Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

The Sultans of Soul by Doug Allyn

There could hardly be a better chronicler of the world of popular music than Doug Allyn, who has been touring with bands in northern Michigan for more than twenty-five years. This tale of a gumshoe hired to collect unpaid royalties takes us to the heart of the record industry and the early days of the Motown sound...

Papa Henry’s Hickory Hut serves the best barbeque in the city of Detroit, bar none. Ribs to die for. The Hut is just a storefront diner, booths along one wall, a scarred Formica counter and backless chrome stools. Ah, but behind the counter, shielded by a spattered Plexiglas screen, is an honest to Jesus barbeque pit. You can watch your order revolve on the rotisserie, kissed by flames and hickory smoke, while homebaked hoecakes warm on the grill. High cholesterol? Probably. But since the Hut’s on the rough side of Eight Mile, keeping your veins intact is a more pressing worry than having them clogged.

I’d ordered a late breakfast at Papa’s, and was sipping coffee, waiting, when a white Cadillac limo ghosted to the curb out front. The chauffeur, a uniformed black the size of a small building, popped an umbrella against the April drizzle, and opened the back door. An elderly black gentleman eased slowly out. The chauffeur watched, wooden, offering no help.

The old man looked exotic, like a Nigerian diplomat. An orange patterned kente-cloth cap, a Kuppenheimer’s continental-cut black suit, hand-tailored to a tee. He had café au lait skin, a spray of coppery freckles across the bridge of his nose, a metallic gray Malcolm X goatee. Dark, intense hawk’s eyes.

He’d have stood six feet plus upright, but he was pain-hunched into a question mark, using a silver-headed bamboo cane for support. I guessed him to be fiftyish. Fifty isn’t old for most people. It was for this guy.

He moved like he’d been wounded at Gettysburg. Step, lean, step, lean. The gait was familiar. Sickle cell anemia, very late in the game. I grew up around it down home. This old man had lasted longer than most. But it was coming for him now. And he was coming for me, sizing me up all the way. I was easy enough to spot! As usual, I was the only white face in the Hut.

It took him a month to limp the dozen paces back to my booth. He stopped in front of my table, leaning on the cane, wobbly as a foundered horse. “You’d be Axton, right? From the detective agency up the street?” he asked, his voice a low rasp. Black velvet.

“Yes, sir. Something I can do for you?”

“For openers, you can speak up. I don’t hear too well. My name’s Mack, Varnell Mack.”

“R. B. Axton,” I said, offering my hand. He ignored it. “Would you care to sit down, Mr. Mack?”

“No thanks, too damn hard to get up again, and I won’t be here long. I’m into a few things around Detroit, mostly real estate, own some rental units. Willis Tyrone, the guy that owns them pawns down in the ward? Willis tells me you’re good at collectin’ money folks ain’t altogether sure they owe.”

“I make collections sometimes,” I said cautiously, “but I don’t do evictions.”

“Neither do I,” Mack said, “that’s the problem.” A spasm took his breath for a moment. His knuckles locked on the cane and a faint sheen of moisture beaded on his forehead. “I believe I will sit down after all,” he said, swallowing. He drew a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, flicked the dust off the bench across from me, then casually replaced the handkerchief in his pocket with a flip of his wrist. A perfect fleur-de-lis. I was impressed. I can barely manage to knot a necktie.

“See, I had this old gentleman livin’ in one of my buildin’s,” Mack said, easing into the booth. “Used to be a helluva singer ’round Detroit back in the fifties, early sixties, even cut a few records. Horace DeWitt. Ever hear of him?”

“Can’t say I have, but I’m not from Detroit originally.”

“Knew that the minute you opened your mouth. Where you from, boy? Alabama?”

“No, sir, Mississippi. A little town called Noxapater.”

“They teach you to call blacks ‘sir’ down there, did they?”

“They taught me to be polite to my elders,” I said evenly. “And to watch my mouth around strangers. You were saying about Mr. DeWitt?”

“I used to write tunes, sing backup in Horace’s group. Called ourselves the Sultans of Soul.”

“No kidding? I remember the group. From when I was a kid, down home. I’ve still got one of your songs on an oldies tape. ‘Motor City... something?”

“ ‘Motor City Mama.’ I wrote that one. Our last single. Cracked the top twenty on the race charts in sixty-one. Never made no money off it, record company folded right after, but it got us a name so we could make a few bucks doin’ shows. Then things petered out, the group busted up. I went into real estate, did all right for myself. Helped out Horace some, last few years, with rent and such. He had a stroke a few months back, had to move to a rest home. One of them welfare places. I offered to help, but he wouldn’t take it. He’s flat busted, cain’t even afford a TV in his room.”

“Sorry to hear it,” I said.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be,” Mack said. “Might be somethin’ in it for you. Thing is, I still hear ‘Motor City Mama’ on the radio sometimes. So I figure somebody must owe the Sultans some money. I want you to collect it.”

“Collect it?” I echoed.

“That’s what you do, ain’t it?”

“I, ahm... Look, Mr. Mack, what I do is skip-traces mostly. People who light out owing other people money. I hunt ’em up, talk ’em into doin’ the right thing.”

“So?”

“So, for openers, who do you expect me to collect from?”

“That’s your problem. If I knew who owed Horace, I wouldn’t hafta hire you. I’d see to it myself.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Boy, I never joke about money.”

“All right then, straight up. Even if I could find somebody who’d admit to owing the Sultans some royalties or whatever, it probably wouldn’t amount to beans. And I don’t work cheap.”

“Two-fifty a day, Willis told me,” Mack said, snaking an envelope out of an inner pocket, tossing it on the table. “Here’s a week in advance. Fifteen hundred. You need more, my number’s on the envelope. But I expect to see some results.”

