Freaky Deaky (15 page)

There was no sound. Dead silence.

Then a ringing sound and Donnell felt his body jump. The sound came again and came again, Donnell hearing it through his shoulders tight against his ears. It came again and he took his arms away, gradually raised his head. It came again and he got to his knees and reached for the phone.

“Mr. Ricks’s residence. . . .”

Robin sat at her desk in a swivel chair, close to the red explosion on the wall. She recognized Donnell’s voice and said into the phone, “Let me speak to him, please.”

Donnell’s voice said, “Mr. Ricks can’t be disturbed. You want to tell me who’s calling?”

“Tell him it’s quite important.”

Robin was giving him her low, slow voice.

“You can leave a message,” Donnell’s voice said, “or you can call back later.”

“I want to tell him I’m sorry about his brother.”

“You can leave your name, your phone number.”

Robin stroked her braid.

“I want to tell him it was an accident.”

There was a silence on the line.

“What was?”

“His brother getting blown up. I want to tell him that. Why don’t you ask him if he can be disturbed or not?”

“Don’t have to ask him, he’s the one told me.”

Robin moved and the swivel chair squeaked.

“I want to tell him I hope the same thing doesn’t happen to him.”

There was a longer silence on the line.

“I can tell him that,” Donnell’s voice said.

“But I want to be sure he understands it. If you tell him, you’re taking on quite a responsibility, don’t you think?”

There was a pause and then Donnell’s voice said, “How much you looking to get?”

Now Robin paused. The chair squeaked again.

“I’d like about a million. Yeah, let’s make it an even million. Can you remember to tell him that?”

“I believe so,” Donnell’s voice said. “Would that be cash or you take a check?”

Robin hunched over the desk as she said, “You
want to play, is that what you’re doing? I’ll play with you. In about two minutes, man, you’ll
hear
the way I play. It’s going to ring in your fucking ears so you won’t forget.”

There was a silence.

Then heard, “Hold it a minute.”

Robin straightened in the chair. “Hey, what’re you doing?” Silence. She looked at her watch. Twenty-five seconds passed.

Donnell’s voice came on the line again. “All right. Tell me how you want this million dollars given to you.”

“Oh, are you back? You ready to talk?”

His voice said, “Behave, girl. I can hang up, end this business right now.”

Robin got her low, quiet voice back. “I’ll let you know. How’s that?”

“When’s this gonna be you talking about?”

“As soon as he has it.”

“If the man doesn’t want to give it to you, what?”

“Bow your head and think of Mark.”

“Say you gonna kill him, blow him up?”

Before Robin could answer Donnell’s voice said:

“All right, it’s cool. I’ll tell the man.”

The line went dead.

Robin eased back in the chair and didn’t move. She wanted to believe she’d handled it okay—at least considering the way Donnell was all of a
sudden into it, playing it back, and it threw her timing off. The idea had been to keep him on till she heard the explosion, tell him to have a nice day and hang up.

She might have to give Skip a different version. Otherwise he’d say she blew it, misjudged the guy. Try to explain that. Well, you see him in his chauffeur suit opening doors, Jesus Christ, you
assume
he’s now a well-behaved brand-new house-nigger version of the old Donnell, right? And Skip would say, Hey, Robin? You decide this dude is born again and you haven’t talked to him in like sixteen years?

Robin began to picture Donnell waiting by the limo, Donnell in his dark shades, the trim black suit. . . . She lit a cigarette, got more comfortable in the creaky chair and began to think, Yeah, but wait. What’s wrong with the way it is? Dealing with the old Donnell. Jesus, and began to get excited about the idea. Seeing him as a Panther hiding in the chauffeur suit. Waiting for his chance to score, work some kind of game. The guy would have to be up to
some
thing.

She wondered why she hadn’t realized it before. It seemed so obvious now. How could he resist? She thought about it another few moments and said, “Jesus, far out.” Because if they were both looking to score and Donnell was inside, alone, and hadn’t figured out a move yet . . .

Robin had an urge to call him back. “Hi, it’s me. I was just wondering, you want to get in on it?”

But then looked at her watch. Shit, it was bomb time. Any moment now,
kaboom,
and the lion goes flying, disappears, the door blows in, windows shatter. . . .

