Swag

  “Look,” Frank said, “you got to have a gun or it isn’t armed robbery, is it? You don’t have a gun, the guy says go fuck yourself and you’re standing there, your hand in your pocket, pointing your finger at him.”

  “I’m not talking about the guns,” Stick said. “I’m talking about the source.” He’d been thinking about it and his idea was maybe they ought to run down to South Carolina or someplace.

  “Buy them?” Frank said. “Fill out the papers? Registered in whose name, yours or mine?” No, Frank said, the only way to do it was to talk to Sportree, his old B and E associate.

  Stick said how did they know they could trust this guy Sportree? Where was he getting the guns? Were they used before? Get caught with the goddamn piece and they check it and find it killed some colored guy the week before. “I never dealt with a colored guy,” Stick said, “on anything important, and I don’t know if I want to.”

  Frank told him to quit thinking about it. Sportree wasn’t going to sell them the guns. All he’d do was set it up so they could put their hands on a couple of clean pieces. Once they found him.

  Frank hadn’t seen Sportree in a few years. When he tried to call, he got an operator who told him the number was no longer in service. Stick said why didn’t he look in the phone book. Frank said, Jesus, that’d be like looking up Gracie’s Whorehouse. Stick said why didn’t he try it anyway.

  That was how they found the listing for Sportree’s Royal Lounge on West Eight Mile.

  In the late afternoon and early evening Sportree’s offered semidarkness and a sophisticated cocktail piano and was a spot for Southfield secretaries who worked in the new modern glass office buildings for companies that had moved out of downtown Detroit. They’d stop in after five and let guys buy them drinks. Or a secretary might come in with her boss, or with a salesman who called on her boss. A good-looking black girl with red hair and horn-rimmed glasses played cocktail Cole Porter from five to eight, getting the secretaries and the executives in the mood. Then she’d cover the piano keys and take her sheet music upstairs to the apartment over the Lounge.

  Also at eight the two white bartenders, who had come on at noon, went off, and two black bartenders took over. By nine, the executives and the secretaries were out of there. By ten, the clientele was solid black and the cute redheaded piano player came down without her sheet music and played soul on and off until two A.M.

  When Frank and Stick got there a little before seven, it was cocktail time and the secretaries were sitting around in the moody dimness with bosses or salesmen or waiting for live ones to come in. Walking in, Frank liked the place right away. He said, “Hey, yeah.” A few of the girls looked up and gave them a quick reading, without showing any interest. Nothing. A guy who slept in his clothes and a garage mechanic off duty—probably what they thought. It bothered Frank. He felt seedy and needed a shave and imagined he had rotten breath. He wanted to go home and change, come back later. He wasn’t disappointed at all when the bartender told them Sportree wouldn’t be in till around ten.

  They drove out to Stick’s motel, the Zanzibar, picked up the ten cocktail napkins, the can of Busch Bavarian left over, and Stick’s suitcase that looked like it had been through a lot of Greyhound bus stations and held nearly everything he owned. After that they went to Frank’s apartment on Thirteen Mile in Royal Oak.

  Frank told Stick to unpack and make himself comfortable while he took a shower. Stick looked around; it was a small place, one bedroom, not much. He didn’t unpack but took a pale-green sport coat out of the suitcase and draped it over the back of a chair. He wondered if Frank had an iron. Probably not, the place was pretty bare, a few magazines lying around and ashtrays that hadn’t been emptied. The place didn’t look lived in; it looked like a waiting room in a hospital.

  Frank put on a clean shirt, a dark-blue shiny suit, and asked Stick if he was going to change.

  “I already did,” Stick said, “this morning.” He had on a faded blue work shirt.

  Frank looked at the sport coat on the chair. “I guess you couldn’t wear it anyway till you had it cleaned.”

  “I haven’t worn it in a month,” Stick said. “What do I need to get it cleaned for?”

  “I mean pressed,” Frank said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They stopped for something to eat and got back to Sportree’s a little after ten.

