Downriver (7 page)

I’d made a purchase at an all-night liquor store where an alert salesclerk operated the cash register one-handed, keeping the other out of sight under the drawer. I pulled the bottle out of the bag and corrupted the innocence of a clean glass in the kitchen, wound the Seth Thomas in the living room, put on something hoarse and smoky by Anita O’Day, and sat down in front of the speakers to wait for the mellow. Some men need a drink to wind down after a lively couple of days. I get along just fine on music and a drink.

Two issues of the
News
had been waiting for me on the doorstep. I’d forgotten to suspend delivery, which was why my would-be burglar had thought the place worth a try. That day’s, Thursday’s, had a front-page piece on Marianne Motors, which was seldom absent from the headlines now that production had begun on the Stiletto, a gunmetal sportabout designed for middle-aging men and women for whom the Corvette was too much car. An insert in the photograph that ran with the article showed the vehicle parked in the middle of a barren proving ground with gull wings raised, looking like a fiberglass bird of prey. The main picture featured a grinning Timothy Marianne accepting a check from a heavy dark-suited bald man who looked like he’d rather be anyplace else. The caption identified him as Hector Stutch, president and chairman of the board of Stutch Petrochemicals and one of the grandsons of Leland Stutch, who in 1901 had mounted an internal combustion engine on a carriage body in his father’s barn and thirty years later sold the Stutch Motor Corporation to General Motors for eighty-five million Depression dollars. The Commodore, as old Leland had been known since retooling to produce minesweepers for the navy during the First World War, was reported in good health and semiretirement as Hector’s consultant in the family mansion in Grosse Pointe, having observed his one hundredth birthday in February of that year. The photograph had been taken to commemorate Stutch Petrochemicals’ investment of seven hundred and fifty million dollars in Marianne Motors.

The check was a dummy. Barons the likes of Stutch and Marianne didn’t get ink on their hands or stand in line at the bank. Someone who made twenty thousand a year tapped some keys and a number followed by a flock of zeroes flew through the ether from one corporate account into another. But that didn’t make as good a picture.

The story that accompanied it was more of the same. With his customary flamboyance Marianne had acquired a bankrupt tractor plant downriver, razed most of it, put up a new building, and installed state-of-the-art equipment at a cost far exceeding what would have been needed to start from scratch. This had drawn plenty of criticism from the rest of the industry, but the local economy had benefited from the increased demand for labor and the energetic new magnate was a popular speaker on the chicken-and-peas circuit. He had used his considerable personal charm to wangle large investments at home and abroad, although none was as big as Stutch’s. The reclusive Commodore was an unknown factor because of his age, but his grandsons were careful businessmen and speculation ran high that the financial vote of confidence would loosen a great many purse strings on Wall Street. In workingmen’s bars throughout Detroit and its suburbs the patrons were singing “All day, all night, Marianne,” referring to production at the Stiletto plant.

The media had fallen in love with him, the way they will with good-looking men who speak well and spend a lot of money and glitter when they walk. He had been consulted on everything from presidential candidacy to his favorite Christmas carol and always offered up something quotable that would offend nobody the public didn’t want offended. Those editorialists and market analysts who counseled caution were trampled under the same stampede that had swept several local mediocre boxers and clownish ballplayers toward their inevitable Waterloos. It played hell with your faith in the basic wisdom of mankind.

I turned to the box scores to see where the Tigers stood, then read the funnies and my horoscope. I was warned to approach new ventures warily. I bought myself a wary second drink and warily flipped the record on the turntable. When that side was finished I tried some wary TV. It was getting thin by that time.

I caught the last twenty minutes of a colorized version of
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
— Spencer Tracy had blue eyes and a complexion like Deanna Durbin’s —and then the newsbreak came on just before sign-off. Someone had blown up a restaurant in Beirut and so far three groups had claimed credit for the explosion. The President had caught a fish while on vacation. Local news was dominated by the press conference following the announcement of the Stutch deal with Marianne Motors. Wonder Boy himself broke the news, fielded a few hyper questions from the reporters, then turned the floor over to Alfred Hendriks, his new general manager, and strode out of the room, stopping at the door to look back and wave before passing through it. He had no bodyguards that I could spot. Which might mean that he had some very good bodyguards. In any case I wasn’t paying too much attention to Marianne.

