“You need new men,” I said.
“You take what’s available when you’re starting out. Hendriks isn’t here. The Detroit offices are just a blind to pacify the mayor. Mr. Marianne and the other executives put in three or four hours a week here and spend the rest of their time at the downriver plant.”
I said, “Hendriks was here when I called this morning.”
“Christine probably rerouted the call. Unless they recognize your name the secretaries are programmed to say they’re unavailable. You’d be surprised how many crank calls a fledgling automaker gets. Every backyard crackpot thinks he’s solved perpetual motion.”
“How do I get into the plant?”
“The big man stays home, right?”
DeVries opened his mouth. I nudged his ankle with a toe. It was like kicking a goal post. “I work solo. Today was just a coincidence.”
Piero thought about it. “Use my name. If I take an angry call from downriver you didn’t get it from me.”
“Thanks.”
“Save it. We needed the field test. There are bugs to be worked out; two in particular.”
“Don’t be too tough on them. The state just pulled the cork on my client after twenty years. He’s eager.”
“I’d hate to see him excited.”
On the sidewalk in front of the bank building I asked DeVries how much play there was in his parole officer.
“Some. He got me a job behind the bottle counter at Kroger’s starting Monday. I gets to quit if they whips me.”
“Good. I’m thirsty.”
We took a back table in the Pontchartrain bar. No one was at the piano and we shared the place with a pair of businessmen on the stools and a bald bartender in a red jacket. He brought us two beers and ghosted off. It was as cool as a mineshaft in there.
“It’s him okay.” DeVries inhaled half the contents of his glass and set it down. “He had this way of grinning in some other direction when he was talking, like he was laughing at you. I seen it again this morning. He’s the one set me up to fire that place.”
“Wonder what happened to the blonde?”
“Blowed away on a cloud of psychedelic shit, probably. Wasn’t her behind the desk up there. Too young.”
“I got Hendriks on the telephone this morning. He says he never heard of you.”
“I bet that knocked you flat on your ass.”
“He says he was studying in England at the time of the riots. It’s something that can be checked.”
“Check it?”
“I will. Point is he had an answer for everything.”
“Nobody that didn’t do nothing has an answer for everything.”
I dissected that, then nodded. “It bothered me too. Also he got your name wrong and I didn’t like that. It was like he had his lines down cold.”
“Squeeze the son of a bitch.”
“Couple of other things to run out first. I’ve got a line on the cop who arrested you and I found out what ‘redstick ranger’ means.”
“That’s what Hank Wakely said the dude said when they was fixing to stop us on the road.”
“Firemen’s jargon. Did Hendriks or whoever he was have anything to do with the fire department in your time?”
“Search me. Be funny, though, wouldn’t it?”
“Hysterical. That’s the trouble with the detective business. The answers ask their own questions.”
“What’d the cop say?”
“I haven’t been able to get him yet. I figure he’ll have more to contribute about the case than I can get from either downtown or the newspapers. Once they’ve got a suspect in custody they don’t bother reporting all the loose ends. But they remember them. I hope.”
“Wrong tree,” he said. “Hendriks’ the one we want to work on. He’s got the money.”
I drank some beer. “You’re paying me to do the digging. Whatever I churn up won’t help you if you break somebody’s neck. Didn’t prison teach you anything besides license plates?”
“I know. I just seen him on TV and couldn’t think of nothing else. Guess I’m glad you come in when you did.”
“You need to blow it off.”
“What I need’s a woman. Saltpeter’s wearing off.”
I gave him five twenties. “I cashed your check this morning. Look at their teeth first. If they don’t take care of them they’re just as careless other places. How long’s it been since you played ball?”
“Gave it up nine years ago. Wasn’t no point. It was like playing with kids and it only made me think what I missed out on.”
“You can only sing that song so long.”
“I sung it till I don’t feel it no more. Hell, I’d be retired now anyway. Just another jock selling subscriptions to Sports Illustrated.”
“Take yourself over to the Y and shoot a few hundred baskets. Even if it doesn’t make you feel better, you’ll be too tired to think about taking away people’s guns and baseball bats.”
“I’m too dark for the Y. They can’t see me in them dim lights.”
“That’s changed. Not as fast as the world, but then we’re all running to catch up. Why should you be any different?”
“Maybe I’ll do it.”
“Just watch your head on the hoops.” I started to leave money for the beers. He held up a palm the size of a skillet and laid down a five-spot.
“Beer’s went up.” He stood. “Where’d you hear that about teeth?”
“The army.”
“Someone told it to me my first week in slam. Think thev’s anything to it?”
“Nothing else I heard in the army was, except keep your butt down and never volunteer. But it’s a comfort.”
13
NEARING ROMULUS A DC-8 bellying into Detroit Metropolitan Airport dragged its shadow over the Renault, engines shrieking. The slipstream tugged the little car toward the expressway median and the vibration loosened screws in the dash and popped open the glove compartment. When I parked and got out I was surprised not to find skid marks on the roof.
