Two, he was a genie. The word 'genie' is derived from the word 'djinn', or 'jinn', depending on which ancient culture you study. Chavez and the AA preferred 'djinn.' According to Natasha, the djinn are spirits that inhabit the unseen world between humans and angels, completing the third leg of the three sentient creations of God—humans, angels, and djinn. She said that a djinni can be good, evil, or neutral, and that they can take human or animal form when presenting themselves to humans. She also said that they are supernatural beings capable of powerful acts but she refused to reveal what those powerful acts may be. Under her intense gaze Jake had pressed no further.
Three, Jake's father's initials were V.K. It was clear the AA knew his father, but they'd yet to speak his name.
Four, in the summer before he was born—about nine months before, to be precise—a traveling sideshow had come through Detroit. The show was attached to the Top Tent Circus, which was nationally popular at the time, and it featured a sideshow attraction run by gypsies. One of the acts was a magician. The Great Vincent Kali.
Five, Vincent Kali was not a stage performer, but a slight-of-hand artist who worked the crowds in between the main acts. Jake discovered the only notes he could find about him through a blog post someone had written about their experience with the show that summer. It was one entry in a memoir series about the blogger's youth and Jake, taking Chavez's advice, had memorized it. Chavez said that reciting aloud any information absolutely known about a djinni would reduce the quickening's effect while at the same time alerting the djinn to the reciter's presence. "By speaking of a djinni,” Chavez had said. "You spiral the magic outward. Keeping the information within will not do. Like a disease, it must be expelled."
Jake began speaking aloud, his eyes still closed. "The on-stage acts were fine, but they paled in comparison to the up-close magic of The Great Vincent Kali..."
Once the recitation was done, Jake’s hands were back under control. He started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot, turned left toward the highway and drove toward Wixom.
20
Motown—helmeted, manacled, and without plasticware—sat across from young Jake at the breakfast table. For the first time in Jake's recollection, Motown's pancakes went untouched throughout breakfast. Instead of eating he eyeballed Jake intensely. Jake smiled and finished his last bite of pancake, picked up his cup of orange juice.
Motown said, "Hey kid, I wish I was dead."
Jake stopped drinking. He waited with cold juice dammed against his upper lip. After a moment he set the cup down and put a hand to his chest. There was no feeling like before, nothing like what happened in Motown's room with the tape player. His hands didn't tremble. His body stayed cool.
Motown's eyes had gone wide and expectant. He clutched the arms of his chair. His knuckles went white.
Jake shook his head.
"Goddammit," Motown said, releasing his grip. "Nothing comes easy."
That afternoon Jake sat at the edge of Motown's bed while the older boy smoked his Camels and told his stories. He was sixteen years old and his real name was Early Jenkins. "My parents were young when they had me, and I was premature to boot. I guess they thought they were being cute."
The boys agreed to stick with Motown.
"I spent my time in the fruit cellar," he continued. "It wasn’t like some Harry Potter shit, though. I chose to be there. It was where I could hide from the two idiots who made me. Also, that's where the music was. My child of a father tossed a collection of grandpa's eight-tracks and cassette tapes down there some years before, and when I found them I pretty much locked the door above my head. The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations. That's what the old man discarded. Those singers brought me up like my parents should have. You couldn't even call them parents. They were too young and too busy with their own bullshit to think about their kid. If they weren't screaming at each other they were testing the bedsprings, ya know?"
Jake nodded, though he didn’t technically know.
"Volatile," Motown continued. "Vol. A. Tile. I hated them. I took to cutting myself. 'Look at me', ya know? 'I'm bleeding. Pay attention to me.'" He smirked and looked off. "Music was the only thing that saved me. The only thing that stayed pure. People disappoint you, but music stays beautiful." The tape player caught his gaze. Smoke curled up and around his sharp features like swaying seaweed. He eyed the cassette deck. "And now I went and did the same goddamn thing they did."
"What's that?"
