the van along Woodward. Louis had to look over at him. Ordell said, 'They build all the glass shit and convention centers and domes along the river? That's for the postcard pictures--hey, shit, look at Detroit, man--if you never seen it before. Then you drive out this big wide street, what do you see? What does anybody want to come here for? Pick up some ribs and leave the motor running.'
'Over at the Mexican Village,' Louis said, 'on the wall in the can it says, 'Coleman is a copsacker.' Now you want a safe place and some good burritos, go to the Mexican Village. All the cops eat there.'
'I notice that,' Ordell said. 'The cops love to eat Mex. I was in there, it's right over by Michigan Central where I been doing some business.'
'By the freight yards,' Louis said.
'Freight yards, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, man, all the stuff that comes out of there.'
'That's where you're getting the building supplies?'
'No, the choo-choo comes in, we get mostly appliances,' Ordell said. 'Ranges, refrigerators, the man buys for these apartments I'm gonna show you. The building stuff we pick up out on jobs.'
'This deal,' Louis said, 'if we're talking about lifting work you don't want me, you want some strong young boys.'
'I say anything about lifting work?' Ordell looked at the rear-view mirror and made a sweeping left turn off Woodward. 'I'll show you where the man makes his money.'
Ordell made a couple of loops through the Cass Corridor area, giving Louis the tour.
'On the right you have the beautiful Wayne State University campus--'
'I had it two years,' Louis said. 'I should've learned something.'
'On down the street,' Ordell said, 'to a fine example of neo-ghetto. I went to school too, man. You can see it's not your classic ghetto yet, not quite ratty or rotten enough, but it's coming. Over there on the left, first whore of the day. Out for her vitamin C. And there's some more--hot pants with a little ass hanging out, showing the goods.'
'How come colored girls,' Louis said, 'their asses are so high?'
'You don't know that?' Ordell glanced at him. 'Same way as the camel.'
Louis said, 'For humping, uh?'
'No, man, for going without food and water when there was a famine, they stored up what they need in their ass.'
Louis didn't know if Ordell was putting him on or not. He looked at him, then shifted his gaze to the street again as Ordell said, 'Uh-oh, see those people picketing? Trying to keep the neighborhood from falling in the trash can.'
The van coasted past the people on the sidewalk, white and black, some with children, who were marching in a circle that extended from a bar to the entrance of an upstairs hotel. Louis read a sign that said, PROSTITUTES AND PIMPS GO AWAY. Another one said, HONK YOUR HORN IF YOU SUPPORT US.
Ordell beeped a couple of times and waved. A prostitute in white boots and hot pants waved back. There were prostitutes standing around watching, making comments, and a blue-and-white Detroit police cruiser parked at the curb. Most of the signs, Louis noticed, said, SEE AND TELL.
Ordell said he liked the one, GO HOME TO YOUR WIFE. He said, 'If she was any good, the man wouldn't come down here.'
Louis didn't understand the SEE AND TELL signs or the license numbers, it looked like, painted on a couple of other signs.
'That's the Johns' numbers,' Ordell said. 'Man stops his car to pick up a whore they write it down. Then the TV news man comes and takes pictures and the John's license number appears on the six o'clock news. How'd you like that, you're sitting home with mama and the kids? 'Hey dad, ain't that our car license?' Everybody's protesting. The other day I see these two ugly chicks look like pull-out guards with the Lions. I mean ugly, got these little halter outfits on, their tits hanging way down, they're walking along with a sign says, 'Lesbians Are Good Mothers.' One's got this little kid. She's holding his hand, he's trying to get away to kick some beer cans. The little kid not knowing shit what he's into.'
'Well, I've seen whores,' Louis said. 'What else you got, some muggings?'
'The whores're part of what I want to show you,' Ordell said. 'Be cool, Louis. You ain't got to be anywhere but with me.'
He showed Louis where you could buy liquor with food stamps. He showed him the second best place in town to buy fine grass.
Finally he showed Louis the apartment buildings, about ten of them scattered around on different streets in the Corridor, all of them big, worn-out-looking buildings, four and five stories, with names like Clairmont and Balmoral and Carrolton chiseled in stone above the entrance ways. Louis said, yeah? They didn't look any different than all the rest of the ratty looking places. Jesus, Louis said, how could people live around here? Louis hated dirt. He didn't hate real dirt, soil. He hated manufactured dirt, soot, and all the wrappers and empty bottles and crap in the doorways. Why didn't the people who lived there bend over and pick up the crap?
'It's inside the apartments are different,' Ordell said. 'These the ones the man bought and fixed up. I'll show you.'
He took Louis past an old Airstream house-trailer that was parked in front of an apartment house. The trailer was painted yellow with DYNAMIC IMPROVEMENT COMPANY lettered on the side, and in a smaller, fancy script, Licensed Builders.
'That's the man's company,' Ordell said. 'Dynamic.'
'You're gonna tell me,' Louis said, 'he got rich renovating apartments?'
'He got rich buying the apartments cheap, then improving them even cheaper with materials and appliances and what have you supplied by the Or-dell Robbie take-it-and-get, man, delivery company. You following me? He gets them all fixed up, then rents them--not to the po' black folks and the people on welfare and the ones got strip-mined and fucked over and come up here from the Kentucky hollers, shit no--he rents them to the pimps and the ladies with the high asses you like.'
'So it's a business like any other business,' Louis said. 'What's the big deal?'
Ordell turned left off Third Avenue at Willis, pulled over to the curb and parked so he could swivel around in his captain's chair and look directly at Louis and see the whores in front of the Willis Show Bar.
'The deal--all these colorful people pay him in cash. You understand?'
'I guess they would,' Louis said.
'Start multiplying,' Ordell said. 'He's got twelve buildings I know of, average thirty units each, two to $300 a month rent. That's a gross of almost 100 grand every month.'
'And he's got taxes, overhead. You said he's buying buildings,' Louis said.
Ordell gave Louis a pained look. 'You think he uses his own money? He mortgages the buildings, ten per cent down. Yeah, he makes some payments. But he takes his rent receipts in cash, declaring only about sixty per cent occupancy. You listening? And he takes out around fifty grand every month, fifty , and goes and hides it.'
'Where?'
Ordell grinned. 'Gotcha, haven't I? He been doing this, we know of, two years.'
'Where's the money?'
'In a bank.'
'Well, for Christ sake, what good's that do us?' 'Bank's not in this country.'
'So what? A bank's a bank.' Louis stopped. 'Wait a minute. He knows who you are, right? How you gonna work it?'
'He knows me, yeah, but just barely. One time I met him and a couple times maybe he's seen me. But I don't--shit, you think I deal with him and he buys the merchandise himself? Shit no. Listen, he don't even have his name in the company, not on any paper the company's got.'
'You're talking about Dynamic.'
'Yeah, Dynamic Improvement. You saw it. Man name of Ray Shelby runs it. He's the front for the man, been working for him years.'
'Okay, he's putting money away--'
'And breaking the law, way he's doing it.'
'Okay,' Louis said, 'you get next to the man and say excuse me, give me all your money or I start screaming
