King of the Corner (6 page)

It was scarcely the fault of the family in those less cautious times that a victim of hard luck, mistaken for a straggling browser, showed Mrs. MacGryff an old black revolver while she was counting the profits and made off with them.

The police were sympathetic, but explained that the bandit had as like as not already departed Detroit on the same freight train he had come in on. The money was irretrievable.

This is one MacGryff story with a happy ending, however.

On the following Saturday they held another sale; and while the proceeds from Horace’s cherished shaker collection fell somewhat short of the previous weekend’s total, they were more than adequate to treat parents and children all to a season in the bleachers.

“You should have seen the look on Horace’s face when he found out,” reminisces the widow. “I don’t mind telling you I was so happy I cried right along with him.”

(to be continued)

P
ETER
Y. K
UBITSKI,
D
OC’S
parole officer, was one of these comfortable avuncular types in a mohair jacket that had worn to fit his angular construction and a nubby knitted tie on a blue button-down shirt. His hair, receding on either side of the widow’s peak, was salt-and-pepper and fluffed out at the temples and he had a long pale face and one of those noses that looked as if he had slept on it wrong; when he put on his reading glasses he had to come around a corner. A pair of tiny blue-black eyes like gooseberries glittered under the moss cliff of his brows. Doc disliked him on sight.

His office, on the third floor of Detroit Police Headquarters at 1300 Beaubien, was small and overheated and smelled of the rotting bindings of social science books in glass cases and apple-scented pipe tobacco, Doc’s least favorite kind. Kubitski had all the irritating habits of a pipe smoker: the constant fussing with the charred blob of brier, charging and recharging and tamping and lighting and relighting, the browsing in the dilapidated leather pouch, the business of pointing the stem at his visitor when he was making an observation and then biting down on it as if stamping the whole thing in granite. Sparky Anderson smoked a pipe too, and Doc had never gotten on with the aging Tigers manager.

Kubitski seated him in an uncomfortable chair facing the desk and kept him waiting while he read Doc’s file spread out on the blotter. At length he sat back, communed for a full minute with his pipe, and said, “You’re changing your employment?”

“Yes.” Doc didn’t elaborate. If his time in prison had taught him anything it had taught him never to volunteer information.

“Are you unhappy at the farm dealership?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Maynard Ance is well-known around here. He skates the edge of the law. Working for him wouldn’t be in your best interest.”

“Is it a violation?” Before coming in that morning, Doc had called the office to report last night’s adventure and his decision to accept Ance’s offer. He hadn’t mentioned he was driving a cab.

Kubitski sucked on his pipe. The gurgling made Doc think of a rain gutter. “How are things at home?”

“Okay.”

“But?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Oh, come on. A grown man, forced to live with his brother and his brother’s family? I’d have gone berserk with a chainsaw before this.”

Doc saw he was going to have to give Kubitski what he wanted. He sat back as far as the straight chair allowed. “I had friends in Jackson I knew better than Neal. I was just a kid the last time we lived under the same roof. He’s still got the first job he ever had. We don’t exactly speak the same language.”

“What about the others”—the parole officer glanced down at the file—“Wilhelmina and little Sean?”

“Billie’s great. I don’t remember my mother that well but she was a lot like my sister-in-law, warm but tough.”

“But?”

“She think’s baseball’s what got me in trouble. Maybe she’s right, but not in the way she thinks. I think that has something to do with why she’s turning her boy into a carrot. All the kid does is watch TV and play video games. He’s getting to look like eighty pounds of pork.”

“And you’ve argued with her about this.”

“No. He’s not my son.”

“But?”

Kubitski’s
but
was getting on his nerves. “I take a lot of walks.”

“Going to work for Maynard Ance at all hours must seem like a nice change.”

“I’m going to work for him because he offered me more than I’ve been getting.”

“Enough to move?”

Doc hadn’t expected him to catch on so quickly. “I’ll just be driving him around. Is it illegal?”

“No more than operating a taxi cab under someone else’s license.” Kubitski unhooked his glasses to catch the other’s reaction. “I work at this job, Doc. I don’t play at it. A certain kind of parole officer would send you back to serve out your sentence on a complaint like that. He would think you hadn’t learned your lesson.”

