Bill Morris - Motor City Burning

It was too good to be a coincidence. It was a pickup to end all pickups, and Doyle was so excited he went up to the fifth floor and started dialing Jimmy Robuck’s home number. But he caught himself before the connection went through. It was after three o’clock in the morning and he’d just worked an eighteen-hour day. The pickup would still be there tomorrow.

By the time Doyle got home the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared. He went into the back yard to check on his garden and was surprised to find that the tomato plants already came up to his waist and the corn was knee-high. Even in the weak moonlight he could see that the garden was in bad need of weeding. The breeze brought a whispered reproach from his mother.

He poured a snifter of cognac and lit a cigar and went out onto the front porch to watch the moon and listen to the dripping night. He could see the lights of huge freighters sliding past on the river, on their way to feed the beast that never sleeps. Doyle’s father, fuzzy around the edges and a little milky, was sitting in the butterscotch La-Z-Boy recliner, his old TV chair. Before Doyle could say a word, his old man said, How come you haven’t brought Vicki around lately?

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.

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.