Man With An Axe: A Detective Sergeant Mulheisen Mystery Part 4

Would there be anything in there about selbstmord? I was willing to bet that there wouldn't be. Somehow, it just didn't seem the kind of thing that Grootka would notate. It would be like keeping a dream journal-just a little too flaky for a no-bulls.h.i.+t b.a.s.t.a.r.d like Grootka. (Well, that's what he used to say: "Hey, I'm just a no-bulls.h.i.+t b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but. . . .") Thinking about all this, I remembered that Agge, the History Honey, had asked where was Grootka when Hoffa disappeared. Possibly there was something in his notebooks. Another reason to look.

I couldn't remember Grootka ever saying anything about Hoffa. Which was odd, come to think of it. I remembered the furore. Everybody was checking their traps, trying to get a lead. Not a d.i.c.k in Detroit, but wanted to know what had happened to the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, hoping to get lucky and make a name.

I stuck my head out into the hallway and bellowed, "Maki!" A tall, bony, red-nosed detective with rubbery red lips stuck his head out of the squad-room door. Maki was a nice guy. Been on the force forever.

"What do you know about Hoffa?" I asked.

"They found him!" he declared, with a red rubber grin.

I stared at him. His eyes were beady, blue, and a little watery. He was not known to be a joker. "Where?" I asked, suspiciously.

"Jeffrey Dahmer's autopsy!" he guffawed, and his head vanished.

I sighed and returned to my desk. Apparently the world had gone completely loopy.

A few seconds later, rather sheepishly, Maki appeared at my door. "Mul, I'm sorry," he said, abjectly, "it was too good an opportunity to pa.s.s up. I don't know what got into me." He laughed a little, thinking about it. He was embarra.s.sed now.

"I know, I know," I placated him. "But seriously. . . . What do you know about Hoffa? Did you work on the case at all?"

"Hoffa? Seriously? Sure. Sure, I worked on it. Didn't you? I just did the usual."

"No," I said. "I wasn't a detective yet. What usual?"

"Oh, I don't know. . . . I checked out some alibis, tried to locate some possible witnesses, snitches . . . that kind of stuff. I didn't try very hard."

"Why not?"

"Well, it was Hoffa," Maki said, almost apologetically. "He was not exactly a policeman's pal, you know. Anyway, everybody knew the Mob whacked him. It was bound to happen. You fool around with those guys, eventually they dump on you, especially if you aren't one of them. Right?"

I shrugged; it happened. "Did you know him?"

"Hoffa? I met him once. I was on the West Side, then. I went to check out a tussle over at the local, Two ninety-nine, Hoffa's local. He beat some laborer up. The guy was protesting because the laborers' union-A.F. of L., you know-was on strike at Zug Island and the Teamsters didn't honor the picket line. So a bunch of them went over to the local and stood around, yelling, calling Hoffa a labor traitor, and finally he came out with some of his heavies. There wasn't much to it. The guy got his a.s.s kicked. Or, I should say, his nuts. Hoffa kicked the guy in the nuts. Really stomped him. Pretty nasty stuff. Nothing came of it, though."

"No?"

"The guy never pressed charges. It was kind of iffy, anyway. But the thing I remember is Hoffa chewed our a.s.ses. You know, the old rant about 'Where were you when I needed you,' and 'Who do you think pays your salary.' The man was abusive. And a crook. You never saw him, hunh?"

No, I'd never seen Jimmy Hoffa, live. He was all over the press and the television, of course. Hoffa was not a hero of mine, although I certainly didn't share Maki's dismissive att.i.tude. I had been brought up to respect unions. In my home, men like Eugene V. Debs and Walter Reuther were revered. Others, like George Meany and Hoffa, were viewed with mixed feelings. They were allowed some respect for being at least chosen, whether honestly or not, to lead enormous bodies of union workers. There was no denying in Hoffa's case that an overwhelming majority of his const.i.tuents supported and even loved him. Doubtless, there were some, perhaps many, disaffected and even anti-Jimmy Teamsters; but it seemed that the great majority were more or less enthusiastic supporters. You can't ignore that.

Too, Hoffa was a genuine character, an original. There was no one in public life quite like him. He was tough, not in the least abashed by polite society, and quite willing to speak from the hip. In Detroit a guy can dine out for a long time on candid comments like Hoffa's about the Mob: "You're a d.a.m.ned fool not to be informed what makes a city run when you're tryin' to do business in the city." Even as a cop, I had to admit that it didn't make sense to pretend that the Mob didn't exist, like most public figures did.