“The only lesson I learned is who to throw out of my parties.”

He wished immediately he hadn’t said it. Roger Craig had once told him the only thing that would keep him out of the Thirty Game Club was his tendency to rattle when a batter anticipated one of his pitches. The gooseberry eyes glittered dangerously, but after a moment the man behind the desk struck three matches in a clump and relit his tobacco. His pale cheeks billowed and caved in rapidly. He deposited the matches in an ironwood ashtray. “How much did Ance tell you about himself?”

“Just that he was a lawyer. And something about a job he did down in Tennessee.”

“Did he mention he was disbarred?”

“What for?”

Kubitski puffed. Doc was beginning to realize he didn’t give answers. “He’s a grandstander, a cowboy. Either he doesn’t know how to turn down work or he likes going on these midnight raids to bring back jumpers, because he averages five to the ordinary bail bondsman’s one. If I were you I’d keep on selling manure spreaders. You stand a lot better chance of finishing out your time on the outside.”

“Does that mean I can take the job?”

“Just stay behind the wheel.”

Doc thanked him and left. Heading toward the elevators he thought he might have been less belligerent with Kubitski and to hell with his habits. But he wouldn’t have known how to explain to the parole officer that during his time in the Independence Motel with Ance, from the moment he had leaned menacingly on the clerk’s counter until they got away from Sergeant Battle, when a wrong word could have revoked his parole, he had felt more alive than at any time since the two-hitter he had thrown his last day in Jackson.

A uniformed officer carrying a large manila envelope down the hall directed Doc to Major Crimes, where he almost collided with Battle coming out of the squad room. The sergeant, in striped shirtsleeves and a burgundy leather shoulder clip that actually matched his tie, caught himself with a hand on the doorjamb, thanked Doc for coming in, and asked him to wait in the lieutenant’s office.

The lieutenant’s office was the only enclosed cubicle in a room full of desks and detectives talking on telephones. It had glass walls that stopped short of the ceiling and was just big enough for a desk half the size of Kubitski’s, two chairs, and a row of gray steel file cabinets stacked with folders that had overflowed the drawers. In spite of that the room was neatly kept, the telephone, calendar pad, and portable scanner on the desk squared in line with the corners and a fistful of yellow pencils standing at attention in a rubber cup with their razor points directed at the ceiling. Doc felt certain that Sergeant Battle used the office more than anyone. He wondered idly if the sergeant owned a matching gun rig for every tie in his wardrobe.

Atop one of the cabinets a portable TV set was tuned to CNN with the sound off. When a still photograph of Wilson McCoy appeared on the screen, Doc went over and turned up the volume. The report of the discovery of McCoy’s body was sketchy and, like every other news event Doc had ever witnessed firsthand, bore little resemblance to what he remembered. Biographical footage followed: McCoy at twenty in jungle fatigues with the sleeves cut off, haranguing an all-black crowd with a banner behind him bearing the initials B.L.A.C.; McCoy in handcuffs and streaked coveralls being escorted to a squad car by white Detroit Police officers in uniform; McCoy standing on the steps of the City-County Building wearing the same coveralls but without manacles, raising a fist in the Black Power salute to a mob hooting and pumping placards reading FREE WILSON; McCoy, many years older and almost unrecognizable in a blue county jumpsuit with his hair cut short and no goatee, being arraigned before a judge on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of interstate flight; McCoy looking much as Doc had seen him last night, graying and emaciated, entering the auditorium of the Detroit Light Guard Armory with the crowd, turning to look at the camera with an expression that reminded Doc of the uncomprehending faces of the old people he had seen in the nursing home in Warren. The last shot dissolved to the still photograph he’d seen before, over the dates of Wilson McCoy’s birth and death. In the late footage he had looked much older than forty-four.

