There was a single dresser, made of pine and painted gray. The top drawer contained socks neatly rolled and tucked in pairs, both silk dress socks in gray, black, and navy blue with red clocks on them, and dark wool socks also rolled and tucked. Other drawers contained neatly folded white boxer shorts, T-shirts, dress shirts, a couple of old well-worn wool V-neck sweaters. In the closet were hung three double-breasted wool worsted suits, in brown, gray, and blue, along with two silk ties in solid colors and several pairs of casual slacks. His usual tie, as I'd told Agge, which he wore just about every day, was red and it was never untied, just loosened and slipped on and off; normally, it was hung on a spindle of the chair by the bed—
I remember having seen it there, but he'd been wearing it when he died and it had been packed up with other items from the morgue. There were three pairs of dress shoes, in brown, tan, and black, very good shoes, evidently made to his last. (He had been buried in his police uniform, but as far as I knew, the funeral director had not required shoes.)
In a hall closet near the entry, I'd found a couple pairs of rubbers, including six-buckle arctic galoshes of a type I hadn't seen in years. Under the bed was a pair of carefully lined up leather slippers, very expensive and well cared for. Another pair, rather cheaper ones of boiled wool with rubber soles, very likely the ones he used when he came from the bath, were in the bathroom, along with an old, somewhat threadbare blue terry cloth bathrobe hanging on a brass hook on the door.
It was an interesting apartment. Even one who lives very simply, as Grootka appeared to, leaves a surprising amount of things. Some nice paintings, or prints, were hung in the living room and in the other rooms. So Grootka had been interested in abstract art. Possibly more interesting to my colleagues were the dozen or so guns, stashed all over the place—behind books on a shelf, under sofa cushions, in the liquor cabinet, in an otherwise empty box of Sanders’ chocolates on the coffee table. One of them, a .32 caliber revolver, had been of use to me in the scene with the killer, and another, a small silver-plated revolver, had discharged three fatal shots from Grootka's hand into the killer.
Almost as interesting, however, was the music room. It was a rear bedroom. It was bare except for an upright piano (battered, but in good tune), a stool, a music stand, and two gleaming saxophones on separate stands—a huge baritone and a straight soprano. A large sash window looked out onto a rear porch that was little more than a walkway with stairs going up and down and beyond that a small courtyard and a gate. (This was the way Grootka used to “sneak in,” to avoid his supposedly matrimaniacal landlady.) The window was heavily curtained and barricaded with a mesh grid. There were pictures on the walls, pushpinned reproductions of what looked to me like a nineteenth-century American seascape (gray and placid, with sails in the distance) and an Eakins scene of rowers on the river: perhaps they gave the musician a scene to look at, or into, while practicing scales.
And there was quite a lot of sheet music in this room, including some very complicated-looking scores, ultramodern stuff, some of it by composers with European-sounding names. There were several folders of handwritten music featuring a blizzard of notes and some odd-looking notation that could have been computer generated. Did Grootka play this, on the piano, on the saxes? He did, according to the neighbors, some of whom grimaced when they recalled the fact, not because he didn't play well, they said, but because the music itself was “awful.” ("Why couldn't he play ‘Danny Boy'?” one of them said. “He could play as good as that guy on Lawrence Welk")
I wasn't familiar with this music, but then I'm not a player. The handwritten stuff had numbers rather than words where one might expect a title, and the stuff on the accordion-folded computer paper may not have been music at all, but it was titled “Nigger Heaven: A Suite for Quartet and Six Others, by T. Addison.”
There was an excellent stereo or high-fidelity system in this room and many long-playing records and a surprising number of compact discs, mostly classical recordings, but many jazz recordings from a wide range of music—Louis Armstrong to Anthony Braxton. I was frankly astonished. I kind of knew that Grootka liked jazz, but before I saw this if you'd asked me I'd have said he was probably a Tommy Dorsey fan. There were no Dorsey boys here.
The most attractive neighbors shared the back porch: a handsome woman of middle age with a strikingly beautiful daughter of about sixteen or seventeen. They were genuinely grieved at the death of their dear neighbor, Mr. Grootka, whom they seemed to remember as a kindly, helpful, and (I gathered from some unspoken gestures or sentiments) protective older man. They were not the ones who disliked Grootka's musical performances. A youthful gay lawyer upstairs and a somewhat older bachelor managerial type on the top floor, both of whom had bedroom windows that opened onto the airshaft, were not so appreciative.
