by James Tarr
“It was very nice of you to invite me, Freda” Dave assured her.
She just waved dismissively at him. “Somebody got my whiskey sour?” she half yelled. “I’ve got too much blood in my alcohol system.” And she cackled again.
“Here mama,” Arlene said, handing her a tall glass.
Freda hoisted the glass and took a long draw. “You got yourself a girl, Davey?” she asked him. “Someone to cook your dinner and be there when you get home?”
“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t really want to talk about Gina.
“Leave him alone about his old lady, ma,” Aaron said. “You want your cashews?”
“Nah, they’re giving me phlegm,” she complained. She cocked an eye at Dave. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you? I’m trying to give my cancer cancer.”
He laughed hard at that. “It’s your house, you do whatever the hell you want. At least until they make smoking in your own home illegal.”
“Ain’t that the fucking truth,” she grumbled, and took another drink, the glass shaking a little in her knuckly hands.
Dave looked around the trailer. The front half of it, including the big room he was standing in, was covered in dark imitation wood paneling. The Christmas lights were still up; Aaron had used a staple gun to run them around the room just below the ceiling, and he’d never taken them down. Either that, or he’d put up the same lights for the Fourth. He thought about telling Aaron that if they were up he might as well turn them on, but decided to hold his tongue.
“Here you go,” Aaron said, handing Dave a huge frozen margarita. “It’s pretty strong, so if you have more than one you might think about sleeping here.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“All right, I got to get back to my sauce.”
Dave hung back, sipping his strawberry margarita—which was strong as hell—and watching Aaron and Arlene in the kitchen. Aaron was fussing over the sauce, and put the noodles on to boil, while Arlene put garlic bread in the oven and started cutting greens for a salad.
“Aren’t we supposed to have hot dogs and hamburgers for the Fourth?” Dave said.
“Not if you’re Italian,” Aaron told him. “Abruzzo ain’t fucking Irish. Besides, this is better. You ever have my spaghetti before?”
“You’ve told me about it about a hundred times, driving around the city,” Dave said. “Does that count?”
“You’re gonna love it,” Aaron assured him.
“It’s very good,” Arlene said. She walked past Dave. “Ma, you need anything? Refill on your whiskey sour? Oh, shit, better grab her cigarette.” Dave looked over, and saw Aaron’s mother had fallen asleep in the wheelchair, a cigarette burning between her skeletal fingers. Arlene plucked it out delicately, then grabbed the tilting drink.
“How ‘bout you?” Arlene asked Dave, lowering her voice slightly. “Need a refill?”
“Hell, I’m a lightweight,” he admitted. “This one’s going to put me on the floor, and I shouldn’t be drinking at all since I’m carrying.”
“I’ll protect you,” Aaron said with a grin over his shoulder. He reached back and pulled up the tail of his uniform shirt, showing Dave his Colt in an inside-the-waistband holster.
“Both of us armed and drunk?” Dave said with a smile. “In a trailer park. What could go wrong?”
Aaron’s spaghetti was very good, with a lot of basil and fresh tomatoes. He woke his mother up to eat with them, although she didn’t have much of an appetite. “It’s her recipe,” Aaron told Dave. “She’s the one taught me how to cook.”
“I’m going to have to run all the way home to work off that garlic bread,” Dave said. It tasted like Arlene had soaked the bread in melted butter before putting half an inch of grated parmesan mixed with fresh cut garlic on top. She’d eaten as much as any of them, but he’d heard about her hummingbird metabolism from Aaron.
“All the bread and noodles soak up the alcohol,” Aaron said. He hoisted the half-empty glass of margarita sitting in front of him. It was his second, which he’d had with dinner. “I think I’m less drunk now than when I sat down.”
“You two lightweights are like a couple of princesses,” Freda told them. “I’m half dead and I can outdrink you.”
