“Ol’ Sol’s still in the business and livin’ fat city?” he said, showing a thin smile. “And still with Millie? I’ll be damned. Who woulda figured it after all this time?”
“It hasn’t really been so long,” I said.
“Been a lifetime for some people,” Mack said, glancing out the flyspecked window at the street. A posse car cruised slowly past, a blacked-out Monte Carlo low rider. Mack didn’t notice it. He was looking beyond to... somewhere else.
“Millie remembered you,” I said.
“A lotta woman, Millie. Smart, too. Smart enough to marry money, and stick to it.”
“Maybe it wasn’t like that,” I said.
“No?” the old man said, annoyed. “Know a lot about it, do you, boy? You married?”
“I was. Once.”
“Once oughta be enough for people, one way or another. You know, Willis told me you were sharp, Axton, but I’ll tell you the God’s truth, when I laid that money on you, I thought I was kissin’ it goodbye, I truly did. You did okay.”
“I haven’t actually done anything yet,” I said.
“How do you figure?”
“You hired me to collect some money for the Sultans. Sol said he was willing to work something out about the rights to ‘Motor City Mama.’ He didn’t actually say he’d pay or how much.”
“Don’t worry ’bout it.” Mack smiled grimly. “The important thing is, he’s willin’ to talk. This ain’t really about money, you know? It’s about doin’ the right thing. So whatever Sol’s willin’ to pay, it’ll be enough.” He used his cane to lever himself painfully out of the booth. “I’ll pick you up here at nine-thirty.”
“Right,” I said absently. The posse car was coming by again, probably checking out Mack’s Cadillac. I watched it pass, then realized what was bothering me wasn’t the car, it was something above it, something glinting from the roof of the building across the street. For a split second I froze, half-expecting gunfire. But the flash was too bright to be metal. And it wasn’t moving. Mack was eyeing me oddly.
“Anythin’ wrong?”
“Nope,” I said, “not a thing. I’ll see you tonight.” I waited in the booth while he limped out to the Caddy and climbed in. As the car drifted away from the curb, a man stood up on the roof of the building opposite. With a minicam. He photographed Mack’s car as it made a left onto Eight Mile.
I slipped out the back door of Papa Henry’s into the alley, trotted down to the end of the block, and walked quickly to the corner, keeping close to the building. The man on the roof was gone.
Damn! I sprinted across the street, dodging traffic, and dashed down the alley. A blue Honda Civic was parked in a turnout, halfway down. It had to be his. Nobody parks in an alley in this part of town.
I heard a clank of metal from above and flattened against the wall. Someone was coming down the fire escape, moving quickly. A slender black man in U of D sweats and granny glasses, toting a black canvas shoulder bag. I waited until he was halfway down the last set of firestairs, then stepped out, blocking the path to his car.
“Nice day for it,” I said.
He froze. “For what?”
“Taking pictures. That’s what you were doing, right? Of me and the man I was with?”
He hesitated a split second, then shrugged. “If you walk away from me right now, maybe you can stay out of this thing.”
“What thing?”
“An official Metro narcotics investigation.”
“Narcotics investigation? Of who? Me? Papa Henry? You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I’m warning you, you’re interfering in—”
“Save the smoke,” I interrupted. “If you’re a cop, show me some tin, and I’m gone.”
“Fair enough,” he said coolly. He unzipped the canvas bag, took out a packet, and flipped it toward me. I half-turned to catch it, and he vaulted the rail and hit the ground running. He only had me by two steps and the bag on his shoulder must have slowed him, but he was still too fast for me.
“Heeelllp!” he shouted as we pounded down the alley. “The maaan! The maaan!”
It worked. I broke off the chase a few feet from the alley mouth. There was no way a white guy could chase a black man down Eight Mile without attracting an unfriendly crowd, and we both knew it. He cut a hard right when he hit the street and disappeared. I turned and trotted back to his car.
The packet he’d tossed at me was useless, a brochure for camera film from a shop on Woodward. I considered breaking into the car, but decided against it. For openers, I wasn’t certain it was his car. But I was fairly sure that he’d been filming Mack and me. We were the only ones sitting in the windows; he’d photographed the Caddy as it pulled away, and stopped shooting when it was gone.
A narcotics investigation? Possible. God knows, there are enough of ’em in this town. But if he was a cop, why not just show me some ID? Or a .38? No narc would work an alley off Eight Mile unarmed. And if he wasn’t a cop, then what was he?
I was getting an uneasy sense of blundering through a roomful of spiderwebs. The only reason I could think of for someone to film me talking to Mack was that one of us was being set up for something. I’ve ticked off a few folks over the years, but none I could think of who’d bother with a cameraman. Not in a town where you can buy a hit for fifty bucks. Or less.
That left Mack. Was he mixed up in the drug scene? Maybe, though the drug trade’d be a rough game for somebody who can barely walk. Besides, he hadn’t asked me to do anything illegal. He hired me to collect money for the Sultans from persons unknown.
Or had he? All I really knew about Mack was what he told me. Millie remembered him, and Sol too. From the old days. This whole thing kept coming back to that. The old days. And the Sultans of Soul.
And Horace DeWitt. And since in a way I was actually working for DeWitt, maybe it was time I met the Sultans’ leader. Besides, I’d been hearing “Motor City Mama” since I was a tad. It would be interesting to finally meet the face behind the voice.
I’ve acquired a modest reputation in music circles for tracing skips and collecting debts. The sign on my office door says private investigations, but the truth is I don’t have to do much Sherlocking. The people in this business aren’t very good at hiding. And since he wasn’t hiding, Horace DeWitt was easier to find than most.
Mack mentioned DeWitt had only been in the home for a few months, so he was still listed in the phone book at his old address on Montcalm, and a quick call to the post office gave me his forwarding address. Riverine Heights, in Troy.
The funk from some welfare-case warehouses will drop you to your knees a half a block away, but Riverine Heights appeared to be better than most, a modern, ten-story cinderblock tower on Wattles Road. It even had a view of River Rouge.
At the front desk, a cheery, plump blonde in nurse’s whites had me sign the visitor’s log, and told me I’d probably find Mr. DeWitt in the fourth-floor residents’ lounge. Fourth floor. A relief. The higher you go in these places, the less mobile the patients are. The top floors are reserved for the bedridden, only a last gasp from heaven. A fourth-floor resident should be ambulatory, more or less.
It was less. The residents’ lounge was a small reading room with French doors that opened out onto a balcony. Institutional green plastic chairs lined the walls, a few well-thumbed magazines lay forgotten on the bookshelves. An elderly woman in street clothes was sitting on the sofa with a patient in a robe. The woman was knitting a scarf. Her date was asleep, his mouth open, his head resting on her shoulder.