I wondered if Grootka mightn't have been at least a grudging, if private, admirer of Hoffa's, but I couldn't recall even a single mention of him. That seemed odd, considering how Hoffa had been in the public eye more or less constantly for decades, to say nothing of the tremendous hullabaloo about his disappearance.

Oddly, I had misspoken myself, to Maki: I had been a detective at the time of Hoffa's vanis.h.i.+ng, but to the best of my recollection I hadn't had one single thing to do with the case. And I was certain that Grootka had not mentioned it, not even on the occasion when we were discussing ways of getting rid of bodies, as in abandoned cars.

The Hoffa case was sure to be on the computer. I called up the clerk in Records; she did a quick scan for me and reported, almost immediately, not a single reference to Grootka in the records. So Grootka had never worked on the case. Too bad. I'd have bet that it would have been worth an amusing anecdote or two for Agge's history.

Then the clerk from Records called back. She'd been interested in my query and had taken it on herself to make a cursory scan of the F.B.I, liaison file-it was, after all, essentially an F.B.I, case. Here she came up with one reference to Grootka. A memo from a Special Agent Senkpile to D.P.D.-Homicide: "Please keep your man Grootka out of this. Highest priority." Which meant, the clerk thought, orders from the director himself.

"Hoover?" I said. But no, Hoover had died three years earlier. Webster? Gray? Who could remember these nonent.i.ties?

Well, this was fascinating. I called the F.B.I. They had no Agent Senkpile anymore. And, naturally, they had no comment about this former agent's comments re Grootka. But they'd get back to me.

I called a guy I knew in the U.S. marshal's office, P. G. Ch.e.l.liss, better known as Pedge. An old-timer, he remembered "Stinkpile." "A true FBI man, Mul. Stinky was Dutch Reformed. He got his hair buzz-cut even before he joined the bureau. s.h.i.+ned his shoes every day, stood tall, looked you right in the d.a.m.n eye. This man could soldier. Absolutely useless as an investigator, of course. Couldn't find his a.s.s with both hands."

"Why would he warn Grootka off the Hoffa case?"

Pedge, remembering Grootka, snapped: "Who wouldn't?" But on further reflection he confessed that he had no idea. It was ridiculous for Senkpile to even be on the Hoffa case, much less in a position of apparent authority. He promised to check around.

I have a small window in my office. It looks out onto Chalmers Avenue. It was a swell dark and rainy March day, temperature about fifty degrees with periodic blasts of wind that could tumble a pig. The trees were bare and wet, the street glistening, reflecting the headlights of cars already, at four in the afternoon. A great day to get out of the office and run down to Lake Erie. As bleak as Detroit looked on a day like this, the southern Ontario plains were bound to be even gloomier. I do enjoy a gloomy prospect.

I was not disappointed. The wind and rain off the little jetty in front of Books Meldrim's cottage was absolutely doleful. You could hear lost s.h.i.+ps out there in the murk, moaning for guidance, lamenting their trespa.s.ses, pleading for mercy.

Books was looking okay, not noticeably older. He was in his seventies for sure, possibly his eighties or nineties. I couldn't tell. He was a small brown man with grizzled hair and mustache. He reminded me of an old jazzman, but I couldn't recall who, exactly. In fact, he was a player himself, a well-regarded nonprofessional pianist in the Teddy Wilson style.

My intention was to ask him about the list I carried of Grootka informants. Maybe some of them were still around. But I got distracted by the jazz suggestion and asked him about Grootka's surprising predilections.

"I knew about the soprano sax," Books said. "Will you have some tea? I also have whisky, but I haven't been drinking it of late, so I forget to offer it."

I took the tea. For some reason I'd gotten fed up with whisky myself. A day like this called for tea, and Books's strong Darjeeling answered well.

"Grootka was always a surprising one," Books observed when we had settled near the fireplace. It was a very snug cottage. "I believe he learned music at the orphanage. He told me he played a C-melody sax in the band. In our younger days he was very fond of the kind of small group swing that one could hear in the joints down on Hastings Street. You know, there was always a considerable jazz movement in Detroit. Many great players got their start here. Why, I remember Don Redman's band, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, and Benny Carter played with them, too. What a wonderful player he was-still is, in fact. Oh, it was a swinging town!"

I was quite aware of this. My own preference was for the small bands of the thirties and forties. I had inherited it, obliquely, from my parents. Not because they were jazz fans-they had never shown any particular interest in jazz-but because they were of that era and I longed to be of it myself, to share that life with them. It gave me a fine and unusual pleasure to listen to Books reminisce about the period.