The program turned from there to a second Detroit story, wherein a group of journalists were asking Mayor Coleman Young for his reaction to a number of allegations made against him by yet another of his aides currently standing trial for misuse of public money. His reply was mostly bleeped out and after thirty seconds he shoved his way through the pack and out of the frame. Sergeant Charlie Battle entered the office then and turned off the set. “Nothing wrong with this city couldn’t be cured with an asshole transplant, you old fart,” he said, stepping behind his desk. He opened the top drawer, took out a typewritten sheet, looked at it, and laid it on Doc’s side of the desk. “I typed up what you told me last night from my notes. Anything else you remember, tell me now.”

Doc read the statement. It was almost word-for-word what he had given the detectives. “I didn’t see you taking any notes.”

“I did all that later.”

“Can’t see someone’s eyes when you’re writing down their words, huh?”

The sergeant laughed shortly. “Eyes aren’t the part that talks.”

Doc borrowed a pen and signed his name on the bottom, adding the date. Battle took the sheet over to the file cabinets and put it in the folder on top of the pile. “Where’s Ance?”

“I haven’t seen him since last night.”

“He’s a pistol, your boss. When I’m his age I plan to be sitting in one of those condos they’re building in the warehouse district, flipping my wang-doodle across the river at Canada. That’s if I can still get it up.”

“I thought you were married.”

“Oh, I expect to outlive her.” He was still holding the file. He removed a stiff rectangle of yellowed paper sealed in clear laminate and handed it to Doc. “I brought it in this morning. I wasn’t sure you believed me last night.”

It was a Detroit Tigers scorecard. He’d forgotten how elaborate his signature was then, full of loops and flourishes. Jackson had cramped it up. He gave back the card. “I believed you. How old is your son?”

“Fourteen. I almost called him down here last month to help me dope out the new computer. I guess
his
boy’ll fly a rocket to Mars for his first science project.”

“He play any ball?”

“Shoots the hoops better than his old man ever did, for what that’s worth.” He switched off the scanner. “Your boss been in touch with Starkweather Hall lately?”

The change-up caught him looking. “Who’s he?”

“You really did watch nothing but sports,” Battle said. “Wilson McCoy was just window dressing on account of he knew Mahomet personally. Hall
is
the Marshals. Without him they’re just a bunch of throw-backs spitting up black revolutionary slogans from the sixties. Ance put up his bail last time we popped him. It didn’t take, but he’s wanted again on a case we can make stick.”

“What are the Marshals of Mahomet?”

“Jesus. Well, you remember Mahomet.”

“Some kind of double-A Malcolm X. Somebody shot him.”

“Kercheval Street, 1966. Looked like the riots were going to start that night, but it rained. The real riots the next year and then King’s assassination in ’68 shoved him into the backseat—he was just starting to make a name for himself locally with his white suits and Lou Rawls pipes when some nutso Mafia hitter took him out—but it looked for a while like the whole white establishment in this town was going to come apart that week. Then McCoy cut down Patsy Orr and a couple of his
paisani
in the Penobscot Building, and nobody knew if it was racial or just another gangland blowout and the whole thing just lost momentum.”

He sat on a corner of the desk. “McCoy jumped bail on the Orr killing and just disappeared. These revolutionary types aren’t your average lamster, they don’t keep in touch with their friends and families. The FBI staked out his mother’s house until she died. They even went to her funeral, like if he didn’t break cover to see the old lady when she was alive he’d come out for the planting. Finally they gave up on him. By the time he turned himself in down in Atlanta or someplace a new generation had taken over the Bureau and they didn’t know him from Dillinger. But his trial got a lot of publicity—Remember Jimi Hendrix,
Gilligan’s Island,
and Watts?, that kind of thing—and when the jury couldn’t decide and the prosecutors didn’t retry and cut him loose, he did the lecture tour for a while; men Starkweather Hall came to him with this crackpot Marshals of Mahomet idea and he just lapped it up.

“The organization’s all black, founded on the notion that Mahomet was God and McCoy was his prophet on earth. Mahomet used to speak at meetings of McCoy’s Black Afro-American Congress, so it made sense in a lunatic kind of way. They started meeting in the basement of a crummy house on Erskine, and in six months they were pulling in crowds of thirteen and fourteen hundred in the National Guard Armory downtown. That new African-American thing, you know, second generation. Like Lester Maddox never died, and George Wallace isn’t just filling a shitbag in his wheelchair in Alabama.”