Man with an Axe.
Jon A. Jackson.
Blues Going Up.
July 30, 1975.
""T" ain"t what you know," Tyrone"s uncle Lonzo was wont to say, "it"s what you don"." Sadly so, it"s the single thing that we do not know that so often shapes how things go for us. Tyrone Addison knew and understood most everything about his true wife, Vera, but he didn"t know everything-couldn"t, mustn"t know-and that was more or less fatal.
At this moment in the late afternoon of a summer day in the suburbs north of Detroit, Tyrone was determined to believe that they were driving to Machus" Red Fox Inn for drinks before an early dinner with his old friend Janney Jacobsen. It was something that he wanted to do, knew he should do, but in the way of such things he had to act as if it was all Vera"s idea, that it was a terrific bore to him or even a great nuisance. "The same-o, same-o," as Uncle Lonzo liked to say-and Tyrone affected to see it that way.
"Every time things get tight," he said to Vera, speaking loudly over the noise of the elderly Volkswagen engine, "you think it"s time to eat out. That don"t make sense, girl. Shift! Shift the d.a.m.n gear!"
"That"s not fair," Vera said, shifting the laboring engine into third gear. But it was true: in moments of stress she had a tendency to suggest a nice dinner, automatically. It had something to do with her childhood, perhaps; she didn"t know. But she felt that eating well would make everything better. This dinner was different, but she knew that Tyrone wasn"t just thinking of that. She knew he was harping on this to avoid saying something else, something that if said might not be so easy to unsay. It was much better for him to complain that when times got tough she was secretly glad, because she had money and he had none and now she could play the d.u.c.h.ess, which was a name Tyrone had for her when he was feeling put down, when he felt at a disadvantage. She was grateful that he didn"t say it, that he chose rather to focus on a presumed tendency of hers to squander money on dining out, or her bad driving.
Here was the problem, simply put: Janney Jacobsen was Tyrone"s friend, his admirer, and his sometime financial backer. If that had been all there was to it, that would be problem enough, but Janney was also in love with Vera. That is too simply put. In fact, although Vera went by the name of her true husband, Addison, she had married Jacobsen, a Dutch national, to provide him with American citizenship, and she was still legally married to him, years later. At the time of the marriage, Tyrone was playing sax in Phil Woods"s band, which was touring Europe, and he had met Vera in Paris and Janney in Amsterdam. Janney was rich; he wanted to emigrate, but there was some complication that had to do with a youthful criminal escapade, long forgotten except by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Janney would be allowed in as the spouse of an American citizen, and then he could devote himself to promoting his friend and musical idol, Tyrone Addison. So it was done, at Tyrone"s urging.
This is the complication, and it"s more complicated than that, but is not presently germane. The point is that Vera and Tyrone were on their way to meet Janney for an early dinner at the Red Fox, to discuss money for a recording project. Whether it meant that Janney got to sleep with Vera is not important, because the meeting did not take place.
"Well? Are we going to the restaurant or not? Turn! d.a.m.n, d.u.c.h.ess, can"t you watch what you"re doing?"
Vera angrily swung the van across the southbound lanes of Telegraph Road into the parking lot of the suburban restaurant and was instantly blinded. She was driving right into the waning sun and the glare off the filthy windshield badly obscured her vision. Tyrone, as ever, was wearing dark gla.s.ses, so he saw the man who burst out of the shrubbery.
"Stop!" Tyrone shrieked. "For G.o.dssakes, don"t hit him!"
Vera stopped just in time. The man actually b.u.mped against the bullnose of the Volkswagen van, but she hadn"t hit him; it was the man"s impetus that propelled him against the vehicle.
The man looked wild. He was stocky, in late middle age, and his eyes were wide and rolling. He was wearing a black, short-sleeved polo shirt and slacks. He angrily bashed a hefty leather briefcase at the nose of the van. It thumped solidly.