  As soon as they were inside the door, Stick said, “What’s going on?” He kept his voice low. “What the fuck is going on?”

  He followed Frank over to an open space at the bar, seeing the young black guys with their hats and hairdos turning to look at them.

  Frank said to the bartender, “Bourbon and a Scotch, please. Splash of water.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the tables. There wasn’t another white person in the place. The light was off where the redheaded black girl had been playing the piano. The heavy chugging beat of West Indian reggae was coming from a hi-fi. The place seemed darker.

  Frank waited for the bartender to put their drinks down. He said, “Where’s Sportree? Tell him Frank Ryan. He knows me.”

  The bartender looked at him, didn’t say a word, and moved away.

  Stick said, “What’s going on?”

  “I got an idea,” Frank said. “I don’t know, but I got an idea.”

  When Sportree approached a few minutes later, Frank saw him coming in the mirror behind the bar. He looked over his shoulder at Sportree, at his open body shirt and double string of Ashanti trading beads, and said, “Where you going, to a drag party?”

  Frank could feel the people near them watching, and felt good seeing the warm, amused expression in the man’s eyes. He hadn’t changed; he still knew who he was, in control. A good-looking, no-age black man with straightened long hair glistening across his forehead, a full, curled-down moustache, a little bebop growth beneath his lower lip, and liquid, slow-moving eyes.

  Sportree said, very quietly, “Frank, how you doing? It’s been awhile.”

  Frank said, “I’d like you to meet my business associate, Ernest Stickley, Jr., man, if you can dig the name. Stick Stickley. And this is Sportree in the Zulu outfit, in case anybody doesn’t know he’s a jig.”

  Sportree didn’t change his expression. He said, “You come down to learn some new words? Don’t know whether you’re Elvis Presley or a downtown white nigger, do you?”

  “Well, you know,” Frank said, “it’s hard to keep up with all that jive shit living with honkies. Actually what we’re looking for is a cleaning lady.”

  Sportree’s expression held, then began to relax more, and he almost smiled. “A cleaning lady. Yeah, why don’t we go upstairs, be comfortable? Talk about it.”

  They went outside to the entrance and up a flight of stairs to the apartment over the Lounge. The good-looking young black girl with red hair was sitting on the couch smoking a homemade cigarette. Sportree said, “A bourbon and a Scotch, little water.” Stick could smell the cigarette. He watched the girl get up without a word and go into the kitchen: little ninety-six-pounder in a white halter top and white pants.

  As they sat down Sportree said, “You all want to smoke?”

  Frank said, “Hey, don’t start my partner on any bad habits. He’s straight and I want to keep him that way.”

  Stick didn’t say anything. He listened to Frank ask the black guy how the numbers business was, and the black said numbers, numbers was for little children. He was in the saloon business now. You mean in front, Frank said, with a pharmacy in the rear. The black guy said well, maybe a little coke and hash, some African speed, but no skag, uh-unh, he wouldn’t deal shit to a man he found in bed with his lady.

  The redheaded black girl brought the drinks in and left the room again, still without a word or change of expression.

  Stick listened to Frank talking about the car business, LA, smog, traffic on the Hollywood Freeway, how he’d worked in a bar in North Hollywood, screwed a starlet once, and finally, after thinking awhile, re
membering the name of the picture she was murdered in, which Stick and the black guy had never heard of. Stick went out to the kitchen and made himself another drink. The redheaded black girl sitting at the table reading Cosmopolitan didn’t look up. He went back into the living room, which reminded him of a Miami Beach hotel, waited until Frank got through saying no, he wasn’t in jail out there, and said, “You having a nice visit?”

  Frank gave him a deadpan look. “Why, you in a hurry?”

  “I thought we were looking for a cleaning lady.”

  Sportree was watching them both with his lazy, amused expression. He said, “Yeah, I believe somebody mentioned that.” His eyes held on Frank. “Your business associate know what he’s doing?”

  “Cars,” Frank said. “He’s very good with cars. Many, many years at it, one conviction.”

  “If that’s your pleasure, what you need with a cleaning lady?”

