Motor City Burning

by Bill Morris

  “The initials H-D-H mean anything to you?” Octavia said as the saxophonist in the house broke into a wailing solo. People were whooping, urging him on.

  “Sorry.”

  “How bout Holland-Dozier-Holland?”

  At last they were getting back to Clyde. “Is that the name of Clyde’s law firm?”

  She laughed, shaking her head. “I forget you from down South. You still got a lot to learn.”

  Coming from her, the put-down carried a frightful sting. It was one thing for Clyde Holland to cluck his tongue, as he’d done on Opening Day at Tiger Stadium, and let Willie know that his busboy job branded him a hopeless chump. But it was something else for this woman to tell him he still had a lot to learn. He could feel his hurt shading instantly toward anger. “So what’s Holland-Dozier-Holland?”

  “You heard of the Four Tops? Or the Supremes?”

  “Of course.” God damn.

  “Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland’s the team wrote most of they hits—‘Bernadette,’ ‘Standing in the Shadows of Love,’ ‘Can’t Hurry Love,’ ‘I Hear a Symphony’—hundreds a songs.”

  Now Willie was remembering how Louis Dumars had introduced Clyde on Opening Day—as the famous barrister with the even more famous brothers. “So Eddie and Brian are Clyde’s brothers?”

  “Now you catchin on. Thas how I got my job, through Clyde. But he’s more than just they brother. He they lawyer too. Motown just sued H-D-H for four million dollars.”

  “Why?”

  “Claim they breached they contract cause they haven’t written no songs since last year. Can you imagine that? After all the money they done made for the company? Now Clyde’s fixin to counter-sue the company for twenty-two million. And Eddie and Brian’s gonna start they own record label, gonna call it Hot Wax.”

  There it was again, Willie thought, the oldest story in the book: black people sticking each other instead of sticking together and fighting the actual enemy. So much for the big happy Motown family.

  A car pulled up alongside the Austin-Healey. A radio crackled and a man’s voice said, “You comin, goin, or just gawkin?”

  Octavia and Willie looked to their left. It was a blue-and-white Detroit police car. The cop behind the wheel was black; the white cop in the passenger seat was wearing a big phony smile. He had bad teeth and bad skin.

  Then it hit Willie like a fist: it was the same cop who’d stopped him right after he and Wes unloaded the last of the guns on that Vietnam vet, Kindu.

  Within seconds of pulling away from Kindu’s apartment, Willie had seen the red light in his rearview mirror. His first feeling was relief—at least the Buick’s trunk was empty. But even as he pulled over to the curb, his relief melted. What if the cops had seen him come out of Kindu’s apartment building? Wes was still in there with a big bag of reefer, all that cash, and those AK-47s.

  In his Buick’s sideview mirror Willie had watched the cop approaching. Big white sonofabitch with a beer gut and a rolling swagger, thumbs hooked on his belt, eyes moving like ball bearings from the car to the street and back to the car. Willie had his driver’s license out before the cop’s face filled the window.

  “License and registration,” the cop had said. His fleshy lips were parted in a smile that carried no warmth. His teeth were yellow. He was so close Willie could smell him—coffee and greasy food on his breath, hair tonic, gun oil. It was a mechanical smell, not even human.

  While the cop studied the license, Willie noticed he was carrying a long black flashlight even though there was plenty of daylight left. In the rearview mirror he could see that the cop’s partner was still in the squad car, a good sign. The cop bent back down, eyes scouring the interior of the car. “You realize you failed to make a complete stop at the corner of Wildemere and Tuxedo, Mr. Bledsoe?”

  “Nosir, I didn’t realize that. I believe I came to a complete—”

  “You calling me a liar, boy?”

  Here we go, Willie thought, slowly placing both hands on the steering wheel. He heard a dog bark, a child’s laughter, and again he smelled the cop, that oily machine smell. Been in the Promised Land less than a week, he told himself, and here it was again—already, still, forever—the bowel-cramping terror he thought he’d left behind when he left the South. He almost wanted to laugh at his own stupidity.

  “Where’s that registration?”