"Whyncha look where d"h.e.l.l yer goin"?" he snarled. His voice was quite audible with the windows open and the engine silent, killed when Vera had slammed on the brakes.
Suddenly the man swiveled his head, peering into the foliage of the shrubbery that shielded the parking lot from the surrounding terrain, which included a suburban shopping area on one side, with its large parking lot, and on the other side some spa.r.s.ely wooded acreage. It wasn"t clear which direction the man had come from, perhaps from the restaurant itself, which was a modest brick building, with a contemporary low-profile structure but sporting some faux rustic half-timbered effects, which licensed this suburban eatery to proclaim itself an "inn."
Evidently, the man heard something that alarmed him more than being hit by a vehicle. He scampered around the side of the van and took hold of the sliding door handle. "Lemme in," he rasped. "Lemme the f.u.c.k in!" He slid the door open and hopped in, crouching on the mattress that covered the floor of the van. "Get goin"!" he demanded. "Go! Go, go, go!" He ducked down.
In a panic, Vera tried to start the engine but managed to flood it. Unfazed, Tyrone leaned over the seat and demanded, in his best jive style: "Hey! What the f.u.c.k you doin"? Who invited you, motherf.u.c.ker? Get the f.u.c.k outta my d.a.m.n car!"
The starter whizzed but the engine did not catch. Tyrone lifted his long-suffering eyes to the sky. "Jesus! Give it a rest, d.u.c.h.ess," he said wearily. He turned back to the man and in a semiwhitey voice of detached calmness, said: "Listen here, my man . . . what the h.e.l.l you up to? Tell me that."
The man gestured with his briefcase, which he had partly open with his hand buried within. It was a threatening gesture, Tyrone felt. But he didn"t like being threatened in his own car-or his wife"s car-by some old white man who looked like a crazy Polack. "Whattayou, some kinda d.a.m.n lawyer? You gon" sue? She didn"t run into you, you ran into us. Whatchoo got in dere?" he demanded, slipping back into the spook act. "You tryna tell me you got a gun in dere? Show me yo" piece, mothaf.u.c.ka."
"What I got in here," the man rasped, his voice betraying desperation, "is a G.o.dd.a.m.n good reason for you to get the f.u.c.k goin". So get the f.u.c.k goin"! Help the broad, f"chrissake!"
The car started. Vera looked at Tyrone. He nodded resignedly; she put it in gear and they coasted forward. They cruised through the parking lot. This lot surrounded the restaurant, except for the front, which faced Telegraph Road, and it was all but empty at this hour, too early to call evening. There were a couple of flashy cars, Cadillacs and Lincolns, and toward the remote fringes the humble Fords and Chevys of the staff. Vera stopped at the edge of the neighboring parking lot, but the man spoke up from the depths of the back.
"No, no, turn right. That"s it. Turn. Go on out on Telegraph."
Vera turned onto Telegraph Road and began to drive south. She looked at Tyrone. He shrugged. "Man got a gun, d.u.c.h.ess. Guess we do what he wants. Hey! Old man! Old-man-with-a-gun! Where you wanta go?" Tyrone nodded his head then slightly, rhythmically, quietly mouthing the phrase, "Oman, omanwitta, omanwittagun, wittagun . . ."
"Anywheres, just keep goin"." The man scrambled toward the back and tried to look out, but the rear window was filthy, as always. There was fairly heavy traffic on Telegraph, particularly the northbound lanes. If the man was concerned about someone following, and clearly he was, there was no way of determining it. There were a few cars coming up behind them, but they were hardly identifiable through the dirt of the back window. "Get off Telegraph," the man rasped. "What"s this comin" up, Thirteen Mile?" He peered through the windshield. "Turn left, turn left."
Vera turned left and they drove about five hundred yards before their pa.s.senger bade them to pull over. "Get off the friggin" road," he said. He actually said "friggin"," evidently in deference to the presence of Vera, as if he had only now realized that a woman was in company. They sat quietly on the side of the road as several cars turned off Telegraph and cruised past them. Only Tyrone absently nodded his head and muttered, "Oman, omanwitta, gunwittagun. . . . Tha"s kinda cool, got its own little beat. E, C, B-flat, maybe. Hmmm."
