Man with an Axe

by Jon A. Jackson

  We both had a good laugh on that one. “Well, Grootka certainly got into free-form jazz,” I said. “He had a baritone sax, too.”

  Books's face lit up. “Really? I bet that was Tyrone Addison's influence.”

  “Oh yes, there was some music with Addison's name on it, on Grootka's music stand.” I'd heard of Addison, the obscure genius. But I hadn't heard much. I thought of him as a quintessential Detroit star—greatly admired locally, but unknown to the outside world. There were precedents for that kind of obscurity, but it's an old story in provincial circles. His music, which I couldn't remember ever hearing, was said to be wild and difficult. But I hadn't heard anything about Addison in years. I had a vague notion that he was dead—dope, probably.

  “Did Grootka know Addison?” I asked.

  “Oh yes. I remember he talked about him incessantly for a while. I think he was taking lessons from him! That'd be that baritone.

  Tyrone was a bari player. Gone now, I guess. I've kind of lost touch.”

  Astonishing. But then, Grootka was unusual. Imagine, taking lessons at his age. Then it struck me: “When was this?”

  Books frowned. “Back in the seventies, about seventy-five, seventy-six, in there.” And then, to nail it down: “It was when he was working on the Hoffa case.”

  “Oh yes,” I said, casually. “Did he ever talk about the Hoffa case?”

  “Not much. I got the impression he thought it was all open and shut.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  Books made a face of careless certainty, a comical moue: “Oh, you know . . . Hoffa got all screwed up with them Mob boys. There wasn't much to it, but I guess Hoffa was stubborn and wouldn't let it drop, whatever the beef was. So he had to go.” He shrugged. That was all there was to it. Open and shut.

  I pursued it a little further, but Books didn't know any more. We fell to considering the list of names I'd brought and that was good for a laugh or two. Books confided that a couple of the names on the list, Shakespeare and Homer, were alternate tags for himself.

  I was happy to accept Books's invitation to dinner, which turned out to be black-eyed peas with ham hocks and cornbread. It was delicious, particularly with the poke sallet greens. I was curious where Books would get these things locally; it seemed unlikely that supermarkets in this region of southern Ontario would feature the makings for soul food. He said he drove up to Detroit once a week to shop, or sometimes a friend would come down. Something in his tone made me ask how he enjoyed living down here on the lake.

  “I like it fine,” he said. “I have my books, my records. I generally enjoy solitary living. But, you know, once in a while a fellow longs to see another dark face.”

  He smiled thoughtfully and sipped at his wine. We had finished the dishes and withdrawn to the fireside again. He drew on the H. Upmann “Petit Corona” I had provided. “When a man lives alone,” he said, “he is tempted to philosophize. I am not immune. I have come to believe that race is one of the biggest servings of bullshit that man has ever tried to digest. But look at it this way: say you're sick. You got a tumor and you need help, right now. There are two doctors available to you and both are named Brown. But one of them is white and one is colored. Which one will you go to? As long as you don't know that they're different races, there's nothing to choose. But if you do know which is which . . . well, if you're me, it would be hard not to at least see the colored doctor first, don't you think? It would be easier, more comfortable. And I'll bet you would see the white Dr. Brown first. That's ‘cause there is nothing but skin color to distinguish these two doctors from one another, so race becomes at least a minor factor. But say that one of them is a well-known surgeon and the other one practices holistic medicine—you know, herbs and naturopathy, that kind of thing. Well, if you're me, you wouldn't give a fart in a whirlwind what color that surgeon was: you'd go see him. Another man, like my old friend Henry Chatham, he's a naturopathy man: he'd go to a witch doctor or a conjure woman before he'd let a man of any color cut on him. You see? But.” He looked a bit wistful. “Sometimes I miss Nigger Heaven. Maybe I should have retired there.”

  I was momentarily nonplussed.

  Books chuckled. “I'm sorry, I don't mean to embarrass you. I should have said Turtle Lake. It's a colored resort up in the Thumb. Maybe you heard of it?”

  I had, though it seemed ages ago, and I'd even heard its nickname. And now I made the connection with the piece of music that I'd seen attributed to Tyrone Addison, in Grootka's apartment.

  “Did Tyrone Addison have a place up there?” I asked.