I left the envelope where it was. “Mr. Mack, I really don’t think I can help you. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Willis gave me your card,” Mack said, using the cane to lever himself to his feet. “R. B. Axton, private investigations. That makes you some kinda detective, right?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“So maybe you oughta try earnin’ your fee. Investigate or whatever. Look, I know it’d be cheaper to just lay the damn money on Horace. He won’t take it. He was a dynamite singer once. And people are still listenin’ to his music. He shouldn’t oughta go out broke like this. It ain’t right.”

“No, sir,” I said, “I suppose it isn’t.”

“All right then,” he said grimly. “You find out who owes the Sultans some money. And you get it. How much don’t matter, but you get Horace somethin’, understand?”

I picked up the envelope, intending to give it back to him. But I didn’t. There was something in his eyes. Dark fire. Anger perhaps, and pain. It cost him a lot just to walk in here. More than money. I put the envelope in my pocket. “I’ll look into it,” I said. “I can’t promise anything.”

“Banks don’t cash promises anyway,” Mack said, turning, and limping slowly toward the door. Step, lean, step, lean. “Call me when you got somethin’.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. He didn’t look back.

Finding a place to start looking wasn’t all that tough. The cassette tray in my car. I did have the Sultans of Soul on tape. “Motor City Mama.” There was no information on the cassette itself. It was a bootleg compilation from Rock ’n Soul Recollections, on south Livernois.

R&S isn’t the usual secondhand record shop with records piled around like orphaned children. The shop’s a renovated theater, complete with bulletproof box office, which, considering its location, is probably prudent. The walls are crammed floor to ceiling with poster art, larger-than-life shots of Michigan music monsters, Smokey Robinson, Bob Seger, The Temps, Stevie Wonder. The bins are immaculate, every last 45 lovingly encased in cellophane, cross-referenced and catalogued like Egyptian antiquities.

All this regimentation is a reflection of the owner/manager, Cal, a wizened little guy with a watermelon paunch and a tarn permanently attached to his oversized pate. I don’t recall his last name, if I ever heard it, but he knows mine. Not just because I’m a good customer, but because he remembers everything about everything. He knows every record he has in stock, and probably every record he’s ever had in stock.

On the downside, he’s compulsive, wears the same outfit every day: green slacks, frayed white shirt, navy cardigan clinched with a safety pin. His hands look like lizard-skin gloves because he washes them forty times a day. Still, if I wanted to know about the Sultans, Cal was the person to ask.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

“Hey, I should think you’d be flattered. I thought you knew everything about those old groups.”

“I do know about their records,” he said, irritated. “The Sultans cut three forty-fives and one album, all out of print. But as to who owns the rights to their music now? Hell, there were a million penny-ante record labels back then, and the royalty rights were swapped around like baseball cards. Most of the forty-fives were cut in fly-by-night studios owned by the mob—”

“Whoa up. Mob? You mean organized crime?”

“Absolutely. In the fifties and early sixties radio play was still segregated. Damn few stations would air black music, so the only market for it was jukeboxes. And most of the jukes and vending machines in Detroit were mob controlled.”

“Terrific.”

“The bottom line is, if you want to find somebody who might owe the Sultans a few bucks, you’re probably looking for some smalltime hood who once owned a few jukes and a two-bit recording studio and went out of the record business before you were born.”

“But I still hear ‘Motor City Mama’ on the radio sometimes.”

“Local deejays play it because of the title, but Detroit’s probably the only town in the country where it’s aired. Wanna try muscling a few nickels out of Wheelz or WRIF?”

“Fat chance. What label did the Sultans record for?”

“That at least I can tell you,” he said, flipping through a stack of albums. “None of their stuff has been reissued, even on a collection. The Sultans just weren’t big enough... Here we go, the Sultans of Soul, ‘Motor City Mama.’ ”

He passed me the album. The cover photo was a blurred action shot, four black guys in gold lame jackets doing splits behind the lead singer, a beefy stud with conked hair. Mack appeared to be the tall guy on the left, but the picture had faded. So had Mack. I flipped the album over. “Black Catz?” I read. “What can you tell me about it?”

“Not much,” Cal said. “It was a local label, defunct since...” He frowned, then shook his head slowly, his face gradually creasing into a ghost of a smile.

“I knew it,” I said. “You do know something, right?”

“Nothing that’ll help you, I’m afraid,” he said. “But I did come across a Black Catz reissue recently. Not the Sultans though. Millie Jump and the Jacks.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Maybe you don’t remember the Jacks, but you should remember Millicent. Soul singer who had a few hits in the sixties, then tried Hollywood and bombed? The Jacks was her original group, until she dumped ’em to marry the label owner and use his money to go solo.”

“Wait a minute, you mean Millicent’s husband, Sol Katz, was the original owner of Black Catz?”

“That’s right,” Cal said. “You know him?”

“I not only know him, I’ve worked for him.”

“Worked for Sol?” Cal said, squinting at me from beneath his tam. “Doing what? Kneecaps with a baseball bat?”

“Actually I didn’t exactly work for Sol. His daughter, Desirée, was an opening act for Was Not Was at the Auburn Hills Palace. I was her bodyguard.”

“I would have thought Sol had bodyguards to spare.”

“He wanted somebody who knew the local music scene. Most of his guys are from L.A.”

“And it didn’t bother you, working for a hood?”

“I — heard rumors about Sol, but in this business you hear smoke about everybody. Hell, half the guys in the biz pretend to be hoods just to spook the competition.”

“Sol Katz isn’t pretending, Ax, he’s the real thing. His old man was an enforcer for the Purple Gang back in the thirties. Sol took to the family business like The Godfather Part II.”

“I thought he was from L.A.?”

“He went out there awhile after the Purples ran him out of Detroit for marrying Millie. Having a black mistress in those days was one thing, but marriage? Not in his set. Besides, Millie figured she was ready for the bright lights. She was a fair singer, but never quite good enough to make it big, even with Sol’s money. How’s the daughter, whatsername, Desirée?”