“You’re too ornery to be half dead,” Dave told her. “I’m guessing a quarter dead at most.” That got her laughing so hard she almost started coughing.
After dinner they watched some TV. Freda watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy with near religious fervor, and never missed a night. Watching Jeopardy with her and Aaron was a competitive sport—whoever could spit out the answer (or rather the question) first did. Dave played along, and to his surprise found that all four of them were rather evenly matched.
“How the hell do you know so much about French furniture?” he asked Arlene.
“I lived in France.”
“Really? When? For how long?”
“I lived my whole life there,” she told him.
At Dave’s confused look, Aaron told him, “She believes in reincarnation, and that in her previous life she lived in France. In what, the 1700s?”
“Late 1700s,” Arlene corrected him.
Aaron shrugged. “I used to call bullshit, but she just knows too much weird stuff that she shouldn’t. Considering nobody knows what the hell a soul is, who’s to say it can’t come back in a different body?”
Freda made it almost all the way through Jeopardy before falling asleep again. “I’ll put her to bed,” Arlene said quietly to Aaron and Dave. “You guys keep talking.”
“Let’s head outside and get some air, I think it’s nice out,” Aaron said.
They leaned up against Aaron’s Mustang, and he lit up another Marlboro. It was beautiful out, warm but not hot or humid. The sun was heading down, but the sky was still bright.
“Dude, I thought you were going to get her car fixed,” Dave said, nodding toward the Taurus.
Aaron rolled his head over to look at the car. “Yeah, well, I was going to take it in, but we got busy. We haven’t been driving it. Arlene was complaining about the chemical smell at first anyway, and then it got a flat….”
“What’d you do with the money I gave you?”
“Paid some bills,” Aaron said sheepishly. “Maybe waiting to fix it was better anyway, what do you think?”
“I think you need to fix it, the flat and the front end damage. You shouldn’t be using your ‘Stang as a daily driver. You need more money for that?”
“Nah, nah, I’m good.”
They stood side by side for a while, just staring out at the neighboring trailers. The park wasn’t loud, but it was filled with the sounds of people living their lives. Kids somewhere yelling in fun, the faint sound of the Tigers on the radio, and the occasional firecracker. The daylight had faded enough that the inside lights of the neighboring trailers revealed people moving around, and the blue flicker of TVs. Square golden islands in the gathering gloom.
“Sorry you had such a shitty time,” Aaron said suddenly.
Dave looked at him in surprise, and saw he was serious. “No, dude, thanks for having me out, I had a good time. A real good time.”
“Yeah, right.”
Dave turned and looked at his friend. “No, Aaron, it was nice to be around a family for the holidays, even if it isn’t my own. If I was at home, I’d just be sitting alone in an empty house, watching a movie or something.”
“What about Gina? She got family or anything, you ever head over there and hang out with them?”
“I’ve never met her family. I don’t know if she even sees them, she never talks to them. Or about them. And I think you know we don’t have that kind of relationship.”
“Well, I know how it started….”
“And that’s pretty much how it’s stayed. She likes me just because I’m the only normal guy she’s ever dated. It makes her feel grounded, or normal, or something. All the other girls she works with are dating ex-cons or dealers or psychos, or just plain ass
holes.”
“Yeah? So why are you still dating her?”
Dave shrugged and made a face. “Inertia. Habit.”
“I’m guessing those big tits of hers might have something to do with it too,” Aaron said with a smile, smoke curling up around his face.
Dave shrugged again and then gave a little smile. “She also brings girls from work home from time to time, too. For threesomes. I mention she’s bi?”
The expression on Aaron’s face made his whole evening.
PART III
MURDER CAPITAL
Detroit was the murder capitol for so many years not because we’re more violent, we’re just better damn shots.
Ted Nugent
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They’d worked the guy twice before, and both times he didn’t leave the house until after noon. In fact, there was never any sign of life at the place until late morning, so John had talked with the client about starting later and the adjuster had agreed.
