Motown (16 page)

He sat cross-legged on the floor among the torn and creased covers and sorted through the
Cosmopolitans.

It was funny how things stuck in your head, particularly when you kept coming across the same magazine when you were looking for something else. Each time he had planned to throw out the women’s publications, and each time after he’d found what he’d wanted he had returned the stack to the box.

He found it now, a single line on the cover among that month’s features—the month being March 1964—checked the table of contents, and turned to the article. The page opposite the title was a full-length black-and-white photograph of a woman in a tailored dress carrying a thick briefcase down the ramp from a commercial jetliner. Her face was turned slightly away from the camera, presenting a clean-edged profile, long of neck with blond hair up, that recalled Princess Grace. The title was
“The Queen of Torts.”

The article that followed, written in a breathless style by a female journalist clearly in awe of her subject, recounted a day in the life of Caroline Porter, with a brief introduction tracing her rapid rise from storefront lawyer to canny counsel to the Porter Group. Her landmark case, in which she had successfully defended her husband from a charge of industrial espionage brought by General Motors’ battery of male attorneys, received only a line. The writer was far more concerned with Mrs. Porter’s mannish fashions and trademark pearl earrings, the only jewelry she ever wore aside from her wedding band.

Although it was useless for Rick’s purposes, he read the piece twice before reinterring the magazine with the others in the beer case and shoving the case back inside the closet. Tomorrow when the library opened he would read more.

Caroline Porter.

Enid Kohler.

Say what one liked about Wendell Porter, he had a knack for surrounding himself with beautiful capable women.

“I
WASN’T SAYING IT
just to be saying it,” Krystal said. “It was nice. I mean, really nice.”

Quincy said, “Nobody’s arguing, okay?”

“I remember when they put my mother under, it was like your generic, all-purpose, one-size-fits-all funeral. Preacher kept getting her name wrong. I didn’t give a shit, I mean she threw me out when I was fourteen, said if I was going to pedal my ass all over town I might as well do it for a living. I only went because my brothers said if I didn’t they’d hang out in front of my apartment and throw the johns down the stairs and because I wanted to make sure that old woman was dead. It was the only time I ever seen a smile on her face. Didn’t they do a good job on Vernon? He looked nice.” She’d been calling him Vernon ever since they’d begun the arrangements. In life it was always Congo, when she’d addressed him at all.

“He looked deader’n Bojangles,” Lydell said.

They were riding in one of the two white Cadillac limousines Quincy had hired for the procession; ahead of them, following the hearse, was the limousine carrying the Reverend Idaho, and behind them an assortment of Lincolns, Corvettes, Thunderbirds, Chevies, and Theron “Gidgy” Gidrey’s black-and-green Excalibur, was strung out for eleven blocks doing fifteen miles an hour on the way to Mt. Elliott Cemetery. Krystal, touching up her face with a compact shaped like a clamshell, had on a black minidress with sequined lace across the bodice, black fishnet stockings, and silver sandals with leather straps cross-hatching her calves like Richard Burton wore in
Cleopatra.
Quincy wore black sharkskin with his only white shirt and no necktie and Lydell had exchanged his yellow tie and hatband for respectful black. Quincy’s window was down and East Lafayette smelled of hot asphalt and spent cordite from exploded firecrackers. He had to remind himself it was the Fourth of July.

They passed a parked panel truck bearing the WWJ Channel 4 logo. A few yards away a silver-haired man in a blue blazer stood on the sidewalk with his back to them, facing a TV camera. He was holding a microphone.

“That Ven Marshall?” Lydell leaned forward and cranked down his tinted window.

“Probably just some reporter. Them anchormen don’t go outside for nothing.”

“I was on TV once,” Krystal said.

“Think Patsy’s watching?” asked Lydell.

“Somebody’ll tell him about it if he don’t see it.”

“I waved when I was getting into the wagon. Only they cut out the wave when they showed it.”

“Hope you’re right,” Lydell said. “I hate to think of spending all that bread on just Congo.”

“I was in a movie once, but the cops burned the negative.”

Quincy said, “The reverend surprised me. I didn’t think he could hop around like that.”

“He sure gives hell hell,” Lydell said. “Where’s Mahomet? I thought he was riding with us.”

“He took a bus back to Collingwood. Said he don’t like to see folks put in the ground.”

