Motor City Burning

by Bill Morris

  Because she blew me off, Doyle said. Left a note on the fridge and disappeared while I was out late working a double at the Driftwood. Well, at least Herb Silver’s happy now.

  What do you mean?

  I heard him talking to Effie from the kitchen window one night after he saw Vicki and me walk up these porch steps holding hands. I could hear him saying, That fucking Doyle kid’ll never change. First he spends all his time in Ford Park playing basketball with the coloreds. Then he goes out dancing with them. Then he gets one for a partner. And now he’s screwing one. Next thing you know we’re gonna have a bunch of nappy-headed thugs cutting across the front lawn and stealing our hubcaps.

  Herb Silver’s an asshole, the old man said. Always bragging about how many ribbons he won for his roses and how much he paid for his new Cadillac. You gotta wonder about a guy whose front lawn looks like he trims it with scissors.

  Doyle laughed. Good point, he said. Herb’s been talking about putting the house up for sale ever since that black couple moved in at the end of the block.

  Good riddance. Let ’em move out to Southfield where they belong.

  Doyle told his father about the past few days—the conversations with Charlotte Armstrong and Bob Brewer, all those For Sale signs on Normandy Street, the Vietnam angle, the picture of the Hulls in the News, the pickup. He didn’t mention that his brother’s house was lit up like Christmas. No sense pissing the old man off at this late date. Doyle said, Henry and Helen looked so happy in that picture in the paper.

  They were happy, his father said. Two of the finest people I ever met.

  We’ve been dead in the water for ten months, Doyle said. And now, just like that, we’ve got a chance.

  His father asked him why things always seemed to happen just like that.

  Beats me, Doyle said. For all he knew, his old man was thinking about the way he’d died. One minute he’s eating a meatloaf sandwich on the second-shift lunch break in the stamping room at the Rouge, the next minute he’s face-down on the greasy concrete floor, already dead from a heart attack that would’ve taken down a bull elk. Doyle said, You know what I’m always saying about detective work.

  Right. Luck and squealers.

  So we finally caught some lucky breaks. We were damn sure due. Now if we would just hear from some squealers.

  That would be nice.

  Yeah, Pop, squealers are always nice.

  11

  STINGERS ALWAYS TASTED BETTER TO CHICK MURPHY AFTER A Tigers victory. He was sitting alone at the bar in the upstairs mixed grill at Oakland Hills, getting started on his second stinger and replaying tonight’s game in his head. The Tigers fell behind early and were down 2-0 after six, then they woke up and beat the Red Sox going away, 7-2. Beat ’em like a dirty rug.

  “You know what I was just thinking, Cheech?” Chick Murphy said to Chi Chi, who was rubbing clean glasses with a bar cloth and swallowing a yawn.

  “What, Meester Murphy?”

  “I was thinking that this Tiger team is a lot like this city.”

  “How you mean?”

  “Well, you can get ’em down and you can keep ’em down for a long time, but somehow they always find a way to bounce back. Those sonsabitches never quit.”

  “Berry true,” said Chi Chi, who didn’t know a thing about baseball.

  “These late-inning rallies aren’t doing a damn thing for my blood pressure, but they sure as hell are exciting to watch.”

  Just then Willie Bledsoe walked into the room carrying an empty bus tray and started clearing the last dirty table. Chick had liked the kid the first time he laid eyes on him. Like his uncle, Willie was hard-working, articulate, polite. He moved with the grace of a natural athlete. Kid was handsome, too, tall and fair-skinned, sharp-jawed, well-groomed. None of that greasy shit in his hair that Wiggins and some of the others used. Even that scar on his lip looked good, like he wasn’t afraid to mix it up.

  “Hey, Willie,” Chick called to him, stirring his brain dimmer with his right index finger, then licking the minty fingertip. “You get a chance to listen to the game tonight?”

  “Naw, Mr. Murphy, we got swamped. Heard we won, though. You go?”

  “Yeah, a customer gave me a coupla nice box seats down by first base. I heard every cuss word that came out of Norm’s mouth. I swear to Christ, that guy never shuts up—and he could make a sailor blush!”