And who sees it? Back when blowing up the establishment was popular, they’d set the charge on a timer, come back to park about a block away, smoke joints and at least
hear
it go off. She realized she was not working much of a fun factor into this deal. Thinking too much about money. Bad. Becoming way too serious. What she needed was a release, an upper that wasn’t dope. A guy who could lighten her mood. Not Skip, he was basically a downer. Someone more spontaneous—as her mind flashed that scene in the powder room—like Donnell. Perfect. Assuming that in the last thirty seconds or so he hadn’t opened the front door. It would be just her luck to lose him before they even got started. She began to wonder what Skip would think. She liked Skip, but he always had b.o. Which used to be okay, but not now. Having b.o. was no longer in. She kind of liked the idea of approaching Donnell first. That seemed like the way to go. . . .

The phone rang.

Robin waited for two more rings before answering. It was the building manager. He said, “Well,
you’re finally home. There’s a couple police officers here want to talk to you.”

“What about?”

The manager didn’t answer. Robin heard him talking to someone away from the phone. She waited. And now a woman’s voice came on.

“Miss Abbott, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Sergeant Downey, with the Detroit Police? I wonder if we could come up and talk to you for a minute.”

“It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun,” Robin said. “What’s it about?”

“You may or may not have been a witness to a crime we’re investigating. It’ll only take about two minutes.”

“It’s not something I did?” Robin said.

The lady cop sort of laughed. “No, we’re sure of that.”

“How many are you? I only have three chairs.”

“We won’t even have to sit down,” the lady cop’s voice said. “Just myself and Sergeant Mankowski.”

Donnell made himself stand at the side of the pool. The bag was floating still, as it was before, when he’d come off the phone to take a look. The stuff from inside the bag was at the bottom of the deep end by the diving board, in nine feet of water. Dark
objects down there. The wires still seemed attached to the objects.

Donnell walked through the house to its other end and into the kitchen, where the man was watching “Leave It to Beaver” on the TV while he had his breakfast. It looked like Post Alpha-Bits this morning. The man liked a sweet cereal to start the day, then get all the sugar he needed in his booze. The horoscope page of the paper was folded open next to his bowl. The man glanced up, anxious.

“Listen to this. It says, ‘You have a sense of inner and outer harmony. This would be a perfect day to start taking singing lessons; you may have talent.’ What do you think?”

“Yeah, well, if we have time,” Donnell said. “We got us a couple more pressing matters come up. First thing, we have to find somebody knows how to take a bomb out of the swimming pool.”

That got the man’s dumb eyes focused on him.

“How did a bomb get in the swimming pool?”

“Let’s come back to it,” Donnell said. “We also have a matter, this lady called. Say she gonna blow you up if you don’t give her some money.”

Donnell waited for the man’s mind to work and put this and that together. Like he fooled with the Alpha-Bits floating in his milk sometimes, trying to make a word out of the letters.

“The lady that called put the bomb in the swimming pool?”

“I ’magine she’s the one.”

“Is it gonna go off?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I say we have to get us a bomb man.”

“Call the police, they’ll take care of it.”

“I’m afraid of what she’d do. You know, like she might be a crazy woman and it would set her off.”

Right then Beaver’s mama on the TV, a cute woman, began fussing at Mr. Beaver, giving him some shit. Doing it just at the right time.

The man shook his head, didn’t know what to think. Had an idea then and said, “Was it Robin that called?”

“I suspect, but I don’t know her voice.”

“How much does she want?”

Here we go.

“Say she like two million, cash money, no checks. Get it from the bank and have it ready.”

Look at the man blink his eyes.

“Yeah, she say to have it ready. You know, like in a box? See, then when she phones again, to tell us the time and place she wants it? You suppose to give it to me and I deliver it.”

What happened:
when Wendell didn’t show up, Maureen called Homicide from the manager’s ground-floor apartment. The manager, a sour old man, stood at a window watching for Robin, bifocals gleaming when he turned his head, more interested in Maureen. Chris was reading the Bureau report on Robin Abbott, times and places in it familiar. He heard Maureen say, irritated, “Thanks for telling me. You know how long I’ve been waiting here?” She hung up, saying to Chris, “Wendell’s got a body in an alley: female, black.” Chris said, “And you have me.” Maureen said, “Oh, no. You’re staying here.” Chris said to the manager, “Try Miss Abbott again, okay?” The manager said, “She isn’t back yet. I’d have seen her.” Chris said, “But will you try?” And said to Maureen, the manager busy now, “You talk to her, I look around. You need me.” Maureen said, “You don’t have your badge or I.D.
What do you show her?”
As the manager was saying, “Well, you’re finally home. . . .”

