Motown (12 page)

“He was probably wearing a helmet.”

“A helmet doesn’t protect your arms and legs and spine. It won’t do you much good when you catapult through a fixed windshield because there’s nothing to stop you when the car stops suddenly.”

Rick said nothing. He’d already alienated one important source by speaking his mind.

“Not everyone can look back at a specific incident in his life and identify it as the turning point,” Porter said. “Watching that test driver climb out of that car with nothing worse than a bad case of nerves was mine. Until then I’d been planning to go into corporate law. I switched to civil liability. I’m not the lawyer Caroline is, but I won two important cases of negligence against dealerships after their faulty servicing led to accidents. That was good enough for a while. Then it occurred to me that I could be a lot more effective by preventing the accidents from happening in the first place. That’s when I became a lobbyist.”

“Tough decision. Economically speaking.”

“Not so tough. I gave up my shot at real money when I turned my back on corporate. Also I had the good fortune to marry well. The pro-industry press has made a lot of that, but when I met Caroline she was fresh out of law school with an office over a credit orthodontist’s and one client.”

“You?”

Porter nodded. He’d stopped to let a redhead in a sundress walk her dog across the street. “I won’t quote Lincoln at you on the subject of lawyers who represent themselves. She’s built a large and successful firm on her efforts on behalf of the Porter Group and the Porter Group’s raked in an impressive number of national headlines over her victories in court.”

“Sounds like the perfect union.”

“Yes, it does.” Porter was silent after that. Rick registered the silence and stored it away.

“Sounds like you’re having trouble in Washington, though.”

“It’s hard to organize a senate subcommittee on auto safety when the senator’s always busy somewhere else. The automotive industry employs a lot of people, and a lot of them vote. I suppose it’s naive to expect a politician not to act like a politician, but I can’t get it through their heads that victims of fatal accidents
can’t
vote.”

“Maybe if you didn’t harp so much on seat belts. They’re kind of radical compared to the other things, disk brakes and padded dashes.”

“Brakes stop cars, not people. And if you have a seat belt you don’t need a padded dash.”

“I can’t help thinking about all those people you hear about who survive terrible accidents because they’re thrown clear.”

“You hear about them because it almost never happens. Most injuries occur after the initial impact, when the victims are still bouncing.” Porter glanced sidelong at his passenger. “I can tell you’re not convinced.”

They were out in the country now, rolling down a straight two-lane blacktop with barns and fields on both sides. Rick wondered how far they were going and what they’d find when they got there.

“There’s no arguing with statistics,” he said. “We’ve gotten along for almost seventy years without strapping ourselves to our cars. What’s next, training wheels?”

“My friend, you’d be right at home with those officers who denied parachutes to our flyers in World War One because they thought having them would inhibit their courage in combat. Changing your mind will be my good deed for today.”

Rick didn’t like the sound of that.

L
YDELL LIT A
K
ENT
one-handed—he was getting the hang of it—and coughed. “Fucking cops.”

The police seal was gone from the smashed door of the blind pig and he and Quincy had entered to find that the law had added refinements to the damage caused by the three men in ski masks. Flies and flashbulbs clotted the smear on the floor where Congo’s body had fallen and the squashed carcasses of Camels and Chesterfields lay in scorched depressions amid the broken glass from the jukebox. White fingerprint powder blurred the dark surfaces, black the light. The bar and tables were rookeries of crumpled waxed paper, some of the crumples containing the metamorphosed remains of half-eaten sandwiches. The room stank of ferment.

Quincy crunched over the debris, leaned in through the door of the little unisex bathroom, where a cigar floated on top of the yellow water in the toilet, and twisted the handle. The water gasped and gushed.

“Wisht we could flush the whole place,” said Lydell.

“Get somebody in to clean up. We open tomorrow morning same time as always.”

“Shouldn’t you better ask Mr. Gallante about that?”

“He don’t own the pig.”

“Yet.”

Quincy touched the blasted section of bar. “Find Curtis Odie and get him to plane this down and chunk in a new piece. He’s a rough carpenter. I don’t want nobody else bitching about splinters.”

“Wasn’t splinters done this to my arm, I said. They plucked out eleven double-ought slugs. Lead poisoning alone could of croaked me.”

“Closest you ever been to croaking is them weeds you smoke.”