  This, as Chick had hoped, got Willie to stop working and walk across the room. Chick knew that Norm Cash was Willie’s favorite player, which was another thing he liked about the kid. While the other black guys in the clubhouse tended to favor the obvious black players, usually Willie Horton or Earl Wilson or Gates Brown, Willie developed preferences based on subtle things, like Norm Cash’s soft hands and quick feet, his way of coming up with hits at the right time. The kid understood the game, and he judged players by their ability, not their race. A week or so ago Willie had told Chick he played first base in high school and college, even got a tryout with the Houston Colt .45s. When Chick had asked him what happened at the tryout, Willie said, “Nothing. I couldn’t hit a big-league curveball if they hung it in front of me with clothespins. So much for my baseball career.”

  Now Willie said, “How’d Cash do tonight?”

  “Norm looked good. He’s going to be all right soon as he stops chasing those outside curveballs. He went three-for-four, with a homer. Drove in three runs. Turned a couple of slick plays in the field, too.”

  “So his batting average moved in the right direction for a change.”

  For a change. Spoken like a true Detroit fan, Chick thought, rapping the bar, his signal for Chi Chi to hit him again. Cash drives in three runs, plays flawless defense—and all people can talk about is that his batting average is nowhere near where it’s supposed to be. That was something Chick loved about Detroit, the way the fans were demanding, sour, impossible to satisfy—and yet eternally loyal. They loved you but they didn’t give you anything for free.

  Another thing Chick liked about Willie was that he was all ears whenever Chick talked about the old Tiger teams. Most young people nowadays don’t give a rat’s ass about anything that happened before last Tuesday, but Willie seemed genuinely interested when Chick told him how he’d grown up worshiping Hal Newhouser, Mickey Cochrane, Schoolboy Rowe and, above all, the G-men. And Willie seemed to believe Chick when he predicted this was going to be a memorable season, maybe right up there with the two World Series championships he’d lived through, in ’35 and ’45.

  As Willie went back to work clearing and resetting the last table, Chick thought about how the members of Oakland Hills sometimes grew attached to people on the staff, to favored waiters and bartenders, even busboys and caddies. Many of the club’s members had had humble beginnings themselves, and no matter how rich and powerful they’d become, they liked to feel they were still in touch with the common man, still knew the taste of the salt of the earth. In a lunch-pail town like Detroit, it was important to remember where you came from. Chick Murphy started out washing Packards at a dealership on Gratiot during the Depression, then graduated to shoving booze in his father’s bar on Dequindre. And he wasn’t going to let himself or anyone else forget it.

  Thinking about how far he’d come, Chick considered asking Willie about his life back home, what it was like being a Negro in a place like Alabama, a place that might as well have been on the cold side of Mars to a guy who’d never traveled farther south than the Notre Dame football stadium in Terre Haute, Indiana. Chick reached for his drink, missed it—and almost pitched off the barstool.

  “Meester Murphy,” Chi Chi said, appearing out of nowhere to grab his elbow and wrestle him back onto the stool.

  “Thanks, Cheech. Musta slipped. . . .”

  “Is berry late. Maybe is time to go home?”

  “Righto, Cheech.”

  “You are dribing?”

  “Actually. . . .”

  That was when it hit him—one of his brilliant ideas. He turned j
ust as Willie placed the last water goblet upside-down on the table, gave it a final inspection, and started to remove his bow tie.

  “Say, Willie,” Chick called to him, “you think you could do me a huge favor?”

  “Uh, sure, Mr. Murphy.”

  “You got a driver’s license?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You think you could run me home in my car? I really don’t need to be driving.” He rattled the ice cubes in his glass, surprised to see it was already empty. He would run his brilliant idea by Willie on the way home. “You can bring my car back here tonight—and my wife’ll bring me by to pick it up in the morning.”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “If it’s too much trouble I could call a—”

  “It’s no trouble, Mr. Murphy. I’m spending the night here anyway. Gotta work the lunch shift tomorrow.”

  “Well, then, I’ll have a short one for the road and we’ll go.” He turned toward the bar but Chi Chi had vanished. “Ah, what the hell.” He set his empty glass on the bar. “Let’s roll.”