The reason for that was Alfred Hendriks. The slim handsome dark man who had taken his employer’s place at the podium had aged slightly, but he was the same man who had been photographed with the automaker at the time the contract was signed with the UAW; the same man, according to Richard DeVries, who had handed DeVries a Molotov cocktail to cover for an armored car robbery during the worst race riots in the city’s history.

I
GOT UP
the next morning with a stiff neck, some kind of delayed reaction to the dip in Lake Superior. I waggled it, bombarded it under the shower head, took a couple of aspirins, and rubbed in some cream from a tube that smelled like Stillman’s Gym. After a cup of coffee and a radio weather report calling for unseasonably high temperatures I put on the blue summerweight and knotted a red silk tie that looked cool and nonabrasive to my freshly shaved throat. By then my neck had frozen up tighter than a fence post. Backing the Renault out of the garage was one for Torquemada.

My office mail was fanned out under the slot in the door with
A. WALKER INVESTIGATIONS
lettered on the glass. I read the envelopes on my way through the waiting room and dumped them into the wastebasket in the private office. I used the duster on the desk and telephone, called my service to tell them I was in the traces, then looked up a number in the metropolitan directory, and used the telephone again.

“Marianne Motors, executive offices.” One of those quality-controlled female voices.

“Alfred Hendriks, please.”

“One moment.”

I listened to eight bars of the Marianne Motors advertising jingle.

“Mr. Hendriks’ office.” This one had been inspected even more closely.

“May I speak to Mr. Hendriks?”

“Who is calling?”

“Amos Walker.”

“Hold, please.”

Second chorus.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hendriks is in a meeting. May I take a message?”

I said no and told her good-bye. I lit a cigarette and smoked half of it. Then I ran the gauntlet again. I knew the jingle by heart now.

“Mr. Hendriks’ office.”

I deepened my voice a notch. “This is Adolf Wentz, vice president in Investments at Stutch Petrochemicals. We’ve run into a hitch and I need to discuss it with Mr. Hendriks.”

“One moment, Mr. Wentz.”

The jingle was cut off in mid-lyric. “What sort of hitch?”

This was a man’s voice, smoothly blended, but not smoothly enough to overcome the wheatfields in it; a toned-down Henry Fonda. “Mr. Hendriks?”

“What sort of hitch, Mr. Wentz?”

“Sort of none,” I said. “Adolf Wentz was my algebra teacher in high school. Those German names cut through a lot. My name’s Walker. I own a pocket comb with
STUTCH PETROCHEMICALS
stamped on it, but that’s my only connection with the firm.”

“If this is some kind of sales gimmick I want the name of your employer.” There was no change in his tone. Those were the dangerous ones. Give me a yeller anytime.

“I’m a private investigator working for Richard DeVries. Maybe you remember the name.”

“I meet a lot of people. You’d better give me a hint. A quick one.”

“Twenty years ago, during the riots. You’d remember him. He’s a whole lot bigger than a breadbox.”

“Sorry, Walker. I was in England at the time of the riots, studying at Cambridge on the exchange program.”

“He says it was Wayne State.”

“I was at Wayne State for a year. The wrong year for the riots. I took my accounting degree from Michigan.”

“Law, he said.”

“Perish the thought. Your Mr. DeSoto is mistaken, Walker. Don’t bother me again.”

I listened to the dial tone for a moment, then cradled the receiver. Rubbed my rigid neck.

He shouldn’t have said DeSoto. Either you remember a simple name like DeVries or you plain forget it. You don’t get it wrong unless you try. Or maybe you do. There are just no rules for that sort of thing, only a grumbling in the guts, and I had that.

I decided to let it grumble for a while and got out my pocket notebook where I’d scratched down the information DeVries had fed me about Davy Jackson’s family. If any of the slain armored car robber’s relatives were still in the area and had a telephone I’d find them in the directory. The ex-convict was right about one thing: Twenty years isn’t enough time to go from the smell of cooked cabbage in the hallway to an unlisted number. Not in that place, and not without a gun.

