Man with an Axe (17 page)

But I insisted. We were standing in the middle of a empty road in a fucking forest in northern fucking Michigan and owls are hooting whenever we quit yelling and I'll tell ya, Mul, I was a little bit, I don't know, not scared, but I'm not so great in the fucking woods at night, it ain't my scene. I'd rather be on Dexter Avenue at four in the morning with a bunch of drunk spades who think I been hiding the bottle. But I put the heat on the kid until he finally broke down and said, “All right, if the deal goes bad,
then
I'll split.”

“And don't go near Vera,” I said. “Don't even call her. She'll figure it out. She ain't a infant. If I get out of this, I'll talk to her. But you and she are done. Got it?”

“Unless everything's cool,” Tyrone says.

He's still got this idea that if Hoffa can pull this off then he and Vera can go back to their old life and he'll play music and make a hit record and they'll get rich . . . and it just goes on and on. Bullshit.

The next morning me and Lonzo and the others took our walk and figured out the system, like I said, and I sent Tyrone off about eleven. Eleven-thirty he's back, says he talked to Carmine, who agreed to everything and they'd be here in about a half hour. So I sent him off down the road and I take up my spot, which is near the dirt track, in the woods. I can keep an eye on the road, see if there's any other vehicles, make sure Tyrone is in place so he can watch and blow his horn.

High noon and here comes Tyrone, cruising slowly up the county road, but no Carmine. Tyrone eases by, looking at Janney, who shrugs and waves. As Tyrone gets near me, I step out of the woods and wave him on, but Tyrone just proceeds up the road and pulls into the hiding spot we found. I see he's gonna play it that way, so I sigh and move back into my observation spot.

It's another full half hour before Carmine's limo shows. I can't say I was surprised. Another fifteen or twenty minutes and I'd of called it off, ‘cause it meant they was setting something up. But a half hour is not enough to bitch about. Anyways, here they come, tooling up the blacktop in a Town Car, or whatever them things are, but it's all tinted windows and I can't see shit. It ain't like when they came in at Nigger Heaven. Jacobsen hails them and they pull over and the window comes down, a little. Jacobsen says his piece, pointing up the road, then the back door opens and he gets in. I'm watching from inside the woods, not fifty feet away, but they'd never spot me. Still, it makes me nervous, the car just sitting there like that, half on the blacktop and half into the drive, the seconds ticking by like minutes. I'm starting to get interested, wondering what they got to talk so long with Janney for?

But, finally, just when I'm about to go back and signal Hoffa to get lost, the deal's not gonna happen, the car eases into the dirt track and begins to trundle up toward the cabin. I wait a few seconds and step out to the road. From where he's parked, Tyrone should be able to see me. I signal “okay,” with a clenched fist, and for the last time I motion to him to hit the road, waving him off, but there's no response. I look around. I don't see no other cars, nothing.

Oh well, I think, it's his funeral. And I hustle back on up through the woods. I make pretty good time and I'm there to see Lonzo standing behind his car, which is parked across the dirt track, the shotgun out of sight but his right hand is hanging down, and I figure he's got the gun in it. The limo is standing there, twenty feet from him, and Jacobsen is standing outside the open back door. It looks like he's relaying messages back and forth from the guys inside to Lonzo. I hear him yell out, “They want to see your weapon!”

Lonzo hoists the 12-gauge with one hand, then sets it down. “Ain't nobody gon’ get hurt!” he yells back. “We all be cool. You tell him, Jake! They cool, we cool!”

And then, lo and behold, Carmine and the Fat Man get out on either side. The Fat Man is wearing a black suit, in August. It must be like a fucking oven, I figure, except of course they got air-conditioning. But outside it ain't air-conditioned. It's at least eighty-five and not a breath. Humid. It's shady, though, so I ain't sweating, but I ain't wearing no black suit, just my light summer gray, and anyway I never sweat. The Fat Man has also got on shades and a hat. He looks like a fucking cartoon Mobster. Carmine is wearing a pale green jumpsuit kind of leisure outfit, with brown-and-white shoes. On his head he's got some kind of fucking golf hat, and shades, of course.

A couple of goons get out of the back, too. Young guys in dark slacks, sport coats, sport shirts. Shades, natch. And they got Uzis. Holding ‘em muzzle up, like the Secret Service guys do, as if they wanta keep the fucking BBs from falling outta the barrel.

Which leaves at least an armed driver and another armed man in the front seat, but you can't see them, it's tinted. That's a lotta firepower, but no more than I expected, and if nobody else comes to the party I guess we can play. Anyway, Lonzo knows what to do.

