Man with an Axe (8 page)

Too, Hoffa was a genuine character, an original. There was no one in public life quite like him. He was tough, not in the least abashed by polite society, and quite willing to speak from the hip. In Detroit a guy can dine out for a long time on candid comments like Hoffa's about the Mob: “You're a damned fool not to be informed
what makes a city run when you're tryin’ to do business in the city.” Even as a cop, I had to admit that it didn't make sense to pretend that the Mob didn't exist, like most public figures did.

I wondered if Grootka mightn't have been at least a grudging, if private, admirer of Hoffa's, but I couldn't recall even a single mention of him. That seemed odd, considering how Hoffa had been in the public eye more or less constantly for decades, to say nothing of the tremendous hullabaloo about his disappearance.

Oddly, I had misspoken myself, to Maki: I
had
been a detective at the time of Hoffa's vanishing, but to the best of my recollection I hadn't had one single thing to do with the case. And I was certain that Grootka had not mentioned it, not even on the occasion when we were discussing ways of getting rid of bodies, as in abandoned cars.

The Hoffa case was sure to be on the computer. I called up the clerk in Records; she did a quick scan for me and reported, almost immediately, not a single reference to Grootka in the records. So Grootka had never worked on the case. Too bad. I'd have bet that it would have been worth an amusing anecdote or two for Agge's history.

Then the clerk from Records called back. She'd been interested in my query and had taken it on herself to make a cursory scan of the F.B.I, liaison file—it was, after all, essentially an F.B.I, case. Here she came up with one reference to Grootka. A memo from a Special Agent Senkpile to D.P.D.-Homicide: “Please keep your man Grootka out of this. Highest priority.” Which meant, the clerk thought, orders from the director himself.

“Hoover?” I said. But no, Hoover had died three years earlier. Webster? Gray? Who could remember these nonentities?

Well, this was fascinating. I called the F.B.I. They had no Agent Senkpile anymore. And, naturally, they had no comment about this former agent's comments re Grootka. But they'd get back to me.

I called a guy I knew in the U.S. marshal's office, P. G. Chelliss, better known as Pedge. An old-timer, he remembered “Stinkpile.” “A true FBI man, Mul. Stinky was Dutch Reformed. He got his hair buzz-cut even before he joined the bureau. Shined his shoes every day, stood tall, looked you right in the damn eye. This man could
soldier.
Absolutely useless as an investigator, of course. Couldn't find his ass with both hands.”

“Why would he warn Grootka off the Hoffa case?”

Pedge, remembering Grootka, snapped: “Who wouldn't?” But on further reflection he confessed that he had no idea. It was ridiculous for Senkpile to even be
on
the Hoffa case, much less in a position of apparent authority. He promised to check around.

I have a small window in my office. It looks out onto Chalmers Avenue. It was a swell dark and rainy March day, temperature about fifty degrees with periodic blasts of wind that could tumble a pig. The trees were bare and wet, the street glistening, reflecting the headlights of cars already, at four in the afternoon. A great day to get out of the office and run down to Lake Erie. As bleak as Detroit looked on a day like this, the southern Ontario plains were bound to be even gloomier. I do enjoy a gloomy prospect.

I was not disappointed. The wind and rain off the little jetty in front of Books Meldrim's cottage was absolutely doleful. You could hear lost ships out there in the murk, moaning for guidance, lamenting their trespasses, pleading for mercy.

Books was looking okay, not noticeably older. He was in his seventies for sure, possibly his eighties or nineties. I couldn't tell. He was a small brown man with grizzled hair and mustache. He reminded me of an old jazzman, but I couldn't recall who, exactly. In fact, he was a player himself, a well-regarded nonprofessional pianist in the Teddy Wilson style.

My intention was to ask him about the list I carried of Grootka informants. Maybe some of them were still around. But I got distracted
by the jazz suggestion and asked him about Grootka's surprising predilections.

“I knew about the soprano sax,” Books said. “Will you have some tea? I also have whisky, but I haven't been drinking it of late, so I forget to offer it.”

I took the tea. For some reason I'd gotten fed up with whisky myself. A day like this called for tea, and Books's strong Darjeeling answered well.

