The Switch (9 page)

 

TEN TO NINE
, Sunday morning. Mickey, in a plain white scooped-neck tennis dress, stood at the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee and the Sunday
Detroit Free Press
—the linoleum floor cool and a little sticky beneath her bare feet. She had showered and was hungry, but would hold off the bacon and eggs until Bo came down.

She flipped through the sections of the thick Sunday edition—from the front-page headline,
Witnesses Finger Teen Gang Leaders
. . . past Sports,
BoSox Rout Tigers 10­2
. . . to the Women's Section, and stopped. God, there it was. With pictures.

 

TENNIS MOMS

Children's Games Become Their Career

 

The story, covering the entire first page of the section, was illustrated with five action shots of moms and their kids: the kids swinging tennis rackets; the moms staring, chewing lips, one smiling.
Mickey saw herself, slightly out of focus, beyond Bo's clenched jaw, racket chopping down hard. The caption read: “Bo Dawson smashes a volley while his proud mother, Margaret ‘Mickey' Dawson, watches from the sidelines. Bo's home court is Deep Run Country Club.”

Her gaze scanned the columns of type, stopping to read about a mom who had canceled a trip to Europe in order to take her son to the Ann Arbor Open.

A Grosse Pointe mother had persuaded her husband to buy controlling interest in an indoor tennis club, then moved in as manager to promote her daughter's career full time.

Nothing about Bo's mom yet.

A Franklin Village mother, whose husband was in cardiac care at Sinai, told a friend, “I've lived my whole life for this (Southeastern Michigan Junior Championship). My husband isn't conscious; there's nothing I can do for him. But I can be with my daughter and help her.”

In the third column, mothers were sweating out their children's matches, nail-biting, chain-smoking. There it was . . .

“Watching her son Bo in a match at Orchard Lake, Mickey Dawson claimed she wasn't the least bit nervous. Except there were 10 menthol cigarette butts at Mickey's feet by the end of the first set.”

. . . Thrown in with the rest of the clutched-up
tennis moms. She had told the relaxed young woman writer she
wasn't
nervous, not at all, and was sure she'd smoked no more than four or five cigarettes. The other butts could have been there before. If she had smoked ten—it was possible—it had nothing to do with Bo. Frank had been there too, growling, calling shots, officiating for the people in the stands.

There were quotes from moms agonizing: “Oh Kevin, oh Kevin, oh Kevin, please—that's it, baby. That's my baby.”

Another one: “If only I had been there. Missy needed me and I let her down.”

A mom complaining, her voice breaking: “They've got the seeding all backward. I can't believe it.”

Rationalizing: “You start to figure if you combine your intelligence with your son's ability you can go all the way.”

A minimizing mom said: “Not me, I have a husband I adore. I love to party, travel . . .” Her husband: “Any time you ask her to do anything, she has to check her calendar to make sure Scott doesn't have a tournament.”

“Bo's father, Frank Dawson, shaking his head, but with a merry grin on his handsome face:

“ ‘If I told you what it cost a year, would you believe six, seven thousand?' “

“. . . a merry grin on his handsome face.” Frank loved to say “would you believe.” He loved to talk about money, what things cost.

At five to nine, though, he didn't seem ready to talk about anything. Frank came into the kitchen wearing his yellow golf outfit and carrying an old pair of loafers, his eyes watery, glazed.

“You didn't call me.”

“I didn't know you were playing.”

“I never play on Sunday, uh?”

“I mean this early. You didn't say anything.”

“We've got a 9:30 starting time. Overhill and some guy that works for him.”

“Who's Overhill? Aren't you gonna have coffee?”

“No, just some juice, tomato juice. You know him; we had them out last year. Larry Overhill, the big guy with the laugh. He's got a slice and about a thirty-five handicap.”

“Why're you playing with him then?”

“You kidding? He's loan officer at Birmingham Federal. Listen, I was thinking—” He paused to drink down half the tomato juice. “Since I'm going to Freeport the end of the week—I told you that, didn't I?”

“I don't think so, you might have.”

“We've got some investors, a group, coming all the way from Japan, if you can believe it. All the islands over there, they're looking in the Bahamas.
So—I thought why not fly down with Bo this evening, see your folks. They probably have some questions, how late he can stay out, all that.”

“I've been on the phone with my mother practically every day this week,” Mickey said.

“Also it'll give Bo and I a chance to talk,” Frank said. “See if I can get a few things straightened out about his attitude.”

Mickey watched him pour another ten-ounce glass of juice. Was he kidding or what? He looked terrible, as though he could use another five hours of sleep; but he kept busy, putting on his shoes now, trying to act as though he felt normal. In their fifteen years together, Frank had never admitted having a hangover.

“The flight's at 6:30,” Mickey said.