By now he's got the 12-gauge in his hands, resting the barrel on the roof of his car. But he's friendly, he ain't pointing it at no one, just showing it. “Only one comes forward! You other guys, get back in the car. Don't want no trouble!”

The goons look at Carmine. The Fat Man says something I can't hear, and then the goons get back in the car, but they leave the door open, not wide open, but ajar. Lonzo yells to shut the doors, and they do. Which leaves Carmine and the Fat One, plus Janney, standing. That ain't one man, but Lonzo shrugs. “Okay!” he yells, over his shoulder.

Mr. Jimmy Hoffa comes down the path. He stops and waves. He's got on a shirt that's too big for him, must be one a Lonzo's, a

Hawaiian shirt with the tails out. “Hey, Carmine!” he yells. “Humphrey! Where's Tony?”

Carmine says something to the Fat Man, who has strolled around the car and now is standing next to him. Then Carmine yells out, “Tony wouldn't come. He's chickenshit. He's scared of you and"—he points around to the woods—"your fucking trucker buddies! He thinks you're gonna beat him up!” He laughs, very loudly. The Fat Man laughs too, but he's looking around. Jimmy laughs.

“Hey, Jimbo!” Carmine yells out. “How you doing? They treating you all right up here? Whatta you got, some bimbos back in the woods? What izzit, Indian squaws or something?”

They all laugh.

Jimmy comes down a little closer. “Nah, it's just a cabin. You been here, ain't you? It's Cess Morgan's old place. C'mon up. We can talk. C'mon. There's nobody out there.” He half-turns, waiting, waving his hand at the woods to indicate that it's empty.

“You sure?” Carmine yells, gawking around, almost clowning—he's got his hand up to the bill of his golf cap, like a Indian scout. But you know, Mul, even here in the middle of the fucking North Woods, Carmine looks like a million bucks. Even in that stupid suit, which it looks like a fag put on him. He's lean, not old, not young, got that steel-wool hair that looks like it's ironed on his neat little skull—Perry Como hair. But even with those Italian designer glasses on, I can see he's nervous. He mutters something over his shoulder to the Fat Man, then he calls out, “I think I'll stay here, Jimbo! I don't feel too good. I had a shitty breakfast. These shitkickers up here, they don't know how to make a breakfast—fucking pancakes like lead. I'm gonna stay in the car. You and Umberto can settle this.”

Carmine looks yearningly at Hoffa. You can tell he don't wanta be out here in this bullshit woods. He wants to be on a golf course, or on his yacht in the Detroit River, or in Hawaii.

Hoffa stands there, his fists on his hips, shaking his head. Then he shrugs and waves the Fat Man on. Carmine steps back to the car and opens the door to get in.

That's when I seen the first guy. I don't know how many there was. Not many, I guess. Maybe only two or three. They were in the woods, between the car and the cabin. They must of come the back way, but they must of known where they was going. There was no sound from the road, so maybe they got Tyrone first. But I think they knew where they was going.

The guy I seen was beyond Jimmy, just stepping out of the woods. He was maybe twenty feet from Hoffa and he had a rifle, which he had brought up to his cheek, aiming. I shot him clean with the Swedish K I'd parked in the woods for myself. He went flying back, arms wide, the rifle tossed, and he lay there. Just a single shot. But I switched to auto right away.

The Fat Man whirls around. He's got a revolver, nickel-plated. He shoots Jacobsen right in the face. The two punks bounce out. One shoves Carmine into the back, the other grabs at the Fat Man, trying to wrestle him into the car and in the bustle knocking the gun out of his hand, which it gets kicked under the car. Then the two kids slam the doors and jump out of the way so the car can back up at very high, dirt-throwing speed, and they're crouched in that movie position, both hands on the Uzi, blowing away the bark off the trees on either side. Obviously they got no idea where I am.

I ran out one clip on them, and believe me, that goddamn K is a cannon, though of course there's so many trees, you're not gonna hit anything like that. But it puts the kids back out of the way, retreating back down the track. So I run to help out Jimmy, slapping a new clip into the K. Lonzo has disappeared, I notice, lying half under the car and not moving. I stop on the edge of the road to hose the boys back and I see that the limo has got away.

Then I look up the other way and there's Jimmy blazing away with a revolver at the trees.

I don't know where that gun came from, but it didn't help Mr. James R. Hoffa. Because a second later he was pert-near cut in two by a hell of a fucking cannon, from somewhere not too far back in the woods. I mean, that was ordnance. I don't mean like a law, but like artillery, except this kind of ordnance is laying down the law. It sounded too big to be portable and it actually made everybody stop firing when it quit, because you didn't want to be on the same field with that kind of shit.

