Motor City Burning

by Bill Morris

  “Quit yer squawkin. It’s beer and it’s cold.” Doyle could tell he appreciated the ribbing. “Cheers,” Henry said. They tapped cans as Doyle returned to the sofa.

  After a while Henry put his hand on Doyle’s knee and said, “You did the best you could, Frankie, you and Jimmy both. The whole department did, and I want you to know how much I appreciate it. You never gave up. Now it’s time to let it go. It wasn’t meant to be. Case closed.”

  “The file will stay open till the case is solved, Mr. Hull.” It would stay open and it would turn cold and eventually it would slip into the deep freeze. “We never stop working open cases.”

  Doyle wondered if it was possible that the old bird was feeling the same thing he’d felt when he watched Willie Bledsoe walk out the front door of 1300, a free man. He wondered if it was possible that Henry was feeling a skewed sense of relief now too. No, Doyle told himself, I know more than Henry knows, and he lost his wife. No way Henry was feeling relief.

  Yet Henry was willing to let it go. His wife didn’t deserve to die, but Henry, like Doyle, seemed to believe that Willie Bledsoe didn’t deserve many of the things he’d been through, things no white man in America would ever have to endure. Something had to give. Somebody was always having to pay for the things that went on, for the things that had been going on in this country for hundreds of years. If the cycle of vengeance was ever going to stop, it had to stop somewhere. Why not here? If Henry wasn’t exactly relieved, Doyle told himself, maybe he agreed that some sick form of justice had prevailed. Somebody had to be the first one to step off the merry-go-round.

  “I said let it go,” Henry repeated. He waved at the boxes. “If I can get on with my life, then you can get on with yours. It’s time for me and you—and this whole city—to move on.”

  “You coming back to the old neighborhood?”

  “Afraid I can’t. There’s nothing for me there but memories, mostly bad ones, and I’ve still got a few good years left in me.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “My kid brother’s got a place in the U.P., not far from Marquette. He says he needs someone to go fishing with him. His wife passed away last summer too.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “How about you? What’s next for you?”

  “Let’s see. I’m cooking dinner tonight for Jimmy and Flo and a gorgeous strawberry blonde. In the morning Jimmy and I’ll go out looking for new killers.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “Killers are always serious, Mr. Hull.”

  “No, I mean the strawberry blonde.”

  “Yeah, I think it’s safe to say we’re falling in love.”

  This perked Henry up. “Tell me about her.”

  “Well, she’s gorgeous and she’s sexy and she knows a lot about art and she loved the lamb chops I cooked for her last—”

  “Shit!”

  Bob Gibson had struck out his fourteenth Tiger batter.

  “I’m sorry, Frankie. You were saying about the lamb chops.”

  “She likes my cooking almost as much as Jimmy does. I’m making chicken cacciatore for everyone tonight.”

  “You say she knows a lot about art?”

  “She’s getting her master’s in art history at Wayne State. She’s writing her thesis on the way the Nazis looted art during the War.”

  “Sounds like an interesting gal.”

  “She is, she really is. And smart as hell.”

  “You remember me telling you I was in Patton’s Third Army during the war?”

  “Yeah, I remember that picture of you in your uniform, the one behind the cash register at the market. Right next to the picture of you shaking hands with President Truman.”

  “Well, my unit was the one that found the salt mine full of stolen art near Altaussee, Austria. Hitler was going to put the stuff in his museum in Linz after the war. There were hundreds of pieces.”

  Doyle had forgotten that about Henry Hull, the way he was always surprising you with his stories. It was what made the Greenleaf Market such a lively place. This city was going to miss him.

  “So what’s your girl’s name?” Henry said.

  “Cecelia Cronin.”

  “She from Detroit?”

  “Hamtramck. But yeah, she’s been here all her life except for a short spell in New York. She’s going to move in with me to see, you know, how we work together.”

  “Sounds pretty damn serious.”

  “Yeah. . . .” Like any inveterate bachelor, Doyle was anxious about having Cecelia move into his big empty house. Surely her presence would cut down on his front porch chats with his father. And he knew that those buckets of rainwater in the master bedroom would seem romantic to her for only so long. He told himself that this might actually be a good thing, might force him to get off his ass and replace that sieve of a roof before the house fell down. Doyle was much less anxious about their travel plans. “We’re hoping to go to Italy together in the spring. My mother made me promise I’d go see the Uffizi and the Sistine Chapel before I died.”

