The Jones Men

By Vern E. Smith

An all-out drug war explodes in 1970s Detroit when a young Vietnam veteran decides to rip off heroin kingpin Willis McDaniel. In the chaos, rival outfits, the Mafia, and even junkies themselves try to step in to fill the void while one lone assassin tries to hunt them all down—and one determined cop tries to stop it all.

Vern E. Smith formerly served as the Atlanta Bureau chief and as a national correspondent for Newsweek. As a principal reporter with Newsweek's Special Projects Unit, he contributed to four cover stories later published as books. One of the stories, “Charlie Co.: What Vietnam Did to Us,” won the 1981 National Magazine Award for Single Issue Topic. He also served as a principal reporter and blogger for the 2004 Voices of Civil Rights oral history project, which is permanently housed in the Library of Congress. His work has also appeared in Emerge, the London Sunday Times, Ebony, GEO, the Crisis magazine, Merian magazine, and the History Channel Magazine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rosarium Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781495617867

Book preview

Part One

1

Saturday Evening

For Bennie Lee Sims’ wake, Lennie Jack chose the sky-blue Fleetwood with the chromed-up bumpers and the bar-line running from the trunk to the dash, dispensing six different liquors with chaser.

Joe Red brought the car to a halt in front of Fraser’s Funeral Parlor on Madison Boulevard. He backed it in between a red El Dorado with a diamond-shaped rear window and a pink Lincoln with a leopard-skin roof.

Lennie Jack wore a medium-length Afro and had thick wide sideburns that grew neatly into the ends of a bushy moustache drooping over his top lip. He got out of the passenger seat in a manner that favored his left shoulder. He had on a cream-colored suede ·coat that stopped just below the knee, and a .38 in his waistband.

Joe Red was shorter and thinner and younger than Lennie Jack. He got his nickname for an extremely light complexion and a thick curly bush of reddish brown hair; it spilled from under the wide-brimmed black hat cocked low over his right ear. He had on the black leather midi with the red-stitched cape; he had a .45 automatic in his waistband.

They came briskly down the sidewalk and went up the six concrete steps to the entrance of Fraser’s.

An attendant in a somber gray suit and dark tie greeted them at the door.

We’re here for Bennie Sims, Joe Red said.

Come this way, the attendant said.

He guided them down a narrow hallway past a knot of elderly black women waiting to file into one of the viewing rooms flanking the hall on either side. The hallway reeked of death; the women wept.

They passed three more doors before the attendant led them left at the end of the hall and down a short flight of stairs. A single 60-watt bulb illuminated the lower level. The attendant went past the row of ebony- and silver-colored caskets stacked near the staircase and stopped at a door in the back of the room.

They’re in there, he said. He turned and headed back up the stairs. Lennie Jack rapped softly at the door. They stood a few feet back from the doorway to be recognizable in the dim light.

The door cracked.

This Bennie Lee? Lennie Jack said.

Yeah, this it, said a voice behind the crack.

A man with wavy black hair in a white mink jacket and red knicker boots let them in. He relocked the door.

The room smelled of cigarette smoke. A row of silver metal chairs had been stacked in a neat line on one side, but most of the people come to pay their respects were scattered in the back in tight little clusters, talking and laughing.

At the front of the long room, near a small table of champagne bottles, Bennie Lee Sims’ tuxedo-dad body lay in a silver-colored coffin with a bright satin lining.

His face was dusty with a fine white powder.

Lennie Jack walked over to the coffin. He dipped his fingers in the silver tray of cocaine on top and sprinkled it over Bennie Lee.

Joe Red stepped up behind him and tried to find a spot that wasn’t covered. He finally decided on the lips and scattered a handful of the fine white crystalline powder around Bennie Lee’s mouth and chin.

They moved through the crowd, shaking hands and greeting people. Almost everybody had come to see Bennie Lee off.

The Ware brothers were there: Willie, the oldest at twenty-four; Simmy, who was twenty; and June, who often swaggered as if he were the elder of the clan but still had the baby-smooth face and look of wide- eyed adolescence. He was seventeen.

Pretty Boy Sam was standing in one corner with his right foot resting on one of the metal chairs. He had smooth brown skin and almost girlish features, topped off by a pointed Van Dyke beard. His good looks masked a violent temper.

Pretty Boy Sam had worn his full-length brown mink and brought his woman to pay his respects to Bennie Lee Sims, who had two neat bullet holes right between the eyes and underneath all the cocaine on his face.