“About the same, not bad, not gangbusters. I think Millie and Sol want her to make it more than she wants it herself. They’ve got her cutting an album of classic soul stuff out at the Studio Seven complex. What label was the reissue on?”

“Studio Seven, which means Sol may still own the rights to the Black Catz library. Including the Sultans. Lucky you. You going to try to collect?”

“That’s what I’m being paid for.”

“Hope you’re getting enough to cover hospitalization. By the way, who is paying you? I thought the Sultans were all playing harps these days.”

“They nearly are. Horace DeWitt, the lead singer, is in a rest home and the guy who hired me, Varnell Mack, looks like an AWOL from intensive care.”

“I probably have them mixed up with another group. There were so many in those days,” he said softly, glancing around the displays, filled with CDs, albums, tapes. And raw talent. And Soul. “So many. You know, it might not matter much to world peace, but it’d be nice if you could squeeze a few bucks out of Sol for the Sultans. Just for the damn principle of the thing.”

“Principles?” I said. “In this business?”

Actually, principle was all I had going for me. Mack hadn’t given me as much as a faded IOU to work with. In the music biz, sometimes deals with very serious money involved are done with a handshake or a phone call. I occasionally get hired to collect on oral contracts, but usually folks know in their heart of hearts that they owe the money. This was different.

Technically, Sol Katz probably didn’t owe the Sultans dime one. Hell, after all these years he might not even remember who they were. Whatever deal they’d had, they’d lived with it for nearly thirty years, so if Sol told me to take a hike, I’d walk. Assuming my knees were still functional. Still, I figured I had a small chance. Mobster or no, a guy who’d risk his neck to marry the woman he loved must have a heart, right?

Right. So why did I keep remembering every story I’d ever heard about the Purple Gang? Two-to-a-box coffins, the shooters at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the gang that pushed Capone out of Detroit...

I shook it off. Ancient history, all of it. Then again, so were the Sultans of Soul.

The Studio 7 building is a spanking new concrete castle just off Gratiot Avenue, in the equally new city of Eastpointe, nee East Detroit. The locals rechristened the town, trying to shed its Murder City East image.

Funny, it had never occurred to me what a fortress Sol’s studio complex was. I’d called ahead to let Desi know I was coming, but I still had to identify myself to a uniformed guard at the parking lot gate when I drove in, and to a second guard at the front door, then get clearance from a body-by-steroids male receptionist to use the elevator. There was nothing unusual about the stiff security arrangements. In a town where gunslingers will hold you up in broad daylight to steal your car, paranoia is an entirely rational state of mind.

Still, knowing Sol was a born-to-the-purple mobster made all the guards and guns seem a lot more sinister. It was like finding out your lover and your best friend were once lovers. You can’t help revising all previous data.

The recording studios are on the fourth floor of the complex. The rooms are carpeted floor to ceiling in earth-tone textured saxony, and subdivided into a half-dozen Plexiglas booths which separate the musicians and singers on the rare occasions when two people actually tape at the same time. Nowadays most tracks are cut solo to avoid crosstalk and achieve maximal clarity. State-of-the-art digital recording, as sterile as a test-tube conception. And even less fun.

Roddy Rothstein, Sol’s head of security, was leaning against the wall outside the studio door. He looks like an aging surfer: bleached hair, china-blue eyes, a thin scar that droops his left eyelid. He was wearing jeans, snakeskin boots, and an L.A. Raiders jacket that didn’t quite conceal the Browning nine millimeter in his shoulder holster. He gave me a hard, thousand-yard stare. Nothing personal. Roddy looks at everybody like a lizard eyeing a fly.

“Hey, Ax, what’s doin’?”

“Small stuff. Is Mr. Katz in?”

“Everybody’s in but me,” Roddy grumbled. “The music biz. Life in the fast lane.”

“Beats honest work,” I said.

“How would you know? Go ahead, green light’s on.”

Even with Roddy’s okay and the warning light in the hall showing green, I still eased the door open cautiously. At five hundred bucks an hour, you never barge into a studio. But it was okay. They were in the middle of a soundcheck. Desi was wearing headsets in a sound-isolation booth. Recording company promos always shave a decade or so off performers’ ages, but in her Pistons T-shirt and bullet-riddled jeans, Desi really did look like a high-school dropout, dark, slender, drop-dead gorgeous. If she ever learns to sing as good as she looks... She gave me a grin and flipped me the fickle finger. I waved back.

Millie and Sol were chewing on the engineer about clarity. Interracial couples aren’t unusual in Detroit, but Sol and Millie were an especially handsome pair. Sol, slender, dapper, with steel-grey hair, grey eyes, fashionably blasé in a pearl-grey Armani jacket over a teal polo shirt. Millie was probably a few pounds heavier than in her Millicent days, but she wore it well. Voluptuous, in deceptively casual jogging togs that probably cost more than my car. Sol left the argument to give Millie the last word and strolled over. The Godfather II? Maybe. Maybe so.

“Axton,” he nodded, “how are you doin’? Glad you dropped by. Desi was going to call you. She’s going to do some charity shows for AIDS next month, Cleveland and Buffalo. I’d like you to handle security if you’re free.”

“I’ll be free,” I said. “If you still want me. This, ahm, this isn’t a social call, Mr. Katz. It’s business.”

“What kind of business?” Millie said, waving the engineer back to his booth. I felt sorry for him. Millie can be a hard lady to be on the wrong side of. A tough woman in a tough trade.

“It’s a bit complicated, but basically, somebody hired me to, uhm... to collect an old debt.”

“What kind of debt?” Sol said evenly. “Who am I supposed to owe?”

“I’m not sure you owe anybody, Mr. Katz. Look, let me lay this thing on you straight up. Do you recall a group that recorded for you back in the early sixties called the Sultans of Soul?”

