Motor City Blue Read Online Free PDF Page B

ago he happened to drop in on the man who runs the place and this was laying on his desk. This associate has spent a lot of time in my home and knows Maria almost as good as I do. He recognized her right away and came to me in Phoenix.”
    “He say who took it?”
    “He questioned his man. He wasn’t sure. It could have come from any one of a dozen studios he deals with here in town or he might have bought it in a package from some hophead punk off the street. Hundreds like it cross his desk every day. He can’t be expected to know the source of each one.”
    “Swell. How about mail order?”
    “No way. That’s a federal rap.”
    “I’ll need his name.”
    The lines in his face tightened. “My associate?”
    “The guy who works for him. Also a list of the studios he does business with if you’ve got it. If not I can get it from him.”
    “I guess I can give you that much. His name’s Lee Q. Story. That’s important, the Q. I hear he’s particular about it. Runs a dump called Story’s After Midnight on Erskine. Another shvartze , but I don’t suppose I got to tell you that in this burg. Frankly, I was surprised to hear you was white, name like Amos.”
    “There are a few of us left. I guess I have to get it from him.”
    “Get what? Oh, the list. Yeah. I didn’t have the stomach for it. Bad enough I got to see that garbage from the outside on my way down Woodward without going in. When I was young those were all theaters, you know what I mean? Theaters. Paramount, Roxy, Bijou. Clara Bow. Ramon Novarro. Dick Arlen and Buddy Rogers in Wings . I seen that one three times, each time with a different girl. You know what’s playing at the Roxy right now? Sluts of the Third Reich . What the hell kind of a thing is that to slap up on a sign a yard high for kids to read?”
    Color came to his face like blood on a galled fish. I tried to break in before he had a stroke, but he was just warming up.
    “This morning I had Wiley take me down Twelfth Street where I grew up. Rosa Parks Boulevard they call it now. It made me sick. They burned down the house I was born in. Burned it to the ground during the riots. Same thing with all the places I used to work to help support the family after my pa got killed. Nothing but black holes in the ground with here and there a chimney or a cast-iron sink sticking up out of them. I remember thinking as a kid how ugly it all was, that neighborhood, how it would be a blessing if somebody put a match to the whole thing. I was wrong. It’s worse.”
    I had been scribbling the essentials of the case into my soiled notebook with a pencil stub I’d dug out from among the lint and paper clips in my pocket. Now he noticed that I had stopped. Something that passed for a wry look slithered over his fallen features.
    “Go ahead and say it,” he said. “I’m one of those old farts who talk too much.”
    I turned that one aside. “A man in your line has enemies. Could it be she was forced into this to get you?” I flipped the photo.
    “The last of my enemies died ten years back. I’m retired. Everything I own now is in the form of investments, and Paul Cooke looks after those for me. Even if I had something they wanted, it wouldn’t do them much good keeping me in the dark. I found out about this by accident.”
    “Through your associate.”
    He smiled thinly, without twitching. “I thought of that. I don’t trust him any more than I do anyone else, but he’s above suspicion in this case. He has no family, and the cancer that’s eating out his stomach is going to kill him before the one in my lung kills me. We had a saying in the business. I guess it’s still used. You can’t take it with you.”
    “Anything else I should know about Maria? Hobbies? Ambitions? Needs, medical and otherwise?”
    “Her health’s good, so there’s nothing there. She’s a real good singer. Nice voice. Plays the piano like a pro. She always wanted to sing for a living, but I hoped the Brock woman