Motor City Burning

by Bill Morris

  “A car pulled up right down below that window.”

  “What kind of car was it?” Doyle had started writing in his notebook.

  “Oh goodness, Detective, I don’t know much about cars. And the street was dark on account of they shot out all the streetlights. There was a moon, though.”

  “Were the car’s headlights on?”

  “No, but when the car doors opened I could see by the inside lights that it were real pretty. Shiny like. But it weren’t no new car. Had lots of chrome like cars use to have.”

  “Do you have any idea what kind of car it was? Was it a big car like a Cadillac? Or small like a Mustang? Or—”

  “Gracious no. My eyes aren’t so good anymore.”

  Doyle didn’t write that down. He said, “How about the color?”

  “Well, the seats were red and black, that much I could see by the inside lights.”

  Jimmy said, “You say the car doors opened, Mrs. Armstrong. Two doors, three doors, four?”

  She looked at Jimmy. She seemed surprised to see him sitting there.

  “Two doors,” she said to Doyle. “And two men got out.”

  “Did you recognize them?” he said.

  “No, from this angle I couldn’t see their faces. And it being so dark—”

  “Could you tell if they were black or white?”

  “They were both Negroes, of that I’m sure.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “They were wearing short-sleeve shirts. One was fat, the other was much taller. And thin.”

  “What’d they do next?”

  “They opened the trunk and stood there talking for the longest. Sounded like they were arguing. Then the fat man took something out the trunk. Looked like one a them bags soldiers carry. You know, a, a—”

  “Duffel bag?”

  “That’s it, a duffel bag. And then he carried it cross the lawn and into the building. The other man followed him. In the moonlight I could see that the fat man, the one carrying the duffel bag, had a limp. I could still hear them talking—”

  “Could you make out what they were saying?”

  “No, they were talking too low. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s fine, Mrs. Armstrong. You’re doing just fine. What’d you hear next?”

  “I heard the downstairs door open.”

  “Is that door always kept locked?”

  “Oh yes. They’s been a buzzer on the front door since we moved in here five years ago.”

  “Can you hear the buzzer from up here?”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Did you hear the buzzer before the men opened the door?”

  “Come to think of it, no. I didn’t.”

  “So these men had a key to the front door?” Doyle and Jimmy exchanged a smile.

  “Well, yes,” she said, “I suppose so. I hadn’t thought about it, but I suppose you’re right.”

  “So the men came in through the front door.”

  “Yes, I heard them come up the first flight of stairs—no voices, just footsteps. They passed our door, then kept on going upstairs. I heard someone knock on a door. For a while after that I didn’t hear a thing. I figured they’d gone into an apartment and that was the end of it. I was fixin to go to bed—but then I heard their voices again.”

  “Where?”

  “Coming from up above.” She pointed at the ceiling. “But I don’t think they were inside the building.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, they were laughing, talking loud. The way their voices carried, it just sounded like they were outside.”

  “On the roof?”

  “The fifth floor’s kept locked on account of that’s where the residents store they spare things. But yes, it sounded like there were two men on the roof, maybe three.”

  “Who has a key to the fifth floor?”

  “I wouldn’t know. We never stored anything up there.”

  “Did you hear anything else?”

  “Oh yes.” She smoothed the lap of her dress, brushed away a crumb. Doyle and Jimmy were afraid to look at each other. They could hear the roar of the freeway, the ticking of a clock. Finally she said, “I heard gunshots.”

  “How many?”

  “I counted nine.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then it stopped. I heard two men talking very loud—arguing again. They might of been drunk. Before long I heard a car coming up the street—it was a po-lice.”

  “Yes? And then?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No footsteps? No voices?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “No one left the building?”

  “Not that I could see or hear.”

  “About how much longer did you sit by the window?”

  “Not long, maybe fifteen minutes. I saw another po-lice pass by real slow with its lights off, but that was all I saw. Then I went on to bed.”

  “Did you report this to the police?”

  “I tried, but the lines were always busy. I couldn’t get through.”