“The Sultans?” Millie echoed. “Sure. We did a few shows together at the Warfield and the Broadway Capitol.”

“Do you remember Varnell Mack?” I asked.

She shot a sharp glance at Sol, then back at me. “I remember him. Tall, with a goatee?”

“He’s not so tall now,” I said. “To make a long story short, Mr. Mack says Horace DeWitt, the Sultans’ lead singer, is down and out. In a rest home.”

“I heard,” Sol said coolly. “So?”

“So Mr. Mack is hoping you can see your way clear to... help Mr. DeWitt out. For auld lang syne.”

“Just Horace?” Sol frowned. “Or would Varnell be wanting a taste, too?”

“No, sir, Mr. Mack seems to be doing quite well. New Caddy and a chauffeur, in fact.”

“Good for him,” Sol said evenly. “Did he say anything about my trying to contact him?”

“He didn’t mention it. Why?”

“Nothing heavy,” Millie put in, a shade too casually. “We’ve been thinking of calling Desi’s new album Motor City Mama, so we need Varnell’s permission to use the song. We had Roddy ask around, but nobody seemed to know what happened to him.”

“He said he quit the business years ago, went into real estate,” I said.

Sol shrugged. “Well, if all Mack wants is a few bucks for Horace, maybe we can work something out. Tell you what, Ax, bring Varnell by the club tonight. Tenish? We’ll have a few drinks, talk it over.”

“Fine by me. I’ll have to check with Mr. Mack, of course.”

“Do that, and get back to me. Meantime, if you don’t mind, we’re gettin’ ready to roll tape.”

“No problem. I’ll be in touch. And thanks.”

I stopped at the first 7-Eleven I came to and used the drive-by phone in the lot to call Varnell Mack. He answered on a car phone; I could hear the traffic noise in the background. I tried to tell him what I had, but he cut me off.

“Boy, I can’t hear worth a damn over this thing. You got news for me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then meet me at that rib joint down from your office. Twenty minutes?”

“I’ll be there.”

Mack’s Cadillac limo was parked illegally in front of Papa Henry’s, motor running. His chauffeur was behind the wheel, his huge hands tapping out rhythm to the thump of the Caddy’s sound system. Mack was sitting in a front window booth facing the street. Not a spot I would have chosen, but then I don’t need a cane to get around either. At least, not yet. I slid into the booth. Mack was warming his hands around a cup of tea. I gave him a quick rundown on what I’d turned up.

“Ol’ Sol’s still in the business and livin’ fat city?” he said, showing a thin smile. “And still with Millie? I’ll be damned. Who woulda figured it after all this time?”

“It hasn’t really been so long,” I said.

“Been a lifetime for some people,” Mack said, glancing out the flyspecked window at the street. A posse car cruised slowly past, a blacked-out Monte Carlo low rider. Mack didn’t notice it. He was looking beyond to... somewhere else.

“Millie remembered you,” I said.

“A lotta woman, Millie. Smart, too. Smart enough to marry money, and stick to it.”

“Maybe it wasn’t like that,” I said.

“No?” the old man said, annoyed. “Know a lot about it, do you, boy? You married?”

“I was. Once.”

“Once oughta be enough for people, one way or another. You know, Willis told me you were sharp, Axton, but I’ll tell you the God’s truth, when I laid that money on you, I thought I was kissin’ it goodbye, I truly did. You did okay.”

“I haven’t actually done anything yet,” I said.

“How do you figure?”

“You hired me to collect some money for the Sultans. Sol said he was willing to work something out about the rights to ‘Motor City Mama.’ He didn’t actually say he’d pay or how much.”

“Don’t worry ’bout it.” Mack smiled grimly. “The important thing is, he’s willin’ to talk. This ain’t really about money, you know? It’s about doin’ the right thing. So whatever Sol’s willin’ to pay, it’ll be enough.” He used his cane to lever himself painfully out of the booth. “I’ll pick you up here at nine-thirty.”

“Right,” I said absently. The posse car was coming by again, probably checking out Mack’s Cadillac. I watched it pass, then realized what was bothering me wasn’t the car, it was something above it, something glinting from the roof of the building across the street. For a split second I froze, half-expecting gunfire. But the flash was too bright to be metal. And it wasn’t moving. Mack was eyeing me oddly.

“Anythin’ wrong?”

“Nope,” I said, “not a thing. I’ll see you tonight.” I waited in the booth while he limped out to the Caddy and climbed in. As the car drifted away from the curb, a man stood up on the roof of the building opposite. With a minicam. He photographed Mack’s car as it made a left onto Eight Mile.

I slipped out the back door of Papa Henry’s into the alley, trotted down to the end of the block, and walked quickly to the corner, keeping close to the building. The man on the roof was gone.

Damn! I sprinted across the street, dodging traffic, and dashed down the alley. A blue Honda Civic was parked in a turnout, halfway down. It had to be his. Nobody parks in an alley in this part of town.

I heard a clank of metal from above and flattened against the wall. Someone was coming down the fire escape, moving quickly. A slender black man in U of D sweats and granny glasses, toting a black canvas shoulder bag. I waited until he was halfway down the last set of firestairs, then stepped out, blocking the path to his car.

“Nice day for it,” I said.

He froze. “For what?”

“Taking pictures. That’s what you were doing, right? Of me and the man I was with?”

He hesitated a split second, then shrugged. “If you walk away from me right now, maybe you can stay out of this thing.”

“What thing?”

“An official Metro narcotics investigation.”

“Narcotics investigation? Of who? Me? Papa Henry? You’ll have to do better than that.”

“I’m warning you, you’re interfering in—”

“Save the smoke,” I interrupted. “If you’re a cop, show me some tin, and I’m gone.”

“Fair enough,” he said coolly. He unzipped the canvas bag, took out a packet, and flipped it toward me. I half-turned to catch it, and he vaulted the rail and hit the ground running. He only had me by two steps and the bag on his shoulder must have slowed him, but he was still too fast for me.

