“One of the nicest fuckers you’d ever want to meet in your life,” BJ later told a friend. “The Doc was a hell of a guy.”
BJ always figured The Doc would be capable of a lot more charity if Dawn hadn’t abused his generosity so much. She talked as though she hated the motherfucker, often employing her favorite line: “The fuckin’ pinhead. I wouldn’t fuck him. He’s lucky I suck his dick.”
BJ also watched Dawn play The Doc against Fry. She’d been squeezing her boyfriend about the regular date’s standing offer to set her up in the suburbs.
“I don’t need you, John,” she said when they bickered. “Al said he would take care of everything.”
“Well then, bitch, go with Al,” John always countered.
BJ sensed a growing animosity from Fry toward The Doc, a dislike that had started months ago. BJ remembered how his Buick Regal was stolen right after Fry complained about The Doc’s money falling short about a year ago. BJ suspected that that and other rip-offs were Fry’s way of retaliating. Lately BJ often found his neighbor stewing as he waited for The Doc and his cash.
“Where’s The Doc?” BJ would ask.
“That motherfucker is a pain in the ass,” Fry would say.
Fry was far more forgiving of his girlfriend, and he often bragged about Dawn’s talents as a hooker.
“She’s good, mon,” he’d say. “The best.”
But BJ knew she hardly worked the streets anymore, depending only on The Doc and a couple of longtime regulars for cash. Fry also had other things working for him, including a pile of blank payroll checks and a bonding machine. BJ knew firsthand that Fry and a couple of other dope fiends had kited about eight thousand dollars’ worth of bad paper all over the city. Fry had used the same slippery delivery on merchants that BJ first discovered when he met him seven years ago in Jackson Prison. Fry was the head man in Quarantine, and new inmates had to see him for their cell assignments. He acted like everybody’s buddy, but he was always looking for an angle.
“Lucky Fry knows how to stroke your ego and pat you on the back,” BJ said later. “Rah, rah for the home team and all that. But John Fry is a chameleon. He can be whatever the situation calls for.”
He was equally deceiving as a drug source. Fry took perfectly good bags of cocaine and turned it into garbage with cut, saving the best for himself. He wasn’t any more generous with his money. He had made a lot of enemies by shafting dealers on the south side who gave him credit. Fry was fortunate he had The Doc to shuttle Dawn to a connection in the Morrell Apartments a couple of miles away, BJ thought. The middleman took her money and scored the coke from the dope house. The dealer didn’t want anything to do with Fry or his girlfriend.
BJ knew the pair’s routine so well because that was how he timed his visits to their bungalow from his house down the street. When BJ saw The Doc’s black Buick glide up Casper, he knew Fry and his girlfriend would be into the cash and the coke. If The Doc didn’t take them to score, BJ would offer his wheels and usually get some of the spoils. There were ample opportunities. Fry and Dawn were shooting at least three hundred dollars’ worth of cocaine a day, and they’d been at it like that for a month.
BJ knew from experience that the pair’s bender could go on as long as money and metabolisms held out. BJ’s last coke binge had lasted six months, before his kidneys went to hell. Withdrawals weren’t a factor as with heroin. It just felt too good to stop. Cocaine-induced feelings of power and control usually prompted racing minds to devise all kinds of grand schemes for money to buy more. Then, after a couple of months of many sleepless nights, the nervous system began to feel as though it was charged with static electricity. Coke fiends could get pretty testy and paranoid. One spark and they were kicking somebody’s ass. But most of the time, Coke stimulated a lot of chatter and camaraderie, especially when a few six-packs or a fifth of whiskey were employed to help lower the voltage.
A couple of nights later, BJ, Dawn, and Fry were nurtured by that very combination as they partied in front of the living room TV at 2518 Casper. A little black-and-white with a coat hanger for an aerial had replaced their new color television. BJ didn’t even have to ask what had happened to the big set.
