Bill Morris - Motor City Burning

The staff sergeant behind the long counter today was an alcoholic tub of lard named Jimmy McCreedy, who’d spent the past quarter-century moving from one desk to another within the Detroit Police Department and was nearly ready to reap his pension and devote all of his time and energy to his Hibernian interests. Doyle could still remember standing in front of the J.L. Hudson department store on Woodward in a blizzard when he was ten years old, shivering, watching a pink-faced man in short green pants, a short-sleeved green shirt and a green bowler dance a jig in the middle of the street during the St. Patrick’s Day parade. This leprechaun didn’t even seem to notice that the snow was coming out of Canada in horizontal sheets and the temperature was in the single digits. That was Jimmy McCreedy for you, a man well acquainted with the wondrous power of 90-proof anti-freeze.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” boomed McCreedy’s rich tenor now, a voice that made him a favorite in the handful of Detroit saloons where the singing of Irish ballads was still tolerated. “Come to us now, all the way from thirteen-hundred Beaubien Street in the heart of the Motor City — the fastest rising star in the history of Homicide, it’s Francis Al—”

“Knock it off, Jimmy. How’s tricks?”

He lowered his voice. “Fine, lad, just fine.” The story was that when the snipers opened up on this building, Jimmy McCreedy was under the counter before anyone else was even aware they were under fire. “Might I offer you coffee, Frank? Or has our new line of work turned us into a tea drinker?”

“No thanks, Jimmy, I’m good.” Doyle saw David Denekas, a Vice detective, shuffling through paperwork in the corner. Denekas had let his blond hair grow long, and he was wearing his shoulder holster over a paisley shirt, with bellbottom jeans and a pair of fancy white track shoes. Track shoes, for chrissakes. The better to chase down deviants? Denekas was one of the stars of Vice’s cleanup squad, a true gung-ho street warrior. The cleanup guys spent the bulk of their time hassling pimps and their prostitutes and the prostitutes’ johns, and they spent the rest of their time hassling homosexuals, who they called “browns.” Despite his blue-collar jockstrap Jesuit upbringing, Doyle had never been able to work up the expected loathing of homosexuals. He believed that what people chose to do in the privacy of their own bedrooms was their own business. Besides, in this town there were bigger battles to fight.

“Who’s the hippie with the gun?” Doyle said to Jimmy McCreedy. Denekas looked up and flashed Doyle the peace sign, then went back to his paperwork.

“Nice kicks, Dave,” Doyle said.

“Thanks,” Denekas said, admiring the shoes. “They’re Adidas.”

“What the fuck’re Adidas?”

“Dave DeBusschere wears ’em!” he said, as though a certain brand of sneakers deserved to be bronzed simply because they were worn by the player-coach of the Detroit Pistons, a basketball team that always finished a couple dozen games out of first place and then got bounced out of the playoffs in the first round. “They’re leather,” Denekas added, admiring them some more.

Doyle still owned the last two pairs of canvas Chuck Taylor Converse All-Star high-tops he’d worn during his senior year at U. of D. High, white for home games, black for away games. Now they were making sneakers out of leather. When the brothers got hip to this, Doyle told himself, a pair of canvas Chucks will be about as prized as Aunt Jemima’s head scarf.

“Is Zap working today?” Doyle said to Jimmy.

“He’s in the back doing paperwork. You know how Zap loves his paperwork.”

“Do I ever.” Doyle went down the long corridor to the last room and found Jerry Czapski sitting at the battered Royal typewriter in the corner, chewing on a pencil and tapping out a report with his thumbs and stubby index fingers. The scary thing about Czapski was that he was more proficient with a typewriter than he was with the.38-caliber Smith & Wesson strapped to his hip. Doyle still thought it was a miracle that Zap nailed that armed robber at Northland with a single shot.

“You take a speed-typing course?” Doyle said, sliding a chair up to the desk.

Czapski blinked, then broke into a big toothy smile. Doyle had forgotten how thick his lips were, how thick the flesh on his face was — how meaty the man was. He stuck out his right hand and gave Doyle a crusher handshake. “Hey pardsie, how they hangin?”

“Fine, Zap. What you working on?”

“Christ.” He passed a hand over the bristles of his crewcut. “They’re breaking my stones over that thing at Cobo — you know, that fucking Poor People’s March? I got called in on it and I was there when the mounted guys charged the crowd, knocked a few people around. All we were trying to do was get a stalled car out of the way and now the NAACP and all the big niggers like Reverend Cleage are hollering police brutality.”

“All the fun’s gone, eh Zap?”

“You said it, brother. So what’s up with you? Nice suit.”

“Thanks, Zap. Coming from a clothes horse like you, that means a lot. I’ll be sure to tell my tailor.”

Czapski actually blushed, for even among members of the Detroit police force he was known as an atrocious dresser, partial to the white-belt-with-white-shoes combo known as the full Cleveland. Doyle took the photocopy of the run sheet out of his pocket and set it on top of Czapski’s pile of paperwork.

“Take a look at this, Zap. Tell me if it rings any bells.”

Czapski’s lips moved as he read the run sheet. He was frowning, a bad sign. No light bulb blazed inside the thick skull. “Jeez,” he said at last. “We jacked up so many smokes together back in the old days. . ”

Yes we did, Doyle thought sadly. “Try to think, Zap. This one was different. Our last night together, we were heading south on Wildemere — you were driving, warm evening, lot of people out — and you said you didn’t like the looks of a young black guy getting into a cherry old Buick with out-of-state plates. You were wondering where he got the money to pay for it. . ”

“Ohhhhhh, sure,” Czapski said, like a kid who’d just solved a difficult math problem. “Now I remember. Spade looked a lot younger’n he was. I figured him for a teenager but his license had him somewhere in his mid-twenties, as I recall.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “I remember when he reached for the glove box to get his registration, I gave him a little love tap on the side of his head with my flashlight. Told him not to pull out no gun on me. Just fuckin with him, you know.”

“Yeah, Zap, I know. You remember what he looked like?”

“Like I say, young looking. Smooth skin, not too dark. Handsome enough kid. Looked like he coulda been a backup singer at Motown.”

“You think you could pick him out at a show-up?”

“I dunno, Frank. It’s been more than a year. And jigs all look alike to me.”

“But you’d be willing to give it a shot?”

“Sure, if you asked me to. I can’t make any promises, though.”

“I understand, Zap.“

“You want me to come downtown now?”

“No no, not just yet. I’ll let you know if I need you. One last thing. You happen to remember what color the car was, the exterior?”

“Yeah, it had a two-tone paintjob — pink in the middle, with a black roof and black beneath that chrome strip that runs along the side of old Buicks. I remember asking the kid was he a pimp since he drove a car the color of pussy. Then I asked him was he a homasexual.”

“He gave the Algiers as his local address. He say anything about having a roommate?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Thanks, Zap.” As Doyle stood up to leave, a young black uniformed officer walked into the room. Czapski looked up at him. “Jerome! Come over here and meet your predecessor. This is the legendary Frank Doyle. Frank, this is my new partner, Jerome Wright. He was an All-City guard at Cody. Averaged nineteen a game.”