“I know, I called and made a reservation.” He glanced up at her. “Couple of days ago. I thought I told you.”

He was rushing it at her. “Let me get it straight,” Mickey said. “You'll drop Bo off, see my folks and what, hang around Lauderdale a few days before going to Freeport?”

“Either way. I can see your folks. Then, I can stop at the tennis camp on the way back, like Friday, and come home Saturday.”

“So you'll be gone all week.”

“Now you've got it,” Frank said.

“Well, okay. Then I'll drive you to the airport?”

“No, I'll drive, leave the car there. It's a lot easier, in case I get in late.” Frank finished his tomato juice, getting every drop. “I drive, Bo and I can talk in the car.”

There were questions she wanted to ask; but he would tell her he didn't have time now; later. So she said, “Bo has a match at one, the Inter-club. Are you gonna watch it?”

“I'll see. It depends on what time I get finished. So—”

She raised her face for the kiss on the cheek and felt his hand slide down the tennis dress to pat her can.

“—I'm off.”

“Your name's in the paper, Frank.”

“Hey, really? The club championship?” Turning back to her, his eyes seemed almost bright.

“No, it's about kids playing tennis. Remember we talked to the girl, the reporter? At Orchard Lake.”

“Oh.” He picked up the paper, glanced at the page a moment and dropped it on the counter. “Good shot of Bo. What's it say, anything?”

“You can read it later.”

“Yeah, save it. Well—I'm off.” He always said, “I'm off.”

Frank went out the door that led to the attached
garage. The door closed behind him. Mickey waited. The door opened again and Frank was looking in at her, frowning, scowling.

“What in the hell you do to your car, for Christ sake?”

 

SUNDAY, A NICE SUNNY DAY
, Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara were out for a ride in Ordell's tan Ford van. It was mostly tan. What made it stylish was the black-yellow-red stripe of paint worn low around the van's boxy hips. The tan van for the tan man, Ordell said.

He had not seen his friend Louis Gara in almost three years. Louis had been down in Huntsville, Texas, keeping fit, clearing scrub all day, having his supper at five p.m. and turning the light out at ten. Louis was back home and Ordell was showing him the latest sights of the Motor Capital. Things like the Renaissance Center on the riverfront, all that glass and steel rising up 700 feet in a five-tower complex.

Louis said, “Wow.” He said, “It's big.”

Ordell squinted at him. “That's all you can say? It's big?”

“It's really big,” Louis said. “If it fell over you could walk across it to Canada.”

“Take you farther than that,” Ordell said. What he saw, looking up at the Plaza Hotel tower and the outside elevator tubes, the sun hitting on it hot and shiny, it looked like a gigantic spaceship could take you to the moon for about a buck seventy-five. Louis and Ordell had been smoking grass, too, lounged in the van's swivel captain's chairs, some Oliver Nelson electronic funk washing over them from four speakers as they drove around looking at the sights, working north from the river.

Six years ago Louis had been tapping a swizzle stick at Watts' Club Mozambique, messing up Groove Holmes' beat for Ordell who happened to be sitting next to Louis at the horseshoe bar. Ordell had put his hand with the jade ring on Louis' wrist and said, “My man, we don't go to your clubs and fuck with the beat, do we?”

Louis was high that time and feeling love for mankind, so he didn't take Ordell and beat him up the side of his head. He put the swizzle stick down and let Ordell introduce him to Campari and soda and they discovered what a small world it was. Unbelievable. Both of them had been in Southern Ohio Correctional at the same time. No shit—for true? But wait—and both of them had been in there for grand theft auto, supplying new Sevilles and Continentals to body shops and cutting plants down near Columbus.

They even looked somewhat alike, considering
Ordell Robbie was a male Negro, 31, and Louis Gara was a male Caucasian, 34. Ordell was light-skinned and Louis was dark-skinned and that put them about even in shade. Ordell had a semi-full round afro, trimmed beard and bandit mustache. Louis had the mustache, and his head was working on a black curly natural, growing it out again after his time at Huntsville. Both were about six feet and stringy looking, weighing in around 160. Ordell wore gold-frame Spectra-Shades; he liked sunglasses and beads and rings. Louis wore a cap—this summer a faded tan cap—straight and low over his eyes. Louis didn't go in for jewelry; a watch was enough, a $1,200 Benrus he'd picked up at the Flamingo Motor Hotel, McAllen, Texas.

Ask ten girls which one they thought was better looking. It was close, but Louis would probably win six-to-four.

Woodward Avenue didn't look any different to Louis, the same bars, the same storefronts with grillwork over the show windows, a few more boarded up. It was a strange deserted big-city downtown with everybody staying out in their neighborhoods.

“Crime,” Ordell said. “People afraid to come downtown; but there's no crime here. You see any crime in the streets?”