  “You should go. Go while you can.” Henry glanced at the naked walls. “You never know when it’s going to get yanked away from you.”

  They sat there on the sofa like father and son and watched the rest of the game. It wasn’t pretty. Bob Gibson broke Sandy Koufax’s World Series record by striking out seventeen Detroit batters, and the Cardinals embarrassed the Tigers, 4-0.

  When the game was over, Doyle asked Henry what he was planning to do with all the boxes, all the evidence and tips and dead-end leads he’d amassed so painstakingly over the past fifteen months.

  “The guys on the motel staff are gonna toss it in the dumpster out back for me.”

  “I was wondering, Mr. Hull . . . I’ve got my brother’s pickup truck parked out back—had to pick up some topsoil yesterday—and I was wondering if you’d let me take this stuff with me.”

  “Take it where?”

  “Back to my house. For some strange reason I cleaned out my old bedroom last week. It’s the only room upstairs that doesn’t have any leaks in the roof. I’d like to spread everything out in there as a way of, you know, keeping the case warm.”

  “I dunno, Frankie. Like I said, maybe it’s time to let it go.”

  “I can’t do that, Mr. Hull.”

  Henry sighed. He sounded older than he’d ever sounded, like a man who was finished with life. “Be my guest then, Frankie. Do what you gotta do.”

  When the post-game show ended, Henry called the front desk and a bellhop came up to fetch his two suitcases. He was taking a cab to City Airport, then a plane to Duluth, Minnesota, where his brother was meeting him. He wrote down his brother’s address and phone number in Marquette and made Doyle promise he would keep in touch. They hugged then, and Doyle stood in the doorway and watched him walk, one last time, down the hallway where his wife died.

  When the elevator door closed behind him, Doyle got a porter to help him load the boxes into his brother’s pickup. There would be time to smoke a cigar on the front porch before he had to start sautéing the vegetables and the chicken. He wanted to tell his father about the latest developments. The old man would be surprised and saddened that Henry Hull had packed it in. But Doyle had a hunch—he hoped—that his father would be proud that he’d brought all the evidence home and planned to keep the candle burning for Vic #43.

  27

  ON THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WORLD SERIES OPENED, Willie broke the news to Octavia that he would be leaving Detroit for good as soon as the Series ended. His friend Walter Mitchell had a spare room waiting for him in D.C., a quiet room with a view of Rock Creek Park, and Willie was determined to finish writing his memoir there.

  Willie broke this news while he and Octavia were lying in her big four-poster bed, sticky and spent from their most frenzied lovemaking yet. He had dreaded this moment, but he thought she took the news pretty well, almost calmly, almost like she’d been expecting it. “Oh Willie, we so different,” she said, sou
nding relieved to finally be able to admit that this was something they could never hope to overcome.

  The next afternoon, feeling subdued but not unhappy, Willie and Octavia watched the opening game of the World Series at the Chit Chat. Erkie sat on the barstool between them, chain-smoking, chasing shots of Old Overholt with Stroh’s and sending a torrent of abuse at the overmatched Tiger batters. When Bob Gibson struck out the side in the ninth inning, Erkie bellowed, “Seventeen a y’all struck out? Yain’t nothin but a buncha born-insecure, rat-soup-eatin, barnyard muth-a-fuckas!” Willie was the only person in that morgue who laughed.

  After the game Octavia dropped Willie off at his apartment and he went right back to work at the typewriter. He worked deep into the night, until he finished a rough draft of the story about the night Helen Hull died.

  He had to work the lunch shift at Oakland Hills the next day, but his Uncle Bob was the only one on the staff who did a lick of work. All the other waiters and busboys stood along the walls in the packed men’s grill to watch Mickey Lolich try to atone for yesterday’s disaster. Lolich pitched brilliantly, even hit the first home run of his career, and the Tigers won with surprising ease, 8-1.