"In the forties, down on Hastings, I used to hear guys like Lucky Thompson and Wardell Gray. That's when I first met Grootka. He was hanging out-'course, he was a cop, but he was a fan, you could tell. Bop was coming in. I believe Milt Jackson was around then, too, before he went with the Modern Jazz Quartet."

"How did Grootka get onto this avant-garde stuff?" I asked. "It seems out of character, somehow."

Books shrugged. "You never know with Grootka. And you know, I think the idea that the swing players hated the boppers and the boppers hated Ornette and that gang . . . well, a lot of that was just the media, you know? I mean, some of those old guys, they didn't like the new stuff, said the boppers couldn't play in tune and where was the melody, all that stuff . . . but I believe that most of the real players weren't really like that. The critics and the reviewers, they liked the controversy. I guess it sold magazines and records. But you know how the real players are: they like everything. h.e.l.l, you couldn't get Basie to admit that Lawrence Welk was bad-'Man's got a h.e.l.l of an organization.' Ha, ha." He paused suddenly, remembering something, then related a tale about the fine old cornetist Bobby Hackett, who evidently was even less capable than Basie of finding anything critical to say: "Cat asked him, 'What about Hitler?' And Bobby thinks for a minute, then says, 'Well, he was the best in his field.' Ha, ha, ha!"

We both had a good laugh on that one. "Well, Grootka certainly got into free-form jazz," I said. "He had a baritone sax, too."

Books's face lit up. "Really? I bet that was Tyrone Addison's influence."

"Oh yes, there was some music with Addison's name on it, on Grootka's music stand." I'd heard of Addison, the obscure genius. But I hadn't heard much. I thought of him as a quintessential Detroit star-greatly admired locally, but unknown to the outside world. There were precedents for that kind of obscurity, but it's an old story in provincial circles. His music, which I couldn't remember ever hearing, was said to be wild and difficult. But I hadn't heard anything about Addison in years. I had a vague notion that he was dead-dope, probably.

"Did Grootka know Addison?" I asked.

"Oh yes. I remember he talked about him incessantly for a while. I think he was taking lessons from him! That'd be that baritone.

Tyrone was a bari player. Gone now, I guess. I've kind of lost touch."

Astonis.h.i.+ng. But then, Grootka was unusual. Imagine, taking lessons at his age. Then it struck me: "When was this?"

Books frowned. "Back in the seventies, about seventy-five, seventy-six, in there." And then, to nail it down: "It was when he was working on the Hoffa case."

"Oh yes," I said, casually. "Did he ever talk about the Hoffa case?"

"Not much. I got the impression he thought it was all open and shut."

"In what way?" I asked.

Books made a face of careless certainty, a comical moue: "Oh, you know . . . Hoffa got all screwed up with them Mob boys. There wasn't much to it, but I guess Hoffa was stubborn and wouldn't let it drop, whatever the beef was. So he had to go." He shrugged. That was all there was to it. Open and shut.

I pursued it a little further, but Books didn't know any more. We fell to considering the list of names I'd brought and that was good for a laugh or two. Books confided that a couple of the names on the list, Shakespeare and Homer, were alternate tags for himself.

I was happy to accept Books's invitation to dinner, which turned out to be black-eyed peas with ham hocks and cornbread. It was delicious, particularly with the poke sallet greens. I was curious where Books would get these things locally; it seemed unlikely that supermarkets in this region of southern Ontario would feature the makings for soul food. He said he drove up to Detroit once a week to shop, or sometimes a friend would come down. Something in his tone made me ask how he enjoyed living down here on the lake.

"I like it fine," he said. "I have my books, my records. I generally enjoy solitary living. But, you know, once in a while a fellow longs to see another dark face."

He smiled thoughtfully and sipped at his wine. We had finished the dishes and withdrawn to the fireside again. He drew on the H. Upmann "Pet.i.t Corona" I had provided. "When a man lives alone," he said, "he is tempted to philosophize. I am not immune. I have come to believe that race is one of the biggest servings of bulls.h.i.+t that man has ever tried to digest. But look at it this way: say you're sick. You got a tumor and you need help, right now. There are two doctors available to you and both are named Brown. But one of them is white and one is colored. Which one will you go to? As long as you don't know that they're different races, there's nothing to choose. But if you do know which is which . . . well, if you're me, it would be hard not to at least see the colored doctor first, don't you think? It would be easier, more comfortable. And I'll bet you would see the white Dr. Brown first. That's 'cause there is nothing but skin color to distinguish these two doctors from one another, so race becomes at least a minor factor. But say that one of them is a well-known surgeon and the other one practices holistic medicine-you know, herbs and naturopathy, that kind of thing. Well, if you're me, you wouldn't give a fart in a whirlwind what color that surgeon was: you'd go see him. Another man, like my old friend Henry Chatham, he's a naturopathy man: he'd go to a witch doctor or a conjure woman before he'd let a man of any color cut on him. You see? But." He looked a bit wistful. "Sometimes I miss n.i.g.g.e.r Heaven. Maybe I should have retired there."