“Man can sing. What’s that he sang?”

“‘Freedom Road.’”

“Beats them low notes to death. Makes Lou Rawls sound like Little Anthony.”

“Man can sing,” Quincy agreed. Before the service he had taken Mahomet aside and told him he’d personally break his dick off if anything but lyrics came out of his mouth. He had had an anxious moment when Mahomet got up in front of the choir and cleared his throat, but when Quincy rolled up his funeral program and bent it in half, the singer got the message, and the next three minutes were the sweetest Quincy had ever spent in a place where he didn’t want to be. Mahomet was good, phenomenally good; the timbre of his voice was like the reverberation of a great bell, and the emotion behind it held the tragic richness of wine put down when “Freedom Road” was new.

There had been a brief tingling silence between the end of the last, incredibly attenuated note and Idaho’s approach to the pulpit, like a stone hanging at the top of its high arc before plummeting anticlimactically to earth. Perhaps because of it, the minister had started slowly and worked his way up, droning at first, then shortening his vowels and chopping his consonants, to a tent-fire pitch, ending with:

“‘And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire!’”Mahomet had then joined with the choir to sing “Praise Ye the Lord,” but although it stirred the people in the pews, many of whom joined in, clapping and swaying, it was that first quiet solo that had stayed with Quincy. It made him think for the first time of what Congo had lost, and of what all those who shared his color had lost since the first slaver set anchor off a barbaric shore. He thought then that he understood Emma and her tribal artifacts a little better, without wanting to see any of them again.

The graveside service was brief, with Idaho reading quietly from Matthew under a canvas with folding chairs set out for Quincy and his party while the other mourners stood in their dark clothes and jewelry. The pallbearers were Quincy, Lydell, Joe Petite, and Sebastian Bright from the East Side, and two of their collectors. Despite his name, Petite, a former Detroit Piston, was nearly seven feet tall, with wrists and ankles that stuck out of the suits he bought by the yard. Bright, shorter by almost a foot and a half, was two hundred pounds of hard fat with a glossy shaved head and a gold tooth in front; today he had foregone his trademark fawn suits for sober black flannel.

The casket, whose brushed bronze finish shone softly in the sun, descended into the vault with a hydraulic hum. When it came to rest, Idaho tossed the first handful of earth onto the lid. Quincy bent to scoop up a handful, paused, dropped it into the grave, and walked away. When Lydell joined him, dusting off his palms, Quincy stopped and pointed his chin in the direction of Mt. Elliott Street, where a man in a black tank top and faded Levi’s was leaning back against a sky-blue Cobra with his arms crossed, showing his biceps. The sun flared off a gold chain around his neck.

“My, oh, my,” said Lydell. “Mistuh DiJesus he sho’ nuff do likes to see his customers all de way into de ground, don’t he? Think Patsy sent him?”

“You don’t send guys like him anyplace. They just show up.”

“Man knows his wheels.”

Krystal caught up with them. “What you all looking at?”

Quincy told her. She shielded her eyes with her hand. “He don’t look like such hot shit to me.”

“He killed Congo.”

“Man’s got balls,” Lydell said. “Fuzz here and everything.”

Quincy said, “They ain’t looking for him. If they tossed him right now, he’d be cleaner than you.”

“Town’s full of dudes like that, showing off their big muscles,” Krystal said. “Ain’t a stiff wad in the bunch.”

Lydell poked a Kent into his holder. “What you figure he wants?”

“A look at the meat.” Quincy resumed walking. “Let’s go back to Collingwood.”

Gidgy’s Excalibur, bottle-green with black fenders and running boards, was parked in front of the blind pig when they got there. Loosely patterned on the 1930 Mercedes, the car had a flat rag top, wire wheels, a long medieval-looking hood secured with a leather strap, and chromed exhaust pipes bending down from holes in the hood.

“How’d he get here ahead of us?” Lydell stood on the curb while Quincy tipped the driver of the limousine. They’d let Krystal out in front of the apartment building on Woodrow Wilson to change.

“Gidgy never stays for graveside,” Quincy said. “He only bought the car for Sundays and funeral processions.”

“Looks like something the house nigger drives the rich old white lady in to Mah-Jongg. Them dope fiends got no taste.”

“Twenty grand worth of car, bro. They only sell a hundred and fifty a year.”