  Willie removed his right hand from the steering wheel and reached slowly for the glove box. Just before his thumb pressed the button, his left ear caught fire and stars jumped off the windshield. Stunned, his head ringing, he looked to his left. The cop was grinning. He’d whacked the side of Willie’s head with the flashlight.

  “Don’t go pulling no gun on me now, honey,” he said, lips stretching to reveal those yellow teeth.

  “Nosir . . .” Willie opened the glove box and gave him the registration. While the cop studied it, Willie kept his left hand on the steering wheel, stretched his right arm across the back of the seat, in plain view. He was not going to rub the spot where the flashlight hit, give this pig any satisfaction. He saw that people had come out on their porches to watch the show. Most of them looked bored, a few looked angry. Someone shouted, “What the fuck he do wrong? Leave him be!”

  The cop ignored this and studied the registration even longer than he’d studied the license. “Tuskegee, Alabama, eh? You sure are a long ways from home.”

  “Yessir.” The ringing in his left ear was so bad it was hard to hear him.

  “What brings you to Detroit?”

  “I’m here . . .” And then the black man’s oldest reflex took over, that ageless survival instinct, the automatic gift to tell the white man the lie he wants to hear. “I’m here for a job interview, sir.”

  “Where at?” He was still studying the registration. His lips were moving.

  “At . . . General Motors.”

  “Doing what?”

  “They’ve got an opening in the Mail Room.”

  The peckerwood nodded at this, and Willie applauded himself for coming up with such a perfect lie, a lie this cop would love because it fit so neatly into his view of the world: black people were put on the planet to work in the Mail Room and the kitchen, to sing and dance, to cut the grass and polish the brass.

  The cop started copying the information from the driver’s license into a notebook. Willie assumed he was writing a ticket, but the cop handed back the license and registration, no ticket, and gave the Buick a long, admiring look. “Where’d you pick up a fine ride like this, boy?”

  “In Alabama, sir. Restored it myself.” He realized it was the second time he’d told this lie. No sense stopping now. “Picked it up in a junkyard for twenty-five doll—”

  “What’re you doing in this neighborhood?” He was still admiring the car. Willie realized he was seeing jealousy on the cop’s face.

  “I was on my way back from my job interview, sir.”

  “Back to where?”

  “My hotel.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Algiers, over on Woodward.”

  “The Algiers?” The cop gave out a single snort of laughter. “Buncha pimps and dope dealers and queers over there. You a homasexual, honey?”

  “Nosir.”

  “You like smokin dicks?”

  “Nosir.”

  “You a pimp? Only pimps drive cars painted like pussy.”

  “Nosir, I’m not a pimp.”

  “Well, you’ll fit right in at the Algiers anyway. What you got in the trunk?”

  “Nothing, sir.” The ringing was dying, but now the side of Willie’s head was beginning to throb. He could see in the rearview mirror that the other cop, another white guy, was out of the squad car now, hands folded on its roof. “I’d be happy to open the trunk for you—”

  “What were you doing in that apartment building three blocks back?”

  Willie managed to sound calm. “I was . . . looking for an apartment, sir. A permanent place to live. They h
ave a vacancy on the third floor.”

  “You buy any dope while you was in there?”

  “Nosir, I don’t do drugs.”

  “Don’t lie to me, boy!”

  This was obviously for the benefit of the people who were now crowding the nearby porches. A few had spilled down to the sidewalk, children mostly. So this was a Motown spectator sport. The cop studied his audience, nice and slow, not in any hurry. He was enjoying himself. Willie felt ashamed for allowing this fat white cop to humiliate him in front of these people.

  The cop said, “All right, boy, I’m going to do you a big favor and give you a warning this time. But don’t go running any more stop signs.”

  “Nosir.”

  “And don’t go giving your money to those dope dealers and hookers at the Algiers, you hear me?” He was smiling again, pleased with his wit.

  “Yessir, I hear you.”

  The smile vanished. “Now gitcher ugly black ass outta my sight.”

  By the time he got back to the Algiers Motel, Willie had come to the realization that he was capable of killing that fat white cop. He wanted to kill him. He also realized this was precisely what The Man wanted him to want. He drives you to murder so he can turn around and kill you dead for allowing yourself to be driven.

