Bill Morris - Motor City Burning

Alvin’s eyes danced around the yellow walls for a while and finally came to rest on Doyle’s. Then Alvin looked down at his hands. “I ain’t killed nobody.”

“You already told me that. Tell me something new.”

“Alls I can tell you — let me get somethin straight, first.”

Doyle waited.

“That jive piece a paper Kenneth signed — you gonna tear it up I give you what you want?”

“That all depends.”

“What it depend on?”

“On whether or not your story checks out.”

“It’ll check out cause it’s the truth.”

“Then we got a deal.”

“I give you a name and you tear up that piece a paper?”

“No, Alvin, you give me names — plural — and I tear up that piece of paper.” That piece of paper that didn’t exist. “Provided your story about your momma’s funeral checks out.”

“I only got three names. And that’s God’s honest truth.”

Doyle asked himself what Jimmy would do under the circumstances. He would say follow your gut. Doyle’s gut told him that Alvin believed he was cornered and he was too scared and too stupid to lie his way out of the corner, so this was the best they were going to get. Way better than they had any right to hope for. “Okay then,” Doyle said. “You give me those names and we got us a deal.”

“You tear up the paper.”

“That’s right.”

Alvin sighed. “The onliest people I ever saw in that warehouse was Kenneth and a brother name Yusef. That’s his Muslim name and I swear to God I don’t know his real name.”

Doyle waited.

“You got to realize I only been in that warehouse two, three times—”

“I’m waiting for another name, Alvin, not another story.”

“—I’m comin up on that. Yeah, I was there one day Yusef brought some guns, including that one in the picture you showed me. I put ’em on the racks, which is why my fingerprints is on ’em—”

Doyle held his breath.

“—we talkin three guns here. The guy who brought ’em in use to be in the Navy. He was suppose to be some big bad-ass, cording to Yusef, but he fat now. I think he were half-drunk too. Or high, one.”

Doyle was still holding his breath. “The name, Alvin.”

“Yusef called him by Wes.”

Doyle exhaled. “Any last name?”

“Jus Wes.”

“Was anybody with him?”

“No. He were alone.”

Doyle turned the pictures over and lined them up for Alvin to see. “Now I want you to take your time, Alvin, and look at these three pictures. Tell me if you see Wes.”

Alvin didn’t hesitate. He tapped a finger on the picture of Seaman W. B. Bledsoe. “That’s the motherfucka right there.”

“You sure about that?”

“Stone positive.”

Jimmy gave Doyle high fives and a bear hug out in the hallway. While Jimmy took Alvin back to his cell, Doyle went to the squad room and placed a call to the F.B.I. in Washington. It was time to find Wes Bledsoe.

An hour later Doyle called his home phone on the off chance that Cecelia was still sleeping off the red wine and the after-dinner calisthenics. She picked up after the fifth ring. “I wake you up?” Doyle said.

“God no, it’s past noon. I made coffee and ate some toast. I’ve been. . I hope you don’t mind. . ”

“What?”

“I’ve been weeding your garden. I used to love gardening but I haven’t done it since Ronnie and I moved into the high-rise. I’d forgotten how. . therapeutic it is. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Be my guest. If you want to take a crack at that jungle in front of the house, the mower’s in the garage.”

She laughed. “Don’t press your luck. So how’d it go with that interrogation?”

“Better than good. Perfect. Unbelievable.”

“So you’ve got your murder suspect?”

“We’ve got the name of the man who sold the murder weapon. Just about the same thing.”

“You’ve already arrested him?”

“No, but we know who he is. Now we just have to find him. The F.B.I.’s helping us.”

“You sound happy.”

“No, I’m on cloud nine.” He paused. “You planning on hanging around the house for a while?”

“I’m going to finish this weeding. I’m not even halfway done. Why?”

“Because I’m in the mood to celebrate, take the rest of the day off. I’ve got a nice bottle of French champagne in the fridge and I thought—”

“I’ll be right here.”

And she was. Her Mustang was still parked in front of the house and from the kitchen window Doyle could see her in the garden, dressed in gloves and a pair of his boxer shorts and a faded U. of D. T-shirt. She was down on her knees in the dirt, humming to herself. Her hair was piled up crazily, held together with a pencil, and when she shooed a fly Doyle could see she had a smudge of mud on the tip of her nose. He tapped on the window and she looked toward the house, a smile spreading on her face as she came out of the garden, up the back steps, into his waiting arms. They kissed. Then she followed him upstairs to the big room with the buckets half-full of rainwater scattered around the king-size bed.

WILLIE HAD THE WEEKEND OFF, and after working on his book all day Saturday he decided to take Octavia out for a Sunday drive in the country. He’d earned a day of rest. He rose early, washed the Deuce, then fixed a simple breakfast and ate it at the kitchen table while reading about the Tigers’ 12-1 victory over the woeful White Sox.

Half an hour later he was watching Octavia slide onto his convertible’s front seat. She’d worn her hair up, wrapped in a scarf made of colorful African cloth, and her skin glowed against the white upholstery. She was wearing a long loose creamy linen dress and sandals, gold hoop earrings, very little makeup. Her toenails were painted copper. Willie had trouble keeping his eyes on the road.

He took Jefferson, the same route he’d taken when he took the car for a test drive with Chick Murphy. The lake was even shinier this morning, the air tropical humid, the kind of heat Willie liked. On the north shore of Anchor Bay they passed through towns with nautical names — Anchorville and Fairhaven and Pearl Beach — and they saw men sitting on overturned buckets fishing in a canal, the same way Aunt Nezzie taught Willie to fish in the teeming roadside creeks and bayous. The memory reminded him that the similarities between Alabama and Michigan were not all bad.

As they were leaving Pearl Beach, Octavia reached for the radio. “You got JLB on any a these buttons?”

“Second one from the right.” She turned on the radio and pressed the button and the day filled with the Temptations’ familiar voices: Like a snowball rollin down the side of a snow-covered hill, it’s grrrr-owin. . Like the size of the fish that the man claims broke his reel, it’s grrrr-owin. .

“Oooh, I love me some David Ruffin,” she said, turning up the volume.

David Ruffin, the singer whose limousine was upholstered with mink. For the first time in weeks Willie thought of his brother. He wondered if Wes ever made it to Denver — or if he was still alive.

“You never axed me how someone works as a receptionist managed to afford that Austin-Healey,” Octavia said. “That’s usually the first thing men ax me.”

There it was again, the subtle put-down, that northern smugness that had so infuriated Willie the day Octavia took him for a ride in her Austin-Healey. He realized the work he had done on his book so far was fueled by anger — by a desire to show people like Octavia that they were the ones who had a lot to learn and that he, a man who had walked through fire, was the one to teach them. In the past he would have been distrustful of such anger as a sign of an overblown ego. But now he welcomed it. His mission, as he’d known for many weeks, was to repudiate the world that made him. Anger would be a useful tool — as long as he didn’t use it recklessly. He took a deep breath and said, “Tell me, Octavia, how’d you manage to afford that fine ride?”