Motown stayed silent for an uncomfortable moment before he broke his stare from the tape player. "Got a fourteen-year-old girl pregnant. She's coming here today. Jenna. Ain't that some nutball shit? She showed me that pregnancy stick with the two red lines and I kicked her for it. God help me, she was smiling and holding that stick and I kicked her hard, right in the guts. Knocked her down. I hoped to Christ the baby inside her couldn't handle the blow. You sure I can't wish to die?"
"I didn't feel anything," Jake said.
Motown frowned. "Anyway, she's coming here to see me with her pregnant belly and sore back, still thinking there's something between us." He tapped away ashes. "That night she was lying there holding her stomach and crying, asking why. I didn't know why. I just knew I didn't want no kid of mine sitting in a fruit cellar carving stupid shit into his arms and legs, ya know?"
Jake looked at Motown's arms, but saw only the orange of his long sleeves. He'd seen the wrist scars peeking out from time to time, but nothing more.
Motown caught him looking. He flicked away the cigarette and peeled off his shirt. Underneath he wore a white V-neck with short sleeves. He held up a forearm. There were words carved everywhere. Scars. Letters and sentences trailing up into his sleeves. Some words and phrases seemed to make sense, others were like puzzles.
"Can you dig this stupid shit?" Motown said, pointing to one particular section.
When you believe in things you don't understand.
"And how about this gem?" he said, lifting his other arm and exposing the fleshy part.
I bet you're wondering how I knew.
Jake wanted to keep reading, but Motown slid his long-sleeve shirt back on. He tapped out another cigarette from the soft pack, lit it, dragged in smoke. "She sat there and watched me. We were back behind that Blister Burger on M-59 near White Star. It was greasy as hell. Rats used to run crazy back there. I was a prep cook. She brought that little stick in her purse, called me out through the back screen door while I was cutting onions. She showed it to me thinking I'd be happy. After I kicked her she sat there with her back up against a dumpster. Her eyes were wet and she was holding her stomach. I took that onion knife and did both wrists right then." He pulled his legs up close to his chest, wrapped his arms around them. "So, we know you're bound to wishes, but unless you're planning to take me out in the next couple days, there must be rules."
Jake nodded.
"What do you know so far?"
"Not much," Jake said. "It's only happened a few times that I can remember."
"Oh man," Motown said, "that's why you're in here, isn't it? It's why you hurt someone?"
Jake nodded.
"You can't control it, can you?"
"I don't know."
"You boys okay?"
It was Nurse Kerry. She was leaning through the doorway into Motown's room. Jake's eyes tracked from her lips down her neck and past her collarbone, over the curve of her chest where the doorjamb had pulled her cotton uniform tight, down her waist to where the same doorjamb halted his hormonal progress. As she leaned forward her dark hair fell from beneath her hat and across her eyes. She pulled it’d back behind her ear.
"Come on in," Motown said. He smiled and patted the spot next to him on the bed.
"Don't you wish?" Nurse Kerry said. She looked at Jake. "You all right?"
"Of course he's all right," Motown said. He flopped an arm over Jake's shoulders.
Nurse Kerry offered Motown a raised eyebrow of both curiosity and warning.
&nbs
p; "I'm okay," Jake said.
"All right, then," Nurse Kerry said. She winked at Jake and then left.
"You like her, eh?"
Jake blushed.
"She looks like that singer," Motown said. "Katy something."
"Perry."
Motown punched Jake's shoulder. "She's too old for you, Rage."
Jake rubbed his sore shoulder.
Motown rubbed his hands up and down on his shins. His eyes bounced around in thinking mode. "Forget about her. We've got work to do."
21
Detective Barry Harris and Sergeant MacDonald sat in the technical lab at Detroit's first precinct. Harris sipped freshly brewed coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He was a young detective with slicked back hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. His eyes seemed a little too big for his head, which gave him a froggy look that played as terrifying in an interrogation room. Unfortunately it played as terrifying just about everywhere else, too. He'd just come in from staking out a suspect in an east side armed robbery the week before. The suspect never left the house and Detective Showalter showed up to replace Harris at 10 p.m. Harris came back to the station instead of heading home.