“Grootka was always a surprising one,” Books observed when we had settled near the fireplace. It was a very snug cottage. “I believe he learned music at the orphanage. He told me he played a C-melody sax in the band. In our younger days he was very fond of the kind of small group swing that one could hear in the joints down on Hastings Street. You know, there was always a considerable jazz movement in Detroit. Many great players got their start here. Why, I remember Don Redman's band, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, and Benny Carter played with them, too. What a wonderful player
he
was—still is, in fact. Oh, it was a swinging town!”

I was quite aware of this. My own preference was for the small bands of the thirties and forties. I had inherited it, obliquely, from my parents. Not because they were jazz fans—they had never shown any particular interest in jazz—but because they were of that era and I longed to be of it myself, to share that life with them. It gave me a fine and unusual pleasure to listen to Books reminisce about the period.

“In the forties, down on Hastings, I used to hear guys like Lucky Thompson and Wardell Gray. That's when I first met Grootka. He was hanging out—'course, he was a cop, but he was a fan, you could tell. Bop was coming in. I believe Milt Jackson was around then, too, before he went with the Modern Jazz Quartet.”

“How did Grootka get onto this avant-garde stuff?” I asked. “It seems out of character, somehow.”

Books shrugged. “You never know with Grootka. And you know, I think the idea that the swing players hated the boppers and the boppers hated Ornette and that gang . . . well, a lot of that was just the media, you know? I mean, some of those old guys, they didn't like the new stuff, said the boppers couldn't play in tune and where was the melody, all that stuff . . . but I believe that most of the real players weren't really like that. The critics and the reviewers, they liked the controversy. I guess it sold magazines and records. But you know how the real players are: they like everything. Hell, you couldn't get Basie to admit that Lawrence Welk was bad—'Man's got a hell of an organization.’ Ha, ha.” He paused suddenly, remembering something, then related a tale about the fine old cornetist Bobby Hackett, who evidently was even less capable than Basie of finding anything critical to say: “Cat asked him, ‘What about Hitler?’ And Bobby thinks for a minute, then says, ‘Well, he was the best in his field.’ Ha, ha, ha!”

We both had a good laugh on that one. “Well, Grootka certainly got into free-form jazz,” I said. “He had a baritone sax, too.”

Books's face lit up. “Really? I bet that was Tyrone Addison's influence.”

“Oh yes, there was some music with Addison's name on it, on Grootka's music stand.” I'd heard of Addison, the obscure genius. But I hadn't heard much. I thought of him as a quintessential Detroit star—greatly admired locally, but unknown to the outside world. There were precedents for that kind of obscurity, but it's an old story in provincial circles. His music, which I couldn't remember ever hearing, was said to be wild and difficult. But I hadn't heard anything about Addison in years. I had a vague notion that he was dead—dope, probably.

“Did Grootka know Addison?” I asked.

“Oh yes. I remember he talked about him incessantly for a while. I think he was taking lessons from him! That'd be that baritone.

Tyrone was a bari player. Gone now, I guess. I've kind of lost touch.”

Astonishing. But then, Grootka was unusual. Imagine, taking lessons at his age. Then it struck me: “When was this?”

Books frowned. “Back in the seventies, about seventy-five, seventy-six, in there.” And then, to nail it down: “It was when he was working on the Hoffa case.”

“Oh yes,” I said, casually. “Did he ever talk about the Hoffa case?”

“Not much. I got the impression he thought it was all open and shut.”

“In what way?” I asked.

Books made a face of careless certainty, a comical moue: “Oh, you know . . . Hoffa got all screwed up with them Mob boys. There wasn't much to it, but I guess Hoffa was stubborn and wouldn't let it drop, whatever the beef was. So he had to go.” He shrugged. That was all there was to it. Open and shut.

I pursued it a little further, but Books didn't know any more. We fell to considering the list of names I'd brought and that was good for a laugh or two. Books confided that a couple of the names on the list, Shakespeare and Homer, were alternate tags for himself.

I was happy to accept Books's invitation to dinner, which turned out to be black-eyed peas with ham hocks and cornbread. It was delicious, particularly with the poke sallet greens. I was curious where Books would get these things locally; it seemed unlikely that supermarkets in this region of southern Ontario would feature the makings for soul food. He said he drove up to Detroit once a week to shop, or sometimes a friend would come down. Something in his tone made me ask how he enjoyed living down here on the lake.

