reception and asked him to come back Saturday night when he could promise more than fifteen listeners. Mahomet had said he’d get back to him. Even then he knew he’d accept. He had found his calling.
He scarcely remembered the words he’d used. They were but fuel to get him around from behind the long table that served as a bar after hours while the fifteen in their folding chairs listened at first with skepticism, then swelling anticipation and finally, as he bore down on them, with the rhythmic, junglelike grunts of acquiescence he’d heard so often from congregations in the thrall of the Reverend Otis R. R. Idaho those Sundays when the fever was truly upon him. The words didn’t matter in the end, only the fire and the spirit. He had struck Soul, and the vein was deep, deep. Sex was never as draining nor as satisfying; although he had to admit that most of the sex he had experienced was part of a monetary transaction, and its passion therefore suspect. Women had wanted him, for his looks and his hair and his voice, but that kind of transaction called for a sacrifice after the fact. Once sated, Mahomet’s appetites turned in new directions.
Yes, it was a changing fate that had ushered Quincy Springfield into the life of Gerald W. Lilley, Jr.
A pair of headlights on high beam swung around the corner, blinding him momentarily and shrinking his vitals; the thing with the Sicilians was always a dash of cold water in the face of his good fortune. Despite his fistfights with the Man in all his many incarnations, Mahomet was not physically brave. He felt a warm release when the vehicle, a sport model of some kind on a short wheelbase, sped past. Then its tires shrieked and it reversed directions in a shower of flaming rubber. The door on the driver’s side sprang open. Someone bounded out and seized him by the shoulders.
“Jesus, we been looking for you all over the West Side! You just shufflin’ along, gots all the time in the world.”
The wasted features staring down at him were Lydell Lafayette’s.
“What happened?”
“Quincy got busted is what. Looking for you. The war’s on. We gots to get down to the police department and post bond. How much cash you carrying?”
He pried himself free and picked his jacket up off the sidewalk. He found six dollars in a side pocket. Lydell coughed disgustedly.
“I got about a hunnert. We’ll go up to the place and get what’s in the box. Shake it, brother! That nightside’s hell on niggers.” He was climbing under the wheel.
Mahomet got into the passenger’s side carefully. He’d wet himself when Lydell grabbed him.
The name on the watch desk at 1300 was O’Pronteagh, but the sergeant’s accent was flat Midwestern and he had the patrician features of a Roman senator, all high cheekbones and eagle’s beak and a shock of salt-and-pepper hair on a tall tan forehead. Despite the airlessness of the big room with a single fan humming in a distant corner, his collar was buttoned and his necktie snugged up under an Adam’s apple as big as an eightball.
“Your boy’s being booked downstairs,” he said. “Carrying a concealed weapon. You can visit him in the morning at County.”
Lydell said, “We’re here to post bond.”
“Sorry.”
Lydell took the roll from his pocket and thumped it down on the counter. “They’s a thousand here. That ought to cover it three times and change.”
“Son, are you trying to bribe a police officer?”
“I ain’t your son.”
Mahomet laid a hand on Lydell’s arm. They had begun to attract the attention of the other officers in the room. “Excuse me, Sergeant, but regulations say we can post bond on a misdemeanor.”
O’Pronteagh took in the white suit. “If you’re selling Ajax, where’s your horse and lance?”
One of the uniforms snorted. Mahomet said, “How much is bond?”
“I’m a peace officer, son. It’s not my job to let you people run around with firearms.”
“What you mean, ‘you people’?” Lydell gripped the counter.
The sergeant made an infinitesimal movement of his head. One of the uniforms standing nearby stepped in, grabbed Lydell’s wrist, and jerked it behind his back. His other arm went across Lydell’s throat. The prisoner stopped struggling.
O’Pronteagh handed the roll of bills to another officer behind the counter. “Count it and tag it as evidence. Attempted bribery and resisting arrest.”
“Call Gidgy,” Lydell croaked. “The Morocco Motor Hotel.” His eyes were starting from his head.
Mahomet went to a booth near the door. He was reaching for the receiver when someone pulled him out of the booth. A fist plowed into his stomach. His knees lost tension. Someone caught him before he hit the floor.
“Another resisting.” The sergeant’s voice, far away. “Book them both and make it stick.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus fucking goddamn Christ.”
The other plainclothesmen in the seventh floor squad room stood around in silence. They had never heard the neat quiet inspector raise his voice before. Now he was standing over a goggle-eyed Sergeant Esther, both hands clenching the sides of the sergeant’s desk to avoid seizing the sergeant’s fat throat.