Much more significant than neighbors, now that I recollected it, were Grootka's notebooks. I don't know why, but I'd completely spaced them out. Three boxes of mostly pocket-size dime-store notebooks, filled with pencil scribblings, usually containing miscellaneous items like business cards or ticket stubs, each secured with a rubber band. That was why I'd spaced them out, no doubt: just a peek into those miserable scribbles was enough to make your guts turn to cold, gelid coils. There were also some larger notebooks, but I'd ignored them at the time.
It appeared that Grootka, who was not an overly methodical man, had nonetheless evolved a familiar method: he kept notes on cases in separate notebooks. I hadn't examined them at all closely, but I'd gotten the impression that the method was a familiar one: basically, a main notebook would contain the day-to-day notes. Then there would be a number of satellite notebooks, each one dedicated to a single case and containing information about that case alone. I had found all these notebooks jumbled in a couple of cardboard boxes stored in the rather spacious pantry of Grootka's apartment. But what had I done with them?
I'd seen the system before and I'd even tried it myself, for a while. But then I'd gotten in the habit of restricting all my notes to the actual files in the precinct or the bureau. I kept a daily notebook, of course, just to jot down stuff as it occurred. My daily logs were filed in my office file cabinet. As soon as I got back to the precinct I consulted the appropriate aide-mémoire now to see what had happened to all of Grootka's property. To my surprise, I discovered that I was in possession of most of it.
Getting old, I thought. I had totally forgotten that I'd been named conservator of Grootka's estate by the court, in the absence of any known relatives or even other interested parties. It isn't usual for the investigating detective to “inherit” a subject's petty goods, but it isn't unheard of. A home or an automobile, now . . . the state is sure to take an interest in the estate. But it doesn't want to be bothered with books and records and kitchen utensils. Paging through my logs I was reminded that the musical instruments had been donated to St. Olaf's orphanage. It seemed to me that his clothes had gone to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Other than that—and, I almost didn't remember, a Seiko wristwatch, probably worth five hundred dollars, that I'd given to his friend Books—Grootka had accumulated very little of value. He'd had a fairly new Buick, which the state had claimed and one of the guys had been tipped to buy at auction. And he'd left a savings account, though I doubt that it had amounted to more than a few thousand. But Grootka's notebooks and music were stored in my attic, I was pretty sure.
Would there be anything in there about selbstmord? I was willing to bet that there wouldn't be. Somehow, it just didn't seem the kind of thing that Grootka would notate. It would be like keeping a dream journal—just a little too flaky for a no-bullshit bastard like Grootka. (Well, that's what he used to say: “Hey, I'm just a no-bullshit bastard, but. . . .”)
Thinking about all this, I remembered that Agge, the History Honey, had asked where was Grootka when Hoffa disappeared. Possibly there was something in his notebooks. Another reason to look.
I couldn't remember Grootka ever saying anything about Hoffa. Which was odd, come
to think of it. I remembered the furore. Everybody was checking their traps, trying to get a lead. Not a dick in Detroit, but wanted to know what had happened to the bastard, hoping to get lucky and make a name.
I stuck my head out into the hallway and bellowed, “Maki!” A tall, bony, red-nosed detective with rubbery red lips stuck his head out of the squad-room door. Maki was a nice guy. Been on the force forever.
“What do you know about Hoffa?” I asked.
“They found him!” he declared, with a red rubber grin.
I stared at him. His eyes were beady, blue, and a little watery. He was not known to be a joker. “Where?” I asked, suspiciously.
“Jeffrey Dahmer's autopsy!” he guffawed, and his head vanished.
I sighed and returned to my desk. Apparently the world had gone completely loopy.
A few seconds later, rather sheepishly, Maki appeared at my door. “Mul, I'm sorry,” he said, abjectly, “it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I don't know what got into me.” He laughed a little, thinking about it. He was embarrassed now.
“I know, I know,” I placated him. “But seriously. . . . What do you know about Hoffa? Did you work on the case at all?”
