Motor City Burning (28 page)

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 savage 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.

In his paneled office, surrounded by all the celebrity golf photos and model cars and autographed baseballs, Chick studied the second-quarter sales figures. He realized one reason sales had fallen off in '68 was that the riot buyers had dried up. These were the city dwellers, usually black guys, who showed up at the dealership last summer and fall wearing sherbet-colored slacks and pointy alligator loafers, their pockets full of cash from all the fur coats and guns and booze and jewelry they'd looted during the riot and then fenced for a tenth of its value. They came in waves, in battered cars, in taxis, on buses, just poured out Mack through Grosse Pointe, all the way out here to St. Clair Shores because the word was out on the street that Murphy's made the best price on a Buick. And every last one of them absolutely had to have a new Deuce and a Quarter. Much as Chick hated to see these flashy assholes turn his hometown into a gigantic ashtray, he was a businessman and he knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. Sadly, he now realized, all that riot money was gone. The only thing Murphy Buick had to show for it was banner third and fourth quarters in 1967—followed by a sharp drop-off in the first and second quarters of '68.

Time to change that. Chick shoved the sales reports into a desk drawer and popped a Certs breath mint. He loved the Certs jingle—
Two . . . two . . . two mints in one!
—and when he strode out onto the lot he knew instantly it was going to be a good day for selling cars. The sun was out, making the '68s look a littler newer and the used cars a little less old. It was humid but not too hot, a kiss of breeze coming off Lake St. Clair and stirring the pennants. Lately he'd noticed that more and more of the people wandering around the lot peering into windows were eager to talk about the Tigers. It was the kind of small talk every salesman loves, a superb lubricant. The team's inspired play was lifting the city's shaken spirits, bringing people together again and, best of all, making them less reluctant to part with their money.

Within minutes Chick was pounding on an old black couple from Highland Park, trying to get them to open their eyes and see why the four-door '65 LeSabre with only 32,000 “original” miles on the odometer was an irresistible deal even though the body had a little rust and there was a hairline crack in the windshield. (Chick didn't bother to mention the hairline crack in the engine block.) That rust had them worried. Just as Chick was about to throw in a cosmetic paintjob to nail down the deal, his eye caught a flash of black and silver easing onto the lot from 9 Mile. He kept talking, but his eyes stayed on the black car, an immaculate '54 Buick Century. “If you're so worried about a little rust,” he told the black couple, “then I'll paint the car for free. What do you say to that?” They were mulling it over as Willie Bledsoe unfurled himself from the driver's seat of the black '54 Century. He was wearing sunglasses, sharp clothes. A man who'd come here to deal.

As expected, the offer of the “free” paintjob clinched the sale, and Chick sent the old couple off to the finance office to get their pockets hoovered. He'd forgotten all about them by the time he turned on the smile and walked up to Willie Bledsoe with his right hand out.

“You finally made it!” he cried, pumping Willie's hand.

“Yessir. Finally.”

Chick looked at his car. “Where'd you pick up the hearse?”

Willie chuckled. “It was a gift, actually. From a friend of my brother's.”

It had a cheap paintjob on it, but there were no dents or visible rust, the chrome sparkled like new, and the red-and-black interior was perfect. Cars didn't hold up this well in Michigan. This one would fetch a pretty dollar. “Looks like you've been taking pretty good care of her, Willie,” Chick said.

“Oh, yes sir. Car spent its whole life in Alabama—till I drove it up here last spring. I kept it in a garage all last winter. Isn't a speck of rust on it.”

“How many miles she got on her?”

“Not even twenty-five thousand—all original.”

Right, Chick thought, and I was born last Tuesday. His suspicions were confirmed when he walked around behind the car and saw the chrome nameplate of the original dealer bolted to the trunk lid—
Tucker Buick, Levittown, Long Island
—which meant this was originally a New York car and Willie had already told at least one major lie and therefore it was open season. Chick slid behind the steering wheel. The odometer read 24,767, and he wondered if that meant 124,767 or something else. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he wouldn't even have to run the car through the Fountain of Youth—the windowless room at the back of the lot where the boys rolled back odometers, changed the oil, gave used cars a cheap paintjob and a fresh set of shoes. The interior had that moldy smell common to old cars, a smell Chick had loved since he was a boy. “Why you want to give up a classic like this, Willie?” he said, climbing out of the car. “She's a beaut.”

“Ever since that day my Uncle Bob took me for a ride in the Deuce and a Quarter you sold him, I knew I had to have me one.”

“So you got your eye on a Deuce?”

“Yessir. A used convertible, if you've got one.”

“As a matter of fact I just got a ragtop in Friday. It's a repo, practically fresh off the assembly line. Let's go have a look.”

Fifteen minutes later Chick was sitting in the passenger seat of a '67 Deuce convertible, its top rolled back, its pale blue skin gleaming in the morning sunshine. Willie was driving, his left elbow resting on the driver's door, his right wrist on top of the steering wheel. He looked right at home.

