Motown (11 page)

“Don’t be a smartass. Sounds like Frankie’s got something on with Brock and Patsy was giving him lip about it. I’m waiting on a call I made to the authorities in Messina, Sicily. Trying to find out what Frankie’s been up to lately, who he’s been seeing.” He gnawed his lip over the transcript. “‘I got a lot of capital tied up in this policy move. DiJesus and his outfit don’t work cheap.’ What policy move?”

“The nigger. Whatsizname, Springfield. That wasn’t any amateur knockover at his pig.”

“Put someone on him, a colored officer. Borrow one from General Service. Not one of those United Negro College Fund types; someone who looks like he belongs on Twelfth Street. And call the Clark County Sheriff’s Department in Vegas. Get the details on that DiJesus bust for felony homicide.”

“Yessir.”

When Esther left, Canada leaned back to rest his head on the swivel. He looked at the group photograph on the wall. The blat of the twin engines, the flap and pop of the chute and the wind whistling through the lines. A heavy machine gun pounding on the other side of a hill. Mortar shells shrilling among the palms. Morning drill outside the stockade, the orders barked in guttural Japanese. The way you knew an officer was approaching your hut by the sound of his monkey-stick swishing against his jodhpurs. The shit-hole in the dirt floor.

After a while, when you had been there long enough that any information you might have would be of no use to them, the beatings became routine, a way of breaking up the day during the long spell of inaction that plagued troops everywhere. You understood them then, the orange sons of bitches, and that was the worst torture of all, because the last thing you wanted to do was understand them. …

The telephone rang.

What was a telephone doing in a stockade?

When at last Canada answered it, he was reaching across twenty years and half a world, so that when his fingers closed on the solid surface of the black receiver the contact was like an arc to the present.

“Hello?”

“This is the overseas operator. Your call to Messina, Sicily is waiting.”

After the call he went out into the squad room, threw a handful of change into the tray by the electric percolator, and poured a slug of black coffee into his personal cup. It was the night of July first and a window fan was sucking in air from the street that had the temperature and consistency of saliva. The pot had barely been touched. Like the British Army in India, Canada believed that drinking hot beverages kept one cool in the hottest climate. Right or not, he was the only man in the room who hadn’t sweated through his shirt. The fluttering black-and-white TV was playing a CBS Special on Vietnam. He stared for a moment at footage of a firefight in the jungle, then switched channels. Johnny Carson was interviewing Bing Crosby.

Sergeant Esther hung up his telephone with a report like a pistol shot and beamed at the inspector. He looked like a fat freckled boy.

“I’ll guess,” Canada said. “Same M.O. in Vegas.”

“Ski masks and shotguns. DiJesus and two guys hit a licensed whorehouse at the end of the Strip and blew down a customer when he tried to play Batman. Two hookers hit by the spray. One of them lost an arm, guess she’s giving her hand-jobs lefty now. Place wasn’t mobbed up, sheriff’s boys say.”

“Bet it is now.”

“They picked up DiJesus on an anonymous tip. None of the witnesses ID’d and he walked.”

“Greedy little Patsy. The fat slice off the black game’s not enough for him. He wants the whole loaf and he’s importing out-of-town talent to get it. He must have a hard-on to impress the old man.”

“Clark County suspects DiJesus in six hits in Vegas alone. The scroat had his own little Murder, Incorporated out there, didn’t hardly take a hand himself except in special cases. Want me to put out an APB?”

“No, we’ll let him rattle around for a while.”

“He’ll hit Springfield’s operation again.”

“Springfield didn’t want to help us when we asked for it. Putting him in the can for twenty-four hours didn’t change his mind. Maybe a little banging between Patsy’s hammer and anvil is just what he needs.”

“DiJesus won’t fuck around next time,” Esther said. “He’s not the type to stay satisfied with blowing down bouncers and johns.”

“So next time Homicide can tag him twice. Don’t forget, it’s Brock we want. You get in touch with General Service yet?”

“Next item on the list.” The sergeant lifted his receiver and started dialing.

Crosby was singing “The Second Time Around.” On still days on Rabaul, the radio in the commandant’s office could be heard in the stockade. Every third song was a Crosby recording. Canada turned off the set.