Floyd Orlander, late of the Detroit Police Department, lived in a well-kept tract built bang at the end of a runway, separated from the airport grounds by a thousand feet of cyclone fence and several miles of community optimism. The first time I rang the bell another jet taking off straight over the house swallowed every sound in the neighborhood. No one answered the second time either, although it was in comparative silence. I wondered if the entire household was deaf. I tried knocking.
A minute later the door opened on a gray-haired woman built for comfort in a green print dress and rhinestone glasses with blue lenses, who showed me a nice set of false teeth and said, “Did you ring before? Everyone’s out back.”
“I tried calling earlier, but no one answered,” I said. “Is this the Orlander residence?”
“I’m Mrs. Orlander. If you’re from the city, we’re not selling. We like it here, noise and all.”
“I’m not from the city. My name’s Walker. I’d like to talk to Mr. Orlander about an old police case he worked on.”
“Land, he’s been retired twelve years. It must be old.”
“Is he at home?”
She put her fingers in her ears. It looked like a stall. I asked the question again, raising my voice. Then a jet I hadn’t even heard winding up shattered the sound barrier directly overhead. The ka-thump boxed my ears and rattled crockery in the house.
“Land, that one was low,” she said, taking her fingers out. “There’s an ordinance against it, but we’ll all be dead by the time they hear about it from the FAA. Are you all right, young man?”
I was reading her lips. “How did you know it was coming?”
“I’d explain, but you’d have to have lived here ten years to understand. Follow me, please.”
There were books and a cabinet TV in the living room and glass cabinets full of knickknacks and china in the dining room and built-in appliances in the kitchen. Everything was spaced out and lashed down as tightly as aboard
ship. The walls were bare of pictures.
“I bet taxes are low hereabouts,” I said.
“Not low enough. But lower than other places.” She stepped through the screen door in back and held it for me.
The backyard bunted up against the cyclone fence with white pickets on either side. On the square of lawn, a yellow-headed boy and girl of about four were digging holes in a sandbox and throwing the sand out onto the grass. They were twins, dressed identically in red shorts and Smurf Tshirts and barefoot. A heavy big man sat watching them in a canvas deck chair with a glass in his hand. He, too, was barefoot and wore a shirt with parrots on it and khaki shorts and one of those wide-brimmed straw hats with a green plastic eyeshade that gave his face a bilious cast. The face was wide and square and so were his hands and feet. A pitcher of ice and brown liquid stood at his elbow on a pedestal table under a striped umbrella.
“Children, the grass,” said Mrs. Orlander.
“Hell with the grass,” the man said. “They’re my grandkids. What about that beer?”
“Drink your tea. You know what the doctor said.”
“Not as good as you do, goddamn it.”
The girl stopped digging. “Grampa said G.D.”
“Watch your language, Floyd.”
“Yes, Dottie.”
“This is Mr. Walker. He wants to talk to you about something you worked on.”
He started, took off his hat, and looked up at me. The brim had blocked his view. His hair had been red, but had faded to a rinsed-out pink, and was cropped so short he would have looked bald from a distance. He had faded blue eyes and blotched skin and one of those faces that came either with age or from both ends of a lot of beer bottles. He wasn’t that old. After a long look he hung the hat on the arm of his chair and drained his glass.
“You’re since my time. Most of you are, I guess. Changing mayors put a lot of good men back out on the street.”
“I’m not with the department.” I gave him one of my cards. “You worked the DeVries arson case, right?”
“You mean the robbery.” He read the card and floated it in a puddle of iced tea on the table.
“That’s what I wanted to talk about. He may be innocent.”
There was a chaise longue on the other side of the table. Mrs. Orlander took a Ladies’ Home Journal off the flowered cushion, stretched out, and began turning pages. Orlander refilled his glass from the pitcher. “He after a new trial?”
“He’s out.”
“Then what’s the point?”
I played it straight up. “He thinks he knows who pulled off the robbery. If he’s right he wants the money.”
“That’s fair. If he was innocent, which he ain’t.”
“If he isn’t it will come out. I don’t work so well with whitewash. My thinking is you could tell me lots about the robbery that isn’t on record. At the very least it might turn Davy Jackson’s killer.”
“Who told you about that?”
“Jackson’s parents. You don’t think DeVries killed him or you’d have charged him with first-degree murder at the time.”
“Not charging him and not thinking he did it don’t even go to the same school.”
“Do you think he did it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He poured tea into his mouth and swallowed it. “Throwing up smoke to cover a heist is an important job. The guy you give it to can’t be bothered with pulling off a hit besides. The rest of it was planned too tight. They wouldn’t make that mistake. Two guys hit the truck, Jackson and one other. The money wasn’t on Jackson so his buddy capped him during the fade and took off with it. DeVries going down meant he didn’t have to split with nobody.”
“Wouldn’t he be worried about DeVries talking?”
“At that particular time a black perp would of went to the chair before he’d give up another black to the white man’s po-lice.” He whined the last word like Willie Best.
“Thin.”
“You had to be there. You had to see it. Nothing I ever heard or read told it like it was. We had to tell our kids they couldn’t play with their black friends. Had to tell them it wasn’t the kids we were worried about. It was their parents.”