Anyway, it didn't speak again and there was Jimmy Hoffa splattered all over the drive. And pretty soon you could hear the little birds calling. Be a good place to take your mother some time, Mul. Maybe she could tell me what that bird is that goes
witchety-witchety.

12

Lonzo's Blues

I
think it frequently happens that a person about whom we have been thinking is soon enough thrust upon our attention for other reasons. In this case, I had been anxious, after talking to Vera Jacobsen, to interview Lonzo Butterfield and Books Meldrim. The former for whatever information he could give me regarding Vera and Tyrone, as well as Grootka and Hoffa and Jacobsen, of course. The latter because I felt now that he was the silent partner in this entire episode, as well as its aftermath.

First things first. Earlier, I had tracked down Lonzo Butterfield. It wasn't difficult. He wasn't in hiding or anything. He was in a rest home and not in very good shape. The home was off Davison, near Van Dyke, not far from Forest Lawn cemetery, and not more than twenty minutes from Vera's place in Ferndale. It wasn't a bad place, as these places go, but it wouldn't have made much difference if it had been. Lonzo wasn't paying too much attention; he was kind of self-absorbed.

He was just a shadow of the Lonzo I used to know. Instead of looming about six feet, six inches or more, and weighing three hundred plus, he seemed to be about five-ten, and he sure didn't weigh any more than a hundred and fifty pounds. He harbored an incredible
mélange of disorders, from diabetes to a cirrhotic liver, including various tumors, some of them malignant; he had suffered at least one mild stroke, partial renal failure, a cardiac arrest or two, you name it. The resident doctor (or perhaps he was only an occasional visitor, it wasn't clear) was a young man of thirty who seemed almost proud of Lonzo, as a kind of catalog of disease and decrepitude. “The man's a walkin’ Dorland's Cyclopedia,” he declared.

“Walking?” I gaped at Lonzo, who was admittedly mobile, but bent over and pushing a wheeled walker that also carried a couple of bottles of fluids that were tubed into his arms, as well as sacs that were receptacles for tubes issuing from his legs and abdomen.

“Shufflin’, then,” the doctor conceded. “But, what the heck, he's breathing.”

He was breathing, but barely, and he wasn't talking much. I had remembered him as a dark-skinned man, but he seemed faded into a khaki color, except for around his eyes, which were as dark as the old tenor man Ben Webster's. His mind seemed in gear. He appeared to recognize me and he certainly lit up when I mentioned Grootka.

“Saymalie,” he breathed. We had made it back to his bed in his little room. The room was plastered with old posters of Coltrane and Miles Davis, and there was a safe on the floor, a square green metal box of heavy gauge steel that was not only padlocked but was actually secured to the floor with heavy chains that led from welded rings in the steel box to steel rings or loops mounted onto the floor with heavy lag bolts.

He repeated the word or phrase until I grasped the meaning: he meant that Grootka had saved his life. I supposed that part of the problem in understanding him was the bullet that had taken a chunk of his tongue and broken his jaw. Now that I thought about it, the two or three times that I had met Lonzo he had been a little inarticulate, but I had attributed that to alcohol. And I recalled
another thing: that in each case it was Grootka who had brought us together. So now I saw that Grootka had meant for me to meet Lonzo, to get to know him.

“Grootka saved your life?” I said. “When they killed Hoffa, you mean?”

His eyes grew round as saucers. “Whirjoogeddat?” he croaked.

“Grootka's notes. He left me his notebooks.” I showed one of them to him. “Tells the whole story. You, Grootka, Tyrone, Janney Jacobsen.”

He shook his head, his withered lips in a grimace. “Jake,” he said. “Asso.”

“Jake was an asshole?”

Lonzo nodded. “Tole.” He nodded more. “Jake tole.”

“Told who?”

“Ca-mine.” Lonzo squeezed his eyes tightly. “Gruuk, Gruuook, Grrk. Grrka,” he shook his head slowly.

“Grootka didn't know? He didn't know that Jacobsen was the one who told Carmine where Hoffa was?” Lonzo nodded. “He thought it was you, didn't he?” Lonzo nodded more. “Did you know? At the time?” He shrugged. “You suspected, but you didn't know?” He shrugged. So it seemed that he hadn't known, probably not at the time, anyway, but later came to know. I put it to him and he nodded. “Did you ever tell Grootka?”

Lonzo shook his head. “Try . . . b'na.”