Slim Williams was there with his woman. He was a tall, thin dark-skinned man whose left eye had been destroyed by an errant shotgun blast. He now wore a variety of gaily colored eye patches the way he had heard Sammy Davis did when he lost his eye. He had on a patch of bright green and red plaid and stood conversing on one side of the room with Hooker, Woody Woods, and Mack Lee.

Willis McDaniel was not there, but then, he never came. He had probably never considered it, but it was a source of irritation to the others.

Joe Red said, "Hey Jack, he the man. He don’t hafta come see nobody off if he don’t wanta come. Ain’t none of these people thinkin’ bout makin’ him come. Who gon make him come?"

Why he can’t come like the rest of the people? Lennie Jack said. Has anybody ever thought of that, you reckon? He too big now to bring his ass out here to see a dude off? He probably had him ripped anyway. I don’t understand how these chumps let an old man like that just get in there and rule.

Now we both know how he got it, Joe Red said. He took it. He say, ‘Look, I’m gon be the man on this side of town cause I got my thing together and I got plenty big shit behind me. Now what you motherfuckers say?’ Everybody say, ‘You the man, Mister McDaniel.’ That’s the way he did it.

That is the way to take it from him, too. Lennie Jack said. We gon get lucky pretty soon. I think he can be had and I know just the way to do it. I got some people working on it. The first thing they teach you in the war is to fight fire with fire, you know?

He took the tiny gold spoon on the chain around his neck and scooped a pinch of cocaine off the tray Joe Red handed him. He brought the spoon up to his right nostril and sniffed deeply.

The crowd was beginning to drift to the corner of the room where Slim Williams was holding court. Slim was thirty-seven, and much older than most of his audience. Lennie Jack was twenty-six, and Joe Red had just turned twenty-one three days ago.

Slim Williams had diamond rings on three fingers of his left hand, and he was waving them around in a dazzling display and talking about Joe the Grind.

Joe used to walk into a bar with his dudes with him–he always carried these two dudes with him everywhere he went. He’d walk into a place fulla people and say, ‘I’m Joe the Grind, set up the bar! All pimps and players step up to the bar and bring your whores with you.’

Slim Williams chuckled. Then Joe would talk about ‘em. He used to say, ‘You ain’t no pimp, nigger. What you doin’ up here? I ain’t buying no drinks for you. Sit down!’

Slim Williams laughed; so did everybody else.

Joe used to rayfield a chump bag dude too, Slim Williams said. He used to tell ‘em ‘Just cause you got eight or nine hundred dollars worth of business don’t mean you somebody.’ Then Joe would throw a roll down that’d choke a Goddamn mule and tell the chump: ‘Looka here boy, I just had my man sell forty-two thousand dollars worth of heh-rawn, and I got twenty more joints to hear from fore midnight. Gon sit down somewhere, you don’t belong up here with no big dope men.

They laughed again and somebody passed the coke tray.

June Ware took his pinch and squared his toes in the eighty-dollar calfskin boots from Australia, via Perrin’s Men’s Shoppe on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

What happened to Joe, Slim? June Ware said.

Oh, somebody shot ‘im in the head in an after-hours joint, Slim Williams said. "And lemme tell you, youall shoulda been there to see Joe’s wake. It put this thing to shame. Compared to Joe’s, this thing ain’t nothing. This light-weight. They say there was coke in the block wrapped in foil and pure heh-rawn set out on silver trays with diamonds in the sides.

So they partied all night till twelve the next day, then they all went to Joe’s funeral. After the funeral was over, everybody got on the plane with his woman and went to Jamaica for two days.

"Say what?" June Ware said.

Yeah, that’s the truth, Slim Williams said. And you shoulda seen that funeral too. They say a broad came over from Chicago in a white-on-white El Dorado, and she was dressed in all white with a bad-ass mink round her shoulders. Then when she came out of the hotel the next day for Joe’s funeral, they say she was in all black. She went to the graveyard and threw one hundred roses on Joe. Then she got in her ride and split. Don’t nobody know who she was. When they had Joe’s funeral march, there was one hundred fifty big pieces lined up for blocks down Madison Boulevard. They pulled a brand new Brough-ham behind the hearse, and when the march was over they took the car out to the trash yard and crushed it.

Goddamn Slim! June Ware said.

Mack Lee, who was twenty-two years old and decked out from the top of his big apple hat to the tip of his leather platforms in bright lavender, came their way with his woman on his arm.

