Bill Morris - Motor City Burning

The choice was obvious. Cecelia, the bartender at the Riverboat out on East Jefferson, had started calling him “Hon” and touching the back of his hand when he dropped in on his way home to drink a few beers and admire the view. Not the river view out the window, the view across the bar. He could watch her for hours, the way her brassy hair flashed in the dim light, the way her hips swiveled as she marched back and forth behind the long U-shaped bar. She would probably have tomorrow off. Just as he made up his mind to swing by the Riverboat after visiting Henry Hull, his phone rang again.

“Homicide, Doyle.”

“Francis Albert Doyle — shame on you, me boy, for working on your day of rest,” came the falsely sugared brogue of his brother, who was the only person in the world who still called him Francis. Rod knew Frank hated it, but that’s how it works between brothers. One is forever the big brother and one is forever the kid brother and the former never stops reminding the latter of this unchanging fact of life. Doyle was pushing thirty, which meant he was still too young to enjoy it but way too old to fight it.

Doyle knew his brother wasn’t calling to chastise him for breaking union regs. He was calling to make sure the Tigers’ tickets had arrived safely and that the gift had been registered in the debit column of their brotherly ledger. Rod had been like this since they were shoplifting Bazooka Joe and Tootsie Rolls, but his native skill at calibrating favors and debts had acquired a razor sharpness two years ago when he made captain. He got the promotion after leading the Vice raid on the Grecian Gardens restaurant, where he personally discovered four little black books that recorded a series of bribes paid to uniformed police officers for ignoring liquor and gambling violations. Twenty-one cops were indicted, a bit of overdue house-cleaning that did not go unnoticed by the man whose image it burnished most, Jerome P. Cavanagh, Detroit’s liberal Democratic mayor who, back in 1966, still fancied himself destined for the U.S. Senate at the very least, maybe a Cabinet post, possibly even the White House itself. And why not? The sky hadn’t fallen yet in 1966. In the eyes of the national press back then, Cavanagh was still “The Dynamo in Detroit,” the man who’d funneled millions of War on Poverty dollars to his city, which boasted the nation’s largest NAACP chapter, low unemployment and high wages, the only city in America with two black Congressmen and a thriving auto industry and a home-grown, black-owned record company called Motown that cranked out the finger-popping hits as fast as the factories cranked out the gas-guzzling cars.

Rod Doyle saw to it that he not only got a captain’s chair for his role in the Grecian Gardens case, but that his kid brother stopped patrolling the gritty streets of the Tenth Precinct and started breathing the relatively rarefied air of the fifth-floor Homicide bullpen at 1300 Beaubien Street. Thanks to his brother, Frank even got to skip the detective’s standard apprenticeship in Vice, Burglary and Violent Crimes, and he got teamed with Rod’s old partner, the Homicide squad’s leathery legend, Jimmy Robuck.

Doyle thanked his brother for the Tigers’ tickets. Then, since he wasn’t supposed to ask, he asked, “So where’d they come from?”

“Believe it or not, I appointed one of Reverend Cleage’s cronies to the Citizens Review Board — guy has the beer concession at Tiger Stadium — and suddenly I’m getting deluged with Tigers tickets. Just remember, you’ll be watching Al Kaline compliments of the Church of the Black Madonna and the Stroh Brewery Company.”

They shared a laugh at the way the world works.

“All seriousness aside,” Rod said, “what’re you doing down there on a Saturday morning?”

“Paperwork. And I just got a call on the Hull case.”

“The Hull case?”

“Helen Hull. You know, Henry’s wife — from the old Greenleaf Market.”

“So who was the call from?”

“Henry, of course.”

“Jesus, he still tending the flame?”

“Afraid so.” Doyle paused. He didn’t like the sound of what he’d just said. “Actually, I’m glad he is. Mrs. Hull didn’t deserve what she got. Neither did Henry.”

“I hear you. I can’t believe you boys’re still working shit from the riot, though.”

“Well, believe it. One went down last week, but we’ve still got two unsolved. And your friend on the eleventh floor of the City-County Building wants them to disappear in the worst way. He’s even started calling Sarge to check our progress in the case.”

“Cavanagh’s been calling Schroeder?”

“Afraid so.” This time he didn’t mind the sound of what he’d just said.

“So why don’t you figure out a way to pin it on the State Police — or better yet, the National Guard — and make everyone happy? Cavanagh, you, me, and every black-power wacko this side of the Ohio state line.”

“Believe me, the thought’s crossed my mind more than once.”

They shared another laugh. This one was shorter than the first.

“I’ll let you go,” Rod said. “Kat made me promise to pin you down on that dinner invite. She says you’re working too hard — but mainly she wants you to come visit. .”

I’ll bet she wants me to come visit, Doyle thought.

“. . and the girls want to see their favorite uncle.”

“I’m their only uncle, Rod.”

“True, but they still ask. Christ, you wouldn’t believe how fast they’re growing up! Liz just got her first pair of toe shoes and we bought a horse for Val.”

“You bought a horse ?”

“A pony, actually. And we didn’t buy it, strictly speaking. Kat did.”

“Oh.” Alcohol makes people do strange things, though Doyle guessed it probably wasn’t all that strange for a teenage girl in Bloomfield Hills to have her own pony. What was strange to Doyle was that his brother had actually left the city, had let his wife’s family money talk him into a four-bedroom Dutch colonial on an acre of suburban lawn that looked more like a putting green than most putting greens. The hardwood trees that towered over that lawn had been around longer than the Model T. Yes, it made perfect sense for a girl in that world to have her own pony.

“So when can I tell Kat and the girls you’ll be out?” Rod said.

“Tell them I’ll be out as soon as I clear a few things up. Maybe next week.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. And thanks again for the tickets.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank Rev. Cleage.”

“I’ll do that next time I see him.”

Doyle’s coffee cup was empty and he was awake at last. Talking to his brother — thinking about his life out there in the suburbs — did what it always did. It made Doyle itch to show the world that there was still hope for the Motor City. He got up from the desk without touching the stack of paperwork. He couldn’t wait to get to the Harlan House and hear Henry Hull tell him about the unbelievable thing they’d missed.

THERE WAS A WEDDING RECEPTION AT OAKLAND HILLS COUNTRY Club that Saturday, so instead of spending the afternoon sitting in the bleachers at Tiger Stadium drinking beer with Louis and Clyde, Willie spent it wandering through the mob in the clubhouse’s cavernous ballroom, carrying tray after tray of glasses brimming with cheap champagne.

It wasn’t a bad gig. The bar boys and Chi Chi, the Mex bartender, set up rows of glasses on the horseshoe-shaped bar in the downstairs lounge, and they popped corks and poured as fast as they could. Every time a busboy came in to refill his tray, custom dictated that he toss off a glass himself. By the end of every wedding reception, a couple of busboys wound up out on the tennis courts on their hands and knees, coughing up everything they’d eaten in the past twenty-four hours.