Shortly it began to seem that no one had followed them. The man seemed to relax, a little anyway.
He looked his rescuers over carefully. What he saw was a pretty white woman, about twenty-five (in his aging eyes), with long blond hair, wearing a shapeless cotton dress that almost hid a busty figure and an essential slenderness. Some kind of hippie, he thought, and a.s.sumed that accounted for her friend, whom he saw as a black fellow wearing shades, slightly older, maybe as much as thirty. It looked to him like the black man was stoned, nodding his head and muttering.
The man had known a lot of black people in his sixty-two years and he had given up trying to estimate their ages. In fact, he had Tyrone"s and Vera"s ages almost exactly reversed, but he wouldn"t have been surprised; he"d dealt with too many smooth-faced seventy-year-olds and gnarly-faced kids. He didn"t think much of Tyrone, at first sight: a long face with thin lips and a ridiculous, wispy beard. He wore his hair long, not so much kinky as twisty, under a brocade or embroidered silk skullcap that had a ta.s.sel.
The man didn"t care for the cap, although it was distinctive, because he didn"t like blacks to be so a.s.sertive. And he didn"t notice Tyrone"s thin, aristocratic Ethiopian features. The black fellow had a good voice, the man thought: deep, articulate, well-modulated, sort of rhythmic somehow. But the nodding and muttering annoyed him.
What Tyrone saw was an old white man with a blunt, tough face and hair combed straight back, Polack fashion. Pure honky. An auto worker, Tyrone thought, except for the authoritative manner. That wasn"t the way of a man who worked in a factory, but he was dressed like they all dress, in strange brownish-purplish-gray formless slacks. He thought: Where do they get those pants, and does that color have an actual name? Black laced shop shoes with thick rubber soles, and a black short-sleeved polo shirt that had a little animal on the breast. What was it, a snake or something? No, an alligator.
The man was stocky and looked overweight at first, but then Tyrone noticed that he was really hard, muscular. He was intimidating with his little, hard blue eyes and his thin, mean mouth.
Vera thought his mouth looked humorous, like a man"s who told jokes and laughed a lot; and the beady glitter of the eyes she saw as twinkles. He looked like Uncle Vance, a not very successful brother of her mother"s, a man who had bankrupted two auto dealerships. There was something about him, though. He looked familiar. And suddenly she realized who he was. It thrilled her. "Are you . . . ? Aren"t you Jimmy Hoffa?"
"You got something against Hoffa?" the man said, but he seemed gratified to be recognized.
"No, no," Vera a.s.sured him.
Tyrone took off his gla.s.ses to get a better look and then said, "Somebody after you, Mr. Hoffa?"
Hoffa was making a face, seemingly to deny Tyrone"s suggestion, when a large, gleaming maroon Cadillac turned off Telegraph and came along Thirteen Mile Road at a slow pace. "Jeeziss!" Hoffa exclaimed and flopped down in the back. The car cruised on past them.
"Who"s after you?" Tyrone pursued.
"I don"t know. n.o.body," Hoffa said, rising barely enough to peer over the front seat at the stately progress of the Cadillac.
"You must know," Tyrone said, ""cause you reckanized that Caddy. Some gangsters on yo" case?"
"Whaddya talkin" about? I didn"t see no gangsters."
"Look like gangsters to me," Tyrone said. He gazed dispa.s.sionately at Hoffa, then shrugged. "Ain"t no business of mine. Man wants to pretend they ain"t no gangsters on his case, that"s cool with me. Well, nice meetin" y"all, Mr. Hoffa. Can we drop you some place?"
"Yanh, take me back to the restaurant. Okay?" Hoffa sounded much calmer, more polite. Perhaps it was the knowledge that they knew who he was. "Don"t worry, I"ll pay you for your trouble."