  Minutes later Willie found himself sliding behind the wheel of a 1968 Deuce and a Quarter, silver with a black vinyl top and black leather seats that smelled like sex itself. He could see there were only 67.8 miles on the odometer, which meant the car was a demo. Chick Murphy probably drove a different one every day.

  “Take a right,” Chick said, lighting a cigarette. They headed east on 15 Mile, the same route Uncle Bob had taken the day he took Willie for a spin in his new Deuce. It was well past midnight, traffic was light. “Go ahead and see what she’ll do,” Chick Murphy said. Then, seeming to read Willie’s mind, he added, “Don’t worry. If a cop pulls you, I’ll do the talking. Give her the gas.”

  Willie eased his right foot down on the big accelerator pedal and the car gathered itself and broke into a gallop, a throaty, thrilling, groin-tingling gallop. He glanced at the speedometer and was astonished to see he was doing eighty-five.

  “You like that pickup?” Chick Murphy said.

  “Hell yes I like it, Sur—Mr. Murphy.” He’d almost slipped and called him Surf. All the clubhouse staff, even the white guys, called him Murph the Surf behind his back because his glossy yellow hair could only have come from a beach or a bottle.

  It was not that Willie and the other black guys on the clubhouse staff disliked Chick Murphy. He was not one of those members who told nigger jokes in the men’s grill and then lowered their voices if a black waiter or busboy approached, thinking they were being discreet. If anything, the Surf tried too hard in the opposite direction, tried to be chummy in a way that made most of the black staff uncomfortable. Willie could remember the night when the Surf came down to the basement, drink in hand, and popped his head into the Quarters to see if anyone could use four tickets to an upcoming Tigers game. Someone turned the radio down. Waiters looked up from their craps games—what they called African golf—and the dice stopped flying. Everyone was obviously uneasy, and it got worse the longer the Surf lingered, trying to make small talk and act like one of the guys. There was nothing wrong with the gesture, it was just that he had crossed the invisible line and it was obvious he was unaware that the line even existed. Like so many white people, he assumed that good intentions—in this case, an offer of free baseball tickets—was enough. Watching him there in the doorway of the Quarters, feeling how tight the air had suddenly become, Willie thought of how his mother had drilled into him never to trust white people, especially the ones who profess to have good intentions. Racist peckerwoods were easy to deal with, she said, because they were so predictable; it was the white people with good intentions who will ambush you every time.

  “You need to drop by the dealership,” the Surf was saying as they sailed along 15 Mile. “Take a test drive. You look real sharp behind the wheel of a Deuce, if I do say so myself.”

  Deuce, Willie thought. White guys never talked like that. “Aw, Mr. Murphy, no way in hell I could afford a ride this nice.”

  “Take a left at the light, on Lahser. Money’s no problem. What’re you driving now?”

  “The DSR.”

  “The what?”

  “Detroit Street Railway. The bus. Or I catch a ride to work with my uncle or one of the guys.”

  “You mean to tell me you live in Detroit and you don’t even own a fucking car?”

  Willie thought of his ’54 Buick parked out of sight in the garage behind his apartment. He considered telling the Surf the standard lie about the Buick’s leaky Dynaflow transmission, but that would lower the car’s value at trade-in time. Besides, there was no future in letting a white man know more about yourself than he needed to know.

  “Course I got a car, Mr. Murphy. Matter of fact, it’s a Buick—a mint-condition ’54 Century. Restored it myself.” The lie began to beget more lies. “It’s in the shop for a tune-up is all. The mechanic working on it’s slower’n molasses in January, says he’s having trouble finding a set of points. So for now I have to catch rides with friends—or take the good old DSR.”

  The Surf launched into a spiel about some nice clean used Skylarks he just got in, but Willie didn’t hear much of it. He was too busy enjoying the power of this Buick, how easy it was to handle. He could control it with his thumb. It was like driving a 400-horsepower stick of butter.

  “Okay, easy does it,” the Surf was saying. “Take your next right, on Long Lake.”