“The robbers wore stocking masks and gloves. How do you know the one that got away was black?”
“Salt and pepper? Not that week.”
A jet canted in for a landing over the fence, making conversation impossible for a minute. The boy and girl went on digging in the sand and never looked up.
“When did you close the case?” I asked when the roar had faded.
“It was still open last I knew. But the snitches didn’t know nothing and the money never turned up and we figured it got laundered someplace, Mexico or someplace. You can only spend so much time on a thing, and we had a city to put back together. Did a rotten job of it too.”
“What about a driver? They wouldn’t have left the getaway car empty with all hell breaking loose.”
“Not so much as a treadmark. Investigating conditions weren’t ideal. Flak jackets and auto-rifles, quick and dirty, get in and out with your ass and whatever you can pick up running.”
“The driver might have been a woman,” I said. “ The man DeVries suspects hung out with a hippie blonde.”
“Age of Aquarius. Peace and love. Shit.”
“Floyd.” Mrs. Orlander didn’t look up from her magazine.
“Yes, Dottie.”
“Who tipped them the armored car would be there?”
“If you got a look at the security in those outfits you’d bury your money in a Mason jar. We couldn’t turn an inside man.”
“Swell.”
“Wish I could remember more,” he said, “but not too bad. DeVries was guilty as hell and we won’t count Jackson. Five hundred was a good average in my day.”
“How’s your partner’s memory?”
“Barney Drake? I heard he blew a vein in his head ten-twelve years ago. His daughter stuck him in a home in California or someplace. I bet they wash him every day and dress him up just like he was folks. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. I never worked with anyone so miserable in my life.”
“Why work with him at all?”
He spread the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and pointed at the web of flesh between them. “See that scar? Well, maybe you can’t so good anymore. Back in ’sixty-two this snitch we was questioning kind of hard behind the old Demosthenes Bar pulled a .45 and stuck it in Barney’s stomach and squeezed off. The punk just never carried, we weren’t ready for it. There wasn’t time to do anything but jam my hand into the action.
After that we sent the sorry snitch to Receiving to get his jaw wired. I saved Barney’s cookies that night.”
“Wouldn’t that make him loyal to you instead of the other way around?”
“Hell no, it made him even more miserable to be with. But you give a man back his life, you just naturally want to hang around and make sure he doesn’t throw it away. I guess he’s grateful out there in the Piss-Your-Pants Home for the Terminally Fucked in Pasadena or wherever it is. Sorry, Dottie.”
“You do the explaining when we send these children home swearing like muleskinners.”
He didn’t hear her. He was looking at the twins, and his thoughts were as clear as the welts on his face. I said, “If they’re raised right they won’t stick you in a place like that.”
“Five minutes alone with my department piece, that’s all I’ll ever ask them for.”
He put on his hat. It was a dismissal, but I wasn’t ready to leave the spot. The sun felt good on my stiff neck. “City looking to expand the airport?”
“Three years now. I’m the one standing in front of it. I bought this place out of my pension, cash on the barrelhead. First place we ever owned. They’ll meet my price or ’doze us both under.”
“What’s your price?”
“Sixty-five.”
“You might get it. In Detroit they’d just invoke em
inent domain and roll right over you.”
“It’s why I left. That it?”
I hesitated. “I’m curious about that shoot-out in Judge Lorenzo’s court. It’s not my business.”
“Was I really trying to hit him?”
“That’s the question.”
“That little pimp. You know what he’s doing now? Handling palimony suits for celebrity fags. I should of took aim.”
“I appreciate your time,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah. Good-bye.”
Mrs. Orlander started to get up, but I said I knew the way out. She showed me her dentures. Whatever she’d overheard was nothing on what she’d been hearing for decades. As I turned toward the house, a wrestling match started up in the sandbox. Orlander said if it didn’t stop right now he’d twist some heads off. The boy laughed.
14
IT WAS THE DAMNEDEST case, and knowing where to find the man I had been paid to look for was no help. It was like one of those game shows where they give you the answer and you have to come up with the question. I took the Edsel Ford eastbound into Detroit, eating cool air coming in through the windows and listening to the not-so-distant sound of Richard DeVries’s twenty-year fuse burning low. It sounded just like a big black jet waiting its turn at the runway in Floyd Orlander’s backyard.
Exiting the expressway, I found myself pointed south and kept going. That way lay knowledge. Most of what little I knew about the case had revealed itself while I was moving in that direction. It was a deal more tidy than sacrificing farm animals.
Downriver is a mystical name to most Detroiters, as the New World was to Europeans in the sixteenth century; a place where dragons drank the blood of mariners and pretty women sat in their underwear on rocks, plucking at lyres and waiting for ships to sail too close. Geographically it refers to a collection of bedroom communities strung out south of the city on the U.S. side of the international border, factory towns with dirty air and clean streets protected by lamps and the cyclops eye of the Neighborhood Watch. Some of the communities have French names to remind their neighbor to the north of the explorers who brought the world to the bend in the river that the Indians called the Crooked Way. But it’s a wasted effort, because the city is barely aware of its satellites, and everything it doesn’t understand it calls downriver.
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