  “Tyrone? Naw. Why, Tyrone wasn't no more than a boy when I used to go up to, ah, Turtle Lake. I had me quite a nice place over by the golf course, actually closer to the casino. Oh yeah.” He shook his head. “I had me some times! But, you know, come to think of it, I used to see Tyrone up there. His uncle had a place there. Lonzo. Now what was Lonzo's name? He was a bail bondsman, great big ‘ol black fellow. Yes,” he said with triumph, proud of his memory, “it was Lonzo Butterfield! My, my, what a fellow. Talk about conjure men, or women, ol’ Lonzo was one. He could walk that walk and talk that talk. Mmmmhmmm. Yeah, and there was something going on up there once, too. I remember Grootka coming to me about it.”

  “Really! What?”

  “Grootka was after Lonzo for something,” Books said. He shook his head with regret. “I'm doggoned if I can remember what it was! But you know these bail bondsmen, they're a wicked bunch. No telling what it was.”

  “When was this?”

  Books stared at the fire for a long moment, seemingly focusing into its depths. Finally, he nodded and said, “If I had to put a date to it, I'd say July or August of . . . oh, let me think . . .” Suddenly, his face brightened. “I just had bought a brand-new seventy-five Continental, except that it wasn't exactly brand-new. So it must have been 1975. August of seventy-five.” He beamed.

  I was impressed. But alas, no amount of encouragement could dredge up from the past the details of Grootka's interest in Lonzo Butterfield. All he could remember was that Grootka had asked him to drive up to Turtle Lake and see if Lonzo was there.

  “Was Lonzo there?” I asked.

  “No. But somebody was. I guess it must have been Tyrone. Yeah, come to think of it, Tyrone was there, with that white wife of his.”

  “Tyrone was married to a white woman?”

  “Nice lady, too,” Books said. “Man, she had tits like melons. And she didn't mind showing them, either. She wore a little skimpy bikini down to the beach. Oh yeah. I wonder if Tyrone put her up to it, or did she do it to piss him off? You know, I believe he put her up to it. I don't believe she wanted to show herself like that. But some of these fellows . . . they want the world to see what kind of woman they got.”

  “What did Grootka say about all this?”

  “Nothing. He was only interested in Lonzo.”

  “You don't say. I wonder if he knew Addison then, or was it later? You know, the lessons and so forth?”

  “Well, he might have known Tyrone beforehand,” Books said. “But I wasn't aware of it.”

  From there the conversation drifted to music and I asked Books if he had any of Addison's stuff on record.

  “Well, you know, I don't. I'm not even sure there is anything. But, damn, there oughta be! The cat was a stone genius. I'm not taking Grootka's word for it, though he knew a thing or two about the music. Tyrone was supposed to be pretty hot stuff back in the seventies—hell of a player. He played with Ornette and Charlie Haden, Marcus Belgrave—all them cats. I remember Yusef—you know Yusef? Lateef? Yeah. The man is heavy. Yusef told me once Tyrone could burn on the bari, like he reinvented the horn, man. And he could write. Very heavy stuff, but basic. It made you think. But . . . I don't know what happened to him.”

  “Drugs, you think?”

  “Well, when you're talking about these fellows, it does come to mind. But I don't recall that Tyrone ever was into drugs. Course, that don't mean a damn thing.”

>   I had to agree. Junkies were notorious for concealing their habit. “What kind of stuff did he write?” I asked. “You saw him play?”

  “Oh, hell yes. He worked quite a bit around town. He'd be playing hard bop, mostly, with Joe Henderson and Marcus. I saw him in a really hot group with Woody Shaw and Louis Hayes.” He shook his head, marveling. He was looking through his record and compact disc collection. “Ah, here's something. You might like this.”

  It was a CD entitled A Parvus Fanfare, by one M'Zee Kinanda. The cover featured a remarkable photograph of a small country church with a few barefooted black children perched on the steps, smiling. Church was not meeting, evidently.

  There were fifty-nine minutes of blues-tinged music on the disc, mostly featuring soprano sax and some remarkable drumming. I can't say that the music really grabbed me, although it was interesting. It swung, but only sporadically. Most of the time it was very serious music. Myself, I'll take Ellington any day.