  Frank and Jimmy helped themselves to a second piece of crumb cake while Charlotte Armstrong went into the kitchen to write down her landlord’s name, address and phone number on a slip of pink paper.

  When they got back to 1300 Beaubien, Doyle started typing up his notes while Jimmy looked over his shoulder, occasionally making a suggestion. Doyle was a much faster typist, used all his fingers and didn’t even have to look at the keys.

  They knew there had been at least two shooters on the roof of the Larrow Arms and one of them lived on the building’s upper floors. The timing matched the time of Helen Hull’s death. The rooftop afforded a clear shot at the Harlan House. They had a rough description of a car. Jimmy reminded Doyle to type in that the fat man had a limp, that there may have been a third man on the roof, that one or more of the men might have been drunk. The top floor was locked, so they needed to find out who had the key. “And don’t forget the landlord,” Jimmy said.

  “I haven’t forgetten the landlord.” Doyle removed the neatly folded pink paper from his shirt pocket. It was the last thing he typed into the file: Bob Brewer. 3417 Normandy. GArfield 4-6743. “I’m going out to see him tomorrow, soon as I do a little research.”

  “All by your lonesome?”

  “If I have to. Of course I’d love for you to come along.”

  “Course you would. But I got to be in court all day to testify in that double at Duke’s Playhouse.”

  “Then I’ll go alone. I don’t want to let this thing cool off again. I can feel it, Jimmy. This could be the one we’ve been waiting for.” He smacked his forehead. “Damn!”

  “Whatsamatter?” Jimmy said.

  “I got so wound up I forgot to ask Mizz Armstrong for her crumb cake recipe.”

  9

  WILLIE WAS DRESSED HALF AN HOUR BEFORE HIS UNCLE BOB WAS due to pick him up for work. Pacing his living room, he decided there was no sense putting it off any longer. He dialed his parents’ telephone number in Andalusia. It was his second long-distance call of the morning, and he was dreading this one even more than the first. With luck he would catch his mother at home alone, keep his father out of this. She picked up after the third ring.

  “Bledsoe residence.”

  “Hey, Ma, it’s me.”

  “William! What a pleasant surprise. How are you?”

  “Fine, Ma. Everything’s cool.”

  “You still working?”

  “Afraid so. Got the lunch shift today.”

  “You putting some money away?”

  “Trying.”

  “Your Aunt Nezzie’s here. Want to say hello?” There was a muffled sound, voices. His Aunt Nezzie hated telephones, wouldn’t have one in her house. His mother came back on the line. “Well, Nezzie says hello.”

  “Tell her I said hey. Got some good news, Ma.”

  “Oh?”

  “Started back working on my book.”

  “That’s wonderful, William.”

&n
bsp; “Yeah, been going to the library to read old newspaper articles about the stuff we did. Been remembering a lot of things.”

  “Have you started writing again?”

  “Not yet. But soon. I can feel it.”

  “And how’s brother Bob?”

  “Same old. Richer by the day.”

  She giggled. “Stop that, you.”

  “Ain’t lyin. He just bought a shiny new Buick that’s bigger’n my apartment.”

  “I know. He sent us a picture of it parked in front of their new house. It looks like a manor somewhere in England.”

  Willie tried for his most casual tone. “Say Ma, I was wondering, you heard from Wes lately by any chance? I just tried calling him at that number in Chicago but they said he left town. Nobody knew where he went off to.”

  “As a matter of fact your brother called last week.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes. Why is that so exciting? To hear him tell it, you two had some big falling out.”

  “It wasn’t no big falling out. It was a misunderstanding’s all.”

  “Wesley made it sound like you two were at each other’s throats.”

  “It wasn’t like that. You know how he exaggerates everything.”

  “I see. Well, he’s on his way to Denver.”

  “Denver? What’s in Denver?”

  “He said he has some friends there. Navy buddies. You know how he’s been since he got out the service. Drifting from here to there, no direction, no ambition.”

  “Yeah, I know. He give you a telephone number?”

  “No, he said he was calling from a pay phone at a bus station somewhere in the Midwest. St. Louis, I believe it was. But he said he’ll call soon as he makes it to Denver.”