Going up the stairs behind Maureen’s nice firm athletic calves he said, “Robin I see was at U of M the same time I was, before I went in the army. Right up from where I lived on State Street, by the Michigan Union, there was always something going on, some kind of demonstration. Nice little girls screaming at the cops, calling ’em pigs.” He shut up as they reached the second floor.

Robin Abbott stood waiting for them, the door to her apartment open. She wore tinted glasses, her hair in a fat braid, shirt hanging out over jeans, barefoot, trying to look young and girlish and not doing a bad job. Chris checked her out over Maureen’s shoulder, letting Maureen lead the way and introduce them. “Hi, I’m Sergeant Downey”—showing her I.D.—“and this is Sergeant Mankowski.” Chris had his wallet out. He flipped it open and closed, staying pretty much behind Maureen.

Miss Abbott brought them in, saying, “Well, what can I do for you?” in a quiet, low voice, then lightened the tone as she said, “I don’t recall witnessing any crimes lately.”

Chris thought of saying he was glad she qualified that. Miss Abbott had been arrested in ’78
after jumping a bond set years before, convicted and sent away in ’79. Maureen had the Bureau printout in her bag; he’d get a copy of it to go over in detail. He wondered what the round red design was supposed to be, painted on the wall. The rest of the room was a mess. Miss Abbott sure had a lot of books and magazines, and what looked like old newspapers, piles of them on a bookshelf. Chris wandered over there as Miss Abbott asked if they’d like coffee or a soft drink, Miss Abbott showing what a nice person she was. Maureen said thanks, but they didn’t want to take up too much of her time. Just a few questions, if Miss Abbott wouldn’t mind. Miss Abbott said, Of course; what would they like to know? See? Cooperative as well as nice. Maureen became official then, saying, “We understand you were at a party at the home of Mr. Woodrow Ricks last Saturday evening?” Chris, looking
at books, heard Miss Abbott trying hard to be of help, saying, “Was it Saturday? Yeah, I
think
so.”

As Maureen said, “You think it was Saturday or you think you were there?” and Miss Abbott laughed and said, “Both,” Chris let his gaze move to the desk close by, the surface nearly covered with typed pages, file folders, mail, magazines, notebooks. . . .

He saw a notebook with a red cover lying on
top. It had
MAY–AUGUST
’70 written on it big in black Magic Marker.

Miss Abbott came over to the desk for a cigarette and Chris looked at the books again. She had an assortment of paperback novels, several of each title—
Gold Fire, Diamond Fire, Silver Fire, Emerald Fire
—all by the same author, Nicole Robinette. Maureen was asking about the people who were at the party. Miss Abbott said she didn’t think she could be of much help there; she wasn’t introduced to anyone.

She had Bukowski on the shelf. She had Genet, Ginsberg. She had Abbie Hoffman’s
Woodstock Nation
and
Revolution for the Hell of It
. Maureen was asking Miss Abbott if she went swimming with the others. She had
Soledad Brother
. She had
Sisterhood Is Powerful, The Politics of Protest
.

Miss Abbott said she just sort of got her toes wet.

Did she recall Greta Wyatt going in the pool?

She had old copies of underground newspapers Chris hadn’t seen or heard of since he got out of school:
East Village Other, Rat Subterranean News, Fifth Estate, South End,
the Wayne University paper. A copy of the
Berkeley Barb
dated May 16–22, 1969, with a headline that said
PIGS SHOOT TO KILL
. . . . Hearing Miss Abbott tell Maureen she wasn’t sure who went in the pool and who didn’t. He waited for her to mention Mark Ricks. He
picked up a book called
Is the Library Burning?
, still waiting as he put the book back on the shelf.

He glanced at the desk as she tapped her cigarette toward the ashtray sitting there.

The notebook with the red cover was no longer in sight.

He heard Maureen asking Miss Abbott if she recalled Greta Wyatt going upstairs and Miss Abbott saying she wasn’t sure which one Greta Wyatt was.

Chris picked up a book from the shelf with the dust-jacket flap folded into the pages and turned to Miss Abbott.

