Chapter Forty-Nine

Here’s the next Chapter of my memoir/novel, Lost and Found.

Hello, wonderful readers. I’m sorry for being a day late with this new Chapter, but life was getting in the way yesterday. In fact, I did manage to check emails last evening about 9:30 PM, but since I was barely able to keep my eyes open enough to read, I figured leaving this posting until today was the smart move.

So, no further delays … Here it is!

Be well, be in peace,

Ron Rink
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Even though Bob Morton wasn’t old enough to have his own car and a driver’s license, he usually had the use of a car belonging to one of his family members. There seemed to be an unlimited number of brothers, uncles, and cousins to keep him supplied with a set of wheels most of the time. The car he was driving that day was a big, black 1939 Packard four-door sedan with white sidewalls. Morton and Billy got in the front seat and I climbed in back. The seats were all brown leather and were so soft and comfortable I wished I could find cars like these in some of the garages where I slept. The dashboard was also covered in leather and looked like it was padded. I don’t know what the Morton family did for a living, but Bob Morton always seemed to be showing up with top-of-the-line automobiles.

I had no idea what a powwow was, nor did I have a clue why Morton had asked me to come along. I was in the process of working up the courage to ask, when Morton began to talk to Billy and me.

“Okay,” he said. “Billy, you’ve done this before so this is for you, Van Buren. What we’re gonna do is drive over to the place where the Livernois boys hang out and see if their leader, Arthur Bukowski, is around. If he’s there, we’re gonna sit down and talk about what happened with Sally and her cousin.”

“You mean we can just drive up, walk in and not get killed?” I asked. Despite the fact I was feeling like a big wheel riding around in such a big luxurious car and being asked to come along with the leader of the Dukes, I was also starting to get butterflies in my stomach when I thought about walking into another gang’s hangout.

“Yeah, it’s a powwow. The gangs all know what it means. When another gang’s leader shows up with just one or two other guys, it means it’s just for a powwow. It’s gonna be one leader talking with another leader to see what we can do to get some justice for Sally. All the gangs know you don’t fuck around with the girls from another gang. If you do, there’s gonna be some sort of payback. They also know you don’t jump a leader on a powwow mission.”

“Yeah,” Billy added. “Those are like laws with the gangs.”

Morton had just turned left onto Woodward Avenue from State Fair and got over into the right hand lane. “We’re just gonna talk about how this score gets settled. Either they take care of it and let Sally, her cousin and some of our boys watch, or they tell us who the bastards are and we’ll handle it. If they don’t like those choices, then we’ll have to set up a rumble with both gangs.”

Morton turned right onto 7 Mile Road. Palmer Park was on our left as we drove along. When we got to Livernois, we turned left. The place we were looking for was at the corner of Curtis Street and Livernois. Morton pointed to a small grocery and tobacco shop where a bunch of guys in red jackets were hanging around out in front and pulled up to the curb.

Billy looked over at Bob Morton and said, “Hey, Morton. Look at the guy sitting on the window ledge—the one in the middle. Blonde flat-top with a D.A., pegs and a long chain.”

Morton nodded.

Billy put his arm out of the window on his side and motioned for one of the guys standing against the building to come closer.

The guy pushed himself off the building and sauntered a couple steps closer to the car. He had a cigarette hanging from his lips and his hands were in the pockets of his peg pants. He had long black hair and a long pocket chain. He was the only guy not wearing one of the red “Livernois” jackets. He looked like he was about fourteen or fifteen years old. I wondered if he was one of the guys who had attacked Sally’s cousin. The guy just stood there looking at us as he took drags from his cigarette without taking it out of his mouth.

“Arthur around?” Morton said. He didn’t turn his head to his right to look at the guy, but kept his eyes focused out the front window of the car.

The guy was beginning to take drags off his cigarette so fast his head was wreathed in smoke. “Who wants to know?”

Morton was still looking straight ahead. “Bob Morton from State Fair. Need a powwow.”

The guy bent down so he could see Morton over on the driver’s side of the car. Then he straightened up, looked at Billy, then at me in the back seat. “I’ll go see if he’s here.”

He turned and went into the store without looking back. Morton was still sitting calmly staring out through the windshield. Billy was drumming his fingers on the door panel next to him and I was leaning over the back of the front seat looking anxiously from the side of Morton’s head, to the side of Billy’s head and to the guys hanging around the front of the building. There were eight or nine of them and they just stayed where they were, looking at the car and at us inside. They didn’t say anything to each other—they just smoked, looked and waited.

A few minutes later the door to the store opened and the same guy that went inside came out. Right behind him was a tall, heavy-set guy with the broadest shoulders I’d ever seen. He must have been over six-feet tall. His shoulders were so big it didn’t look like he had a neck. He had on one of the red jackets which he left wide open in the front because it would never have fit over his large belly. He had on peg pants and stompers. His hair was long, greasy, unwashed-looking, and fell across his face so it was hard to see his expression. I did notice how his eyes were moving constantly as if he was looking for something which wasn’t there. He was also smoking and held the cigarette between the fingers of his left hand. His other hand hung loosely at his side.

Another guy followed them out and the three of them stood next to each other a few feet away from the car with the big, tall guy in the middle. The big guy bent over to look at Morton behind the wheel and said, “Hey, Morton. What’s up?”

Bob Morton was still keeping his eyes focused out the windshield. “Arthur, we need to have a powwow. You got some time to take a short ride over to the park?”

“Nah. I ain’t getting in there and riding with you. I’ll meet you over at the statue in the park in about a half-hour.” He turned his back to us and sauntered back into the store. I noticed that he had an exaggerated swagger to his walk like many of the guys in the Dukes also had. It made him look tough.

I decided I would learn to walk that way soon.

The other two guys turned and followed him.
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