  “That’s his credentials. I’m saying we’re all friends,” Frank said. “Kindred spirits. Birds of a feather.”

  “Man,” Sportree said, “you do need some new words.”

  “I’ll take a side order,” Frank said, “but for the entree how about a nice cleaning lady with big brown eyes?”

  “You going back in the business? It’s hard work, man. For young, strong boys with a habit.”

  Frank shook his head. “No, we got something else in mind. But first we got to locate a couple of items.”

  “Like what items we talking about?”

  “Well, what this cleaning lady should look for are, you know, color TVs—”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fur coats.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Watches. Jewelry.”

  “Go on.”

  “Silverware maybe, you know, silver stuff. And firearms.”

  Sportree grinned. “You almost forgot to mention that. Any particular firearms you got in mind?”

  “Well, like the kind you might find in the guy’s top drawer,” Frank said. “Underneath his jockeys.”

  “No hunting rifles, anything like that.”

  “No, I had more in mind the smaller models you can hold in one hand.”

  “Put in your pocket, or in your belt.”

  “Yeah, that kind.”

  “You remember my cousin LaGreta?”

  “That’s right, your cousin.”

  “She used to have big eyes. I can talk to her,” Sportree said. “Seems to me the rate was twenty bucks a house. I mean a house, you know, there’s goods in it. She give you the plan, where everything is, twenty bucks.”

  “That’s fine,” Frank said. “Twenty dollars, if that’s the going rate, fine.”

  “She’s with this Rent-A-Maid and also a catering service,” Sportree said. “Work parties, weddings, you understand? and does some cleaning jobs, too. She don’t do floors, though. I remember her saying she don’t do floors.”

  “Long as she gets in the house,” Frank said, “I don’t care what the fuck she does in there.”

  “Nice thing,” Sportree said, “she gets around. You know, doesn’t work for the same people all the time. That wouldn’t be so good.”

  “Listen, that sounds fine,” Frank said. “In fact it’s exactly what we’re looking for. If LaGreta’s got the eyes you say she has.”

  “Nice big eyes,” Sportree said.

  “Can I ask you if she’s on anything?”

  “She smoke a little, that’s all. Vacuum that big house, clean the oven, polish the furniture, she like to visit friends and have a little something. But what she make you know, she ain’t on any hard shit.”

  “You think you can set it up?”

  “I’ll talk to her. You give me your telephone number.”

  Frank hesitated. “I better call you. We’re in and out a lot. Maybe we’re not there when you call.”

  Sportree said, “Frank, I hope you still the same person I used to be associated with.” His gaze moved to Stick. “Just as I hope your friend here is pure.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” Stick said to him. “I enjoyed the drinks, but I don’t know a rat’s ass about you ei-ther, do I?”

  It was the quiet way he said it that jolted Frank. He couldn’t believe it—the first time Stick even opened his mouth. Frank said, “Hey, let’s not have any misunderstandings,” and looked over at Sportree.

  “It’s all right,” Sportree said, his tone a little cooler than before. “You call me in a couple of days. Maybe I’ll have something for you, maybe I won’t.”

  When they were outside Frank said, “What’re you trying to prove? The guy’s doing us a favor, you come on like you’re some dangerous character.”

  “All I said was I didn’t know him very well.”

  “But I do.” Frank was tense. “I’ve known him a hell of a lot longer’n I’ve known you. You don’t like the way I’m handling it, go back working cement, maybe I’ll see you around.”

  “You’re handling it,” Stick said. “You made up the rules. It seems to me one of them, it says don’t even tell a junkie your name. The first guy we talk to, it happens, runs a dope store.”

  “You don’t know anything about him.”

  They got in the car and drove off and didn’t say anything for a while, each feeling the other’s presence. Finally Frank said, “Listen, this is kind of dumb. We got something going or we haven’t. We don’t blow it over a few words.”

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” Stick said, “I thought the guy was all right. I probably wasn’t talking so much to him as I was to you.”

  Frank looked over. “I don’t follow you.”