I was momentarily nonplussed.

Books chuckled. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to embarra.s.s you. I should have said Turtle Lake. It's a colored resort up in the Thumb. Maybe you heard of it?"

I had, though it seemed ages ago, and I'd even heard its nickname. And now I made the connection with the piece of music that I'd seen attributed to Tyrone Addison, in Grootka's apartment.

"Did Tyrone Addison have a place up there?" I asked.

"Tyrone? Naw. Why, Tyrone wasn't no more than a boy when I used to go up to, ah, Turtle Lake. I had me quite a nice place over by the golf course, actually closer to the casino. Oh yeah." He shook his head. "I had me some times! But, you know, come to think of it, I used to see Tyrone up there. His uncle had a place there. Lonzo. Now what was Lonzo's name? He was a bail bondsman, great big 'ol black fellow. Yes," he said with triumph, proud of his memory, "it was Lonzo b.u.t.terfield! My, my, what a fellow. Talk about conjure men, or women, ol' Lonzo was one. He could walk that walk and talk that talk. Mmmmhmmm. Yeah, and there was something going on up there once, too. I remember Grootka coming to me about it."

"Really! What?"

"Grootka was after Lonzo for something," Books said. He shook his head with regret. "I'm doggoned if I can remember what it was! But you know these bail bondsmen, they're a wicked bunch. No telling what it was."

"When was this?"

Books stared at the fire for a long moment, seemingly focusing into its depths. Finally, he nodded and said, "If I had to put a date to it, I'd say July or August of . . . oh, let me think . . ." Suddenly, his face brightened. "I just had bought a brand-new seventy-five Continental, except that it wasn't exactly brand-new. So it must have been 1975. August of seventy-five." He beamed.

I was impressed. But alas, no amount of encouragement could dredge up from the past the details of Grootka's interest in Lonzo b.u.t.terfield. All he could remember was that Grootka had asked him to drive up to Turtle Lake and see if Lonzo was there.

"Was Lonzo there?" I asked.

"No. But somebody was. I guess it must have been Tyrone. Yeah, come to think of it, Tyrone was there, with that white wife of his."

"Tyrone was married to a white woman?"

"Nice lady, too," Books said. "Man, she had t.i.ts like melons. And she didn't mind showing them, either. She wore a little skimpy bikini down to the beach. Oh yeah. I wonder if Tyrone put her up to it, or did she do it to p.i.s.s him off? You know, I believe he put her up to it. I don't believe she wanted to show herself like that. But some of these fellows . . . they want the world to see what kind of woman they got."

"What did Grootka say about all this?"

"Nothing. He was only interested in Lonzo."

"You don't say. I wonder if he knew Addison then, or was it later? You know, the lessons and so forth?"

"Well, he might have known Tyrone beforehand," Books said. "But I wasn't aware of it."

From there the conversation drifted to music and I asked Books if he had any of Addison's stuff on record.

"Well, you know, I don't. I'm not even sure there is anything. But, d.a.m.n, there oughta be! The cat was a stone genius. I'm not taking Grootka's word for it, though he knew a thing or two about the music. Tyrone was supposed to be pretty hot stuff back in the seventies-h.e.l.l of a player. He played with Ornette and Charlie Haden, Marcus Belgrave-all them cats. I remember Yusef-you know Yusef? Lateef? Yeah. The man is heavy. Yusef told me once Tyrone could burn on the bari, like he reinvented the horn, man. And he could write. Very heavy stuff, but basic. It made you think. But . . . I don't know what happened to him."

"Drugs, you think?"

"Well, when you're talking about these fellows, it does come to mind. But I don't recall that Tyrone ever was into drugs. Course, that don't mean a d.a.m.n thing."

I had to agree. Junkies were notorious for concealing their habit. "What kind of stuff did he write?" I asked. "You saw him play?"

"Oh, h.e.l.l yes. He worked quite a bit around town. He'd be playing hard bop, mostly, with Joe Henderson and Marcus. I saw him in a really hot group with Woody Shaw and Louis Hayes." He shook his head, marveling. He was looking through his record and compact disc collection. "Ah, here's something. You might like this."