“I just heard back from Sicily, by the way.”

Esther was waiting for someone to pick up the telephone on the other end. “Frankie been out playing boccie with the boys like a good little deported guinea?”

“Took me twenty minutes to pry a straight answer out of what they call law over there; they’ve got that language barrier thing down cold. It seems that nobody in Messina has seen anything of
Don Francisco
in more than a month. Story’s the same in Palermo and Catania.”

Esther cradled the receiver. “Think he’s back home?”

“I don’t think even the sacred law of
omerta
could keep the lid on a secret like that. But I think he’s close.”

“Cuba?”

“It worked for Luciano, but that was before Castro. If Frankie’s there it means he’s getting on better with that cigar-rolling son of a bitch than anyone else except Brezhnev. Do we know the number of that booth Patsy’s been using?”

“I’ll send a car.”

“No, use someone in plainclothes. I don’t want Patsy looking out his window and seeing a blue-and-white parked by his outside line.”

“I’ll go myself.”

“While you’re there, call the phone company. Get a record of all the incoming long-distance calls placed to that number over the past two weeks. There can’t be that many. Not many people call a booth.”

Esther made a note on his telephone pad. “What do you want first, that or the shadow from General Service?”

“General Service,” Canada said. “Ask for the best colored undercover they’ve got. Steal him if they won’t give him to you. Maybe we’ll get lucky and DiJesus will ice Springfield right in front of him.”

“E
NID TELLS ME YOU’RE
doing a fine job.” Rick got up from the card table to shake Wendell Porter’s hand. It was a long bony hand attached to a lot of shirtcuff; the sleeves of his three-button gray herringbone jacket were the least bit too short for him. He was taller than he looked on television, and up close Rick could see that the charmingly disheveled appearance of his dark tousled hair was more barber’s artifice than Ivy League carelessness. He had thick black eyebrows and deep vertical creases in his face that washed out under studio lights, making him look younger onscreen. Rick knew he was in his middle forties. The famous Harvard accent was less pronounced in person.

“I just make calls, ask questions, and write down the answers,” Rick said. “It’s pretty hard to screw that up.”

“You’d be surprised.” Porter glanced at Pammie, immersed in a telephone interview, and leaned closer to Rick. “It isn’t easy getting people who know what they’re doing when you don’t pay. Actually, though, I was referring to that phone number you gave Lee Schenck. Enid says Commander Whozis was a fount of accident information.”

“Some of them drop their guards when they go home.”

“It’s handy to have someone around who understands the policeman’s mind.”

Rick wondered what that meant.

“What time is it?” Porter asked.

Rick looked at his watch. “Almost eleven.”

“I’m due up at the Farm at noon. Would you care to come along? Pammie can manage here. Enid says Lee told her you asked about it.”

This was going too well. He was still turning over the policeman comment.

“I’d be honored, Mr. Porter.”

“Wendell.”

They stopped in the entryway, where Enid looked up from her typing. Today she was wearing a blue silk blouse and a paisley scarf secured with a gold pin. Her hair was up. Rick could see blue highlights in it.

“We’re going up there now,” Porter said. “If Washington calls, tell them I’ll get back to them. Let them stew.”

“Think they’ll call?”

“Probably not.”

“Want me to prepare a press release about the no-show yesterday?”

“Not this time. Half the media is convinced I’m one of these conspiracy freaks now. Let’s wait a little before we convince the other half. Oh, and call Caroline and ask her if we’re still on for dinner. I haven’t touched bases with her since I got back.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Rick fell in behind Porter’s lanky stride. So far, a cool “Good morning” was all he had been able to get out of Enid since yesterday’s jackass comment about her doing needlepoint for Wendell.

Porter’s car was a maroon Volvo sports coupe, six years old but in excellent condition. It was equipped with seat belts, the first Rick had ever seen except on airplanes. Porter gave him an approving glance when he hooked his up without waiting to be asked, secured his own, and they pulled out of the little lot. Rick was surprised when the safety lobbyist sped up to catch the light at Jefferson and changed lanes to pass an Olds 88 lumbering along at just below the limit; he’d been prepared for a demonstration in geriatric roadsmanship. The most persistent rumor about Porter said he didn’t have a driver’s license, had in fact never learned to drive. Rick now made his mind a blank page on the subject of Wendell Porter.