“I like it fine,” he said. “I have my books, my records. I generally enjoy solitary living. But, you know, once in a while a fellow longs to see another dark face.”

He smiled thoughtfully and sipped at his wine. We had finished the dishes and withdrawn to the fireside again. He drew on the H. Upmann “Petit Corona” I had provided. “When a man lives alone,” he said, “he is tempted to philosophize. I am not immune. I have come to believe that race is one of the biggest servings of bullshit that man has ever tried to digest. But look at it this way: say you're sick. You got a tumor and you need help, right now. There are two doctors available to you and both are named Brown. But one of them is white and one is colored. Which one will you go to? As long as you don't know that they're different races, there's nothing to choose. But if you do know which is which . . . well, if you're me, it would be hard not to at least see the colored doctor first, don't you think? It would be easier, more comfortable. And I'll bet you would see the white Dr. Brown first. That's ‘cause there is nothing but skin color to distinguish these two doctors from one another, so race becomes at least a minor factor. But say that one of them is a well-known surgeon and the other one practices holistic medicine—you know, herbs and naturopathy, that kind of thing. Well, if you're me, you wouldn't give a fart in a whirlwind what color that surgeon was: you'd go see him. Another man, like my old friend Henry Chatham, he's a naturopathy man: he'd go to a witch doctor or a conjure woman before he'd let a man of any color cut on him. You see? But.” He looked a bit wistful. “Sometimes I miss Nigger Heaven. Maybe I should have retired there.”

I was momentarily nonplussed.

Books chuckled. “I'm sorry, I don't mean to embarrass you. I should have said Turtle Lake. It's a colored resort up in the Thumb. Maybe you heard of it?”

I had, though it seemed ages ago, and I'd even heard its nickname. And now I made the connection with the piece of music that I'd seen attributed to Tyrone Addison, in Grootka's apartment.

“Did Tyrone Addison have a place up there?” I asked.

“Tyrone? Naw. Why, Tyrone wasn't no more than a boy when I used to go up to, ah, Turtle Lake. I had me quite a nice place over by the golf course, actually closer to the casino. Oh yeah.” He shook his head. “I had me some
times
! But, you know, come to think of it, I used to see Tyrone up there. His uncle had a place there. Lonzo. Now what was Lonzo's name? He was a bail bondsman, great big ‘ol black fellow. Yes,” he said with triumph, proud of his memory, “it was Lonzo Butterfield! My, my, what a fellow. Talk about conjure men, or women, ol’ Lonzo was one. He could walk that walk and talk that talk. Mmmmhmmm. Yeah, and there was something going on up there once, too. I remember Grootka coming to me about it.”

“Really! What?”

“Grootka was after Lonzo for something,” Books said. He shook his head with regret. “I'm doggoned if I can remember what it was! But you know these bail bondsmen, they're a wicked bunch. No telling what it was.”

“When was this?”

Books stared at the fire for a long moment, seemingly focusing into its depths. Finally, he nodded and said, “If I had to put a date to it, I'd say July or August of . . . oh, let me think . . .” Suddenly, his face brightened. “I just had bought a brand-new seventy-five Continental, except that it wasn't exactly brand-new. So it must have been 1975. August of seventy-five.” He beamed.

I was impressed. But alas, no amount of encouragement could dredge up from the past the details of Grootka's interest in Lonzo Butterfield. All he could remember was that Grootka had asked him to drive up to Turtle Lake and see if Lonzo was there.

“Was Lonzo there?” I asked.

“No. But somebody was. I guess it must have been Tyrone. Yeah, come to think of it, Tyrone was there, with that white wife of his.”

“Tyrone was married to a white woman?”

“Nice lady, too,” Books said. “Man, she had tits like melons. And she didn't mind showing them, either. She wore a little skimpy bikini down to the beach. Oh yeah. I wonder if Tyrone put her up to it, or did she do it to piss him off? You know, I believe he put her up to it. I don't believe she wanted to show herself like that. But some of these fellows . . . they want the world to see what kind of woman they got.”

“What did Grootka say about all this?”

“Nothing. He was only interested in Lonzo.”

“You don't say. I wonder if he knew Addison then, or was it later? You know, the lessons and so forth?”

“Well, he might have known Tyrone beforehand,” Books said. “But I wasn't aware of it.”

From there the conversation drifted to music and I asked Books if he had any of Addison's stuff on record.