“Heeelllp!” he shouted as we pounded down the alley. “The maaan! The maaan!”

It worked. I broke off the chase a few feet from the alley mouth. There was no way a white guy could chase a black man down Eight Mile without attracting an unfriendly crowd, and we both knew it. He cut a hard right when he hit the street and disappeared. I turned and trotted back to his car.

The packet he’d tossed at me was useless, a brochure for camera film from a shop on Woodward. I considered breaking into the car, but decided against it. For openers, I wasn’t certain it was his car. But I was fairly sure that he’d been filming Mack and me. We were the only ones sitting in the windows; he’d photographed the Caddy as it pulled away, and stopped shooting when it was gone.

A narcotics investigation? Possible. God knows, there are enough of ’em in this town. But if he was a cop, why not just show me some ID? Or a .38? No narc would work an alley off Eight Mile unarmed. And if he wasn’t a cop, then what was he?

I was getting an uneasy sense of blundering through a roomful of spiderwebs. The only reason I could think of for someone to film me talking to Mack was that one of us was being set up for something. I’ve ticked off a few folks over the years, but none I could think of who’d bother with a cameraman. Not in a town where you can buy a hit for fifty bucks. Or less.

That left Mack. Was he mixed up in the drug scene? Maybe, though the drug trade’d be a rough game for somebody who can barely walk. Besides, he hadn’t asked me to do anything illegal. He hired me to collect money for the Sultans from persons unknown.

Or had he? All I really knew about Mack was what he told me. Millie remembered him, and Sol too. From the old days. This whole thing kept coming back to that. The old days. And the Sultans of Soul.

And Horace DeWitt. And since in a way I was actually working for DeWitt, maybe it was time I met the Sultans’ leader. Besides, I’d been hearing “Motor City Mama” since I was a tad. It would be interesting to finally meet the face behind the voice.

I’ve acquired a modest reputation in music circles for tracing skips and collecting debts. The sign on my office door says private investigations, but the truth is I don’t have to do much Sherlocking. The people in this business aren’t very good at hiding. And since he wasn’t hiding, Horace DeWitt was easier to find than most.

Mack mentioned DeWitt had only been in the home for a few months, so he was still listed in the phone book at his old address on Montcalm, and a quick call to the post office gave me his forwarding address. Riverine Heights, in Troy.

The funk from some welfare-case warehouses will drop you to your knees a half a block away, but Riverine Heights appeared to be better than most, a modern, ten-story cinderblock tower on Wattles Road. It even had a view of River Rouge.

At the front desk, a cheery, plump blonde in nurse’s whites had me sign the visitor’s log, and told me I’d probably find Mr. DeWitt in the fourth-floor residents’ lounge. Fourth floor. A relief. The higher you go in these places, the less mobile the patients are. The top floors are reserved for the bedridden, only a last gasp from heaven. A fourth-floor resident should be ambulatory, more or less.

It was less. The residents’ lounge was a small reading room with French doors that opened out onto a balcony. Institutional green plastic chairs lined the walls, a few well-thumbed magazines lay forgotten on the bookshelves. An elderly woman in street clothes was sitting on the sofa with a patient in a robe. The woman was knitting a scarf. Her date was asleep, his mouth open, his head resting on her shoulder.

Horace DeWitt was awake at least, sitting in a wheelchair in the sunlight by the French doors. A folding card table was pulled up to his knees. He was playing solitaire.

I’d seen his picture only hours before, but I barely recognized him. The singer on the Sultans’ album had been a macho stud. The old man in the chair looked like a picture from Dorian Gray’s attic. The conked hair had thinned and his slacks and sports shirt hung on his shrunken frame like death-camp pajamas. The stroke had melted the right side of his face like wax in a fire, one eyelid drooped nearly closed and the corner of his mouth was turned down in a permanent scowl.

His left arm lay in his lap like deadwood, palm up, fingers curled into a claw. Still, he seemed to be dealing the cards accurately, even one-handed. And he was cheating.

“Mr. DeWitt?” I said. “My name’s Axton. I’ve been a big fan of yours for years. Got a minute to talk?”

“I guess I can fit you into my dance card,” he said, peering up at me with his good eye. “But if you want me to headline one o’ them soul revues, I’ll have to pass.”

His words were slurred by the twisted corner of his mouth. But his voice carried me back to steamy Mississippi nights, blowing down backroads in my daddy’s pickup, WLAC Nashville blaring clear and righteous on the radio. The Sultans of Soul. “I’m comin’ home, Motown Mama, I just can’t live without ya...” I think I could’ve picked Horace DeWitt’s voice out of a Silverdome crowd howling after a Lions’ touchdown.

“Fact is, in a way I’m already working for you, Mr. DeWitt,” I said, squatting beside his chair. “Varnell Mack hired me to try to collect some back royalties for the Sultans.”

“Did he now?” DeWitt said, cocking his head, looking me over. “What’s he got against you?”

“Nothing I know of, why?”

“ ’Cause the last guy I heard of tried to squeeze a nickel outa Sol Katz wound up tryna backstroke ’cross Lake St. Clair draggin’ a hunert pounds o’ loggin’ chain.”

“Maybe I’ll have better luck. I can’t promise anything, but I think there’s a fair chance we’ll shake a few bucks loose.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, turning to his game. “The check’s in the mail, right? So what you want from me?”

“Not much. I was hoping you could tell me a little about Mr. Mack.”

“Varnell? Fair bass singer, better songwriter. Wrote ‘Motor City Mama,’ only song Sol didn’t screw us out of, and he only missed that one ’cause he blew town in a hurry. That why Sol sent you around? Hell, I signed over my rights to that jam years ago.”

“I’m not working for Sol Katz, Mr. DeWitt, I’m working for Varnell Mack.”