  Now he heard Octavia saying to the cop, “We was just leavin, officer.” She was giving him a big phony smile of her own. “I work for Mr. Gordy.”

  “That a fact,” the white cop said. He leaned forward to get a better look at the passenger inside the sports car. Willie stared straight ahead. His heart was going like a jackhammer. The white cop said, “And what all do you do for Mr. Gordy?”

  “Answer the phones. Type. Lick envelopes.”

  “I bet that ain’t all you lick.”

  The black cop said something sharp to his partner. Willie was still staring straight ahead. His heart was going so fast it actually hurt.

  Octavia bristled. “What the hell is that suppose to—”

  “He didn’t mean nothin, ma’am,” the black cop said. “If you’re leavin, you should go ahead and leave. Right now.”

  Willie exhaled as Octavia fired the engine and dropped the car into gear and eased away from the curb. He kept looking over his shoulder until he was satisfied the cops weren’t following. He told Octavia to take a left on Hamilton, the quickest way to his apartment.

  “That motherfucker,” she muttered, lighting another cigarette. “That fee-simple honky motherfucker. . . .”

  They didn’t speak as they passed over the Lodge Freeway, then took a right on Pallister. Willie watched the Larrow Arms slide by, wondered which window belonged to Mizz Armstrong. When Octavia pulled up in front of his place, she left the engine running and glanced up at the building. “So this where you stay?”

  “This is it.”

  “Ain’t much to look at.”

  “No, but it’s clean. And cheap.”

  “What happened to that burnt-up place next door?”

  “The riot happened.”

  “Damn, you was right in the middle of it, wasn’t you?”

  “You got no idea.” Now that, he thought, reaching for the door handle, is the truest thing I’ve said all day.

  She touched his knee. “You okay, Willie?”

  “I’m fine as wine. Why?”

  “You acted like you seen a ghost when them po-lice pulled up.”

  “Something like that.”

  “What is it?”

  “I know that white cop.”

  “Where from?”

  “Some other time,” he said, even though he had already decided there wasn’t going to be another time.

  “You in some kinda trouble with the po-lice?”

  “A hick like me?” He tried to laugh as he climbed out of the car. He was angry at himself for having such thin skin, but he couldn’t help it. He was fed up with being talked down to by all these smug northern niggers who hadn’t seen a fraction of the things he’d seen. They were the ones who still had a lot to learn, and in that moment he made a vow that he would teach them.

  “Thanks for lettin me run my mouth, Willie. I really needed that. Maybe we’ll go for a ride again next Sunday.”

  “May be.”

  “And next time you do the talkin.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “You think you might call me sometime? I’d love to hear more a your stories bout Mississippi.”

  “Sure.”

  She was smiling again as she wrote her phone number on a matchbook. “You promise you’ll call?”

  “I promise.”

  “I’m usually home by nine in the evening, but don’t call too late. I go to bed early. They work us like dogs.” She handed him the matchbook and dropped the car into gear. It squealed away from the curb, leaving behind nothing but a smudge of burnt rubber and a long blue ribbon of smoke.

  He didn’t even wave goodbye because just then he saw a blue-and-white making the turn onto Pallister by the Larrow Arms. The last thing he wanted to do was let that honky cop find out where he stayed.

  It would never end, he thought as he hurried up the front steps and let himself into the building. At least his Buick had a fresh coat of Earl Scheib’s finest black paint and tomorrow, if all went well at Murphy’s, it would disappear once and for all.

  He hugged the wall in the foyer while the cop car eased past. His heart was going like a jackhammer again, and it didn’t stop even after the cop car made a left onto Poe and disappeared.

  PART THREE

  WORLD CHAMPIONS

  18

  MONDAY MORNING AND CHICK MURPHY WAS IN HIS MURDEROUS mood. Blythe had tied on one of her fifty-megaton loads after the Tigers’ game Saturday night, insisting they stop at the club for dinner, then ordering unnecessary nightcaps, getting loud and sloppy, flirting with the help, even with some of the colored guys, for chrissakes. Then she refused to get out of the car when they got home. It was way past midnight when Chick finally wrestled her into bed.