Late into the evening they found themselves staring at a commercial for an item called The Ginsu Knife. Fry sucked on a beer and poked fun as an announcer pitched the kitchen blade at a carnival barker’s pace. They watched a TV chef wield the wonder knife, cutting an old rubber boot and a beer can. Then he sliced up a tomato.
“Fuck you, man,” Fry said. “That’s a bunch of bullshit.”
“OK, smart-ass,” Dawn said. “If you think so, why don’t you try it? We’ve got one.”
She went to the kitchen and returned with a long, serrated blade bearing the Ginsu trademark on its black handle. Fry smirked as he held up the knife before going to work on a beer can. In a few seconds he held up both halves of the Budweiser.
“Well, I’ll be fuckin’ goddamned,” he said.
Everyone had a good laugh.
73
With a cacophony of honks, beeps, and aaoooogaaas the cavalcade of more than two hundred antique cars rolled down West Grand Boulevard. Then the Wheels of Freedom parade chugged to a stop as the drivers positioned their cars all about the base of the Fisher Building.
A retired Ford Motor engineer named Dan Hall parked his 1929 Chrysler roadster at the curb as the boulevard was cordoned off for spectators. Next to the fireworks, the procession was the most colorful event of Detroit’s Freedom Festival week.
Hall was surprised when a beaming Al Canty came toddling out the brass doors of the Fisher. They’d hunted down several old cars together, and Hall had always had his eye on that 1932 Ford Cabriolet of Al’s. But the therapist hadn’t been around old-car circles in more than a year. Hall had missed his fellow auto buff.
“Where the hell have you been, Al?” he asked.
“Well, Dan, I’ve got problems,” he said, eyeing Hall’s roadster. “But I should have them all straightened around in a couple of weeks.”
Hall wanted to inquire if he could help, but he could see Al was rushed.
“Dan, I’ve got a couple of patients sitting upstairs,” Al said.
The psychologist suggested they have lunch and wanted to set a time right then and there. They’d meet Friday, July 19. He’d have his problems solved by July 13.
Celia and John Muir couldn’t help but notice Al Canty’s new demeanor over the past few months. It showed no signs of letting up as they joined the Cantys for dinner the first Saturday in July. They all were sitting at a window table in a downtown restaurant called Floods, listening to Jan talk about her trip to Arizona in the spring. A group of aging conventioneers stood outside, eyeing a menu taped on the glass next to Al’s seat. Suddenly Al began banging on the glass. Then he shook his head and gave the thumbs-down sign to those outside.
“Al,” Jan said. “What in the world are you doing?”
Al laughed, undaunted by her unapproving look. It was a minor prank, really, but so unlike the pretense and control that formerly characterized their outings together. Al Canty was cutting loose, having fun, and not much giving a damn what anyone thought.
The Muirs had seen a lot of changes since early spring. Al was revealing things about himself, instead of remaining so tightly wrapped. He talked about his finances with John, seeking his advice as a stockbroker.
“Well, things are tight,” Al said. “I can’t seem to put any money away. My expenses are so great.”
John was a little miffed. He thought, how is it I have savings and Al doesn’t? I’m a junior stockbroker with kids and a wife who doesn’t work. He’s a psychologist who works day and night and has an income-producing wife. Jan sometimes complained that Al put all his money in his cars. But he’d been selling, rather than buying. Al even had sold the red Porsche, his beloved James Dean car.
One night two months ago he said he knew his mother “won’t live forever,” adding she had a lot of money
.
“It’s kind of a cold thing to think about, but it’s a fact of life,” he said. “And in a few months here I’m going to have everything paid off, Jan’s car and my car. I’ll be able to put some money away. I’ll be able to start investing.”
Already Al was investing more of himself in the time the four of them spent together. He gave Celia hugs and shook John’s hand with conviction. He began talking about his youth, providing interesting anecdotes formerly kept concealed. He told stories about being a cook when he was in the National Guard in the fifties. He told them about his interest in theater. He named the plays in which he had roles in college: Dark of the Moon, The Time of Your Life, The Beautiful People. Celia and John were surprised. They never knew Al was a thespian.