“So you said.” He nodded. “But if you workin’ for him, why ask me about him?”

“Because I think he may be in some kind of trouble. Would you know a reason why anyone would be videotaping his movements? Police maybe?”

“Videotape?” the old man echoed, glancing up at me again, exasperated. “Sweet Jesus, what is this crap? The damn stroke messed up my arm some, but my brains ain’t Alpo yet. At least the last dude Sol sent around askin’ about Vamell came at me straight on. I don’t know what kind of a scam you’re tryna pull, but take your show on the road.”

“I’m not pulling a scam, Mr. DeWitt.”

“Hell you ain’t,” DeWitt snapped. “Look, I let you run your mouth to pass the time, but I’m tired of listenin’ to jive ’bout friends of mine. Varnell Mack never hired you for a damn thing, sonny, so tell your story walkin’ or I’m liable to get out’ this chair and throw your jive ass outa here.”

“Mr. DeWitt, why don’t you think Varnell Mack hired me?”

“I don’t think he didn’t, boy, I know. Hell, he ain’t even been Varnell for more’n twenty years. He went Muslim after the sixty-seven riots, changed his name to Raheem somethin’ or other. Wouldn’t hardly speak to a white man after that, say nothin’ of hirin’ one.”

“Maybe he’s mellowed.”

“Musta mellowed one helluva lot. Musta mellowed hisself right outa the ground.”

“What are you saying?”

“The man’s dead, boy. Died back in eighty-three. Lung cancer. Wasn’t but a dozen people at his funeral and most of them was Farrakhan Muslims. So you trot back an’ tell Sol if he wants to use that jam, go ahead on. I won’t give him no trouble, and Varnell sure as hell won’t neither. You got what you came for, now get on away from me.” He turned back to his game, shutting me out as effectively as if he’d slammed a door.

I rose slowly, trying to think of something to say. It wouldn’t matter. He wasn’t going to buy anything I was selling now. And maybe he was wrong, had Varnell and this Raheem whatever mixed up somehow. Maybe.

I stopped at the front desk on my way out and asked the Dresden milkmaid on duty if DeWitt had regular visitors.

“I wouldn’t know offhand,” she said, frowning. “We have so many patients. Why do you ask?”

“He seems to be a little confused. About who’s alive, and who isn’t.”

“That happens quite a lot.” She smiled, scanning the visitor’s log. “Let’s see, a Mr. Rothstein visited a few weeks ago. And a Mr. Jaquette. A Mr. and Mrs. Robinson. Does that help?”

“No one named Mack?”

“Apparently not, not recently anyway. I wouldn’t be too concerned about it though,” she added. “Residents often get confused about friends who’ve passed on. They even talk to them sometimes. It can give you shivers.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know the feeling.”

I found my steps quickening as I made my way out of the rest home, and when I hit the sidewalk I was sprinting for my car. I scrambled in and peeled out of the lot, pedal down, headed back to the heart of Motown.

And Rock ’n Soul Recollections. I barely made it. It was after five and the blinds were drawn, but I could still see movement inside. I hammered on the door. “Open up, Cal! It’s an emergency.”

“An emergency?” he said quizzically, letting me in. “At a record store?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said, stalking to the golden soul bin, riffling through the S’s. The Sultans. Horace. DeWitt grinned up at me from the jacket, young and strong. A rock. I scanned the faces of his backup singers. Their images were barely more than grey smears, blurred by the dance step they were doing. I just couldn’t be sure.

“Have you got any other pictures of the Sultans?” I asked. “Posters? Anything?”

“The Sultans?” he echoed, eyeing me blankly, while he rapid-scanned the computer directory of his memory. “I have two playbills with the Sultans featured, but no pictures...” He crossed to a file of publicity memorabilia, and expertly riffled through it. “Aha. A program for a Warfield Theater revue. Nineteen sixty-two. Sam Cooke, The Olympics, Millie Jump and the Jacks, and... the Sultans of Soul. Be careful now, it’s a by God cherry original.”

I checked the table of contents, then leafed through the program gingerly. And found the Sultans of Soul. A standard publicity shot of Horace DeWitt ringed by four dudes in gleaming lame jackets. Except for Horace, I didn’t recognize any of them. I checked the fine print beneath the photo. Varnell Mack was last on the left. He was tall, and had a Malcolm X goatee. But he definitely was not the man who hired me.

Damn.

“What’s with you?” Cal said. “You look like you lost your best friend.”

“Worse. I think I may be losing my touch. I’m being conned by a guy who can barely walk across a room.”

“Conned out of what?”

“That’s the hell of it. I don’t know. Cal, why would anybody pretend to be a has-been soul singer? And a dead one at that?”

“Somebody’s pretending to be one of the Sultans? But why? Even in their heyday they were strictly small change.”

“It can’t be for money,” I said. “He’s already paid me more than he’s likely to get from any royalties. So what does he want?”

“You got any idea who this guy is?”

“All I know is that it has to be somebody from the old days who knew the Sultans. I’m guessing he found out Sol was looking for Varnell from Horace DeWitt, so his name could be Robinson, or maybe Jaquette.”

“Jaquette?” Cal said, blinking. “First name?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because I know a few Jaquettes, but only one who would’ve known the Sultans,” Cal said, taking the program from me and flipping through it. “Could this be your guy? The one in the middle?”

“Yes,” I said slowly, “this is him. Or it was thirty years ago. But this pic isn’t of the Sultans.”

“Nope, it’s the Jacks, Millie Jump’s old group. Dexter Jaquette was their lead singer. And Millie’s husband. She dumped him after he got busted.”

“Busted for what?”

“A nickel-dime dope thing, couple of marijuana cigarettes. It’d be nothing now, but it was a hard fall back then. I think he did five years.”