Getting up early was part of the job, but Dave wasn’t exactly a morning person. Getting on site at 9, instead of 6 a.m., was a welcome change, but then there was the traffic.
“Oh, come on!” he yelled at the row of cars in front of him, and checked his watch. Still on I-75 just past the 8 Mile curve, and he was supposed to be there in 20 minutes. Traffic was not cooperating. Okay, time to test everybody else’s reflexes with a little improvisational driving, he thought with a grin. “Like a leaf on the wind,” he said, and stomped on the gas.
He rolled into the neighborhood, if you could still call it that, right at 9 a.m. He saw one car backing out of a driveway, and a dog trotting down the sidewalk, but other than that nothing was moving. So much of the neighborhood was vacant, the abandoned houses having been torn down so long ago that there was no sign they’d ever been there.
The Cherokee crunched to a stop against the curb. He cracked the windows, grabbed his phone, and hopped into the back as quick as he could. It wasn’t supposed to get that hot today, but it was going to be sunny, so he hoped this guy went somewhere. Otherwise it would be another day sweating. He called John on his cell phone.
“Monkey’s in the box,” he told his boss. “Tuna’s in the can.” Getting a full night’s sleep always put him in a good mood. “You in the area yet?”
“Five minutes out. His car there?” John had spent even more time in traffic than his young employee, and was not happy about it.
“Yeah, I can just see the end of it. It’s parked deeper in the driveway than usual, whatever that means.”
“Okay. I’m glad he didn’t skate out before he got here, I had to talk the adjuster into a late start to begin with, and if this guy wasn’t here I’d probably have to eat today’s billing. I’ll call you when I land.” John ended up being ten minutes late, but that was one of the perks of being the boss. He called Dave back. “All right, I’m here, I’ll be in my usual spot in about ten seconds, you call him out when he moves.”
John turned a corner and pulled the Expedition to a stop on Northfield in front of the second house in, right underneath a big oak tree. He could run the air if he needed to, but it was so much more pleasant to sit in the shade. He had the long eye anyway, and needed binoculars to see the two blocks down to the claimant’s house. Speaking of which….
He pulled out the Bushnells from the back seat and put them up to his eyes. Nine in the morning and already he was getting heat mirage off the cracked concrete of the street. It wasn’t that hot, but the sun was a lot hotter than the air and starting to bake everything. He cracked his windows an inch or so—enough for someone to get their fingers in, but that was it—and made sure all the doors were locked.
Dave’s SUV was on East Cobb two blocks down and to the left, out of his view. John couldn’t see the claimant’s house either, for that matter, but knew roughly where it was, and where his driveway ran down to the street. They’d worked him before and knew his ride, a green Chrysler Concorde that desperately needed springs. He drove fast, and was a bitch to follow, which was how John’d gotten Nancy to approve two men on the case. Most adjusters hated to spend money, and had never done surveillance, so getting them to approve a second man on a surveillance was always an uphill battle.
As he was scanning the street he saw a dark car, an SUV or minivan, pull into view off a sidestreet two blocks up and head toward him on Northfield. After only a few seconds it pulled to the curb and parked. John kept his eyes on the vehicle, but never saw anyone get out of the driver’s side, although it was pretty far away. Hmmm.
Cell phones had their uses, but were not great for rolling tails. John pulled out the Motorola handheld, turned it on, and hit the button. “You got your walkie on?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” he heard Dave reply. “I can tell this is going to be a long day, I’m hot already.”
Marsh thought that the day was going to be a bust after the target lost him in traffic. Detroit traffic wasn’t as bad as either coast, or Chicago, which was part of the problem—the kid had room to move, and zigzagged in and out of the slow moving lanes of cars faster than Marsh could follow.
Before he knew it the target was out of sight. He’d given no indication he was aware of the tail, although given his part-time profession he was most likely a step above most people Marsh had followed, at least in awareness and driving skill. Better to lose him than risk exposure by doing something crazy, but he still hated to call the game so early in the day. He hadn’t been given a deadline, but still….