Al also was giving away things that meant a lot to him. He showed up one night at their house with some props he’d used in his Project Indianwood skits. They included a noisemaker and a Viking’s hat. He clowned around with the toys before giving them to their eight-year-old daughter. Even she was shocked. She knew Al rarely acted silly.
Al no longer appeared uncomfortable in their house, though they had adopted a third child, making it busier than ever. Al seemed to enjoy the activity. One night Celia and John sat in silent astonishment as he became very reflective and talked about an old friend he called Ray.
“He had a house like this where I’d go,” he said. “I liked to spend the night there. They didn’t have money and Ray didn’t have a father. But it was comfortable. His mom didn’t worry about the cleaning. She worried about wiping their noses, or hearing about their day at school.”
Then he turned to Celia and touched the back of her neck.
“You’re such a good mother,” he said. “You have no idea how good you are by staying home with your children. You’re a good mom, Celia. Stay that way.”
And he wasn’t looking for a cup of coffee. His eyes were warm, his smile genuine rather than cunning. Celia felt really good inside.
The four of them had been having a lot of fun together in recent months with the Muirs’ new VCR. They popped popcorn and turned their living room into their private little theater. Al always wanted them to get mysteries, films about characters who were victims of thoughtful demise.
Al’s favorite filmmaker was Alfred Hitchcock. He knew everything about the Master of Suspense. Often he asked that they rent a Hitchcock movie for the Saturday night get-togethers. Recently they’d watched Rear Window, the story of a man who witnessed a neighbor murder his wife through the window of a nearby apartment. The killer dismembered her body with a saw so he could shuttle her corpse out of the building unnoticed. Then he buried her head in the courtyard garden. Al thought it was great stuff.
But the most striking change in Al was the way he seemed to be letting his feelings fly toward Jan. The Muirs always had guessed Al didn’t like her competing with him for the center of attention. Before, when she was stealing the show, Al just remained silent. Now he was getting assertive. Celia suspected his little gag in the restaurant was engineered to put the brakes on Jan’s monologue on Arizona.
When the four of them stopped by the Fisher Building the same night to see Jan’s newly decorated office, he made a bolder move. As they ogled Jan’s black lacquered furniture and rose-and-gray decor, Al stared out the window at the darkened city.
Finally, he turned and huffed, “Oh, come on now. Enough. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
He was jealous, but at least he was showing it. Gone was that old Alan Canty guard. Celia thought, who knows? Maybe soon they’ll have a good old family argument instead of a disagreement.
As they got up to leave Floods after dinner, John Muir found himself trying to avoid one with Al. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. John had left a ten-dollar bill as a tip for the waitress. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Al had palmed it and put it in his pocket.
“Al, where you going with that?” he asked as Celia and Jan walked ahead. “That’s for the waitress.”
Al stopped suddenly and looked surprised, as though he’d picked up the cash absentmindedly.
“Oh, yeah. I guess it is.”
John could see through the act, but he kept his shocked feelings to himself.
Why, he wondered, would a man of Al Canty’s means and stature do something like that? And what in God’s name made him think he could get away with it?
74
A fifty-five-yearold divorcée named Dorothy Wilson cradled the telephone on her left shoulder and did what she did best any time John Fry called. She listened.
Ever since their mother died in 1967, John and his brother Jim had looked to her as close kin. Jim called her Ma, and John called her Aunt Dot, though they were in fact only second cousins. She never really sought the role, but she felt the two boys had turned to her to take Nell Ruth Fry’s place.
“Gonna get married, Aunt Dot,” John said. “I want you to come to the wedding.”
As with most of John’s plans, nothing was definite.
With Jim dead, Dot Wilson was hearing from John every couple of months. Before, she was the first person he called when he was in trouble. Over the years she’d taken many calls from police stations and probation officers in several states.
“John Fry will end up dying in a prison,” one of his parole officers told her once.
Other times she figured the Fry boys just needed somebody older they could confide in. John took the privilege to extremes, bragging about his drug use, his girlfriend Dawn, and the doctor he said kept them well supplied with cash.