“It wasn’t me, Inspector. I just found out about it myself.”
“O’Pronteagh and the others just got bored, decided to kill some time with a little nigger-baiting?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“What, exactly?”
Esther took a deep breath and exhaled. Canada smelled stale coffee. “Wasylyk busted Springfield at the stakeout in front of the place on Collingwood; Springfield had a piece. When he came in I told O’Pronteagh to hold him no matter what. I knew you’d want to talk to him. But I never said to rough anybody around.”
“Where are they now?”
“Holding.”
“Kick ’em.”
“Inspector—”
Canada shoved a finger in the sergeant’s face. “Kick them. Give back the money and the gun; it isn’t as if they couldn’t score another one thirty feet from the door. Tell O’Pronteagh if I even see erasures where their names were on the blotter I’ll have him up on charges so fast his shorts will ride up. The whole fucking thing never happened.”
“That might not be so easy, Inspector. There was a reporter downstairs when it happened.”
“News or Free Press?”
“News. It was Conger.”
“That’s a break. They don’t go to press till afternoon. Cut a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“Use your imagination. Offer him first look at the final I. A.D. report on Grecian Gardens. That ought to hold him for a couple of months.”
“These aren’t exactly leaders of the Negro community, Inspector. Springfield’s and Lafayette’s priors would fill a drawer and this Mahomet character’s a born troublemaker. I bet he’s the one started it.”
“I don’t give a fuck if he started the New York blackout. Any rookie knows you don’t muss up coloreds on the ground floor of Thirteen Hundred in a hot month like July. Especially not when the Orrs and the Springfields are stalking each other all over town. You want Joe Weaver and a Channel Two camera up here on seven?”
Esther lifted his receiver. “Give me the desk.” He made eye contact with the knot of the inspector’s necktie. “Coopersmith heard back from the FBI.”
“What?” Canada was disoriented.
“Just a second,” Esther said into the mouthpiece. “On that partial thumb the print boys found in that stolen Caddy. DiJesus, you know? I started to tell you when you came in, but—”
“What’d they say?”
“Belongs to somebody named Curtis Dupree, Negro, did a nickel in Jackson for opening up some poor schnook’s skull over a fender-bender on the Lodge. Works at McLouth. He’s a Steelhauler. A.P.B.?”
“Let me.” He went into his office.
After he got off the telephone to Dispatch, Canada took the photograph he had gotten from Susan Niles out of his wallet and stuck it to the center of the bulletin board covered with mug shots. He resisted the temptation to drive the thumbtack grinning between Albert Brock’s eyes.
Chapter 27
THE TIGERS LOST, BUT Rick and Pammie got to overhear Jim Northrup negotiating to buy a used Chevy from Norm Cash next to the dugout. During the game, Pammie ate a prodigious number of hot dogs, drank three Cokes, and visited the ladies’ room at least six times. She wore a Tigers cap as promised and a Snoopy T-shirt over a pair of tight green shorts that pushed the fat on her thighs into white ridges. Her knowledge of history at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull made Rick want to run home and bone up on his ten-year collection of programs. When the players went to the showers the two remained in their seats while most of the crowd hurried to join the crush of traffic leaving the parking lot. An old Negro worked his way down the bleachers, spearing paper cups and hot dog wrappers with a nail on a stick.
“I wonder if he bought it,” said Pammie.
Rick rested his head on the back of his seat and watched clouds boil past the quarter moon. The night was warm. “I doubt it. Sounded to me like the block’s cracked.”
“Maybe it didn’t sound like that to Northrup.”
“He’s been in the game too long not to know anything about cars. Everybody misses the bus from time to time.”
“I don’t think it’s the block at all. The plugs need cleaning.” She grinned when he turned his head in her direction. “I got three brothers. I spent more time in garages than Parnelli Jones.”
“That how you wound up at PG?”
“No, I’m just staying out from under foot during summer vacation. I start Eastern Michigan in September.”
“Everybody in the office seems to be on his way somewhere else,” he said. “Lee’s joining the Peace Corps, I’m going into politics, you’re waiting on a baseball scholarship—”
She giggled. “I watch. I don’t play. I’m majoring in Business. Either that or Elizabethan Poetry. I haven’t made up my mind yet. Did you go to college?”
“U of D, two years. I’d have thought you’d been around longer. You run the office when Wendell and Enid are out.”
“Oh, I’ve been there two years, nights, weekends, and vacations. My pop thinks I’m being taken advantage of, not getting paid and all. I keep telling him, money doesn’t motivate our generation.”