He had tried, but Grootka either didn't believe him, or had ignored him. The information was coming from the wrong person. When somebody asks who killed Cock Robin, that bird with the bow and arrow can deny it until his breath fails, as this one was doing.

At this rate, I thought, I'll get all the information I need by the turn of the century, if Lonzo holds out, which seems doubtful. I wanted to ask him why Jacobsen would betray Hoffa to Carmine, but it seemed too complex to answer, and anyway, would he know?

A few possibilities occurred to me. Assuming that Jacobsen already had a relationship of some sort with Carmine, which he must have had, one could infer a motive of fear: if Carmine discovered that you knew and hadn't told him, he'd be murderously angry. Or greed: there would be a variety of rewards for whoever helped the Mob out of this potentially disastrous jam. And don't forget jealousy. I wasn't so sure about that one. Was Jacobsen jealous of Tyrone? Or Vera? I didn't know, and when I phrased it to Lonzo he wasn't much help.

“Get Hoffa ‘way,” was the best Lonzo could provide, meaning that he thought—he signified with shrugs and so forth his not very strong feelings or knowledge—that Jacobsen simply wanted Hoffa out of the way, possibly that he felt that Hoffa's presence was too dangerous for Tyrone's good health, or his own plans for Tyrone. Something like that.

I had a feeling that this was probably the case. It had that foolish, almost heartbreaking air of validity that human actions sometimes have when the inconsequential leads to desperate acts. We think at first,
Oh no
; but something deep inside says,
Oh yeah.

“What about Vera?” I asked.

His shoulders and chest heaved, simulating laughter, and he attempted a grin, but his last ministroke had made only a smirk possible. Still, he was clearly cheerful as he hoisted his open palms before his midriff to evoke heavy breasts, and he shook his head admiringly. “Helva woom. Peesass. Helva woom. Golotta-lotta guts. Got guts. Hard,
hard,"
he emphasized sternly, “hard wook . . . sh’ hardwook'n. Fuck'n Ty, leff'r.”

That seemed understandable, with some effort. His condemnation of Tyrone for leaving her was not severe, it would seem, at least on conventional grounds, but rather he thought it foolish. Perhaps he thought Tyrone should have taken her with him when he vanished, assuming that he vanished on his own and wasn't, rather,
disappeared
as the Argentinans have it. But Grootka was fairly
convincing on that topic, I thought. An obscure young jazz musician might be able to disappear—indeed, he certainly had—but probably not with a sexy white wife or mistress.

I asked him what he thought of Tyrone taking off, otherwise. He smiled. Then his face lit up and he had an idea. He gestured me to be patient and he got painfully off his iron bedstead and knelt on the floor to unlock the strongbox, as he called it—"Dass my strawnbox"—from which he took a plastic-encased audiocassette tape. It was not a professional commercially produced recording but one made by someone who had recorded from another source. He popped it into a little portable cassette player, which he also got from the strongbox. It was the kind that joggers use, which had flimsy earphones attached, and he listened for a few seconds before handing the earphones to me. He watched me expectantly as I put on the headset.

I was surprised by the quality of the sound, not audiophile quality obviously, but certainly not bad. A terrific jazz group was playing, evidently a live concert. It sounded familiar, especially the baritone sax, which was crisp and authoritative, full of amazing leaps of intervals. It was M'Zee Kinanda, of course. I recognized the sound, if not the tune, which seemed to be more of an up-tempo bop blowing vehicle than one of Kinanda's wild Free pieces. I thought the recording must date from a period before his more recent, esoteric stuff. This was furious fingering to a driving bass and drums, more consciously swinging, rooted in the chords.

“Is this old stuff?” I asked Lonzo.

“Na, na.” He shook his head. “New. Live. Dee-troit. Two, three.” He gestured with fingers. “Juss . . . juss now. Live.”

So, it was recently recorded, live. A friend or somebody, he didn't say, had taped it and brought it. Good stuff. Great music. But I could see that Lonzo was exhausted by my visit. He flopped back on the bed and gratefully allowed me to drape the headset on his shrunken noggin. He closed his eyes and listened and I walked away.

A very heavy dark woman of middle age, wearing slacks and
a vaguely medical smocklike overshirt, was pushing a cart of medicines and drinks in the corridor. She had a name tag that identified her as Mrs. LoRhetta Butler, Nurse's Aide. I asked her who had brought Mr. Butterfield a new tape.