  There was no game the next day as the teams traveled from St. Louis to Detroit. Willie had the day off and he spent it at home polishing his account of what had happened on the roof of the Larrow Arms. It was already good, but he wanted to make it perfect. Clarence Rawls had moved out West somewhere, but Willie didn’t want to give him up, so he’d changed Clarence’s name to Tyrone Bell and changed his appearance, moved him into a different apartment. Willie had also decided to make Tyrone Bell the killer. It was a little lie that would preserve a larger truth—that Wes didn’t deserve to go to prison.

  Late in the afternoon, just as he was getting ready to knock off for the day, Walter Mitchell called from Washington. It was Walter who’d convinced the editors at Ebony to run six installments from Willie’s memoir—it was going to be called “Death of the Dream”—and now Walter was calling to tell him he’d taken the liberty of slipping the first three installments to Dreyfus Trotter, an editor at McGraw-Hill who used to work at Ebony, another Tuskegee man. Trotter wanted to talk to Willie about publishing his entire memoir in hardcover. Walter gave Willie Trotter’s phone number in New York and told him to call him immediately. Just before he hung up, Walter said his spare bedroom was cleaned up and Willie could move in any time. Willie told him he would show up right after the World Series. Then he dialed the number in New York.

  Dreyfus Trotter didn’t sound black. He sounded vaguely English. “Mr. Bledsoe,” he began, “from what I’ve seen so far I’m of the opinion that your story will belong on the same shelf with Soul on Ice. In a word, I find it brilliant.”

  In a word, Willie was speechless.

  “Are you still there, Mr. Bledsoe?”

  “Yes, I’m right here.”

  “Have you read Soul on Ice?”

  “I read it last week, as a matter of fact.”

  “I edited the book, which, as you’re surely aware, Mr. Cleaver wrote while he was incarcerated.” He paused to let that credential sink in. “I trust you’ll agree with me that the source of the book’s power is its candor. Its refusal to pull punches, if you will.”

  “I agree.” Any black man in America who openly admits to raping white women—and calls it an “insurrectionary” act—cannot be accused of pulling his punches.

  “I’m assuming you saw Walter’s photo essay in Ebony about the Detroit riot.”

  “Of course.”

  “He tells me you were with him when he was arrested.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “I’m curious, are you planning to include that experience in your memoir?”

  “As a matter of fact I spent this afternoon working on that chapter. I’ve just decided to make it the book’s ending.”

  “Would you be so good as to tell me a bit about that night?”

  Willie realized Dreyfus Trotter was asking to be sold a bill of goods. Willie also realized that Dreyfus Trotter was hoping he wouldn’t pull any punches. So Willie told him, as dispassionately as he could, about that horrific night, beginning when he and Walter got arrested, continuing to the moment bloody Wes knocked on his door, and ending when Willie and Wes and “Tyrone Bell” hustled down off the roof of the Larrow Arms while a woman lay dying in the Harlan House Motel. Willie even told Dreyfus Trotter the part he hadn’t told Walter yet—about getting taken in for questioning by the detectives and learning the identity of Helen Hull’s killer from them. The only thing Willie didn’t tell Dreyfus Trotter was the killer’s name.

  Trotter said, “Do you intend to name the killer in your book?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to give it away yet.”

  Trotter chuckled. “Very shrewd of you.”

  Willie was thinking, You got no idea how shrewd.

  “I should very much like to read that chapter, Mr. Bledsoe. Are you planning to include it in your Ebony series?”

  “No. The current plan is to end the series with the 1964 Democratic convention—you know, when they refused to seat the black delegates from Mississippi—because that was when I dropped out of the movement. The Ebony series is about my disillusionment with the civil rights movement, not what happened to me afterwards.”

  “I’m guessing that the chapter you just described to me—about your arrest and what happened on that rooftop—I’m guessing that’s going to be the most powerful passage of the entire book.”

  “I think you’re right. I hope you’re right.”

  “Aren’t you worried about possible legal repercussions? Possibly a charge of accessory to a murder?”

  “No, because I didn’t kill anybody—or help anybody kill anybody. Did they charge Eldridge Cleaver for those rapes he admitted committing?”

  “No, they did not.” There was a pause, a rustling noise. Then Trotter said, “Could you possibly come to New York, Mr. Bledsoe? Based on what I’ve read and what you’ve just told me, I should very much like to talk to you in person about publishing your memoir in hardcover. I think it would be advantageous for us to meet as soon as possible to discuss contract terms.”