It was a CD ent.i.tled A Parvus Fanfare, by one M'Zee Kinanda. The cover featured a remarkable photograph of a small country church with a few barefooted black children perched on the steps, smiling. Church was not meeting, evidently.

There were fifty-nine minutes of blues-tinged music on the disc, mostly featuring soprano sax and some remarkable drumming. I can't say that the music really grabbed me, although it was interesting. It swung, but only sporadically. Most of the time it was very serious music. Myself, I'll take Ellington any day.

Books insisted I take the disc along. He wasn't interested in it, he said. And he gave me a tape, also by Kinanda. "A little something to listen to on the drive home," Books said.

Before I left I remembered to ask Books if he'd ever heard Grootka talk about suicide, or about another self on the loose.

"Haw! That's a good one," Books said, grinning. "He actually told you that? Well." He shrugged, his face becoming thoughtful. "Grootka could surprise you. If he did have some notions about that, a good person to see would be that conjure man Lonzo b.u.t.terfield."

"I thought you said he was a bail bondsman."

"Yeah. Conjure man, too. From New Orleans, you know. Look him up. He'd be interesting to talk to."

One thing about unpleasant weather: it's no fun to drive in. But I took it easy on the way back to Detroit and mulled over the things I'd been hearing. The Hoffa disappearance really was remarkable, more remarkable than I'd ever considered. The thing that stood out the most for me was the way everybody blithely concluded that James Riddle Hoffa, deposed union leader and well-known crony of infamous mobsters, had been murdered and disposed of by those same old pals of his. I didn't find this so easy to accept. If Hoffa was so buddy-buddy with the Mob, why would they knock him? The Mob doesn't hit people for fun. There has to be a reason, especially when the target is a very visible guy who has a long-standing reputation as a friend of the Mob.

I had long contended that the Mob, considered as a corporate ent.i.ty, was not one of the better-run organizations. It has a reputation for ruthlessness and constancy, not to say implacability-characteristics of successful corporations (Ford Motor Company comes to mind). The fact was, the nature of much of their business meant that a high degree of personal trust and loyalty, of reliability, was essential. The Mob had often fallen back upon actual blood relations.h.i.+ps to ensure this crucial loyalty, even when it meant accepting perhaps a lower standard of performance. In the modern hard-driving and technical world, that factor was often a serious drawback. Still, I figured no mobster could be so stupid, so indifferent to general syndicate approval, as to hit Jimmy Hoffa out of anger or annoyance or even bad judgment. Except maybe Carmine, I thought. But even Carmine wasn't that dumb, and besides he always had Humphrey DiEbola, the Fat Man, to counsel and restrain him. No, I figured there had to be some as yet unknown reason . . . if, indeed, the Mob had done the number.

What the h.e.l.l, Hoffa was a pretty rough and reckless guy. He'd stepped on a lot of toes, shot off his mouth an awful lot, had surely ruined a few lives on his road to fame and fortune. There ought to be no shortage of candidates without Mob a.s.sociations who would want him dead and be willing to do the job themselves. I would sure like to see the F.B.I, file. I wondered if Pedge could help.

And, of course, I was most interested in looking through Grootka's old notebooks, to see what his findings, if any, had been.

I stopped at the precinct, although it was nearly midnight. To my surprise, Maki was still there. He was an old hand; it wasn't like him to linger after his s.h.i.+ft. But he said he'd been waiting for a guy to come in and see him, and then he'd gotten sidetracked by some old files.

"You know," I said, "I've been thinking a lot about Hoffa. He must have made a few enemies, wouldn't you say?"

Maki snorted derisively. "A few? You'da thought the guy was drafting an army of a.s.sa.s.sins."

"That's what I was thinking. Take that guy, for instance, the one he stomped at the local . . . the laborer."

Maki shook his head. "Well, that's one he didn't have to worry about. That was Sam Peeks."

The name was familiar to me but I couldn't place it. Maki filled me in.

"About a week after his run-in with Hoffa, Sam took his act to his own local. He got maybe a hundred guys to picket their own leaders for not supporting them, not negotiating in good faith. So the president over there, what's his name . . . McKenzie-he's dead now-invites Sam up to the office to discuss his grievances . . . alone." Maki frowned, remembering. "I heard there was over thirty shots fired inside that office. Somehow, all but five of them found their way into Sam Peeks."

The M'Zee Kinanda tape was pretty good, an improvement over the CD. He had a better ba.s.s player, I think, and the horns weren't so determinedly atonal and abrasive. Even haunting, at times.