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

“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?”