  She still hadn’t emerged from her bedroom by noon on Sunday so he went back to Oakland Hills to hit some golf balls and take a swim. After lunch he wound up playing gin rummy in the men’s grill with a bunch of young huns from the G.M. Tech Center. They called themselves “stylists” but he thought they were a bunch of eggheads because they spoke a language he barely understood, sprinkled with big words like “co-efficient of drag.” They were all college boys—art students, at that—which meant they had no idea what it was like to stand out there at the corner of 9 Mile and Mack in all natures of Michigan weather, in sheets of snow and razor-toothed spring rains, under the egg-yolk August sun that turned the outdoors into a steam bath and, despite that weather, to stand out there under the snapping pennants and plaster a thousand-watt smile on your face and tell lies until you sold a fucking car, preferably a plush new fully loaded Buick, to some poor sap who could no more afford it than he could afford a trip to the moon. That was where G.M.A.C. came in—Alfred Sloan’s genius idea that you could amp up sales and profits by lending money to your customers and then charging them a grand-larceny interest rate. Most of those art school boys from the Tech Center didn’t even know what G.M.A.C. stood for—that to the bluesuits on West Grand Boulevard the initials meant General Motors Acceptance Corporation, while to trench warriors like Chick Murphy they meant Give Me A Chance.

  His joyless Sunday at the club ended late in the afternoon when someone in the men’s grill switched the TV from the PGA golf tournament to the Olympics in Mexico City. When the American national anthem started playing, Chick looked up from his cards and saw three men on the awards stand with medals draped around their necks. Suddenly two of the men, Americans, both Negroes, bowed their heads and raised their gloved fists in the black-power salute. Chick said, “What the fuck . . .” and felt himself rising from his chair, felt his right hand groping for the nearest object, which was an empty Michelob bottle. Chick Murphy, a former Marine, had lost his left pinkie to frostbite during the savag
e fighting at Chosin Reservoir in Korea, and he loved his country. Without thinking, he hurled the beer bottle at the TV screen. There was an explosion, a shower of glass, smoke. Then he was storming out of the room to applause and laughter and howling. The black waiters and busboys lounging by the door got the hell out of his way.

  So by the time he walked out his front door on Monday morning he was locked into his murderous mood. It got worse when he noticed a pair of Blythe’s high heels under a rose bush by the driveway. Rain had ruined them, a pair of sixty-fucking-dollar burgundy suede pumps from Saks. Why had she left a pair of expensive shoes out in the rain?

  The only thing that lifted Chick’s spirits on that gummy Monday morning was the sound of his radio spot coming out of the Electra’s dashboard as he cut across the northern suburbs toward the dealership:

  Stay on the right track

  To 9 Mile and Mack.

  A Chick Murphy Buick’s gonna

  Make your money back.

  Ole Chick Murphy’s got some buyers

  BUYERS!

  Who come from many miles a-waaaaaaay.

  You’ll save yourself a lot of dollars

  DOLLARS!

  By driving out his way to-daaaaaaay!

  Hearing that radio spot never failed to give Chick a boost. He considered it a work of genius. He wrote the lyrics himself on an Oakland Hills cocktail napkin late one Sunday night after a Lions football game and half a dozen brain dimmers. Edgar Hudson, the waiter with the bottomless baritone and the quick laugh, had helped with the tune. The guy had a great singing voice. The jingle was catchy and unforgettable, destined to stay with you like a gold-digging wife. Chick had a hunch it had sold more Buicks than all the lies he’d ever told at the corner of 9 Mile and Mack.

  As he pulled onto the lot now, his commercial gave way to the familiar voice of J.P. McCarthy, who was talking with Mickey Stanley about the double Stanley hit in the bottom of the ninth yesterday that brought the Tigers from behind—again—to beat the Indians. This good news did nothing to dispel Chick’s mood. It was his very best car-selling mood, a blend of cold rage and false bravado that told him the world owed it to him to buy a truckload of Buicks. He once sold thirteen cars in a single day while in his murderous mood. Those customers didn’t have a prayer.