"Don"t worry about it, man," Tyrone said, waving away Hoffa"s hand, which was holding more than one bill. "But you sure you wanta go back there? I thought somebody was after you."
Hoffa withdrew his hand and seemed to ponder. "Yanh, yer right. I wasn"t thinkin". Sorry. Listen, how "bout you find me a telephone? I"ll call a buddy a mine. It won"t take him ten minutes to get here, but I need for you to maybe stick around. Okay?"
"Sure, man, sure."
They drove farther east on Thirteen Mile, careful not to overtake the Cadillac, until they spotted a telephone booth. It stood on the edge of a paved expanse belonging to a gas station. Hoffa wouldn"t get out. He was edgy again.
"Check it out for me, will ya?" he asked Tyrone.
Tyrone didn"t complain, didn"t even make a face, just clambered out of the front seat and stretched. It was still quite hot, a typical Detroit summer day, humid. The sun was angling down, but had a ways to go before dark. Tyrone rubbed his nose where his gla.s.ses had irritated the skin, then walked over to the phone. The door was open. He stepped inside but didn"t close the door. He picked up the receiver and he got a hum, though not of course the dial tone that waited for a dime. He let the phone dangle and went back to the car and leaned in the window. "I need a dime. You want me to place the call for you?"
"That"d be great," Hoffa said eagerly, and provided a number along with a handful of change.
"That gonna be a toll charge?" Tyrone asked, looking at the change in his long, slender palm.
"Nah, I don"t think so. You got anuff," Hoffa a.s.sured him. "Dial it. I got more if you need it."
Tyrone had just dialed the number, and it was ringing-not a toll call, after all-when a gleaming maroon Cadillac swept into the gas station and pulled up by the Volkswagen. He squinted through the dirty gla.s.s of the phone booth at it. It looked like the same Caddy that had spooked Hoffa earlier.
A heavy white man got out of the pa.s.senger side and approached the van, then stopped when he took in Tyrone. His right arm dangled straight down, a huge revolver in his hand, pointed at the ground casually. He seemed totally unconcerned about nearby traffic, or the possibility that customers of the gas station or the help might notice the revolver. He glanced at Vera, then at Tyrone, then back to the car. He walked over to the rear of the Cadillac and a dark-tinted window rolled smoothly down. A pale face shone in the interior. The man leaned to the window and spoke in an ordinary tone. Tyrone could hear him quite clearly.
"It"s just a spade, boss. He got a white wh.o.r.e. You want me to . . . ?" He gestured slightly with the revolver. He leaned closer as the man inside spoke. Tyrone could not hear what was said, but his blood ran cold as the big man straightened up and turned to look at him, with his head tilted to listen to the voice within the car.
The man regarded Tyrone for a long moment, his face blank, mouth open tentatively, as if bemused. With his left hand he fingered the revolving chamber of the pistol, slowly turning it. The oiled clicks were quite audible. Then he nodded, as if to the speaker, and his lips curled in a strange smile. "You"re in luck, Willie," the man called out, hefting the revolver meaningfully. "Hope you find a trick for her." The man cupped his hand under his crotch and tugged. He nodded toward Vera and then he got back into the car. It roared away.
"h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo?" a man"s voice called distantly from the telephone. Tyrone lifted it shakily to his ear. "Is that you Jimmy? You there?" the man asked, anxiously. "F"chrissake, talk t"me!" Tyrone replaced the receiver and almost staggered back to the car, his legs felt so weak.
He got in the front seat and closed the door and leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. "Jesusf.u.c.king-christ," he breathed. "That motherf.u.c.ker was about to . . ."
Vera leaned anxiously across the console, embracing him, saying, "Honey, honey, honey, don"t, don"t."
"Let"s get the f.u.c.k outta here," came a m.u.f.fled voice from the rear. They both turned and looked. Hoffa was crouched on the floor, under some blankets. "Get goin". They might come back. Somebody mighta seen me get inta yer van. Drive!"