“You sure the neighbor's not a doctor?" Harris asked MacDonald.
The question was in jest. The neighborhood where the Davidovich's had lived wasn't likely home to any doctors. Still, MacDonald thought, you never know. If someone's always graduating top of their class someone else must be at the bottom, right? Some doctors must barely scrape by, some must live in shitty neighborhoods.
"I knocked on his door," MacDonald said. "Woke the guy up." He checked his notes. "Jared Davies. A third-shifter at River Rouge. I asked him about the glove. He said he had no idea how it got in his garbage can."
"Maybe he's into some kinky shit with the wife."
"Maybe." MacDonald looked off.
"You got a hunch, Sarge?"
The sergeant waved off a thought. "I'm not ready to spill it. Gotta let it set in. See what we can pull from this glove first."
"You think our guy tried to put on the glove, but it ripped? Tossed it out in this Davies's garbage can and put on another one?"
"Maybe."
"Seems early to put on gloves, though. He still had two fences to climb before the Davidovich backyard."
"The first was chainlink," MacDonald said. "Could have left prints on the steel crossbar. Maybe he was taking no chances."
"But why leave a torn glove anywhere near the scene?"
The precinct lab tech, Melvin Wright, came into the room. He was dressed in khaki shorts and a light blue t-shirt that read 'Your President, Not Mine' on the front. His face was covered in stubble and he had the stink of beer and cigar smoke on him. He'd been at Rusty's Cigar Bar over on Lafayette when MacDonald called him in to run prints on the glove. Wright spent most of his evenings at Rusty's avoiding his wife, Helga. The wicked witch of the west, he called her, as they lived in on the western border of Detroit city proper, near Redford. Also because she was a wicked witch. When Wright answered MacDonald's call the song on the jukebox in the background had been The Joker by The Steve Miller Band.
"No way we'll get anything from the inside of that glove," Wright said, "but there may be some latents on the outside. Odds are low, but a partial will help."
"We got nothing on this guy," MacDonald said. "Anything will help."
"Ghost Mother?" Wright said.
"Your mother," Harris said.
Wright flipped the detective off.
"That's where my head's at," MacDonald said, answering Wright's question.
Wright stole the coffee cup out of Harris's hand. "I'm gonna be here for a while, but no need for you two to stick around. I'll leave the results on your desk, Sarge."
Harris stood up. "Yeah, that's me spent, boys."
"Fucking bachelor," Wright said. "Probably got some strange waiting at home, eh?"
"Your wife's the only strange I know, Wright," Harris shot back.
Wright popped his eyebrows as he drank down a gulp of Harris's coffee.
MacDonald stood up. "Thanks for doing this," he said to Wright. "I owe you a PTO day."
"Take Helga to the zoo or something, eh?" Harris said, clapping Wright's back and cracking a froggy smile. "She'll feel right at home."
"Look who's talking, ya fuckin' amphibian."
MacDonald walked out of the lab with Harris. The precinct was relatively quiet. The dull hours between dinner and when the bars let out. Uniforms mingled about and detectives sat like zombies at face-to-face desks, eyes on their paperwork, chins on palms. The quiet wouldn't last, but it was a welcome gap in the regular madness of Detroit's First.
"You gonna play that hunch?" Harris said to MacDonald.
"Maybe," Sergeant MacDonald said, recalling the scene from Jared Davies's porch from earlier that evening. MacDonald had showed Davies the torn latex glove in an evidence bag. In response, Davies showed MacDonald the flaming skull tattoo on his forearm and said, "The guy that gave me this? He was wearing two of those."
22
The scene outside Eddie's bar was once again dead as a dog. Darnell Collins's truck wasn't there, so Jake didn't bother pulling into the parking lot. He checked the time—11:34 p.m.—as he drove past the bar toward Dover Psychiatric. He turned left at a billboard across the street from the preservation area. The billboard advertisement was for a grain and feed store over which someone had spray-painted DNR = Damn Near Russia. In the state's more rural areas, Department of Natural Resource officers were hated more than police.