“Now you sound like Lee.”
“You sound a lot older than thirty sometimes.”
She was pouting now. He changed the subject. “Enid isn’t on her way somewhere else.”
“Enid was born rich.”
“You say that like you’re sorry for her.”
“I am, sort of. It sure hasn’t made her happy.”
“She and Wendell got something going?”
She looked at him quickly, then at the infield. The grounds crew was unrolling the tarp. More rain was predicted. “I wouldn’t know about anything like that.”
“Come on. You know everything.”
“You ask too many questions. Lee says it’s because you were a reporter, but I think you’re just plain nosy. Everybody should do his own thing and leave everybody else’s alone.”
“That’s Lee talking. He reads all that stuff they hand out on street corners.” He shrugged. “I just don’t like being the only one who doesn’t know what everyone else knows. Personally I think she likes women.”
“Why, because she wouldn’t give you a tumble?”
“Hey, I never asked.”
“What was that needlepoint thing all about then?”
“It was a joke. Are you sore at me for something?” He sat up.
She didn’t answer. She took off her glasses and wiped them with the tail of her T-shirt. She rubbed both eyes and put them back on. “They’re going to kick us out of here.” She stood.
“Sit down. We’re not the only ones waiting for the parking lot to clear.”
She sat down. She was still looking at the grounds crew.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Sorry for what?”
“For being a jerk. A guy isn’t supposed to talk about other women when he’s on a date.”
She smiled then, without looking at him. “I thought this was a buddy thing.”
“If it were a buddy thing I’d have asked Lee. Him I could win an argument with on who leads the Tigers in bases on balls.”
“You still owe me a Coke.” She’d forgotten about the infield. “I thought you were interested in Enid. Just about everybody who comes to the office is. I might as well be a file cabinet when she’s around.”
“She scares the hell out of me.”
She beamed. “You?”
“These fashion mannequins with their eyes locked on their goals always do. Enid never doesn’t talk shop. When you’re a guy that’s intimidating.”
“That’s nothing. Well, you met Caroline.” She had shifted gears into gossip.
“I don’t see her every day.”
“Enid had a tragedy. I shouldn’t talk about it.” The eyes behind the glasses said she couldn’t wait to.
“She told me about her parents. I don’t think that explains it.”
“Well, you were warm before.” She got up. “I think you can get your car out now.”
He didn’t bring up the subject again. The hook was set; from here on she would reel herself in.
In the car, Pammie said the hot dogs had made her hungry. They drove to Nicholson’s Steak House on Woodward, waited a few minutes to be seated, and ordered two open-face steak sandwiches with fries. The other diners were in suits and crepe dresses and ballpark casual, like them. He watched her pour Heinz ketchup over her sirloin.
“Why Elizabethan Poetry?” he asked.
“’Cause I don’t know much about it and I sure won’t read it unless somebody makes me. I know me.” She offered him the bottle; he shook his head. She shrugged and set it down. “I’m sort of a poet. One of my poems got Honorable Mention in the Detroit News Scholastic Writing Competition last year.”
“Congratulations.”
“All I got was a Certificate of Merit and my name in the paper on a big list. Anyway, if I’m going to make anything of myself, I think I ought to try and understand it, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
She dipped a french fry in the ketchup and held it up like a scepter. “You’re a writer, right? I mean, you wrote for the papers.”
“Actually I just talked to people and took notes. Someone else did the actual writing.”
She looked disappointed. Then she shrugged again and took a bite out of the fry. “Still, you’re as close to a real writer as I ever got. Would you read my poems? You could tell me if they’re any good.”
“The Certificate of Merit ought to have told you that.”
“That was high school stuff. I want to know how they stack up to the professionals.”
“All I know about poetry is it doesn’t rhyme any more.”
“Oh.” She concentrated on stirring the stub of potato in her ketchup.
“I’d be glad to read them.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, really. It’s just that my opinion isn’t worth more than anybody else’s.”
“I haven’t shown them to anybody else.”
He stopped sawing at his steak. “They’re not, like, personal, are they?”
“Just stuff that comes to me.”
“You even sound like a writer.” He took a bite.
“Really?” She brightened. “I’ll bring them to the office tomorrow. Don’t spare my feelings. A poet has to have a clear idea of her limitations.”
“Who said that?”
“I just thought of it. Is it good?”
“It’s a good simple declarative sentence. They liked those at the Times.” The closest he had ever been to a newspaper office was an occasional cup of coffee with the police reporter from the Free Press. He had chosen the Times for his background cover because the paper had been defunct for six years, making his story difficult to check.