“Enid says you worked for the
Times,”
Porter said. “I used to have friends there. Maybe we know some of the same people.”

“I doubt it, sir. Wendell. I was a leg man for one of the columnists. I didn’t spend much time in the offices.”

“Which columnist did you work for?”

“Jake Greenburg.”

“Jake died, I heard.”

“I heard that too.”

“Drank himself under. Godawful way to go.”

“I heard cancer,” Rick said. “Jake was a teetotaler when I knew him.”

“Guess I have him mixed up with someone else.”

As Porter worked the clutch and brake, Rick noticed his expensive oxblood loafers were scuffed and run down slightly at the heels. Everything about the man’s carefully rumpled aspect made him think of those tables people bought brand new in department stores and clobbered with chains and hammers to make them look like something from a junk shop.

“I haven’t been very subtle, have I?” Porter said then. “I’m sorry if I sound like I’m giving you the third degree. You’re older than the average Porter Group volunteer and I’m a little paranoid. I’m pretty sure the automobile people have detectives on me.”

“I’m thirty.”

“I’d have thought older. Not that you look it; you could pass for twenty or less. It’s more of an attitude thing. Maybe it’s just my gray hairs showing. Young people are so much more mature than they were when I was one of them.”

“A lot of people think they’re slipping. Smashing the windows of recruitment centers and all.”

“At least they give a damn about something. If they didn’t, I’d be a group of one.” They wound up the ramp of the northbound Chrysler, past Receiving Hospital and a billboard advertising the 1966 Rambler.

“Small as it is, the group makes a lot of noise,” Rick said. “We employ professional lobbyists in Washington, and my wife handles the legal side through her firm. But dedicated young people like Enid and Lee and Pammie supply the blood. With a few exceptions they’re not around long, but while they’re here, look out.”

“Burnout factor that high?”

“Youth wants change now and when it doesn’t come right away they lose interest. Staffing’s my biggest headache, that and trying to sprinkle salt on the tails of certain politicians.”

“Enid one of the exceptions?”

Porter throttled around two trucks hauling separate halves of a mobile home up the slow lane. “Enid’s special. I honestly don’t know what PG would have done without her these past three years.”

“That’s a long time between paychecks.”

“Enid needs a paycheck like I need a Swiss bank account. Her father owned the land that Southfield stands on today.”

“What made her choose PG?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“She doesn’t care much for me.”

“She can be distant sometimes. Don’t let it throw you.”

Detroit leveled out into the neighborhoods, rows of low houses gridded between broad flat streets laid out like perpendicular raceways, a motorists’ town. In Hamtramck they got off on Caniff, passed shops and bakeries bearing signs with Ukrainian and Polish names, and took Mound Road straight up through the enormous suburb of Warren. North of Twelve Mile Road the General Motors Technical Center sprawled for blocks, looking like a well-tended college campus. Its brick buildings housed the automotive Goliath’s Engineering, Research, Styling, and Manufacturing departments.

“Indian country,” Porter mused. “Whenever I drive past the place I think I know how a northern Negro must feel passing through Mississippi. I’m half surprised a mob of thirty-year men doesn’t block the road and pull me out of the car and string me up for treason. I worked for GM two years.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It was on the line, in the Westland assembly plant. I hung doors on Chevies. The job saw me through two years at the University of Michigan.”

“I thought you were from back East.”

“I was born and raised in Boston. Then my father moved the family out to Ypsilanti and invested everything he owned in Tucker.”

“Um.”

“I was studying law at the U of M. When Tucker went belly up it was either drop out of school or finance my own education. If it weren’t for GM and a Harvard scholarship I’d probably be checking cars in and out of a parking lot somewhere. On the other hand, if it weren’t for GM, Tucker wouldn’t have been hounded out of the automobile business in the first place. You could say I had an ambivalent youth.”

“So that’s what turned you against them?”

“Personal vengeance is expensive and not all that satisfying. My father believed in Pres Tucker. So did I. He cared about the people who would ride in his cars. Seat belts, disk brakes all around, padded dash, pop-out windshield. I saw one of his cars roll over on the test track. The driver walked away without a scratch.”