Motor City Burning by Bill Morris Read Free Book Online

think?” Bob asked, beaming.
    â€œShe’s a beauty, Uncle Bob.”
    â€œYou like the color?”
    â€œActually, I think you should’ve gone for chartreuse. Woulda fit your personality a lot better.”
    Bob laughed at the jibe. “Guy on the lot where I bought it told me something interesting. You know where the name comes from?”
    â€œSure. Everybody with half an education knows Electra was a Greek chick from a messed-up family whose momma—”
    â€œNo, no, not the Electra part. The Two-Twenty-Five part.”
    â€œOh. Beats me. Is it the horsepower?”
    â€œThat’s what I thought, too. Come to find out that when Buick started using the Electra name back in ’59, the thing was two hundred and twenty-five inches long. Think about it—that’s damn near twenty feet long.”
    This car wasn’t quite that long, but it was close. The relative lack of chrome and the sharp lines made it seem even bigger and longer than it was. There were four chrome notches in the front fender, which marked it a “four-holer,” a top-of-the-line Buick. The hood was huge, much flatter and longer and wider than the bulbous hood on Willie’s ’54 “three-holer,” and the trunk looked big enough to hold a Volkswagen. Or a couple dozen assault rifles.
    â€œHop in, let’s take her for a spin,” Bob said. It was the first time Willie had heard something like childish excitement in the man’s voice.
    They headed east on Maple Road, then left at Lahser. At the touch of Bob’s foot the Buick shot into the warm afternoon, just ate up the road. Willie watched the orange speedometer needle climb effortlessly past 40, 50, 60, up to 70. Bob had the windows rolled up and the air-conditioning on, and Willie wondered if this wasn’t another of his strategies, like the muted paintjob, to keep from drawing attention to himself. This far north in the suburbs, a black elbow sticking out of an expensive new car’s window could attract something a lot worse than stares.
    â€œHope you don’t mind the AC,” Bob said, fiddling with the controls.
    â€œNo, it’s fine. Feels good. Man, this thing rides smooth.”
    â€œWhat’d you expect? It’s an Electra.”
    There it was again. He called the car an Electra, the way a white man would. To all the brothers in Detroit, the 225 was a Deuce and a Quarter, or simply a Deuce, a term of great reverence, for this car was the pinnacle of status in the inner city, even higher than a Cadillac. Cadillacs were for preachers and pimps and the rich honkies out in Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills. The Deuce and a Quarter was the hip Detroit ride.
    â€œYou need to get you one a these,” Bob said. “You still driving that old Buick?”
    Willie took a deep breath and got ready to tell the lie for the first time. He thought of his mother’s sister, Aunt Nezzie, that great repository of mother wit, telling him years ago that if you’re going to lie you’d better have a good memory. He’d been rehearsing this lie ever since the Tigers’ game, when he stowed his Buick in the garage after hearing about Clyde Holland’s client getting taken downtown for questioning. That was Willie’s wake-up call, his return to a world of worry he thought he’d escaped. Now he could see that there would be no escape from that world until the murder was solved. And even that prospect merely tightened the bind he was in. He wanted to learn he was innocent, of course, but what about the unthinkable—what about learning he was not? So he wanted the cops to remain in the dark because as long as the case remained unsolved he could tell himself that he was innocent—and that his brother was innocent, too. Not knowing might be even better than knowing, but uncertainty was its own kind of purgatory, one he was not eager to re-enter. Yet he had no choice. So here he was, getting