  Books insisted I take the disc along. He wasn't interested in it, he said. And he gave me a tape, also by Kinanda. “A little something to listen to on the drive home,” Books said.

  Before I left I remembered to ask Books if he'd ever heard Grootka talk about suicide, or about another self on the loose.

  “Haw! That's a good one,” Books said, grinning. “He actually told you that? Well.” He shrugged, his face becoming thoughtful. “Grootka could surprise you. If he did have some notions about that, a good person to see would be that conjure man Lonzo Butterfield.”

  “I thought you said he was a bail bondsman.”

  “Yeah. Conjure man, too. From New Orleans, you know. Look him up. He'd be interesting to talk to.”

  One thing about unpleasant weather: it's no fun to drive in. But I took it easy on the way back to Detroit and mulled over the things I'd been hearing. The Hoffa disappearance really was remarkable, more remarkable than I'd ever considered. The thing that stood out the most for me was the way everybody blithely concluded that

  James Riddle Hoffa, deposed union leader and well-known crony of infamous mobsters, had been murdered and disposed of by those same old pals of his. I didn't find this so easy to accept. If Hoffa was so buddy-buddy with the Mob, why would they knock him? The Mob doesn't hit people for fun. There has to be a reason, especially when the target is a very visible guy who has a long-standing reputation as a friend of the Mob.

  I had long contended that the Mob, considered as a corporate entity, was not one of the better-run organizations. It has a reputation for ruthlessness and constancy, not to say implacability—characteristics of successful corporations (Ford Motor Company comes to mind). The fact was, the nature of much of their business meant that a high degree of personal trust and loyalty, of reliability, was essential. The Mob had often fallen back upon actual blood relationships to ensure this crucial loyalty, even when it meant accepting perhaps a lower standard of performance. In the modern hard-driving and technical world, that factor was often a serious drawback. Still, I figured no mobster could be so stupid, so indifferent to general syndicate approval, as to hit Jimmy Hoffa out of anger or annoyance or even bad judgment. Except maybe Carmine, I thought. But even Carmine wasn't that dumb, and besides he always had Humphrey DiEbola, the Fat Man, to counsel and restrain him. No, I figured there had to be some as yet unknown reason . . . if, indeed, the Mob had done the number.

  What the hell, Hoffa was a pretty rough and reckless guy. He'd stepped on a lot of toes, shot off his mouth an awful lot, had surely ruined a few lives on his road to fame and fortune. There ought to be no shortage of candidates without Mob associations who would want him dead and be willing to do the job themselves. I would sure like to see the F.B.I, file. I wondered if Pedge could help.

  And, of course, I was most interested in looking through Grootka's old notebooks, to see what his findings, if any, had been.

  I stopped at the precinct, although it was nearly midnight. To my surprise, Maki was still there. He was an old hand; it wasn't like him to linger after his shift. But he said he'd been waiting for a guy to come in and see him, and then he'd gotten sidetracked by some old files.

  “You know,” I said, “I've been thinking a lot about Hoffa. He must have made a few enemies, wouldn't you say?”

  Maki snorted derisively. “A few? You'da thought the guy was drafting an army of assassins.”

  “That's what I was thinking. Take that guy, for instance, the one he stomped at the local . . . the laborer.”

  Maki shook his head. “Well, that's one he didn't have to worry about. That was Sam Peeks.”

  The name was familiar to me but I couldn't place it. Maki filled me in.

  “About a week after his run-in with Hoffa, Sam took his act to his own local. He got maybe a hundred guys to picket their own leaders for not supporting them, not negotiating in good faith. So the president over there, what's his name . . . McKenzie—he's dead now—invites Sam up to the office to discuss his grievances . . . alone.” Maki frowned, remembering. “I heard there was over thirty shots fired inside that office. Somehow, all but five of them found their way into Sam Peeks.”

  The M'Zee Kinanda tape was pretty good, an improvement over the CD. He had a better bass player, I think, and the horns weren't so determinedly atonal and abrasive. Even haunting, at times.

  5

  Evening Blues

  It really is a damn shame to set yourself up for something when a little thought would have armed you against almost certain disappointment. It's common as hell, for instance, for a grown man to get the blues because “his team” has failed. I'm talking about professional sports. How is it, I ask myself from time to time, that a guy can invest so much emotionally in a group of hired men who purport to represent the community, although everyone knows they aren't from Detroit? You would have to be more naive than any Detroit child to believe that the average professional player really cares about Detroit. The pro is from somewhere else, has no significant amount of his history invested in Detroit, and is probably hoping to get traded to New York or Los Angeles, where he can get the media attention he “deserves” and make some real money.