They were sailing out Jefferson, the lake glistening like Turtle Waxed sheet metal off to their right as Willie described how Jose Cardenal had tried to outrun Mickey Stanley's drive to deep center in the ninth inning yesterday but couldn't catch up with it. Chick pretended to listen as he lit a cigarette. There was something he wanted to get off his chest before they got down to business. When Willie got through with the play-by-play, Chick said, “Listen, Willie, I want to apologize for Saturday night.”

“Apologize, Mr. Murphy? For what?”

“For my wife. You saw her. She was drunker'n a boiled owl.”

“No need to apologize, Mr. Murphy. We all have a little too much now and then.”

“I swear to Christ, she gets a load on and you can't even talk to her.” The cigarette tasted terrible and he tossed it toward the lake. “Tell me something. You ever see her flirt with anybody at the club, members or guys on the staff?”

The answer came back so fast Chick knew he was lying. He almost sounded scared. “Flirt? You mean, like, come on to? I . . . Mr. Murphy, I . . . wouldn't know a thing about any of that.”

“Ah, let's drop it. Sorry I said anything. So tell me, you like the blue color?”

Chick could tell he was relieved by the change of subject. Willie's lie, the fear in his voice, his obvious relief—it convinced Chick that there was something to his suspicions about Blythe. He'd heard whispers that Dick Kowalski got run out of the Flint Golf Club for sporting with a member's wife before he washed up at Oakland Hills. Chick made a note to keep an eye on that Polack weasel.

Willie said, “The color's fine.”

That sounded a little lukewarm, like he was still wrestling with this, the most crucial question in the average car buyer's mind. Chick said, “The factory calls it ‘Bahama blue'—whatever the fuck that means.”

“Means driving the car's supposed to feel like a Caribbean vacation. Which it does. I look at this car and I see a tropical sky on a sunny day.”

That sounded a lot more promising. “You look like you were born sitting there, Willie. It's a great fit.”

“I really like these white seats and red carpet. And I love the way it drives. Practically steers itself.”

Chick knew then that the car was sold, so he asked Willie if he'd given any more thought to coming to work at the dealership.

“Tell you the truth, Mr. Murphy, I don't really know much about cars.”

“I'll teach you. The main thing's how you deal with people. Selling cars to people is all about the people, not the cars.”

“I might be doing some traveling soon.”

“Ahh, must be nice.”

“What must be nice?”

“To be young and single, not a care in the world.”

“I wouldn't know about that.”

Chick noticed he didn't smile when he said it. They rode in silence for a while. Chick knew what Willie was thinking. He was wondering how much money he would need to cover the difference between the value of his trade-in and the price of this Deuce. To get the ball rolling Chick said, “How much you think your Century's worth, Willie?”

“Gee, Mr. Murphy, how much you think—”

“You ever heard of G.M.A.C.?”

“G.M.A. what?”

“It's how us General Motors dealers finance car sales. You understand how that works, don't you?”

“Not really. Like I said, that Buick of mine was a gift. It's the only car I've ever owned, so I don't really understand fi—”

“Ah, screw it. I'll swap you straight up. That sound like a deal?”

It damn sure did, and by the time Willie brought the Deuce to a stop outside the showroom, the trade was complete. Chick's largess was explained by two things: his genuine fondness for Willie, and the fact that the ragtop had had its frame bent when it got rear-ended by a gravel truck in Inkster. The boys in the Fountain of Youth worked on it for a solid week, and they were able to fix the bumper and trunk lid good as new, but they said the frame would never be straight. Chick wanted to get the thing off the lot. He figured he could get at least a grand for Willie's '54 Century from one of the downriver motorheads who dropped by all the time looking for something to soup up. Maybe even twelve hundred. It would be a loss, but getting rid of that damaged Deuce was worth it.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” Chick told Willie when he emerged from the sales office with his paperwork in hand. “Drive carefully now—and give some more thought to that job we talked about.”

“I will. Thanks for everything, Mr. Murphy.” Willie shook the offered hand and guided the Bahama-blue Deuce and a Quarter south toward the city, joining the legion of satisfied customers who'd stayed on the right track to 9 Mile and Mack and didn't even realize they'd gotten bushwhacked by Chick Murphy's murderous mood.

19

D
OYLE AND
J
IMMY
R
OBUCK TOOK A RARE
T
UESDAY AFTERNOON
off to watch the Tigers play the Yankees on Bat Day. It was one of the scariest things the detectives had ever seen—51,000 Detroiters buzzed on fire-brewed Stroh's and armed with giveaway Louisville Sluggers. Miraculously, no one's brains got bashed in. The Tigers lost that day but then won ten of their next eleven, putting the rest of the American League in their rearview mirror.