The woman looked about nineteen; she wore diamond-studded earrings and a matching bracelet. She carried a tray of glasses and an unopened bottle of champagne.

We oughta drink a toast to Bennie Lee, Mack Lee said, and ask the Lord how come he made him so stupid.

The laughter rippled through the room; Mack Lee popped the cork in the champagne bottle and poured the rounds.

Bennie Lee Sims lay with cocaine spilling off his face onto the red satin pillow underneath his head, and couldn’t hear the tributes and the laughter.

At twenty-three, and with a sincere expression on his chiseled brown face, Bennie Lee had made a pitch and learned his lesson the hard way.

All I wanta do from now on is sell coke, Bennie Lee had said. No more jones, see? I just want a portion of the west side dealin’ nothin’ but coke.

It had been the wrong thing to say.

St. Louis Murphy was the first to set him straight. He had pushed back angrily from the table in Dante’s that eve and shook his finger in Bennie Lee Sims’ face.

Look, nigger, St. Louis Murphy said. You ain’t doing nothing. You don’t come in here talkin’ bout what you don’t wanta do. You losing your Goddamn mind, or something? The man say nobody doing that till he say so. You selling P, if you wanta deal, Bennie Lee.

I wanta talk to Mister McDaniel myself, Bennie Lee Sims had answered. I really don’t see why he wouldn’t go for that kinda action. I swear I wouldn’t fuck with no more heh-rawn, just coke, man. I swear fo God. Let me talk to the man.

The man said No.

But Bennie Lee Sims tried to do it anyway, quietly.

The early Sunday morning joggers had found him floating on his back, grotesquely half-smiling from the murky waters at Beckman Pier, his belly bloated and the .357 Magnum bullets in his forehead.

Bennie Lee Sims was gone, so tonight they’d see him off and wish him well; tomorrow they’d compete for his dope bag.

Pretty·Boy Sam had already planned to set up a house right next to Bennie Lee Sims’ main pad on Pittman Street, stock it with good dope, and draw off Bennie Lee’s trade before somebody else beat him to it.

The Ware brothers had also discussed how they might take over what Bennie Lee Sims had left behind. The thought had crossed Slim Williams’ mind too.

June Ware walked up to Slim Williams and handed him another glass of champagne.

Looka here, Slim, June Ware said. Joe the Grind ever stick up any dope houses?

Shit, yeah, Slim Williams said. That’s how he got over so quick, robbing these little chump people. I remember once he sent his woman to the dope house with a note. She just knocked on the door, didn’t even go in, just stuck the note through the crack in the door. The note said: ‘Give my woman all the dope you got and all the money, and don’t let me have to come round there after it.’ Then he signed it ‘Joe the Grind.’ They sent the dope and all the money just like Joe say to, Slim Williams laughed.

How Joe do all that shit? June Ware said.

See, Joe knew how to talk to people, get ‘em to let him inside they joints, Slim Williams said. He used to come in three, four times, buy a little dope, trying to find out what kinda traffic the joint had, and when the dope man was gon make his connect. A lotta times Joe and his dudes would go in a place shooting and the first person they’d shoot would be the dope man. See, if you shoot the dope man, you letting his henchmen know you come in there for sho nuff business. You ain’t got no more trouble out of them. I remember one time he told me about a place he robbed on Dumberry with two other dudes. He said they busted in the joint and put everybody but the dope man on the floor. Quite naturally the dope man got smart and started cussin’ and shit. Joe slapped him upside the head with his pistol. Whop! Told him: ‘Shut up. I don’t wanta hurt nobody but, like hey: I’m for real.’ Joe used to say you had to crack a dude’s skin a little bit, let the blood run. He gon shut up. Anyway, Joe told the dope man he was gon tear up the place it he didn’t get the shit. The dude jumped smart and Joe cracked him. Whop! Whop! He took the joker’ s woman and stuck the gun in her mouth, moved it round a little bit. That sucker ran and got all the dope in the house.

Then what happened? June Ware said.

Shit, what you think happened? Slim Williams said. Joe and them blew ‘em away.

Shit! June Ware said. Lennie Jack had heard it too.

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at June Ware.

It’s cold out there, brother, he said.

2

Sunday Morning

Foxy Newton and the white girl came down the creaky backstairs of their tenement building to the alley and followed it over to where the narrow, trash-littered path crossed Lewiston Street.