  “You think you could do me a favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “When you hear from him, please ask him to call me. It’s important.”

  “What’s this all about, William? Is something wrong?”

  “No Ma, I swear. I just want to straighten out the misunderstanding we had. Simple as that.”

  “Fine. I’ll ask him to call you when I hear from him. Any other news? You find a girl?”

  “Nothing serious. I have gone to a few baseball games though.”

  “Baseball games?”

  “Yeah, the Detroit Tigers. First place in the American League. Made a couple of good friends at the ballpark, two brothers—a dude from Louisiana and a lawyer.”

  “Well, that’s . . . nice, I suppose.”

  “And how’s the Reverend?”

  “He’s fine, thank you for asking. He’s down to the church. He and some of the boys from the choir are finally fixing the roof.”

  “Still working the Jesus thing, is he?”

  “You know he is. He’ll be praising the Lord when he’s inside a pine box.”

  Willie heard his Aunt Nezzie laughing in the background. She had nothing but scorn for the Jesus racket, the way her brother-in-law, now that he’d retired from the railroad, spent all of his time at his church, Mount Olive True Holiness Baptist Tabernacle, a little white-washed box sitting up on cinderblocks in a thicket of loblolly pines just south of Andalusia. The faithful sat on folding chairs, waving paper fans from Hargett Funeral Service, worshiping by the light of a single 60-watt bulb that dangled by a wire from the ceiling. They were all ready for the rapture even though the roof leaked. Or maybe they were ready for the rapture because the roof leaked. Willie had to give his father credit for one thing, though. At least he wasn’t one of those preachers who drove a Cadillac and kept a harem of young redbones hand-picked from the church choir. Otis Bledsoe drove an old Ford. He was a true believer, a foot-washing Baptist who dismissed Methodists and Episcopalians and the like as “shallow-water” because they did their baptizing indoors instead of where it was supposed to be done—outdoors in a snake-infested brown river, under the all-seeing eye of God. “Well, give the Reverend my best,” Willie said.

  “I’ll do that.”

  “I better go, Ma. This is expensive.”

  “All right, William. Write me a letter.”

  “Will do. And don’t forget to tell Wes to call me.”

  “I won’t forget. Bye now.”

  As he hung up the phone Willie heard a horn honk and saw his uncle’s Deuce and a Quarter glide up to the curb on Pallister. Willie hurried down the stairs, several dollars poorer but still no closer to knowing what had become of those three guns.

  10

  DOYLE SPENT THE MORNING RESEARCHING REAL-ESTATE RECORDS, then ate a salad and moussaka alone in Greektown before heading north. Normandy Street was flanked with solid, well-maintained houses, not far from U. of D. High School, Doyle’s alma mater. He parked the unmarked Plymouth two doors down from 3417, a tidy two-story brick with a slate roof and exposed timbers, about a seven iron from the fence of the Detroit Golf Club, if Doyle remembered distances correctly from his boyhood summers spent caddying there. He hadn’t called ahead—he was hoping the element of surprise would work in his favor—and he sat in the car for a while trying to read the street. There were For Sale signs on half a dozen front lawns on this block. So even out here on the leafy northern fringe of the city, miles removed from ground zero, whitey was packing it in.

  A black woman answered the door. She had smooth butterscotch skin, straight hair and a toothy Diana Ross smile. Doyle showed her his shield and asked if Mr. Bob Brewer was in.

  The smile disappeared. “My husband’s at work,” she said, hugging the door.

  “You’re Mrs. Brewer?”

  “That’s right. I’m Mary Brewer.” Not cold, but a long way from warm. Like she thought he’d assumed she was the maid. Christ, he thought, you step on a land mine in this town every time you try to move.

  “What time do you expect your husband?”

  “Bob’s not in any trouble, is he?”

  “Oh no, ma’am, nothing like that.” Doyle gave it a little chortle, as though the very thought was ridiculous. “I just need to ask him a few questions about one of his tenants.”