  “There you are,” Stick said. “And I don’t follow you around either, you say go pee-pee, I do it. You don’t say to the guy I don’t want a smoke. If I don’t want it, I tell him.”

  Frank glanced away from the windshield again. “Is that all that’s bothering you?”

  “That’s all,” Stick said. “I thought I might as well mention it.”

  4

  THEY SPENT THE WEEKEND ON a slow tour of some of Detroit’s industrial suburbs on the northeast side—Clawson, Madison Heights, Warren, Roseville—Stick driving. Frank taking notes, writing down the names and locations of bars, supermarkets, liquor stores, with a few words to describe the traffic and the fastest way out of each area. There was a liquor store in Warren that Frank especially liked and said maybe ought to be the first one. The liquor store was on a four-lane industrial street that was lined with machine and sheet-metal shops, automotive supply houses. Hit the place on a Friday, payday. How’d that sound? Stick said if they were going to start, the liquor store was probably as good a place as any.

  Monday, Frank went back to Red Bowers Chevrolet and told the sales manager he was leaving the end of the week. The sales manager didn’t seem too upset about it. Frank looked around the used-car lot and gave himself a good deal on a tan ’72 Plymouth Duster that needed a ring job and some transmission work. If they had any luck at all, they wouldn’t have the car very long.

  After he got home he drove Stick around downtown Royal Oak until Stick spotted Al’s Plumbing & Heating on South Main and said, “There. I think I like that one.” He liked the way they parked the panel trucks behind the building with no fence or spotlight to worry about.

  Tuesday, Stick took his green sport coat to the cleaner’s, then stopped at an auto parts store and had some clips made for shorting and hooking up electric wires. The guy at the place didn’t ask him any questions. He bowled and drank beer most of the afternoon, rolling a one eighty-six he felt pretty good about.

  Wednesday, Frank called Sportree, who told them to come down, he had something they might like.

  What it was: a sheet of Ace tablet paper, lined, with the addresses of two homes in Bloomfield Hills and a list of the goods they’d find in each place. The words looked like they’d been written by a child, in pencil, but that was all right. They could read the words without any trouble. Especially the one that said GUNS.

&nbs
p; “This one place, LaGreta say the man’s got a gun collection in his recreation room, down in the basement,” Sportree explained. “The whole family’s out to the lake for the summer. Sometime the man stop off home, but usually he drive out there from his work. How’s that sound to you for forty dollars? Whole mother collection to pick from.”

  Thursday night, they went to a ten o’clock show in Royal Oak, watched Clint Eastwood kill some people, and at twelve walked out of the movie theater, across the street, and down two blocks to Al’s Plumbing & Heating. Frank waited on the corner while Stick went around the back. A few minutes later a panel truck with Al’s name on the side stopped at the corner and Frank got in.

  “That was pretty quick.”

  “It used to take me less than a minute,” Stick said, “but with these newer models, I got to figure things out.”

  “You jump the wires?”

  “Not under the hood.” Stick patted the dashboard. “All the work’s done underneath here. You look, you see some clips I had made.”

  Driving out to the gun collector’s house in Bloomfield Hills, he told Frank what he used to do when he spotted a certain car he liked that had the dealer’s name on it. Get the serial number off the car, then go to the dealer and tell them you lost the key and have one made. Simple.

  They found the address and Stick pulled into the side drive of the big Colonial.

  It was Frank’s turn now. “They all do the same thing,” he said, “leave two lights on downstairs and one up, and you’re supposed to think somebody’s home.”

  Stick sat in the truck while Frank rang the bell at the side door and waited. He rang it again and waited almost a minute before he broke a pane of glass in the door, reached in, and unlocked it. Stick got out of the truck and went inside, down a hallway past the kitchen to the family room, where a lamp was on. Frank was looking at the TV set, a big Motorola that was like a piece of furniture.

  “What do you think!” Frank said. “Use the top for a bar, get rid of that little black-and-white I got. Except it’s a big mother, isn’t it?” He looked at Stick. “You think we can handle it?”