“All that was a lifetime ago. What could he possibly want now?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

“Maybe I will,” I said slowly, still staring at the smiling photo of Dexter Jaquette. “Can I take this with me?”

“Absolutely,” Cal said. “That’ll be twenty-four bucks plus tax, an extra ten for opening late, call it thirty-five even.”

I raised an eyebrow, but paid without carping. He’d been a huge help and we both knew it.

I left the program open on the seat as I drove back to my apartment, and my eye kept straying to it. It was a jolting contrast, the faded photo of Dexter Jaquette the singer, and the broken man who’d hired me. My God, he was so young then. Younger than I am now. But there was more to it than that. Something about that picture that I was missing.

Pictures. The guy with the videocam. What was that all about? The only thing I was sure of was that Jaquette had gone to a lot of trouble to set this up. If I confronted him, he’d probably just back off and try again later. Assuming he lived long enough.

Should I warn Sol? A double conundrum. Sol wasn’t my client, Dexter was. And if I warned Sol, he’d sic Roddy Rothstein on Jaquette. The fact that he was a cripple wouldn’t bother Roddy. He’d rough him up, run him off, or worse, and I’d still never know what I’d bought into.

Unless I played it out. Seemed to me this show had been in rehearsal for thirty years. It would be a shame to close it before the last act.

The Cadillac rolled up in front of Papa Henry’s a little after nine. I climbed out of my Buick and trotted over just as Mack’s chauffeur opened the back door.

“There’s been a change in plans,” I said. “We’ll take my car. Give your man the night off.”

Mack/Jaquette eyed me a moment, then shrugged. “My car, your car, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“Good. And Mr. Mack, I mean give him the night off. I don’t want to see him in my rearview mirror, or the meet’s canceled. Understood?”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling faintly. “I think I understand.” He spoke briefly to the chauffeur, who started to argue, then gave it up. He looked me over slowly, memorizing my features, then helped Jaquette out of the car, and drove off.

Jaquette made his way slowly to my car. He’d changed into a tux, with a gleaming ebony cane to match. The suit was an immaculate fit, and broken and bent as he was, he looked elegant. Dressed to kill.

After he’d eased into my car, I leaned in and snapped his seat belt, fussing over his suit to make sure the belt didn’t muss it. And gave him a none-too-subtle frisk at the same time. I expected him to object, but he didn’t. He seemed amused, energized. Wired up and ready.

Costa Del Sol is one of the hottest discotheques in Detroit. Tucked away on the fifteenth floor of the Renaissance Center, it’s trendy, expensive, and very exclusive, with memberships available only to the very chic, and the very rich. I’d been there a few times as Desirée ’s bodyguard, but the bouncers working the front door still wouldn’t admit us until Roddy Rothstein bopped out to okay it.

The Costa is on two levels, a huge, lighted dance floor below, a Plexiglas-shielded balcony above, with a deejay suspended in a pod between them, cranking out power jams loud enough to give the Statue of Liberty an earache. A state-of-the-art laser system plays on the dance floor, psychedelic starbursts competing with the camera flashes of the paparazzi shooting the celebrities at play from the press section of the balcony.

We followed Roddy up the escalator to the second floor, the dining, observing, deal-making area. Shielded from the blare of the sound-system, the music from below is reduced to a pulse up here, a thump you feel through your soles like a heartbeat.

Roddy threaded his way slowly through the tables, adjusting his pace to Jaquette’s limp, leading us to the head table, where Sol and Millie were chatting up the entertainment editor of the Detroit Free Press. Sol had changed jackets, black, with a black shirt, to highlight a heavy gold Jerusalem cross. Millie was dazzling in a white sequined jumpsuit, a spray of diamonds in her hair. Desi was her usual fashionably frumpy self, street-person chic. In the bustle, nobody noticed us, until Jaquette spoke.

“Hello, Sol,” he said quietly. “How’s the leech business?”

Sol glanced up, annoyed, and the color bled from his face. “My God. Dexter.” He glanced quickly around, but Roddy had already moved off into the crowd. “What do you want?”

“To settle up. To close out my account.”

“There’s nothing to close out,” Millie said, glaring furiously at me. “It was all settled a long time ago.”

“Maybe not,” Jaquette said, glancing at Desi. “What do you think, girl? You know who I am?”

“You’re nobody,” Sol snapped. “History.”

“Maybe it’s history to you,” Jaquette said. “It’s not for me. You got any idea what it’s like to see a girl’s face on a billboard, have it nag at you? Knowin’ there’s somethin’ familiar about her? Bugged me so much I went to a shop to buy her album, and as soon as I saw her picture up close I knew. I mean I knew. It was like bein’ struck by lightning. She looks like you, Millie, even sounds like you. But she looks like me, too. And like my mama. The record jacket said she was only twenty-five, but I knew it was a damn lie. She’s mine. You were pregnant when you quit me, hid it from me so you could cop yourself a honky meal ticket.”

“That’s enough,” Sol snapped. “I don’t know what you think you got comin’, Dex, but if it’s trouble, you’re at the right place. Roddy!” Rothstein hurried toward us, bulling his way through the crowd, signaling to another security type standing near the balcony rail. Beyond him, I glimpsed a familiar silhouette, the man I’d seen on the rooftop that afternoon. He was in the press gallery now, with a camera, or a weapon, I couldn’t be sure.

“Too late, Sol,” Jaquette said, reaching under his coat. “You took everything, the music, my woman, even my child. It’s time to pay up.”

“Roddy!” Sol screamed, backing away, stumbling over his chair. Rothstein broke through the crowd and jerked his piece from under his coat, aiming at Dexter’s belly, two-hand hold.

“No!” I yelled, stepping between them. “Don’t. It’s what he wants!”

“Kill him!” Katz shouted. “Do it! Axton, get out of the way!”