"Right, right," Vera said. She got the van started and they drove on east. They were almost calmed down when they saw the Cadillac parked on the westbound shoulder next to another big car. The big man was out of the car talking and gesturing to another man. He had put the pistol away, but when he recognized the Volkswagen his left hand went to his crotch again and he laughed to the man next to him, pointing at them as they cruised by, his right hand imitating a gun and his mouth silently opening as if to say, "Pow!"
"Keep going, keep going," Hoffa said. "Don"t slow down, but don"t speed. I don"t wanta see no cops."
Tyrone craned around. "Why not?"
"Cops got radios, n.u.m.b.n.u.t.s. Even if a cop ain"t on the pad, they talk on the radios and other people got radios, too." Hoffa peeked out from the blanket. "And out here, buddy, I don"t know who"s on the pad."
Tyrone looked at the man cowering under a blanket. Then he looked at Vera. She was driving with great concentration, trying not to let on that she was about to flip out. She looked brave, he thought, but he could see she was scared s.h.i.tless. Strangely enough, knowing she was scared made him feel stronger. He smiled encouragingly at her when she glanced at him.
"Just keep driving, sweetie," he said in as calm a voice as he could manage. He turned back to their pa.s.senger. "Hoffa. We have to let you out now. Not out here on the road, you understand, but on one of these side roads. You dig?"
"Not on your life, buddy," Hoffa said. He showed Tyrone the barrel of a nickel-plated revolver. "You drop me off out here and those birds"ll be on me like crows on a roadkill possum."
Tyrone nodded his head. He supposed the man was right, though he had no idea why Jimmy Hoffa should be afraid of gangsters-wasn"t he a gangster himself? But a lifetime of coping with gangsters in Detroit had left Tyrone with the feeling that their activities were as inexplicable and unpredictable as wild animals. It was better to give them a wide berth and not waste time figuring out what they were up to. "So what do you want to do?" he asked.
"Take me into the city," Hoffa said. "Where do you guys live?"
"The city"s a long ways," Tyrone said. "We"re living in a motel, right now, clear back in Highland Park." This was not true and he was glad that Vera did not react. Usually she was so stuffy about telling the absolute truth that she would not have let such a falsehood pa.s.s. "Must be some place we can drop you. "Cause man, it ain"t cool ridin" around out here like this."
Hoffa nodded. The thinking was sound, he felt. They were a conspicuous couple. With the men in the Cadillac that had actually protected him, but it didn"t do to attract attention. A suburban cop might pull this van over for any excuse-a broken taillight, perhaps-and then search the van for drugs. The trouble was, he couldn"t think of any place that would be safe. The men in the Caddy knew his ways too well, and they were vicious. He was worried about his wife, Jo, but he believed that while they would certainly be keeping an eye on the house, they wouldn"t bother her. It was him they were after.
He shook his head. "I don"t know."
Tyrone looked at him. "You don"t know? You ain"t got no place to go? Woman." He turned to Vera. "Shift!" She had pulled away from a light and, as often happened, had forgotten to shift into fourth gear.
"Listen, Jim," Tyrone said, turning back. "We can"t be out here all night. You got any money? Lemme see." A hand grabbed his guts when Hoffa dumped out the briefcase: a pile of bills in neat little packets. "How much is that?" he asked, deeply impressed.
"That"s a couple hunnert," Hoffa said, "less about fifty bucks."
"That"s more than a couple hundred," Tyrone said.
"A couple hunnert thous"n," Hoffa said, almost smiling. "Sorry. I thought you"d see that. The point is, Henry, it don"t mean s.h.i.t if that Caddy comes after us again. I got this"-he brandished the revolver-"but I gotta admit, I ain"t famous for no shootin". I shoot with my mouth, as my old lady says. So if you can figure out some safe place for me and this bread here, Henry, I"m sure we can work out some kinda appropriate remuneration, if you get my drift."
