“Principles?” I said. “In this business?”
Actually, principle was all I had going for me. Mack hadn’t given me as much as a faded IOU to work with. In the music biz, sometimes deals with very serious money involved are done with a handshake or a phone call. I occasionally get hired to collect on oral contracts, but usually folks know in their heart of hearts that they owe the money. This was different.
Technically, Sol Katz probably didn’t owe the Sultans dime one. Hell, after all these years he might not even remember who they were. Whatever deal they’d had, they’d lived with it for nearly thirty years, so if Sol told me to take a hike, I’d walk. Assuming my knees were still functional. Still, I figured I had a small chance. Mobster or no, a guy who’d risk his neck to marry the woman he loved must have a heart, right?
Right. So why did I keep remembering every story I’d ever heard about the Purple Gang? Two-to-a-box coffins, the shooters at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the gang that pushed Capone out of Detroit...
I shook it off. Ancient history, all of it. Then again, so were the Sultans of Soul.
The Studio 7 building is a spanking new concrete castle just off Gratiot Avenue, in the equally new city of Eastpointe, nee East Detroit. The locals rechristened the town, trying to shed its Murder City East image.
Funny, it had never occurred to me what a fortress Sol’s studio complex was. I’d called ahead to let Desi know I was coming, but I still had to identify myself to a uniformed guard at the parking lot gate when I drove in, and to a second guard at the front door, then get clearance from a body-by-steroids male receptionist to use the elevator. There was nothing unusual about the stiff security arrangements. In a town where gunslingers will hold you up in broad daylight to steal your car, paranoia is an entirely rational state of mind.
Still, knowing Sol was a born-to-the-purple mobster made all the guards and guns seem a lot more sinister. It was like finding out your lover and your best friend were once lovers. You can’t help revising all previous data.
The recording studios are on the fourth floor of the complex. The rooms are carpeted floor to ceiling in earth-tone textured saxony, and subdivided into a half-dozen Plexiglas booths which separate the musicians and singers on the rare occasions when two people actually tape at the same time. Nowadays most tracks are cut solo to avoid crosstalk and achieve maximal clarity. State-of-the-art digital recording, as sterile as a test-tube conception. And even less fun.
Roddy Rothstein, Sol’s head of security, was leaning against the wall outside the studio door. He looks like an aging surfer: bleached hair, china-blue eyes, a thin scar that droops his left eyelid. He was wearing jeans, snakeskin boots, and an L.A. Raiders jacket that didn’t quite conceal the Browning nine millimeter in his shoulder holster. He gave me a hard, thousand-yard stare. Nothing personal. Roddy looks at everybody like a lizard eyeing a fly.
“Hey, Ax, what’s doin’?”
“Small stuff. Is Mr. Katz in?”
“Everybody’s in but me,” Roddy grumbled. “The music biz. Life in the fast lane.”
“Beats honest work,” I said.
“How would you know? Go ahead, green light’s on.”
Even with Roddy’s okay and the warning light in the hall showing green, I still eased the door open cautiously. At five hundred bucks an hour, you never barge into a studio. But it was okay. They were in the middle of a soundcheck. Desi was wearing headsets in a sound-isolation booth. Recording company promos always shave a decade or so off performers’ ages, but in her Pistons T-shirt and bullet-riddled jeans, Desi really did look like a high-school dropout, dark, slender, drop-dead gorgeous. If she ever learns to sing as good as she looks... She gave me a grin and flipped me the fickle finger. I waved back.
Millie and Sol were chewing on the engineer about clarity. Interracial couples aren’t unusual in Detroit, but Sol and Millie were an especially handsome pair. Sol, slender, dapper, with steel-grey hair, grey eyes, fashionably blasé in a pearl-grey Armani jacket over a teal polo shirt. Millie was probably a few pounds heavier than in her Millicent days, but she wore it well. Voluptuous, in deceptively casual jogging togs that probably cost more than my car. Sol left the argument to give Millie the last word and strolled over. The Godfather II? Maybe. Maybe so.
“Axton,” he nodded, “how are you doin’? Glad you dropped by. Desi was going to call you. She’s going to do some charity shows for AIDS next month, Cleveland and Buffalo. I’d like you to handle security if you’re free.”
“I’ll be free,” I said. “If you still want me. This, ahm, this isn’t a social call, Mr. Katz. It’s business.”
“What kind of business?” Millie said, waving the engineer back to his booth. I felt sorry for him. Millie can be a hard lady to be on the wrong side of. A tough woman in a tough trade.
“It’s a bit complicated, but basically, somebody hired me to, uhm... to collect an old debt.”
“What kind of debt?” Sol said evenly. “Who am I supposed to owe?”
“I’m not sure you owe anybody, Mr. Katz. Look, let me lay this thing on you straight up. Do you recall a group that recorded for you back in the early sixties called the Sultans of Soul?”
“The Sultans?” Millie echoed. “Sure. We did a few shows together at the Warfield and the Broadway Capitol.”
“Do you remember Varnell Mack?” I asked.
She shot a sharp glance at Sol, then back at me. “I remember him. Tall, with a goatee?”
“He’s not so tall now,” I said. “To make a long story short, Mr. Mack says Horace DeWitt, the Sultans’ lead singer, is down and out. In a rest home.”
“I heard,” Sol said coolly. “So?”
“So Mr. Mack is hoping you can see your way clear to... help Mr. DeWitt out. For auld lang syne.”
“Just Horace?” Sol frowned. “Or would Varnell be wanting a taste, too?”
“No, sir, Mr. Mack seems to be doing quite well. New Caddy and a chauffeur, in fact.”
“Good for him,” Sol said evenly. “Did he say anything about my trying to contact him?”
“He didn’t mention it. Why?”
“Nothing heavy,” Millie put in, a shade too casually. “We’ve been thinking of calling Desi’s new album Motor City Mama, so we need Varnell’s permission to use the song. We had Roddy ask around, but nobody seemed to know what happened to him.”
“He said he quit the business years ago, went into real estate,” I said.
Sol shrugged. “Well, if all Mack wants is a few bucks for Horace, maybe we can work something out. Tell you what, Ax, bring Varnell by the club tonight. Tenish? We’ll have a few drinks, talk it over.”
“Fine by me. I’ll have to check with Mr. Mack, of course.”
“Do that, and get back to me. Meantime, if you don’t mind, we’re gettin’ ready to roll tape.”
“No problem. I’ll be in touch. And thanks.”
I stopped at the first 7-Eleven I came to and used the drive-by phone in the lot to call Varnell Mack. He answered on a car phone; I could hear the traffic noise in the background. I tried to tell him what I had, but he cut me off.
“Boy, I can’t hear worth a damn over this thing. You got news for me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then meet me at that rib joint down from your office. Twenty minutes?”
“I’ll be there.”
Mack’s Cadillac limo was parked illegally in front of Papa Henry’s, motor running. His chauffeur was behind the wheel, his huge hands tapping out rhythm to the thump of the Caddy’s sound system. Mack was sitting in a front window booth facing the street. Not a spot I would have chosen, but then I don’t need a cane to get around either. At least, not yet. I slid into the booth. Mack was warming his hands around a cup of tea. I gave him a quick rundown on what I’d turned up.