Part 4 (1/2)

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.”