  Willie knew that the World Series would be over by the following Thursday at the latest—if it went to seven games, which seemed unlikely unless Bob Gibson got run over by a bus. He told Dreyfus Trotter he could leave Detroit late next Thursday.

  “I assume you’ll fly?” Trotter said.

  “No, I’m driving.” He didn’t tell him he’d never been on an airplane and was deathly afraid of the things. He told him he was moving in with Walter in Washington, and could stop in New York on his way to D.C.

  “Very well then. Shall we say four o’clock next Friday afternoon in my office?”

  Willie wrote down the address of the McGraw-Hill Building. In parting, Dreyfus Trotter got him to promise he would bring the riot chapter to New York and would not show it to the people at Ebony or anyone else. As soon as Willie hung up he phoned Clyde Holland and asked him what he should do when he got to New York.

  “The one thing you don’t do, Alabama, is you don’t sign nothin,” Clyde said. “He offers you a contract you show it to me before you sign it. Got that?”

  “Got it.”

  “Say, I’m glad you called. Du and me got an extra ticket for tomorrow’s game. Upper-deck in right field. Ain’t the best seats in the house, but—”

  “My answer’s hell yes.”

  “I’ll leave the ticket at Will Call.”

  Willie’s next call was to Dick Kowalski at Oakland Hills, telling him he would not be coming back to work. To Willie’s surprise, Simon Legree took the news well, even wished him luck in New York and D.C. After that call, Willie started packing up the apartment.

  That Saturday broke crisp and sunny, football weather, and the big barn at Michigan and Trumbull was packed for the city’s first World Series game in twenty-three years. When Willie showed up an hour befor
e the first pitch, Louis and Clyde were sitting in the sunshine in the upper deck, passing a silver flask back and forth over the empty seat between them. They both stood up when he came down the row. “Have a taste a this anti-freeze,” Clyde said, handing Willie the flask. He took a nip. It was expensive scotch, nice and smooth.

  “Got Earl Wilson warmin up,” Louis said. “Just like Openin Day!”

  Wilson didn’t fare any better than he had on Opening Day, failing to make it through the fifth inning. The Cardinals proved to be rude guests, stealing bases at will, blasting home runs and winning with ease, 7-3. The loss did nothing to dampen Louis and Clyde’s merriment.

  “We done witnessed history,” Clyde said, watching the disappointed fans shuffle down the aisles.

  “What we done witnessed is a historical ass-whippin,” Louis said. The three friends whooped and slapped hands and went off to meet Octavia at the Seven Seas.

  She was in a funk about the Tigers’ loss but she lit up when Willie told her about the call from Dreyfus Trotter, the possible book deal. She smothered him with a hug and a kiss. When their lip-lock finally ended, she whispered in his ear, “Oh Willie, I’m so proud of—I’m so happy for you. . . .”

  They watched the next game together on the portable TV at the foot of her bed. They were so busy with each other that they missed most of the game. They didn’t miss much. It rained frogs on and off all day, big plump juicy frogs, and Jose Feliciano, the blind folk singer, stood by home plate with his seeing-eye dog Trudy and gave a disjointed rendering of the National Anthem that infuriated the national television audience and embarrassed the citizens of Detroit. To make matters worse, after several rain delays Bob Gibson and the Cardinals splashed out a 10-1 victory and a three-to-one lead in games in the best-of-seven Series. Everyone said it was over. They said the same thing about Jose Feliciano’s singing career.

  At the packed and raucous Chit Chat the next day, Erkie again sat between Willie and Octavia. Overnight she had become a rabid and highly superstitious fan. She wore a new Tigers cap, and she pulled the brim down low so she could concentrate on the TV screen. She was in a tunnel. She didn’t say a word or seem aware of the pandemonium around her. But Erkie was his usual self, spraying colorful abuse at the Tigers, chasing shots with beers, smoking like the stacks at the Rouge. This time it worked. Mickey Lolich came through again, and the Tigers stayed alive with a gritty 5-3 victory. Octavia was convinced her new Tigers’ cap was the reason the team’s luck had so mysteriously changed, and she vowed to wear the cap and sit on the same barstool for the rest of the Series.