Bill Morris - Motor City Burning

Jerome Wright gave Doyle a firm handshake, looked him in the eye. “Pleasure to meet you, detective. Heard a lot about you. You were All-City at U. of D., right?”

“A hundred years ago.”

Jerome Wright smiled. The kid could have been a movie star. So the department’s much-ballyhooed campaign to hire more black officers was finally paying off, and here was living proof. About time, Doyle thought. When the riot broke out the department was ninety percent white and one hundred percent blue-collar ass-kicker. Even the black cops, guys like Jimmy Robuck, made no apology for their allegiances or their methods. In fact, more than a few black suspects learned the hard way that they were better off taking their chances with polacks like Jerry Czapski and micks like Frank Doyle than with brothers like Jimmy Robuck. But the times demanded change — or the appearance of change — and so the department was beating the bushes for black recruits. Doyle said, “You’re a lucky man, Jerome.”

“I am, sir? How’s that?”

“You’re learning your craft at the knee of a true master. They don’t make ’em like Zap anymore.”

“No sir.”

Doyle laughed all the way back to downtown. The irony was simply too beautiful: One of the worst racists on the force was now spending his working days trapped in a radio car with a member of the one race he despised above all the others. Let the punishment fit the crime. Doyle believed it was racist cops like Czapski, as much as any other single factor, that explained the fury of last summer’s riot. The brothers were sick and tired of being called “boy” and “honey baby” and worse. They were tired of getting stopped for no reason, getting love taps from police flashlights, getting their justice served up in alley court. And now, as the department scrambled to recruit black officers, Jerry Czapski, of all people, had wound up riding with a black partner.

The world, Doyle thought, was truly a perfect place.

While talking to Caldwell Petty, the chief of police in Tuskegee, Alabama, Doyle imagined Rod Steiger sitting at a desk chain-smoking cigarettes and sending gouts of tobacco juice into a Maxwell House coffee can while the blades of a ceiling fan chopped the foggy air. Doyle wondered why so many Southerners had last names for first names. His second case during the riot was a yokel from east Tennessee named Wilson Lee Pryor who rode the Hillbilly Highway straight to a job on the line at Dodge Main and wound up getting shot six times on the roof of the Kentucky-Tennessee Apartments on Alexandrine because a half dozen National Guardsmen and cops, including Detective Frank Doyle, mistook him for a sniper. It turned out Wilson Lee Pryor had gone up on the roof of his building to watch for flying sparks from a nearby fire. But he was carrying a deer rifle for protection and now the poor dumb hick was dead.

“What can I do ya for, Detective?” came the gravelly voice of Caldwell Petty over the long-distance wire.

“I’m trying to run down some leads on a murder case,” Doyle said. “You ever have any dealings with a young man named William Brewer Bledsoe?”

“Sho nuff have. He goes by Willie. This have something to do with that trouble yall had with yo Nigras last summer?”

“Looks that way.”

“I figgered as much.”

“How come?”

“Cause that boy ain’t nothin but trouble.”

“How do you mean, trouble?”

“Well, he come up here to go to school from some little piss-ant town down south a here, Troy or Opp. Can’t rightly remember. Soon as he got here he started raisin sand — sat down at the lunch counter at the Sanitary Cafe, which was segregated at the time. That woulda been about nineteen and fifty-nine, maybe sixty, in there. Then he put some foolish sign on the lawn of the university’s president. Can you imagine that? Some uppity little nigger accusing the president of Tuskegee Institute of being a Uncle Tom!”

“Amazing. Anything else?”

“Eventually he run off and joined that Student Nonviolence outfit. Tried to get ill-lit-rit Nigras to register to vote, such foolishness as that. I’m here to tell ya, Detective, we got some of the finest Nigras anywhere in the South right here in Tuskegee, Alabama, yessir. Folks get along here — or they did till uppity niggers like Willie Bledsoe come along.”

“He ever get into any serious trouble?”

“Not here. I heard tell he was on that bus got fire-bombed outside Anniston. Too bad they didn’t cook his ass. Happiest day of my life was when him and that worthless brother a his packed up and left for D-troit. They had a big send-off party night before they left.”

“He has a brother?”

“Better believe it. Ornery sumbitch, name of Wes. He was with the Navy in Vee-yet-nam and something musta happened to him over there. That boy ain’t right.”

Doyle was scribbling in his notebook, trying to keep up. Again he said, “How do you mean?”

“Well, he just ain’t right. Lazy as the day is long. Just pure-T worthless. All he ever done round here, so far’s I can tell, was watch TV, drink beer and shoot guns.”

“Guns?”

“Yeah. Way I heard it, him and his brother used to go out into the woods for a little target practice.”

“What kind of guns they have?”

“Beats me.”

“Any idea how many? Or where they got them?”

“Nosir.”

“Weren’t you curious?”

“Nosir. Most folks round here’s got guns.”

“Do you know where Wes is now?”

“Can’t say as I do. All I know is that I haven’t seen his black face in this town in over a year — and that suits me just fine. Wes Bledsoe’s the kind that’ll explode on you. Believe me, I seen it happen more’n once.”

“How about Willie?”

“Ain’t seen him neither. He could still be in D-troit for all I know. The folks at Tuskegee Institute — that’s the Nigra college here in town — they could probably help you find his homeplace. Like I say, it’s one a them little piss-ant towns down south somewheres.”

Doyle wrote down the phone number for Tuskegee Institute, then thanked the chief and hung up.

Caldwell Petty’s mention of guns reminded Doyle of the coroner’s words about the fatal bullet — the possibility of comparison if the gun it was fired from was located. Doyle knew that the likelihood of finding that gun, almost a year after the murder, was slim to nil. Yet he was encouraged. The pieces were beginning to fit. Suddenly he had an angry young man and an unhinged Vietnam veteran. They were both able to put their hands on guns. And, best of all, they both knew how to use them.

Doyle crossed Tuskegee Police off the list on the yellow legal pad and added U.S. Navy . Then he reached for the telephone and placed a call to Tuskegee Institute. Five minutes later he was dialing another long-distance number, this one at the home of the Rev. Otis R. Bledsoe in the little piss-ant town of Andalusia, Alabama.

After going back to the kitchen three times to fetch a fresh beer, Doyle put four cans in a sack and took it out to the front porch and set it down next to the half-empty fifth of Jameson’s. He didn’t want to waste any more time walking back and forth to the kitchen. He wanted to finish getting drunk and telling his father about his day.

Where was I? Doyle said, re-lighting his cigar and cracking open a beer.

That Bledsoe woman, his father said. The one in Alabama.

Right. So it’s obvious she isn’t thrilled to hear from me.

How could you tell?

Because no black person in this country welcomes a call from the police. Who can blame them? There’s only one kind of news it can be.