“You still reading William Burroughs?”

Miss Abbott looked over and seemed to notice him for the first time. She stared with no expression before gradually beginning to smile.

“You want to make something of it?”

“I was looking at your books,” Chris said. “I’ve read some of them. Abbie Hoffman, I’ve probably read all of his.”

“You like Abbie?”

“I don’t know why he wasn’t a stand-up comic. Yeah, I liked him,” Chris said. “I felt sorry for him too. The poor guy hiding out all those years and nobody was even looking for him.”

She didn’t seem to care for that. Miss Abbott said, “He was wanted by the FBI, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, but how bad did they want him? It was like he finally pops up: Here I am. And they go,
‘Oh, shit. Now we have to arrest him.’ “ Chris saw her start to frown and said, “Yeah, all this takes me back,” looking at the bookshelves again. “I went to Washington for the biggest peace march in history, the Vietnam Moratorium, one of a million protesters. I was at Woodstock . . . I think it was that summer, yeah, I was still going to U of M, I lived in a house on State Street right next to Pizza Bob’s. It was that summer the ROTC building got trashed. I remember typewriters flying out the window.” He was grinning.

It seemed to encourage Miss Abbott. “More than just typewriters, all the records. . . . Did you take part in that?”

“I watched,” Chris said. “No, the only time I saw any action was when George Wallace was here. That time he was running for President and had a rally at Cobo Hall. He’s trying to make his speech, we’re in the balcony, we stand up and give him that Hitler salute and yell, ‘Sieg Heil, you-all!’ His fans didn’t like it. There was a scuffle, pushing and throwing chairs.” Chris grinned. “I remember Wallace yelling at us, ‘Get a haircut and take a load off your mind.’ I don’t know why hair bothered people so much.”

“Really,” Miss Abbott said. “Or the way we dressed.”

“And spoke rather freely,” Chris said. “You were at U of M at that time?”

Miss Abbott drew on her cigarette. “I lived on Packard.”

Chris said, “Packard, you could throw a rock from my front steps and hit Packard.” He gave her another grin. “And some people did. You miss those days?”

“I have them.” Miss Abbott said. “I can look at them any time I want.”

That was a little weird. She seemed to want to get into it with him but was holding back.

Maureen, seated now in a plastic chair that looked like it was coming apart, was watching. She met Chris’s gaze for a moment, not saying a word.

Miss Abbott said, “You were at Woodstock?”

“In the rain and the mud, all three days.”

“I really wanted to go, but I had something on.”

“You had to be there to believe it,” Chris said. “Half a million people sitting there all wet and nobody cared. Saturday I got to see my all-time favorite, Grace Slick. I saw Janis, the Who, Santana. On Sunday, Joe Cocker. He had stars on his boots. You remember Ten Years After? Alvin Lee?”

“They were at Goose Lake, the next summer,” Miss Abbott said. “You remind me of a guy, a friend of mine. He’ll go, ‘You remember Licorice? Who was she with?’ ”

“The Incredible String Band,” Chris said.

They were grinning at each other.

“You aren’t Nicole Robinette by any chance?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I haven’t read any of your books, but I’d like to.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

Again, both grinned and Chris glanced at the bookshelves. “How’d you manage to hang onto all this? You’ve got
Rising Up Angry
. You’ve got the
Rat, Barb
, ones I’ve heard of but don’t think I ever read.”

“You never know,” Miss Abbott said, “they could be collector’s items someday. I stored everything at Mother’s while I was in New York, working for a publishing house.”

Chris said, “How about when you were at Huron Valley, working in the laundry?”

That took care of Miss Abbott’s pleasant expression, left over from the grin.

She said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“You don’t want to talk about old times?” Chris said. “Tell us how you got busted, any of that?”

“I don’t care to talk to you about anything,” Miss Abbott said. “Okay? So leave. That means don’t say another word, just get the fuck out.”

Going down the stairs Maureen paused on the landing to look back at Chris.

“I thought she might try to finesse around it, at least act dumb. No,
sir
.”

“She comes right at you,” Chris said. “You notice she didn’t say anything about Mark? Didn’t want to go near that, get on the subject of bombs. Did you learn anything?”

Maureen said, “You mean outside of what she doesn’t want to talk about? No. She won’t be any help to us on the assault—yeah, I did learn that much.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that one,” Chris said. In the front hall by the manager’s apartment he said, “Can I make a suggestion?”