The target had been heading into Detroit, so just for the hell of it Marsh decided to check out the locations he’d followed him to previously.
The first one, the long street with white houses in northeast Detroit, where he’d scared the crap out of that local with a screwdriver, was a bust. It took him a lot longer than he expected to make it to the other location, but damned if he didn’t see the target’s vehicle parked right in the same spot he’d taken the last time he’d come here. Marsh didn’t stop and kept rolling on the cross-street, a block behind the Cherokee, which was facing away from him.
Marsh didn’t know who the kid was watching, or even which house, and didn’t much care. Whether it was for an insurance company or a divorce case it didn’t much matter for what he had to do. He circled around the area and came in on a street which intersected the one on which the Cherokee sat.
Most of the houses were gone on the right side of the street, and as he coasted forward he saw the target’s vehicle appear in a gap between two houses. He was pretty sure there used to be another house in there somewhere, maybe next to where the Cherokee was parked, but the only thing left was an empty lot with waist-high grass.
Carefully he pulled to the curb about eighty yards from the Cherokee. Only the front half of the vehicle was clearly visible above the unmowed grass of the vacant lot, and the driver’s seat was unoccupied. The Cherokee’s front windows were only lightly tinted, so he had no problem seeing the front seat was empty. The rear windows of the SUV had extra-dark tint, however, and he suspected the target was back there. There was no other likely place for him to be, not in this neighborhood.
Marsh scanned the houses in front and behind his van, and confirmed that they both appeared vacant—no windows, and minor smoke damage to the one in front, although in this city you never knew. There were a few houses on the driver’s side across the street, but nothing was moving. If anyone was watching, the baseball cap and glasses helped change the shape of his head, plus the glare off the untinted front window would help make positive identification nearly impossible.
Marsh cracked the window on the right sliding door of the rental van, made sure the doors were locked, and climbed into the back, where the rifle was wrapped in a blanket.
Dave set down the camera, cracked his knuckles, and took a drink out of the bottle of Diet Coke he’d put in the freezer the night before. It still had good chunk of ice in it, and the cold soda burned pleasantly on the way down.
“You awake out
there?” he said into the walkie talkie.
John was anything but asleep, he’d been on the phone for the last twenty minutes with his divorce lawyer. “Yeah, what?” he snapped into the radio.
“A neighbor just came over and yapped with him for a couple of minutes on the porch. I got video of it, but he wasn’t doing anything other than standing there.”
“He wearing his wrist braces?” John asked him. The claimant had stated in front of the work comp bureau’s magistrate at the last benefits hearing that his bilateral carpal tunnel was horrifically painful, and he had to wear his wrist braces 24/7.
“Nope.”
“Good. Nancy’ll be pleased.” Something caught his eye and he checked his side mirror. “I’ll have to call you back, I’ve got the PD rolling up on me.”
The squad car was half a block back and not moving fast, but after doing the job for over fifteen years John knew the chances were pretty good that they were coming to see him. DPD was too busy to just roll through a neighborhood. By the time they pulled up behind him he had the driver’s door window down, and he had his driver license, PI license, and Concealed Pistol License all in his hands, which were in clear view on the steering wheel.
It was a two-man unit, and they got out and walked up either side of his vehicle. He noticed that they didn’t hit their lights or siren, for which he was grateful.
“P.I., doing a surveillance,” he said over his shoulder as they got close, before they had a chance to ask.
The lead cop was a thick black guy who looked like he had a dozen years on the job. He stopped just behind John’s door and gave a little huff. “You call into dispatch?” he asked him.
John shook his head. “I figure they’re a little too busy to be bothered,” he told the officer. He checked his nametag—Ferguson. His partner stood next to the passenger door window and stared at John, his hand on his holstered Glock.