“Bullshit. Kills germs. I read it in
Confidential.”
Lydell coughed and flicked ash at the floor. “You sure this cat DiJesus was one of ’em?”

“Sure enough. God don’t give even white men eyes like them that often.”

“Well, we just going to let him walk in and wrap the place up for the wops?”

“You got another idea?”

“I still got my Bulldog. Them blue eyes don’t see backwards.”

“He’s just a screwdriver. Break one, they got more.”

“Dude didn’t say one word that whole time,” Lydell said. “I don’t trust a man don’t talk. That’s the reason I don’t have a mutt. Who knows what they’re thinking, they don’t say it? Rip your face off soon as lick it.”

“That ain’t no way to talk about women.”

Both men turned. Krystal had come in the open door. She had pink ribbons tied in her stack of straw-colored hair and six shades of violet on her eyelids. Her dress, electric purple with flowers exploding all over it, started just above her nipples and ran out of material at her crotch. She was wearing five-inch platform sandals and half a pound of copper bracelets. When she walked she made more noise than a junk-wagon.

“Whooee,” she said, looking around. “Sorry I missed the part-
y.
”

Neither Quincy nor Lydell paid her any attention. They were looking at the man who had entered behind her, a cinnamon-colored Negro with straight black hair smoothed back like porcupine quills and dark glasses with plain black rims like Little Stevie Wonder wore. He had on a hip-length brown leather jacket with wide lapels, bell-bottoms, and high-heeled brown boots with buckles. Even in the heels he wasn’t medium height. His black shirt was unbuttoned, showing a V of absolutely hairless skin down to his belt buckle. He stopped in the middle of the room and took off the glasses. Both eyes were puffy and ringed with mustard-colored bruises.

“Looks like the cops helped themselves to your likker.” Behind the bar, Krystal took a square bottle of gin off one of the nearly empty shelves, filled a rock glass almost to the rim, and colored the clear liquid with Rose’s Lime Juice from a bottle in the refrigerator. “Law ’n’ order.” She drank.

“Something stuck on your heel.” Lydell was still watching the stranger.

“Oh, that’s Mahomet. You boys got any ice?” She opened the refrigerator again.

Quincy remembered him now. “I bailed you out,” he said. “I didn’t buy you.”

“I owe you, man.”

The rich baritone was always a surprise coming out of that slender little body.

“He come to the apartment looking for you,” Krystal said. “I was on my way here, so I brung him along.”

Lydell said, “The Klan comes looking for him, you bring them along too?”

She laughed into her glass. “He ain’t Klan.”

“I don’t like to see a brother getting beat on,” Quincy said. “I’d of done the same for a alley cat. But I wouldn’t take him home.”

“I thought maybe I could sing in your place till I paid you back.”

A choking fit cut off Lydell’s laughter. Quincy pounded him on the back until he resumed breathing, then took the cigarette from between the fingers of his partner’s good hand and extinguished it in the ashtray on the bar, previously the only butt-free two square inches in the room. He shoved the jade holder into the side pocket of Lydell’s coat. “Don’t need no singers nor acrobats neither,” he said. “Try the Baptists.”

“I don’t owe them.”

“Missing a bargain, bro.” Lydell leaned on the bar, his chest sucking and blowing out like a bellows. “Dress this boy in a white suit like Cab Calloway, hire somebody to come in and play the accordeen. Charge twice’t as much for drinks during the floor show. That’s how the Cotton Club got started.”

“Shut up and breathe.”

Krystal said, “C’mon, sugar, hire him. Krystal likes the way he talks. Just like Sidney Poitier.”

He hated it when she puckered up and talked like Betty Boop.

“Told you my English was too good,” Mahomet said miserably.

Quincy said, “You want to work it off, there’s a broom in back. I got no use for no singers.”

Mahomet brightened. “Can I sing while I’m sweeping?”

“Sure. How about a little ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ while you’re mopping up Congo’s guts?”

Mahomet glanced down at the feasting flies without emotion and started toward the poolroom. As he passed Lydell, the man with his arm in a sling placed his good hand on Mahomet’s arm. “Ain’t you hot in all that leather?”

“It’s okay. I don’t wear underwear.”

Lydell let go quickly.