“He got a new tape? Oh, I'm so glad. That poor man, he didn't have but two or three tapes,” she chattered as she bustled in and out of rooms, dropping off glasses of apple juice or shaking out an aspirin onto her broad hand and offering it to a patient with a paper cup of water, or waiting while another swallowed his medicine. “And somebody stold one and then he dropped another one and I"—she giggled embarrassedly and covered her mouth with her hand—"stepped on one and broke it! So he didn't have nothing to listen to on that little old Pakman, or whatever it is. Here, honey.” She stood over an ancient old lady with perhaps ten strands of white hair on her shriveled black head, her face an absolute raisin of wrinkles, while the old lady drank some pink fluid from a tiny paper cup. “It must have been Miss Vera brought it,” the aide concluded.

I was pleased to think of the austere Mrs. Jacobsen visiting an old reprobate like Lonzo. According to the aide she didn't come often, or rather she came frequently and then wouldn't come for weeks, but then she'd reappear regularly again, every other day. I thought it must have to do with her movement in and out of Detroit. Not very many other people came, just an occasional, very occasional old acquaintance.

“Mostly trash,” was the aide's contemptuous dismissal. “Jailbirds, they look like. Course I know he was a bail bondsman. But ‘cept for that other po-liceman, Miss Vera the only white person who comes.”

“What other policeman?”

“You a po-lice, ain't you? Unh-hunh, well, there you are. He come a few days ago. He didn't even talk to Lonzo, just looked at the visitor book and axed me about who come to see him. I knew it was some po-lice business, so I didn't say nothing.”

“You mean you didn't tell the policeman anything, or you didn't say anything to Lonzo about it?”

“Wasn't anything to tell. I ain't got no business tellin’ no police about Miss Vera. So I didn't say nothin’ to him and I didn't say nothin’ to Lonzo.”

I was a little puzzled. “Well, why are you saying something to me?” I asked. “I mean, if I'm a po—”

“You a
real
po-lice,” she interrupted.

“You mean the other guy wasn't a real policeman? What was he?”

“He was almost a po-lice,” Mrs. Butler said, “but I didn't trust him. He was the insurance po-lice. He called hisself a ‘vestigator!” She laughed, a genuine mirthful laugh. “He some kind of ‘gator, that's for sure! Asking about Lonzo's visitors! What's it to him? And then he axed if I knowed Mr. Meldrim. Hah! That's what he was really innarested in.”

“And do you know Mr. Meldrim?” I asked.

“Sho’ I knows him. I see Books Meldrim come visit Lonzo every month, also he pays the bills. Least, he signs the bills. I think they go to a bank. But I knew Books when he had a little business on Dexter Avenue.” She laughed, remembering and not unfondly. “I useta buy my dream books from Books Meldrim. And he useta play piano at the Liberry Bar, oncet in a while.”

“I thought you said only trash came to visit Lonzo.”

“'Cept for Mr. Meldrim and Miss Vera,” Mrs. Butler corrected herself. “And you.” She looked at me with a cocked eyebrow, as if to suggest that she might be willing to change her mind about my status if I wasn't careful.

“But you didn't tell any of this to the other policeman. Did he show any identification? A name?”

“He didn't show nothing. He said he was from the Condamental ‘Surance Comp'ny. But one of the other girls, she from over
on Mack? She tole me she seen him at the Ninth Precink. That's way over on Chalmers, ain't it? Choichnya, I calls it, so many houses been flattened, like that place in Russia, Garage-nee. He didn't give no name. Little fellow, real nice suit. He might of been a po-lice oncet, but that was some time ago. Vonda says he is the chief of police over there.”

“Very neat?” I asked. “Patent-leather hair?”

“That's him.”

I told her I thought she was a very acute observer. She didn't know what to make of that. I assured her it was a compliment.

“Compliments are nice, but I'll tell you about that little rat and it ain't no compliment. He is a nasty little rat.”

If the man she was talking about was indeed Captain Buchanan, commander of the Ninth, who fit her description perfectly, I quite agreed with her assessment. But I didn't say so. I started to leave, but I thought of something. “How long has Lonzo been like this?” I asked Mrs. Butler.

“Like what?”

“Well, he's very infirm. Has he been here long?” I wanted to get an opinion from her about his prospects, but didn't want to just come out and say, How long would you guess that he's got?

“This prob'ly just one of his bad days,” she said. “I don't know, I ain't hardly looked at him.” We were standing by his door and she peered in. “Well, he don't sound so bad to me.”

Lonzo was asleep, his mouth open, the headset still on his head, and snoring loudly.

“Drunk,” she said. “He been in the strongbox again. Miss Vera must of brought him something besides a tape.” She sniffed. “Didn't you smell that?”

I stuck my head in and sniffed. Now that she mentioned it, there was a faint whiff of vodka.