“For godsake Sol, he’s unarmed! He didn’t come here to kill you, he came here to die! To take you with him! He’s got a guy in the balcony filming the whole thing!” Nobody was listening. Rothstein was circling to get a clear shot, and he was going to do it, I could read it in his eyes. Dammit!

I shoved Jaquette down out of the line of fire and threw myself at Roddy, tackling him chest high, the two of us crashing over a table. He hacked at me with his pistol, slamming me hard over the ear. I clutched desperately at his arm, but I was too dazed to hold it. He wrenched free, aiming his automatic past me at Dexter.

“Stop it!” Desi screamed, freezing us all for a split second, long enough for me to grab Rothstein’s wrist and clamp onto it with my teeth. He roared, and dropped his weapon, hammering my face with his free hand. Sol scrambled after Roddy’s piece, grabbed it, and swung it to cover Dexter.

“The balcony, Sol,” I managed. “Look at the press box.”

He risked a quick glance, spotted the guy with the camera. Then slowly got to his feet. He stood there, in a killing rage, his weapon centered on Jaquette’s chest, and if I’ve ever seen one man ready to kill another, it was Sol at that moment. The moment passed.

“Get up and get him out of here, Axton,” he said, lowering the pistol slightly. “But by God, if I ever see either of you again, I’ll be the last thing you ever see.”

I shook my head trying to clear it. Rothstein was still clutching his bloodied wrist. His eyes met mine for a moment, and I knew that it wasn’t finished between us. It was personal now. I’d be seeing him again. Terrific.

I lurched to my feet, and hauled Jaquette to his. He was spent, ashen, barely able to stand. I got an arm around him, picked up his cane, and helped him walk out, one slow step at a time. He hesitated at the escalator and I let him. He’d paid the price of admission.

He turned to look back a moment; God only knows what he was thinking. Sol and Millie were trying to calm Desi, all of them shaken to the core. Jaquette swallowed, and I thought he was going to say something, but he didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t. I walked him out to the car.

We drove in silence for twenty minutes, the only sound the rumble of the Buick’s big V-8 and the rasp of Jaquette’s breathing. He rolled down the window, letting the rain sprinkle his face and trickle down his goatee and his collar. It seemed to help.

“I thought it’d be easier,” he said softly, more to himself than to me.

“What would be?”

“Dying. I thought it through, thought I was ready. But at the last second there, I thought, maybe it’s not worth it. He’s not worth it. Not even after... everything. That, ahm, that was a bold thing you did back there. I’m sorry I dragged you into my trouble.”

“Why did you?” I asked.

“I needed somebody to walk me through Sol’s security. Went to the concert at the Palace to... to see the girl. Couldn’t even get close. Spotted you. Asked around, found out who you were, what you do. Took me a month to figure this thing out, set it up. The guy with the camera’s a film student from U of Detroit. Thinks he’s makin’ a documentary about an old-time singer tryin’ to collect some back royalties from a rip-off record company. Would’ve worked too. I figured everything but you.”

“How so?”

“Willis told me you were honest. He never said you were crazy. When it come down to it, I thought you’d stand aside, let it happen. And the whole thing’d be on film. No way Sol could duck the rap for takin’ me out.”

“And that’d be worth dying for?”

“Hell, I’m dyin’ anyway, boy, slow and hard. I was lucky to see Christmas. I won’t see another. I figured if I could just take Sol down with me... Maybe you shoulda let it happen. Hate’s all I had left,” he said, sagging back in his seat, closing his eyes. “Ain’t even got that now. I’m tired. To my bones. I wish I could just... be gone.”

“You can’t though. It’s not over.”

“No? Why not?”

“You hired me to collect some money, Mr. Jaquette. I haven’t done it yet. How would you like to meet your daughter? One on one? I think I can arrange it.”

His eyes blinked open. “Meet her? Why? To say goodbye?”

“Or hello. You might have more to talk about than you think. Business, for instance.”

“What business I got with her?”

“None. But the Sultans have business. With Sol.”

“Man, that was all smoke. A way to get to him is all. He screwed ’em for true, but it was all legal.”

“That doesn’t make it right. And Desi might not think so either. She’s got a good heart, and a hard nose. I think if you asked her right, you bein’ a dyin’ man and all, she’d talk Sol into doin’ the right thing by the Sultans.”

“It’s too late for that. The Sultans are gone, all but Horace. And he ain’t got long.”

“Then do it for the others. The Sultans weren’t the only group who got ripped off. Maybe you could establish a legal precedent other old-timers can use to get a fairer shake. It might not amount to much. But it’s better than nothing.”

“Maybe so, I don’t know. I’m too tired to think now. Drop me off at the corner. I wanna walk awhile.”

“It’s raining.”

“I know,” he said. “Stop the car.”

I watched him limp away, step, lean, step, lean. An old man in a tuxedo, in the rain. I wasn’t worried about him. His Cadillac had been tailing us since we left the Costa Del Sol.

I think he’s wrong about wanting to give up. A man who worked as hard as Jaquette to settle a score would find enough juice to talk to his daughter.

And he’s wrong about the Sultans, too. They aren’t gone. Not really. Nor are the hundreds of others who sang their souls out in warehouses and storefronts for pocket change. And altered the musical culture of the world. Shysters like Sol were so intent on cheating them out of every last nickel’s worth of rights and royalties that they let one minor asset slip past.

Immortality.

When Sol and his ilk are gone, who will remember? But the Sultans? And Sam Cooke? Otis Redding? As long as anyone’s left to listen, they’ll sing. Forever young.

I slid the worn cassette into the Buick’s player, felt the pulse of the kick drum in the pit of my stomach, then the thump of the bass. And Horace DeWitt sang to me. Not the stroke-shattered hulk in Riverine Heights, but the big-shouldered, brown-eyed, handsome man with conked hair, grinning up from the Warfield Theater program. And he was young again.

And so was I.

“I’m comin’ home, Motown Mama, I just can’t live without ya...”