“Hoffa? Seriously? Sure. Sure, I worked on it. Didn't you? I just did the usual.”
“No,” I said. “I wasn't a detective yet. What usual?”
“Oh, I don't know. . . . I checked out some alibis, tried to locate some possible witnesses, snitches . . . that kind of stuff. I didn't try very hard.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it was Hoffa,” Maki said, almost apologetically. “He was not exactly a policeman's pal, you know. Anyway, everybody knew the Mob whacked him. It was bound to happen. You fool around with those guys, eventually they dump on you, especially if you aren't one of them. Right?”
I shrugged; it happened. “Did you know him?”
“Hoffa? I met him once. I was on the West Side, then. I went to check out a tussle over at the local, Two ninety-nine, Hoffa's local. He beat some laborer up. The guy was protesting because the laborers’ union—A.F. of L., you know—was on strike at Zug Island and the Teamsters didn't honor the picket line. So a bunch of them went over to the local and stood around, yelling, calling Hoffa a labor traitor, and finally he came out with some of his heavies. There wasn't much to it. The guy got his ass kicked. Or, I should say, his nuts. Hoffa kicked the guy in the nuts. Really stomped him. Pretty nasty stuff. Nothing came of it, though.”
“No?”
“The guy never pressed charges. It was kind of iffy, anyway. But the thing I remember is Hoffa chewed our asses. You know, the old rant about ‘Where were you when I needed you,’ and ‘Who do you think pays your salary.’ The man was abusive. And a crook. You never saw him, hunh?”
No, I'd never seen Jimmy Hoffa, live. He was all over the press and the television, of course. Hoffa was not a hero of mine, although I certainly didn't share Maki's dismissive attitude. I had been brought up to respect unions. In my home, men like Eugene V. Debs and Walter Reuther were revered. Others, like George Meany and Hoffa, were viewed with mixed feelings. They were allowed some respect for being at least chosen, whether honestly or not, to lead enormous bodies of union workers. There was no denying in Hoffa's case that an overwhelming majority of his constituents supported and even loved him. Doubtless, there were some, perhaps many, disaffected and even anti-Jimmy Teamsters; but it seemed that the great majority were more or less enthusiastic supporters. You can't ignore that.
Too, Hoffa was a genuine character, an original. There was no one in public life quite like him. He was tough, not in the least abashed by polite society, and quite willing to speak from the hip. In Detroit a guy can dine out for a long time on candid comments like Hoffa's about the Mob: “You're a damned fool not to be informed what makes a city run when you're tryin’ to do business in the city.” Even as a cop, I had to admit that it didn't make sense to pretend that the Mob didn't exist, like most public figures did.
I wondered if Grootka mightn't have been at least a grudging, if private, admirer of Hoffa's, but I couldn't recall even a single mention of him. That seemed odd, considering how Hoffa had been in the public eye more or less constantly for decades, to say nothing of the tremendous hullabaloo about his disappearance.
Oddly, I had misspoken myself, to Maki: I had been a detective at the time of Hoffa's vanishing, but to the best of my recollection I hadn't had one single thing to do with the case. And I was certain that Grootka had not mentioned it, not even on the occasion when we were discussing ways of getting rid of bodies, as in abandoned cars.
The Hoffa case was sure to be on the computer. I called up the clerk in Records; she did a quick scan for me and reported, almost immediately, not a single reference to Grootka in the records. So Grootka had never worked on the case. Too bad. I'd have bet that it would have been worth an amusing anecdote or two for Agge's history.
Then the clerk from Records called back. She'd been interested in my query and had taken it on herself to make a cursory scan of the F.B.I, liaison file—it was, after all, essentially an F.B.I, case. Here she came up with one reference to Grootka. A memo from a Special Agent Senkpile to D.P.D.-Homicide: “Please keep your man Grootka out of this. Highest priority.” Which meant, the clerk thought, orders from the director himself.
“Hoover?” I said. But no, Hoover had died three years earlier. Webster? Gray? Who could remember these nonentities?
Well, this was fascinating. I called the F.B.I. They had no Agent Senkpile anymore. And, naturally, they had no comment about this former agent's comments re Grootka. But they'd get back to me.