She’d ask him, “Johnnie, why do you tell me that stuff?”
Most of the time John kept her well confused. Dot later heard stories of John boasting he once owned several gas stations, though neither she nor anyone else in the family ever knew him to have even one. Outwardly, he didn’t seem to be a troublemaker. In fact, he seemed like the kind of guy who got along with everybody. It didn’t fit all the enemies he made.
Dot knew John didn’t exclude the family, either. Once he ran her phone bill so high with calls her service was cut off. Jim told her that John had stolen from him as well, including a stereo that he’d bought with the money left by his dead mother. But that was nothing compared to what happened to John’s ex-wife, another girl named Dawn, ten years back.
Dot would never forget the day she dropped by. The girl looked as though she had been worked over by famished cannibals. She wept as she explained that she had just gotten out of the hospital. John and his motorcycle gang had paid her a visit, she said. Dawn said she was raped, beaten and bitten.
“Where was John as all this went on?” Dot asked her.
“He’s the one who did it,” she answered.
John’s ex-wife gripped the hand of their four-year-old son, little Johnny, and vowed she was leaving for good. The last Dot heard, she was living somewhere in Australia.
Jim had his problems, Dot thought, but he would never hurt family like that. She still thought his death was tragic, and their dad Pete was convinced his death wasn’t a suicide.
Jim knew his brother better than anyone, Dot figured, and she remembered the words he’d said for years: “John will be the death of me one day. If anything ever happens to me, have it looked into.”
Jim also had some other advice, and Dot heeded it as she listened to John talk about some plan to move to Texas or California.
“Remember,” Jim told her many times, “Never cross John, or he’ll kill you.”
75
Actually, the wealthy kid is much more vulnerable to this kind of crime. The inner-city kid is more sophisticated. He lives with violence; he has a much more rigid protective shell.
—W. ALAN CANTY,
Good Housekeeping, September 1977
A thirty-six-yearold unemployed cabdriver named John Oliver Bumstead was getting an earful from his neighbor John Fry. The two men were heading east in a U-Haul July 6, helping a neighbor move to New York. Fry had volunteered to sh
are the driving during the twelve-hour trip. Talk always made a trip go faster, and Lucky Fry was a really good talker.
Bumstead had recognized Fry a few months back at Keith Bjerke’s house as the same man who had processed him into Jackson Prison in 1977. Soon, Fry was dropping over to use his telephone, then to borrow money.
As the miles accumulated on the truck’s odometer, a lot of subjects came up, including the man Bumstead knew as The Doc. From his house twelve doors from Fry’s, he’d often seen the black Buick cruise down Casper. Often he was looking for it. Bumstead knew he had a chance to collect on one of Fry’s loans after a visit from the man.
“Yeah, the money is funny,” said John Fry. He looked pissed.
The Doc’s support was waning, Fry explained. Fry said The Doc told him the problem was that his bank account was frozen and he couldn’t get to all his funds.
“The doctor is fucking up,” Fry said. “He’s not paying me the money he should, and I’m gonna take him out if he don’t get straight.”
The comment held Bumstead’s interest no more than the lane stripes on the freeway. Bumstead had wanted to “take out” a few people in his life as well. He doubted Lucky Fry meant it any more than he himself did when he made an idle threat. Posturing and talking tough. They were talents most everyone learned in Jackson Prison. Keith Bjerke had been hearing the same tough talk from Lucky Fry for about a week. Fry told BJ several times that The Doc’s money was getting “real thin” and that he and Dawn suspected he was getting ready to terminate his support.
“This shit has gotta change,” Fry told him. “I’m gonna have to get him right.”
Fry was preoccupied with the dwindling funds in two or three recent conversations. He looked angry and frustrated.
“I’m gonna kick his ass,” Fry said.
But BJ had heard Fry complain about The Doc’s cash flow before. A threat from the mouth of John Fry was like the air pollution on the south side. Some days you noticed it, but you never dwelled on it for long.
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