“Only the way you're driving,” Louis said. “You're gonna get stopped for loitering.”

“Coleman's got to fix this city up,” Ordell said and sounded concerned, sitting low in his swivel seat, creeping the van along Woodward. Louis had to look over at him. Ordell said, “They build all the glass shit and convention centers and domes along the river? That's for the postcard pictures—hey, shit, look at Detroit, man—if you never seen it before. Then you drive out this big wide street, what do you see? What does anybody want to come here for? Pick up some ribs and leave the motor running.”

“Over at the Mexican Village,” Louis said, “on the wall in the can it says, ‘Coleman is a copsacker.' Now you want a safe place and some good burritos, go to the Mexican Village. All the cops eat there.”

“I notice that,” Ordell said. “The cops love to eat Mex. I was in there, it's right over by Michigan Central where I been doing some business.”

“By the freight yards,” Louis said.

“Freight yards, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, man, all the stuff that comes out of there.”

“That's where you're getting the building supplies?”

“No, the choo-choo comes in, we get mostly appliances,” Ordell said. “Ranges, refrigerators, the man buys for these apartments I'm gonna show you. The building stuff we pick up out on jobs.”

“This deal,” Louis said, “if we're talking about lifting work you don't want me, you want some strong young boys.”

“I say anything about lifting work?” Ordell looked at the rear-view mirror and made a sweeping left turn off Woodward. “I'll show you where the man makes his money.”

Ordell made a couple of loops through the Cass Corridor area, giving Louis the tour.

“On the right you have the beautiful Wayne State University campus—”

“I had it two years,” Louis said. “I should've learned something.”

“On down the street,” Ordell said, “to a fine example of neo-ghetto. I went to school too, man. You can see it's not your classic ghetto yet, not quite ratty or rotten enough, but it's coming. Over there on the left, first whore of the day. Out for her vitamin C. And there's some more—hot pants with a little ass hanging out, showing the goods.”

“How come colored girls,” Louis said, “their asses are so high?”

“You don't know that?” Ordell glanced at him. “Same way as the camel.”

Louis said, “For humping, uh?”

“No, man, for going without food and water when there was a famine, they stored up what they need in their ass.”

Louis didn't know if Ordell was putting him on or not. He looked at him, then shifted his gaze to
the street again as Ordell said, “Uh-oh, see those people picketing? Trying to keep the neighborhood from falling in the trash can.”

The van coasted past the people on the sidewalk, white and black, some with children, who were marching in a circle that extended from a bar to the entrance of an upstairs hotel. Louis read a sign that said,
PROSTITUTES AND PIMPS GO AWAY
. Another one said,
HONK YOUR HORN IF YOU SUPPORT US
.

Ordell beeped a couple of times and waved. A prostitute in white boots and hot pants waved back. There were prostitutes standing around watching, making comments, and a blue-and-white Detroit police cruiser parked at the curb. Most of the signs, Louis noticed, said,
SEE AND TELL
.

Ordell said he liked the one,
GO HOME TO YOUR WIFE
. He said, “If she was any good, the man wouldn't come down here.”

Louis didn't understand the
SEE AND TELL
signs or the license numbers, it looked like, painted on a couple of other signs.

“That's the Johns' numbers,” Ordell said. “Man stops his car to pick up a whore they write it down. Then the TV news man comes and takes pictures and the John's license number appears on the six o'clock news. How'd you like that, you're sitting home with mama and the kids? ‘Hey dad, ain't that our car license?' Everybody's protesting. The other
day I see these two ugly chicks look like pull-out guards with the Lions. I mean ugly, got these little halter outfits on, their tits hanging way down, they're walking along with a sign says,
‘Lesbians Are Good Mothers.'
One's got this little kid. She's holding his hand, he's trying to get away to kick some beer cans. The little kid not knowing shit what he's into.”

“Well, I've seen whores,” Louis said. “What else you got, some muggings?”

“The whores're part of what I want to show you,” Ordell said. “Be cool, Louis. You ain't got to be anywhere but with me.”

He showed Louis where you could buy liquor with food stamps. He showed him the second best place in town to buy fine grass.

Finally he showed Louis the apartment buildings, about ten of them scattered around on different streets in the Corridor, all of them big, worn-out-looking buildings, four and five stories, with names like
Clairmont
and
Balmoral
and
Carrolton
chiseled in stone above the entrance ways. Louis said, yeah? They didn't look any different than all the rest of the ratty looking places. Jesus, Louis said, how could people live around here? Louis hated dirt. He didn't hate real dirt, soil. He hated manufactured dirt, soot, and all the wrappers and empty bottles and crap in the doorways. Why
didn't the people who lived there bend over and pick up the crap?

“It's inside the apartments are different,” Ordell said. “These the ones the man bought and fixed up. I'll show you.”