I called a guy I knew in the U.S. marshal's office, P. G. Chelliss, better known as Pedge. An old-timer, he remembered “Stinkpile.” “A true FBI man, Mul. Stinky was Dutch Reformed. He got his hair buzz-cut even before he joined the bureau. Shined his shoes every day, stood tall, looked you right in the damn eye. This man could soldier. Absolutely useless as an investigator, of course. Couldn't find his ass with both hands.”
“Why would he warn Grootka off the Hoffa case?”
Pedge, remembering Grootka, snapped: “Who wouldn't?” But on further reflection he confessed that he had no idea. It was ridiculous for Senkpile to even be on the Hoffa case, much less in a position of apparent authority. He promised to check around.
I have a small window in my office. It looks out onto Chalmers Avenue. It was a swell dark and rainy March day, temperature about fifty degrees with periodic blasts of wind that could tumble a pig. The trees were bare and wet, the street glistening, reflecting the headlights of cars already, at four in the afternoon. A great day to get out of the office and run down to Lake Erie. As bleak as Detroit looked on a day like this, the southern Ontario plains were bound to be even gloomier. I do enjoy a gloomy prospect.
I was not disappointed. The wind and rain off the little jetty in front of Books Meldrim's cottage was absolutely doleful. You could hear lost ships out there in the murk, moaning for guidance, lamenting their trespasses, pleading for mercy.
Books was looking okay, not noticeably older. He was in his seventies for sure, possibly his eighties or nineties. I couldn't tell. He was a small brown man with grizzled hair and mustache. He reminded me of an old jazzman, but I couldn't recall who, exactly. In fact, he was a player himself, a well-regarded nonprofessional pianist in the Teddy Wilson style.
My intention was to ask him about the list I carried of Grootka informants. Maybe some of them were still around. But I got distracted by the jazz suggestion and asked him about Grootka's surprising predilections.
“I knew about the soprano sax,” Books said. “Will you have some tea? I also have whisky, but I haven't been drinking it of late, so I forget to offer it.”
I took the tea. For some reason I'd gotten fed up with whisky myself. A day like this called for tea, and Books's strong Darjeeling answered well.
“Grootka was always a surprising one,” Books observed when we had settled
near the fireplace. It was a very snug cottage. “I believe he learned music at the orphanage. He told me he played a C-melody sax in the band. In our younger days he was very fond of the kind of small group swing that one could hear in the joints down on Hastings Street. You know, there was always a considerable jazz movement in Detroit. Many great players got their start here. Why, I remember Don Redman's band, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, and Benny Carter played with them, too. What a wonderful player he was—still is, in fact. Oh, it was a swinging town!”
I was quite aware of this. My own preference was for the small bands of the thirties and forties. I had inherited it, obliquely, from my parents. Not because they were jazz fans—they had never shown any particular interest in jazz—but because they were of that era and I longed to be of it myself, to share that life with them. It gave me a fine and unusual pleasure to listen to Books reminisce about the period.
“In the forties, down on Hastings, I used to hear guys like Lucky Thompson and Wardell Gray. That's when I first met Grootka. He was hanging out—'course, he was a cop, but he was a fan, you could tell. Bop was coming in. I believe Milt Jackson was around then, too, before he went with the Modern Jazz Quartet.”
“How did Grootka get onto this avant-garde stuff?” I asked. “It seems out of character, somehow.”
Books shrugged. “You never know with Grootka. And you know, I think the idea that the swing players hated the boppers and the boppers hated Ornette and that gang . . . well, a lot of that was just the media, you know? I mean, some of those old guys, they didn't like the new stuff, said the boppers couldn't play in tune and where was the melody, all that stuff . . . but I believe that most of the real players weren't really like that. The critics and the reviewers, they liked the controversy. I guess it sold magazines and records. But you know how the real players are: they like everything. Hell, you couldn't get Basie to admit that Lawrence Welk was bad—'Man's got a hell of an organization.’ Ha, ha.” He paused suddenly, remembering something, then related a tale about the fine old cornetist Bobby Hackett, who evidently was even less capable than Basie of finding anything critical to say: “Cat asked him, ‘What about Hitler?’ And Bobby thinks for a minute, then says, ‘Well, he was the best in his field.’ Ha, ha, ha!”
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