Davy’s parents’ names were Cleveland J. and Emmaline Jackson. They were together the last DeVries knew, but his knowledge had been left standing in a jar for two decades. There were no entries under either name, but I made a list of Jacksons with the initial C. or E. and one C. J. and started dialing. I got two no-answers, a busy signal, a man with a Tennessee drawl as thick as Graceland who had a cousin named Davy alive and kicking down Murfreesboro way, and two offers not to be alone Saturday night. One of them was from a man named Calvin.

I tried the busy line again. It belonged to C. J. Jackson.

“You get ’er straightened out?”

A man’s voice, very slow and scratchy, like a wornout tape. I said, “Get who straightened out?”

“Ain’t you fambly service?”

“Not today.”

“Hell. I been all morning trying to scare up a pair of crutches for the wife. Dog-damn computer never heard of us, and we been with Welfare since ’sixty-two. Sure you ain’t fambly service?”

“Sorry.”

“Hell. You think we was fixing to sell them crutches and run off to Mexico.”

“Are you Cleveland J. Jackson?”

“Who wants him?”

“Was Davy Jackson your son?”

In the quiet on his end I heard the electronic laughter of a TV situation comedy rerun turned down low. “You a reporter?”

“No.”

“ ’Cause one called here once, said he was doing a piece on the riots. Said he wanted to talk to the relatives of all the victims that was still living in Detroit. I told him to go do it up a rope. He went ahead and wrote the story anyway. You do that I’ll kill you. I got a gun.”

“My name’s Walker. Richard DeVries hired me to investigate the robbery.”

“He in jail.”

“He’s out.”

“Dog-damn.”

I couldn’t read him. He would have had years of practice at not being read. I said, “He says he didn’t do it. He wants me to find the ones who did.”

“Them ’Guards seen him fire that place.”

“He admits to that. It’s the robbery he wants me to find out about.” I waited. The droid audience on his TV was becoming hysterical. I asked him finally if I could come out and talk.

“Our boy Davy was no good,” he said. “I done told his mother but she didn’t hear it. He dead, what I want to talk about him for?”

“I think if you didn’t want to we wouldn’t still be talking now.”

“I ain’t got the time. I got this crutch thing to chew over.”

I lined up my notebook with the edges of the desk blotter. “How tall is Mrs. Jackson?”

Heat was rising in thick greasy sheets from the pavement in front of the Jacksons’ house when I curbed the Renault between a gypsy van missing its left front fender and an Opel station wagon with Saran Wrap taped over an empty window. Mine was the only car on the street with all its equipment. As I was getting out with the aluminum crutches I’d bought at a hospital supply house on Michigan, a reedy lad of fifteen or sixteen separated himself from a gang brawling over a soccer ball in a burned-out lot on the corner and slithered over. Some of the shine went out of his eyes when I stood up and tucked the crutches under one arm.

“Watch your car for five bucks,” he said. “They been shooting out headlights in this neighborhood.”

I onced him over. He was almost my height but forty pounds lighter, in khaki pants and a stained nylon mesh football jersey with the hem hanging to his thighs. He was wearing the skinhead cut that had replaced the Afro while I was looking in some other direction. I turned to slam the car door and grasped his belt through the jersey and pulled him in close, shoving the padded armpieces of the crutches under his nose and bending his head back. He struggled, but his neck creaked and he stopped. There was pink fog in the whites of his eyes.

“Give it over,” I said.

It took a little more pressure from the crutches, but after a second he reached behind his back and came out with an air pistol with a heavy plastic stock rigged to look like an auto mag. I leaned the crutches against the car and accepted the pistol. Then I let go of his belt.

“That cost fourteen bucks and change.”

“You talk like you bought it.” I stuck it under my waistband, giving him a hinge at the butt of the Smith just before I refastened my coat. “If I’ve still got headlamps when I come out you get it back. Don’t bother blowing off steam anyplace else. The car’s rented.”

He left me. Halfway back to the empty lot he unbuckled his belt and pulled down his pants and bent over. I fingered the grip of the air pistol, then decided against it. I was mellowing.

T
HE NEIGHBORHOOD HAD
been decent before the city started turning streets with bad reputations into parks and expressways, which was like cutting into a malignant but dormant mole and releasing carcinogens throughout the system. The slide would have begun with occasional B-and-E’s and ended with old people crossing the street to avoid knots of cigarette-sucking youths blocking the sidewalk. In a year or so the place would be a park or an expressway and it would be another neighborhood’s turn in the box.