  And yet, there are these entities called the Detroit Tigers, Lions, Pistons, and Red Wings that readily earn the devotion of Detroiters (mostly boys and men) for their entire lives. Guys here still talk about Bobby Layne and Gordie Howe, although few are around who were adults when they saw them play. Even profound obscurities like Johnny Lipon and Eddie Brinkman are still mentioned daily. And when the Tigers are doing well, why, the whole city seems to perk up. But when they're awful, as they often are, the city has got the blues.

  Why is this? How can it be? Is it just that most of us have such an unassuageable hunger for community that even a squad of avowed mercenary athletes, all dressed up in the same costume and proclaiming that they are the Detroit team, suffices to bind us into a semblance of unity? Is it because we followed the fortunes of the team on radio and television and in the papers from our youth on, so that even when the names of the individual heroes change the corporate image remains and that image is cloaked in our childhood dreams and heartbreaks and longings, to the extent that at the age of forty, or fifty, or even ninety, we pick up a newspaper and automatically look to see how the Tigers, or the Red Wings, are doing?

  How can this be? I don't know. But every cop in Detroit knows that when one of the teams loses a game that they were expected to win, an “important” game—well, look out! More assaults, more robberies, more everything.

  The current wrench was the shocking turn in the fortunes of the Red Wings, the Detroit hockey club. Here was a club enjoying one of the greatest seasons in the history of professional ice hockey, yet they were losing the playoffs to a miserable overaged team, the Saint Louis Blues. I was surprised by how sick this made me. I was even having dreams about the Red Wings! And I knew that it wasn't doing the spirit of Detroit in general any good.

  You don't have to live in Detroit, either, to feel this pain. You only
have to have lived there as a child—or nearby, as I had, and again did, in Saint Clair Flats. It's a rural place, still: the house is an old farmhouse and there's a barn and a few other outbuildings, and the ten acres or so still border the Saint Clair River. I came across old Red Wings’ memorabilia in the attic that night, while I was looking for Grootka's stuff.

  Ma had met Grootka once. She had invited him to dinner while talking to him on the phone; to my surprise, he'd accepted. I think she wanted to know who my friends were. The occasion was not particularly memorable, except that afterward my mother had observed that Grootka was “formidable.” When I asked what she meant, she related an incident that had occurred as they were sitting in the backyard, sipping cocktails, while I ran to the store for some herb or spice (probably a put-up job, now that I think of it: Ma probably wanted to grill Grootka about my love life). At one point, she said, a meadowlark had perched on a fencepost nearby and begun its vociferous song. Grootka swiveled his head and looked at the bird, which faltered in midphrase and fell silent.

  “I don't believe your friend is a bad man,” Ma had said, “but he silenced a songbird with a glance!” Other than that, she'd gone on, “He seemed a perfect gentleman.”

  By the time I got home from Books's the house was dark and Ma was gone again, and when I trekked up to the attic I couldn't find Grootka's stuff. There was quite a bit of old stuff up there, neatly stored and not too dusty. I had to wonder when Ma ever got a chance to dust. But there was no sign of the cardboard boxes in which I'd packed away Grootka's notebooks and music.

  I fell asleep listening to M'Zee Kinanda and, I must say, I was beginning to like it. In fact, I began to see what all the fuss was about. While I wasn't looking, jazz had moved on. Oh, I don't mean the hyped jazz, the youthful superstars that seem to pop up on television shows. But the music had changed. It had become more daring harmonically and rhythmically, and from what I could hear, the men and women who played it were tremendous technical players. This was nothing new, of course, but there was a suggestion of virtuosity, which made me a little uneasy. Virtuoso music is thrilling at times, as when an Art Tatum appears, although it has a tendency to become boring, too. The nice thing about this music is that an element of antic goofiness is present, as well. I'm thinking of the Sun Ra shtick: the man from the future, from Saturn, as he called himself—although it was pretty well known that he was originally Herman Sunny Blount from Birmingham, Alabama.