Bill Morris - Motor City Burning

“So what happened?” Willie said. There was a roaring in his ears.

“I’m not all the way sure,” Clyde said. “What I do know is he signed a confession — after I tole him not to say a word less I was in the room with him!”

“You and me both know the po-lice done beat it outta him,” Louis said.

All Willie could think about was how grateful he was that there were no more guns in his car or anywhere near his apartment. He tried to remember what Wes had done with those last three guns before leaving for Chicago, but he couldn’t.

Once the second game started, Willie managed to quit worrying about the guns and the police. The day was too fair — soft sunshine, bleached white clouds marching across the sky. Gates Brown started in left field for Willie Horton, an acceptable substitution in Willie’s eyes, but he was disappointed that Ed Mathews was inserted for Norm Cash at first base. Willie had played first base in high school and at Tuskegee, and he was developing great respect for Cash’s fielding and hitting. It was hard to argue with the results, though. Mathews smashed a three-run homer in the fourth inning and Al Kaline added a two-run shot in the sixth.

When the score reached 7–0 in the seventh inning, fans began moving for the exits. But once again Louis and Clyde and Willie stayed put, bound together by the unspoken understanding that even watching a mop-up job here in this beautiful green room surpassed anything that awaited them down on the streets of Detroit.

Clyde bought one last round of beers, then turned to Willie. “You still workin that busboy job?”

“Fraid so.”

“Where’s it at?”

“Oakland Hills Country Club. Way out in honky land.”

“No shit. One a my best clients is a member there. Man name of Chick Murphy.”

“The Buick dealer?”

“Thas right. Man’s a prince. Traded with him for a new Deuce and a Quarter just last week.”

“You’re Chick Murphy’s lawyer?”

“Not his personal lawyer. He calls me whenever one a his nigger mechanics gets liquored up and does something stupid. I make a nice chunk a change off them fools.”

Every day, it seemed, the big city got a little smaller. And Chick Murphy seemed to have satisfied customers all over this shrinking town.

The second game ended 7–0, and the day’s sweep left the Tigers two games ahead of second-place Cleveland. It was a glorious day to be a Detroit Tigers fan. Willie was feeling so good he accepted Clyde’s offer of a ride home in his new Deuce and a Quarter. It was fire-engine red with a white convertible top and white seats, AM-FM radio, power windows, much flashier than Uncle Bob’s Deuce, and it beat the hell out of the DSR. Willie didn’t want the party to end just yet, so he asked Clyde to drop him off at the Chit Chat Lounge.

The place was packed, as it always was when the Tigers were in town. Aziz was sitting on a barstool drinking a Vernor’s ginger ale because he was a Muslim and he never drank alcohol. Next to him sat Erkie, who was drinking a shot of Old Overholt and a Stroh’s chaser because that was all he ever drank. Willie made his way through the mob toward them.

Though his bar-hopping days were past, Willie stopped by the Chit Chat from time to time because the walls were covered with Tigers memorabilia, and Izzy Gould, the three-day Jew who owned the place, always unplugged the jukebox and tuned the radio to WJR on game days. The jukebox was an old Seeburg full of great records, everything from Sarah Vaughan to Clarence Carter to Bo Diddley. To top it off, the Chit Chat was on Euclid just a few blocks from Willie’s apartment, which meant he could crawl home if he had a few too many.

When he reached the bar he saw that Erkie had a Viceroy cigarette stuck in the gap where his second tooth on the lower right side used to be. His head was shrouded in so much smoke that at first Willie thought he was on fire. Normally Erkie was in high spirits when the Tigers won, but now he looked glum.

“Why the long face, Erk?” Willie said, sliding onto the empty stool next to him. Izzy Gould put a bottle of Stroh’s in front of Willie and rapped the bar twice with a knuckle, his way of letting regulars know the first one was free.

“That fuckin Kaline!” Erkie moaned without removing the cigarette. It bobbed when he talked. Willie realized he was blotto, which was no surprise. Erkie spent every waking hour on that barstool, directly beneath the Hamm’s beer sign, waiting for someone to buy him a drink. The Hamm’s sign had a waterfall made of tinfoil that actually appeared to tumble over rocks, especially after you’d had a few.

“What’s your beef with Kaline? He hit a two-run homer in the second game.”

“Sonofabitch — it was the 307th of his career. Broke Hank Greenberg’s club record.”

Just then Izzy set a shot of brown liquor in front of Willie, a fresh shot of Old Overholt in front of Erkie and a shot of Vernor’s ginger ale in front of Aziz. Izzy didn’t want teetotalers to feel left out.

“This round’s on the house!” Izzy shouted. “To Hammerin’ Hank!”

“To Hammerin’ Hank!” everyone shouted back, flipping their shot glasses.

Now Willie understood Erkie’s long face. Erkie had forgotten more about the Tigers than most men would ever know. Willie had always been a sucker for old-timers, and whenever he bumped into Erkie he gladly bought him shots of Old Overholt just to keep him talking. Erkie’s two favorite Tigers of all time were the “G-Men”—Charlie Gehringer, the Mechanical Man, at second base and the great Hank Greenberg at first.

Aziz said, “Finish telling the sad story about Ty Cobb after his retirement, Mr. Erk.” Aziz was a sucker for old-timers, too.

“Where was I?” Erkie said, his cigarette bobbing. “Oh yeah. After he retired, this woulda been along about in the Thirties, Cobb used to go big-game hunting out West with that famous writer, you know, what’s his name, the bullfight guy?”

Aziz gave him a blank look.

Willie said, “Ernest Hemingway?”

“Thas right, Hemmenway. Later on, in the Fifties, Cobb played golf with President Eisenhower hisself. But he passed a few years back, not a friend in this round world. In the end, all that fame and all that Co-Cola stock didn’t do him a lick a good.” He drained his beer. “You know, it’s funny. I knowed the man was a red-ass first time I laid eyes on him at Halloran’s, where I use to wash dishes. Man was what they called a nigger-breaker during slave times. But much as he hated us, I still felt sorry for the way he died. Ain’t nobody deserves to die all alone like that.”

The old man reminded Willie of his father, Reverend Otis, who was forever preaching to his sons that racism was a sickness and it was their Christian duty to love the racist just as they should love a victim of polio or cancer. Willie tried to do his Christian duty, though in the end he failed. His brother didn’t even bother to try.

As Erkie launched into another Tigers story, Willie turned to watch the sports wrap-up on the TV bolted to the ceiling in the corner. They replayed Kaline’s historic home run and even flashed a picture of Hank Greenberg.

Willie ended up closing the place down with a skinny white hooker from West Virginia named Ginger and Tommy Slenski, a DSR bus driver who had worked that afternoon and was still wearing his uniform. Everyone called him Ralph because he looked like Jackie Gleason on “The Honeymooners.” He was telling Ginger a disjointed story about a mob setting his bus on fire during the riot, but the long day of drinking had finally caught up with Willie and he had trouble following Ralph’s story.