Jake drove the paved road through the woods and was looking for a flat spot to turn around when a body flashed through his high beams. He jammed the brakes. His first thought had been Motown, escaped and running like hell. But the person had been small and shirtless with pale skin.
The kid?
Jake turned the truck to aim his headlights in the direction the body had gone. He threw the gearshift into park and hopped out of the cab. His eyes were level with the tops of the goldenrod that overran the field into which the boy had run. Nothing moved. The air temperature had dropped since he left Buzzed Books. The wind was cool against his skin. He scanned left and right but found no one. The boy—if it had been the boy—was either lying down or quick as a rabbit and already gone.
What was he doing out here at nearly midnight?
Jake got back into the truck and drove another fifty yards until he came to the two-track that led down to the river. He drove to the launch site where he'd parked the previous morning to go fly-fishing. Black water rippled in the moonlight as the river flowed past. There looked to be fresh footprints in the sand at the bank. He got out of the truck and followed the footprints to a small launching dock for kayaks and canoes. Hard to tell if the prints were coming or going in the loose sand. He assumed the boy must have hopped off the end of the dock and used the river like a path to return home. Jake looked down the length of the water. His horizon glowed in the distance, red and closing in.
Dover was out there, too.
No sign of the boy.
Once he arrived back at his truck, Jake spotted something sitting on the hood—a small cardboard box about the size of a man's palm.
Jake scanned the launch site again, peering into the blackened woods. Nothing was different, no one there. He picked up the box. The sides were taped closed and clipped with precision, the lid hinged like a jewelry case. There was a small twine handle glued on top so carefully that the glue dot could not be seen.
A drop of rain hit Jake on the head. He looked up to see the sky had become overcast and the stars were fading behind converging cloud cover. More raindrops hit his face as the storm came on quickly. He got inside the truck, started the engine, and turned on the overhead light. He opened the little box to find five hand-tied stonefly fly-fishing lures inside. He picked one out and examined it. The details were exquisite. The dark body, the coiled thorax and wiry legs, the long tentacles. It was the work of an experienced craftsman. If not for t
he hook curling away from its back end, Jake would swear the fly was a specimen.
He reached behind the seat to find his fly-fishing vest. The caddisflies and nymphs were still hooked on his patch. They looked ridiculous compared to the stoneflies in the cardboard box. He removed the old flies from the patch and replaced them with the stoneflies.
Jesus, they looked tasty, and he wasn't even a fish.
Jake lay the vest on the passenger seat. He thought of Dover upriver, undoubtedly dark but for the watchtower lights. He could almost hear the voices from within, Bozo and Teapot echoing out of the past. 'Wow, wow, wow.' 'I'm a little teapot, short and stout.' Those two never stopped using their voices, but they weren't saying anything.
Motown, on the other hand, was spinning gold.
Their first goal had been to understand Jake's feeling of being bound—the pain in his chest, the body heat, the trembling. He had a vague idea of how it should feel, but at the time he only hazily recalled the pain associated with Sally Brewster and Brody Williams. Still, he knew right away he wasn't bound to Motown's suicidal wish.
The boys ran their experiments in Motown's room.
"What do you know so far?" Motown said.
"Not much."
"Okay. Let's start with the three wishes thing. Is it true?"
"I don't think so. Like, I don't feel like I need to give you more wishes because you made the first one."
"What about limitations?"
"How do you mean?"
"Aladdin's Genie couldn't kill someone, make people fall in love, or raise the dead. But you being in here proves you can kill someone. Think you can make two people fall in love?"
"I doubt it."
"Raise the dead?"
Jake shook his head.
"And it seems like a person can't wish for their own death?"
"Sorry."
"Maybe it's a spiritual thing," Motown said. "I did some reading on it. If genies are spirits existing somewhere between the human world and the world of angels, to me that says religion, and with religion there's no suicide, which is bullshit.
The Stonefly Series, Book 1 Page 12