"The name ain"t Henry. It"s . . . Ty-yyyaylor. An" this here is my wife, Alma." Tyrone had no idea where "Alma" had come from; it had just popped into his head. Vera glanced at him and grimaced. If he hadn"t been so stressed he might have laughed. In fact, he was feeling so d.a.m.n stressed that he was afraid that if he ever started laughing he"d make like a hyena and never quit.
"Taylor? Is that your first name or your last? Never mind. Okay, Taylor. Any ideas?"
Tyrone thought. "Well, we could go to my uncle Lonzo"s, in the Thumb. Uncle Lonzo ain"t there. But I know where the key is. n.o.body be there. n.o.body bother us."
"Your Uncle Lonzo lives up in the Thumb? Whereabouts?"
"It"s a resort. A black resort. It"s called Turtle Lake. You ever hear of it?"
Hoffa had heard of it. It was also called n.i.g.g.e.r Heaven. It was one of a few such strictly Negro resorts in upstate Michigan. There was a larger n.i.g.g.e.r Heaven farther over by the Lake Michigan sh.o.r.e, near Baldwin. But this Turtle Lake was older, closer to Detroit. It struck him as an absolutely ideal hideout. No Mob goon would dream of entering the gates of n.i.g.g.e.r Heaven.
"You know a colored fella named Books?" Hoffa asked. "I don"t remember his last name. Little guy, kind of dapper. He"s a kind of fixer, a bagman. I think he"s s"posta have a cabin on Turtle Lake."
"I know him," Tyrone said. "He"s over the other side of the lake from Lonzo"s, by the golf course."
"I don"t want to see him," Hoffa said. "I don"t want to see n.o.body. And I don" want Books to see me. n.o.body sees Hoffa. Got it? And no phone calls. Got it? You don"t tell n.o.body that Jimmy Hoffa is staying over to your uncle Lonzo"s. I"ll keep inna house. A couple days and this"ll blow over and Hoffa"ll be outta yer hair. And you"ll have a coupla grand. That sound like a deal, Taylor?"
"A coupla grand! You gotta be shuckin", Jim. Ahmo lay my a.s.s on the line for a coupla grand? Shee-it!"
"Awright," Hoffa responded readily, "make it ten grand."
"Twenny be more like it," Tyrone popped back.
"So, make it twenny," Hoffa easily agreed.
"Hey, it"s a deal, Jim." Tyrone hoped that his voice didn"t sound as false as Hoffa"s. Once you"d seen two hundred grand, twenty big ones didn"t look so big, all of a sudden, especially when you were just talking twenty, not holding twenty. "You get some sleep. It"s at least an hour, maybe more on them back roads. You feelin" all right?"
"Tell ya the troot, Taylor, I"m kinda wheezy. You know? How you doin" for gas? When we get out a ways you can stop for gas." He handed Tyrone a couple of fifties. "Get me some Pepto, or Di-Gel, somethin" like that. I"ll be all right. Just a little wheezy. Too much coffee or somethin"."
Tyrone nodded. Soon he was humming, staring into the darkness of the country road they"d turned onto and patting out an interesting rhythm on the dash. "Oman," he sang, softly, "omanwitta, gunwittagun." He reached over and squeezed Vera"s leg and grinned at her. She smiled back, happy as a bird in a bush.
Suddenly she gasped, her face stricken. "Oh my G.o.d! We forgot Janney!"
"Jeesus!" Tyrone exclaimed. Obviously, he had just as completely forgotten the projected meeting. But almost immediately he was suffused with a certain gladness. As liberated as he might be, he had hated the idea of carrying his wife to a meeting with Janney that would almost certainly have involved her being, in a sense, "sold" to another man. "Oh, well," he said, blithely, "f.u.c.k it. f.u.c.k Janney."
He glanced at his wife. She smiled and squeezed his hand. And they both felt very good.