Lydell coughed. “Maybe Johnson’s right. They’s hope for this here Great Society after all.”

Upstairs, Mahomet was pouring clear liquid from a cocktail shaker into a glass on the table where Gidgy sat. The singer had taken off the black coat he’d worn to the funeral and tied on an apron that covered him almost to his patent-leather boots. As always he wore elevator heels.

“Thanks for coming, Gidge.” Quincy shook the hand of the man seated. It was like flipping a limp tow rope.

“I was just telling your man here he’s wasting his time tending bar. He’s good enough to sing with the Temptations.” Gidgy had on a box-back jacket that sheathed him past his hips and a red-and-green-striped bow tie on a Madras shirt. The brim of his white Panama and the smoked lenses of his old-fashioned round spectacles shielded his weak eyes from the unaccustomed glare of daytime. His long, could-be-forty, could-be-sixty face was like dark oiled wood, and his mouth was where smiles went to die. A gold earring the size of a Lifesaver glinted on his right lobe. A joint smoldered in a corner of his mouth like a conventional cigarette. From time to time he tilted his head to one side to release the acrid smoke trapped under his hat.

“I tried it,” Mahomet said. “Quincy knows all about it.”

Quincy lifted Gidgy’s glass and sniffed at it. “He can’t mix drinks neither. How much vermouth you put in that shaker?” he asked Mahomet.

“About a cup.”

Lydell said, “Jee-sus. We been working on the same bottle since we opened.”

“The man asked for a martini. Was I going to tell him I never made one?”

“Mahomet’s new,” Quincy said. “You hungry?” He nodded toward the spread on the bar. Krystal had overseen that part, little thin sandwiches and cocktail wienies among the ribs and collards. The room smelled like a barbecue.

“Maybe I get the munchies later. The rest coming?”

“Hope so. We can’t get all that into the fridge.”

“It was a nice one,” Gidgy said. “I only been to one better.”

“Big Nabob?”

“I ain’t that old. Buried my brother in fifty-nine. Well, my half brother, but I sprung for both halves. He tried to fly off a roof.”

Lydell was making a sandwich of ribs on pumpernickel. “Thought you boys never used the stuff you sell.”

“You mean to tell me you never played a number?”

“Not since I been in the business. It’s like cooking for yourself. Where’s the surprise?” He took a bite.

“Surprises is all I sell.”

After a few minutes the others began to arrive, first in singles and small groups, then in a steady stream until the bar and poolroom were filled with happy mourners juggling drinks and paper plates heaped with food. Quincy demoted Mahomet to waiter and for a time he and Lydell were too busy behind the bar to hold a conversation with anyone. Along with Joe Petite and Sebastian Bright and their people, the guests included longtime customers of both the blind pig and Quincy and Lydell’s policy business and other Twelfth Street-area entrepreneurs. Beatrice Blackwood, at fifty-two a handsome, fine-featured Jamaican who operated the Indio Spa on Bethune (No Asian Girls), arrived on the arm of her glowering, dashiki-clad houseman Kindu Kinshasha, who had fought heavyweight under the name Marcus Tyler. By the time Krystal showed up in a purple dress trimmed with black feather boas, the effect was lost in the crowd. She had Lydell float a twist of lemon in a tumbler full of gin and went off in a corner to sulk and soak.

“Anything for you, my man?” Lydell squirted seltzer into a glass of Scotch for Kindu Kinshasha to take back to his mistress.

“I don’t drink.”

“Religion?”

“Ulcer.”

Lydell handed him the glass. “I heard you fought Clay.”

“You heard wrong.”

“Beatrice told me you sparred with him when he was nineteen, twenty.”

“You don’t
fight
Clay. You try to get out of the ring alive.” He turned back into the crowd.

“It ain’t my argument,” Sebastian Bright was telling Quincy over a bottle of Budweiser. His shaven scalp and the gold tooth in the fixed smile sent off semaphores of reflected light.

“Cops told me the same three hit one of your places on Clairmount the night we got it,” Quincy said.

“You talking to cops now?”

“They was talking to me. You fixing to just let the Sicilians walk in and take over like the last thirty years never happened?”

“I don’t know it was Sicilians.
You
said that. I figure it was just some brothers trying to get ahead. I find them I cut their nuts off, but I understand why they done what they done. I ain’t looking for no war I can’t win.”