They walked down Lewiston to Howard Avenue and headed for the Henry Wade Expressway overpass. Foxy wore a faded green army jacket and corduroy bell bottoms. He had the elongated legs and arms of a tall basketball player, a gaunt, haggard face that made it difficult to guess his age, bushy brows, and deep-set eyes that moved constantly. The girl following him up the overpass ramp was nearly a foot shorter and looked frail and thin in a plaid wind breaker and dark pants. She had pale blue eyes in a pasty-white face; fringes of light brown hair spilled around her shoulders from underneath a red ski cap pulled down tightly on her head.

The sky overhead was a dull gray and the first thin white flakes of a predicted snow blizzard were being whipped above the freeway by blustery morning winds.

Foxy and the girl came off the end of the overpass and started across an open field of garbage and discarded old car hulks. The shortcut allowed them to reach the rear of the Wilmot Housing Projects in ten minutes.

The projects sprouted from the belly of the sprawling west side and hovered over the busy expressway like high-rise brick cells.

On the back side of the place the rusted wire fencing had a gaping hole right in the center. Foxy Newton helped the girl through the hole and they started around to the front. The seventeen buildings stretched barracks-like across a gnarled landscape of thirteen acres; most of the windows had missing screens and peeling green paint around the edges.

Foxy and the girl ducked under a clothesline sagging with heavy sheets. They came single-file down a narrow path between two of the buildings that led around to the parking area. It was bright with chips of bottle glass. They crossed the concrete parking lot to building No. 1077.

The dull ringing of a stalled elevator sounded in the musty damp hallway. They came across the lobby and waited with a woman and her little girl for the second elevator. The black woman wore a hairnet and a starched white dress. She had heavy circles under her eyes and carried a bag of groceries. The child had bright ribbons in her freshly combed hair and looked dressed for Sunday School.

Foxy and the girl fidgeted impatiently.

Every time I come here one of these things stuck, Foxy said. What they be doing to ‘em?

Honey, it’s always ringing all day and all night, the woman said. She sighed and shifted the heavy bag of groceries to the other arm.

Foxy turned and said softly to the girl: You gon do the whole ten?

Yeah, hell yes, she said. You know how long it’s been? And I only want the white-bag stuff too. I want some good shit. She put her hand to her mouth and coughed.

The elevator arrived with a grinding noise that revealed its age. The door creaked open and three youths and a girl got out. Foxy and the girl allowed the woman and child to enter the elevator first.

What floor you want? Foxy said.

Fourteen, thank you, the woman said. Foxy punched Fourteen, then Eight for himself. They got out on the eighth floor and noticed that the ringing had finally stopped. The walls along the hallway were peeling and cracked in places and marred by pencil scrawls and graffiti. They turned left at the end of the corridor and stopped at door 804. Foxy knocked softly. Someone cracked open the door and peered out.

Who is that, Mitch? This Foxy Newton, man. He moved in closer to the door and lowered his voice to a whisper. I wanta cop half a spoon, man. Can you do anythin’ for me? There was a short silence.

Who is that with you? said a voice finally.

This my woman, Deborah, Foxy said. She cool.

One, two, three locks were unbolted before the door swung halfway open. A slender black youth wearing only slacks and socks stood in the doorway. He looked them over closely before he stood aside to allow them to enter. The kid was no more than seventeen, and looked it in his thin, keen face; his hair had been straightened and styled in a swirl to the left side of his head. He looked like he had been roused from a deep sleep.

What it is, Mitch? Foxy said.

It’s cool, man, the boy said. Foxy introduced the girl. She smiled forcibly at him. He nodded. How much you say you want?

We wanta do ten cents on some of that white-bag stuff you had last time, Foxy said. We don’t want none of that other stuff. It was kinda foul the last time, you know. The shit you had in the white bag was better.

Everybody want that, the boy said. Let me see if I got that much left.

The girl stepped toward him with a pleading look. Aww, shit! I hope you do, really. She made a raspy noise in her throat and coughed again.

The boy took a ten-dollar bill from Foxy and disappeared into a back room. Another youth nearly the same age as the first, but more muscular, with a broad neck and eyes shaded by dark glasses, was seated on a leather bar stool near the door with his back propped against the wall.

He said to Foxy: You ain’t holdin’ nothin’, is you?

Foxy opened his coat wide. "Hey man, like I’m always cool when I come in your house, you know that." He grinned at the youth, who ignored it. He jerked the