  “Oh.” She relaxed, but only a little. About a third of Diana Ross’s warmth returned. “Well, he’s working late tonight. He’ll probably spend the night since he has to work a double shift tomorrow. I’ll tell him you came by. Do you have a card?”

  “Where does he work?”

  The eyes narrowed a notch, the smile disappeared again. “He’s a waiter.”

  “I see. And where does he do his waiting?”

  Now she was glaring. “At Oakland Hills.”

  “Oakland Hills?” He’d never heard of the place.

  “The country club.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m drawing a—”

  “It’s out in Birmingham.”

  “Do you know where in Birmingham?”

  “West 15 Mile, near Telegraph.”

  Like pulling fucking hen’s teeth, Doyle thought as he nursed the Plymouth farther north out Woodward, through Ferndale and Royal Oak, all the way to Birmingham. It was a notch below Bloomfield Hills but still plush, the sort of place where the people with For Sale signs in front of their houses on Normandy Street surely dreamed of winding up, almost a whole Detroit away from Detroit, a village of pricey shops and well-scrubbed children where it hardly seemed possible that human beings were capable of torching their own neighborhoods and climbing up on rooftops to shoot at policemen and firemen. Doyle had to remind himself that this was how America had always worked: When places like Detroit made you rich enough, you took the money and you ran and you didn’t look back. The only difference nowadays was that nobody could run far enough, or fast enough.

  It was late afternoon when he finally pulled onto the parking lot at Oakland Hills Country Club. The massive white clubhouse looked like something off a movie set. Gone with the Fucking Wind, Doyle thought, tuning the radio until he picked up WJR and the voice of Ernie Harwell. The first game of the Tigers’ twi-night double-header had just started and the Red Sox already had two men
on base. No wonder—Mickey Lolich was pitching, and he was as famous for his shaky starts as he was for his strong finishes. Carl Yastrzemski proceeded to park the next pitch in the center field bleachers, and the Red Sox owned a 3-0 lead before the Tigers had even come to bat. Better get the shower hot for Lolich, Doyle thought, snapping off the radio in disgust.

  The arrival of a shit-brown Plymouth went unnoticed by the people straggling in off the golf course, by the men drinking gin and playing cards in the cozy grill, by the elegantly dressed couples pulling up under the portico in Cadillacs and Chrysler Imperials to meet other elegantly dressed couples for drinks and dinner. These people thought their money made them immune. Doyle had bad news for them.

  The manager received him in his cluttered office off the front lobby. He was a harried little terrier in a cheap suit named Dick Kowalski, a St. Stanislaus grad like Cecelia Cronin, and he pleaded with Doyle to come back around ten o’clock because Bob Brewer was working a very important private cocktail party and banquet for some big shots from Ford Styling. Dick Kowalski pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “If I have to pull him off the floor now it’ll fuck everything up. Believe me.”

  Doyle believed him. They were a couple of city boys marooned out here in far suburbia. Doyle told himself he could work with this guy, then told Kowalski he’d return around ten.

  He drove farther north, all the way to Bloomfield Hills. He found Cranbrook Road without too much trouble and parked across from 1030 and cut the engine. He could hear cicadas whining in the tall trees, and he could see that his brother’s house was lit up like Christmas. Every light in the place was on, upstairs and down, an extravagance that seemed designed to tell the world that the family in the big Dutch colonial didn’t have to worry about electricity bills or anything else. Doyle was sure it was Kat’s idea of class. His old man would have given his brother hell.

  A shape passed by the window on the bottom left. One of the girls? Doyle felt a spasm in his chest and reached for the door handle, but then he remembered the last time he had come here. It was late last summer, everyone still stunned by the riot. Rod grilled steaks on the patio and they ate at the picnic table with the family from next door. The neighbor was a stockbroker who worked downtown and bragged about the three guns he’d just bought in Ohio, a common practice in the suburbs of Detroit that summer. “Just let some nigger try to carjack me,” he said. It was all Doyle could do not to pimp-slap the pudgy little fuck in the pink shirt with an alligator on his left tit.