“Give it to Wendell.”

“Yeah, but call him, from here. Tell him to get a judge to sign a warrant, so he can come right over and search her apartment. You could stick around, make sure she doesn’t leave.”

“What’re we looking for, bombs?”

“Any kind of explosives, copper wire, blasting caps, timers, maybe some kind of remote control switch. Clothespins, the snap kind. Be sure to check the refrigerator.”

“Clothespins?”

“Have Wendell put on the warrant you’re looking for explosive materials and literature.”

“What kind of literature?”

“A notebook with a red cover that’s marked ‘May to August 1970.’ If you don’t find anything
else, at least get hold of the notebook. There’s something in it, ’cause she hid it while you were talking to her. Covered it with some papers. Maybe she’s got instructions in it, how to make a bomb. But even if it doesn’t look like anything,” Chris said, “hold on to it and let me see it, okay?”

Maureen didn’t answer. She squinted, making a show of studying him. “I don’t get it. You want to work so bad, why don’t you straighten out your residence problem, get your shield back?”

“I don’t think I like Sex Crimes.”

“Okay, but why this? What’re you trying to prove?”

“Nothing, I’m just going along.”

“That’s what I’m asking you. Why?”

He had to think of words to describe something he knew without words, something that came to him as he stood at Robin Abbott’s bookshelf and looked at her past and realized her past was her present. “One thing leads to another,” Chris said. “Greta takes us to Robin. You find out she was a hard-core revolutionary at U of M and I pick up on it because I was there, I saw what was going on. I was even into it, not much but enough that I could feel it again. She did too, when I was talking about it. You see her face? She was dying to tell stories, top anything I said easy, but she held back. She was afraid if she got started she might say too much, give away what she’s into now.”

“If she’s into anything.”

“Maureen, come on. Why’d she hold back? What’s wrong with talking about old times?”

Maureen said, “It looked like she’s living in those times.”

Chris smiled at Maureen coming around. “Or she’d like to relive them, huh? But if she can’t, then maybe she gets into it in a different way or for a different reason. You know what I mean?”

“Maybe she’s mad at somebody,” Maureen said.

It raised Chris’s eyebrows.

“Maybe somebody, when she was busted,” Maureen said, “turned her in.”

Chris said, “That’s not bad, Maureen.” He thought about it and said, “Yeah, I like it. I might be able to look into that.”

He remembered one night in the Athens Bar, a guy he’d see in there, an artist by the name of Dizsi, telling how they had planned to blow up a submarine, the one that used to be parked in the Detroit River behind the Naval Armory. It was for sightseeing, Dizsi said, but it was also a symbol of war. He believed someone informed on them, because the submarine disappeared before they could destroy it and later turned up in the Israeli navy.

Chris liked to listen to Dizsi. He was Hungarian and spoke through his gray beard with an accent
that was perfect for telling about anarchist plots. Dizsi had escaped the Russians, traded Budapest for Detroit, taught fine art at Wayne State and supported student demonstrations until he was fired. Now he lived in a loft studio in Greektown where he painted wall-size canvases and was waited on by his mistress, Amelia.

“You remember Robin Abbott?”

“Yes, of course, and I’ll tell you why.”

Chris liked to watch him eat, too. Dizsi could make things Chris wouldn’t dare even to smell look good. Today, having his lunch in the studio when Chris walked in, he was eating marinated squid and hummus, wiping Greek bread in the colorless paste. A bottle of Greek wine stood on the table where tubes of paint had been pushed aside. Chris didn’t especially like retsina, either, but had some when Amelia appeared in a long white shirtdress and filled Dizsi’s glass, Dizsi saying, “We tried to get Robin to join the Socialist Labor Party. Or it was the Young Socialist Alliance.” Chris watching Amelia, her face clean and pale as a nun’s within the soft curve of her dark hair parted in the middle, eyes cast down; Dizsi saying, “It was a fantastic opportunity, here in a blue-collar city, for a mass orientation program. . . .” Chris watching Amelia’s eyes raise and lower again, Amelia leaving them now, Chris wondering what a mistress did all day, Dizsi
saying, “But Robin was only words,
pretentious rhetoric, writing about the proletariat without even knowing one person who worked on the line.” He pushed the plate of hummus toward Chris.