He took Louis past an old Airstream house-trailer that was parked in front of an apartment house. The trailer was painted yellow with
DYNAMIC IMPROVEMENT COMPANY
lettered on the side, and in a smaller, fancy script,
Licensed Builders
.

“That's the man's company,” Ordell said. “Dynamic.”

“You're gonna tell me,” Louis said, “he got rich renovating apartments?”

“He got rich buying the apartments cheap, then improving them even cheaper with materials and appliances and what have you supplied by the Ordell Robbie take-it-and-get, man, delivery company. You following me? He gets them all fixed up, then rents them—not to the po' black folks and the people on welfare and the ones got strip-mined and fucked over and come up here from the Kentucky hollers, shit no—he rents them to the pimps and the ladies with the high asses you like.”

“So it's a business like any other business,” Louis said. “What's the big deal?”

Ordell turned left off Third Avenue at Willis, pulled over to the curb and parked so he could swivel around in his captain's chair and look directly
at Louis and see the whores in front of the Willis Show Bar.

“The deal—all these colorful people pay him in cash. You understand?”

“I guess they would,” Louis said.

“Start multiplying,” Ordell said. “He's got twelve buildings I know of, average thirty units each, two to $300 a month rent. That's a gross of almost 100 grand every month.”

“And he's got taxes, overhead. You said he's buying buildings,” Louis said.

Ordell gave Louis a pained look. “You think he uses his own money? He mortgages the buildings, ten per cent down. Yeah, he makes some payments. But he takes his rent receipts in cash, declaring only about sixty per cent occupancy. You listening? And he takes out around fifty grand every month,
fifty
, and goes and hides it.”

“Where?”

Ordell grinned. “Gotcha, haven't I? He been doing this, we know of, two years.”

“Where's the money?”

“In a bank.”

“Well, for Christ sake, what good's that do us?”

“Bank's not in this country.”

“So what? A bank's a bank.” Louis stopped. “Wait a minute. He knows who you are, right? How you gonna work it?”

“He knows me, yeah, but just barely. One time I
met him and a couple times maybe he's seen me. But I don't—shit, you think I deal with
him
and he buys the merchandise himself? Shit no. Listen, he don't even have his name in the company, not on any paper the company's got.”

“You're talking about Dynamic.”

“Yeah, Dynamic Improvement. You saw it. Man name of Ray Shelby runs it. He's the front for the man, been working for him years.”

“Okay, he's putting money away—”

“And breaking the law, way he's doing it.”

“Okay,” Louis said, “you get next to the man and say excuse me, give me all your money or I start screaming and hollering. That's what you got in mind?”

Ordell shook his head, giving Louis a little grin. “Uh-unh, that ain't what I got in mind. Now I'm gonna take you some place else on the welcome home tour of the Motor City.”

“Where we going?”

“Got to wait and see. This is a surprise mystery tour.”

“Is it far?”

“About half hour.”

“I better take a leak first,” Louis said. He got out and crossed the sidewalk to the Willis Show Bar, the whores looking at his can in the tight pants and making comments.

Ordell was glad Louis was back from Texas. He liked Louis and liked working with him. They saw things the same and could bullshit each other with straight faces, not letting on, but each knowing he was being understood and appreciated.

When Louis came out he walked over to the van and looked in. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

“Guy come out behind me?”

Ordell looked over past the whores to the Willis Show Bar entrance. “No—yeah, big guy?” Ordell, hunched down, could see the man now in the doorway. “Got on a Bosalini?”

“That's him. I'm in the can,” Louis said, “he comes up, says hey, loan me some money. I say loan you some money? You need a buck for a drink, what? He says I want to borrow whatever you got in your wallet. Mother took $27.”

Ordell was still looking past Louis toward the big black guy in the Borsalino felt worn straight on his head with the brim up and the high round crown undented.

“Go on out in the street and call him some names.”

“I don't think it'd work,” Louis said.

“Try it,” Ordell said. “If it don't work, keep running.”

“Gimme a match,” Louis said. He was a little nervous.

Ordell watched him walk away from the van lighting his cigarette. Louis called out something to the big black guy and the whores looked over at him again. Now the big black guy said something, grinning, and the whores laughed and started juking around, feeling something about to happen. Ordell watched Louis begin to edge back now, throwing the cigarette away as the guy came toward him. Ordell heard Louis' words then, Louis calling the guy a tub of shit and, as the guy tried to come down on him, Louis faked a hook, feinting with it, and threw a jab hard into the guy's belly. Ordell put the van in
drive
. He watched Louis run past the windshield and then the big guy run past and make a cut and begin chasing Louis down the middle of Willis. Ordell brought the van out and started after them, creeping up on the big black guy who ran pretty well for a man his size. He had one hand up now holding his Borsalino on.