  They took a quick left after that, onto a smooth silver street that ran between the biggest houses Willie had ever seen. They were fortresses tucked back off the road, behind stone walls and tall hedges and thickets of trees, immense houses with four-car garages. Chick told him to turn up a driveway, a long serpent of blacktop that deposited them in front of a brick mansion with exposed wooden beams and a slate roof. The word Tudor came to Willie, and he thought of his mother’s description of Uncle Bob’s new house. That house would fit into this place’s garage. Every light was burning, which made the house seem even larger, more unreal.

  “Let’s go see what there is to see,” the Surf said, opening his door and lifting himself out of the car with a groan.

  “You want me to come in?” Willie said.

  “Sure. Why the hell not?”

  Halfway up the sidewalk Chick stopped and put a hand on Willie’s shoulder. His breath smelled minty. “Oh, say Willie, I almost forgot. I had an idea back at the club. You ever think about selling cars for a living?”

  “Nosir, can’t say that I have.”

  “Well, I could use a sharp young guy like you on my lot. Someone who can talk to, you know, to all kinds of people.”

  Willie stiffened. “You mean to black people.”

  “I mean black people, white people, rich people, working people. I get all kinds. And I’m sure you’d make a hell of a lot more money than you’re making at the club.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  “Well, give it some thought.”

  “Yessir, I will.”

  “I’m serious.”

  The front door was unlocked. Willie followed him into a slate-floored foyer, through an enormous dining room lit by a chandelier, then down a long hallway that led toward the back of the house, toward muffled music.

  “Where the fuck is she?” the Surf muttered as he went. Then he cried, with too much joy, “Ah, there you are, Shug! I’m home!”

  The woman sitting on the sofa was reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette. She looked bored and angry, like someone who’d been waiting for a bus a long time. She was a fading beauty with dyed blonde hair that was going black at the roots. She was wearing suede high-heels the color of burgundy wine. At first Willie thought her legs were bare, but then he realized she was wearing stockings. Flesh-toned, Willie said to himself. She put down her copy of Town & Country and took a pull from a glass full of ice and brown fluid. Chick Murphy turned down the stereo on his way to her. Willie recognized the music—that Herb Alpert chump with his Tijuana Brass. So this was the kind of swinging shit rich white people
listened to. Smoke was leaking from the woman’s nostrils. “So Chick, what possessed you to buy a gun?”

  “Who says I bought a gun?” he said, pecking her cheek and tearing at his necktie. “This is Willie Bledsoe from the club, darling. Willie, my bride Blythe. Willie gave me a lift home because—”

  “Because you’re stone drunk, as usual. I say you bought a gun. I found it in your sock drawer this morning.”

  “I bought it . . . I bought it for protection.” He gave Willie a sheepish look. “But mainly, Shug, I bought it because I woke up the other day and realized I’ve got to be ready to kill any man who tries to come between you and I.”

  “Between you and me.”

  “Oh for chrissakes, Blythe, lay off the grammar lessons already and fix us a drink, wouldya. Willie, you want something?”

  “Nosir, I’d better be going.”

  He watched the woman rise from the sofa, shakily, to her full height. With the heels she was nearly six feet tall. She must have been a fox in her day. Still not bad, but the skin was getting leathery from the sun, the hair was kind of scorched looking, and the ass was widening under the tight silk skirt. He noticed that her legs were still good—a woman’s legs are the last thing to go—as she wobbled over to the bar in the corner and poured from a crystal decanter marked SCOTCH. She picked up tongs and added two ice cubes from a sweating silver bucket. “You sure you don’t want something—Willie, is it?”

  “No ma’am. I really need to be getting back to the club.” He took in the scene. Two people with more money than they would ever be able to spend, with a gun in the sock drawer, unable to speak proper English or act civilized in front of a stranger, listening to Herb Alpert while drinking themselves blind day in and day out, the bitterness between them growing like some malignant tumor. Again Willie thought of his mother—and how this scene would confirm every suspicion she ever had about white people, especially the ones with money.

  The woman handed the drink to her husband. “You need to protect me,” she said, “why don’t you learn how to fight?”