When he emerged from the back room carrying a broom and dustpan, the newcomer had removed his leather jacket. The cuffs of his black sleeves were fastened with four mother-of-pearl buttons apiece. He hummed as he swept, low and melodic.

Lydell caught Quincy’s eye and went into the poolroom. Quincy pointed at Krystal, freshening her glass from the square bottle. “Don’t drink up the inventory.”

“Yes, boss.”

The poolroom was in better condition than the bar. Quincy blew ashes off the green felt on the table and transferred a Dixie cup two-thirds full of cold coffee from a corner pocket to the wastebasket. Lydell was seated on his favorite stool next to the cues. He had been sitting there when he broke one of them over the head of the disappointed gambler who had threatened Quincy with a Saturday Night Special. He had Mahomet’s leather jacket across his lap and was going through the pockets.

“Anything?” Quincy selected a cue and set up a combination shot.

“Tap City. Beats me how a man can wear threads like these here and not have nothing in his pockets but lint.” He leaned over and hung it on the peg. “What kind of a name is Mahomet anyways?”

“Black Muslim. Malcolm X, remember? They blowed him down last year.”

“No, that’d be Muhammad.”

“Maybe he just likes it, then. Maybe it’s his name.” Quincy made the shot.

“Think he’s a spy?”

“Can’t figure what he’d find out that Patsy don’t already know. Or won’t when he hears from Gallante and DiJesus.”

“I mean the cops.”

“Too small. Five-nine’s the minimum.” He set up another shot and missed.

“Well, I don’t like him hanging around. He talks funny.”

“He went to school.”

“You and me went to school.”

“He finished.” He sank it on the second try.

“Plus I don’t like a man dresses better’n me.”

“Forget him.”

“Okay, let’s talk about the guineas. We going to let Mr. Bigass Deal Gallante and Harry Blue Eyes squeeze our balls till they pop or what?”

“Shit. Scratched.” Quincy returned the stick to the rack. “You pick up Congo’s body at the morgue like I told you?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s out watching the Sting Ray. What am I supposed to do with him when I gots him, take him out dancing?”

“Most stiffs get funerals.”

“Who’d come?”

“We’ll invite Joe Petite and Sebastian Bright. They’ll bring their people and we’ll bring ours.”

“They didn’t even know Congo. They got their own games to run.”

“And Gidgy.”

“All that pusher knows is horse.”

“We all got something in common. We’re colored and we deal with Patsy Orr or we don’t deal at all. And together we got more guns and blades than the fucking National Guard.”

Lydell’s grin was a long time coming. He fished the holder out of his pocket and lit up, forgetting and taking his bandaged arm from its sling. “Think they’ll go for it?”

“They come from the streets just like us. They’ll take any excuse to dress up and show off their cars and their fine ladies. We’ll bust the bank on flowers and a coffin for Congo. We’ll make it so big they don’t dare stay home. What’s the name of that reverend at Second Baptist, Otis something?”

“Otis R. R. Idaho. They built the place around him.”

“Whips up the hellfire, does he?”

“Whips it up and makes it do the Watusi, they say. I missed a sermon or two myself.”

“We’ll do it out of his church and the burying in Mount Elliott Cemetery. Make for a nice long funeral route.”

“Too bad we can’t take it right past the Penobscot,” Lydell said, “rub Patsy the Crip’s nose in it.”

“He’ll get a whiff anyways. We’ll use a white hearse. If we can’t find one we’ll buy one and paint it. This is one planting they’ll be talking about when they elect Sammy Davis Junior President.”

“Congo’d be proud.”

“We’ll hold the wake here afterwards. The best booze, the best food. The griddle in every rib joint on Twelfth Street’ll be sizzling just for us. When we got everyone together, all the bad brothers in town, we’ll have us a pow-wow.”

“They shake our hands and thanks us for the eats and be on their way.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they see when one of us is in hot shit, the rest better grab towels.”

Lydell coughed, hacked, and spat into a cuspidor the size of a loving cup. He dragged his charcoal sleeve across his lips. “Suppose Patsy don’t like it and sends DiJesus and his boys to pay their respects?”

“I hope to Christ he does,” Quincy said. “It’ll save us a ton of words.”

“Cool it.” Lydell was looking past him.

Quincy turned. Mahomet was standing in the doorway, holding his broom like one half of
American Gothic.
“We got a scrub brush? For cleaning up guts.”