by James Tarr
“Why?”
“The fuck if we know. He says he has no clue, and I….shit, I think I believe him. We have not been able to turn up any ties between him and the cops. Hell, the FBI is all over this one, actually being helpful for once, not officious pricks, but they haven’t found anything either. Right now the most popular theory is it has something to do with a PI case he worked, but we don’t actually have any, what’s the word….oh, yeah, evidence. We’re just guessing.”
“There’s got to be a reason. They just didn’t pick this kid at random.”
“Maybe they thought he was somebody else. Eddie Mitchell, the cop who first started shooting at the kid? His blood tested positive for cocaine and marijuana.”
“And so he just went nuts? Started shooting at a….at a kid who was a good enough shot to take out a whole SWAT team? What’s up with that?”
“The more I look into this, the weirder it gets, but right now it still looks like this kid was sitting there minding his own business, and they just picked the wrong fucking dude. He had a Glock on him, and a rifle in the car because he was going to go shooting later. Practice. He shoots competitively, and is supposed to be really damn good. He shot the state championship not too long ago, came in third or something, and is friends with a professional shooter who actually trains actors for movies. Avatar, I think. What are the chances, right? Reminds me a little of the whole Marcus Luttrell dog thing.”
“The what?”
“Marcus Luttrell, he’s that SEAL won the Medal of Honor I think, wrote Lone Survivor, which they made into that movie with Marky Mark Wahlberg. He was sitting at home one night and a couple of assholes shot his dog. Dog that helped him with his rehab from getting blown up in Afghanistan. He chased them across like three counties at a hundred miles-an-hour plus, with two guns in the car, on the phone with 9-1-1. That 9-1-1 call is posted on YouTube, and trust me, Luttrell doesn’t sound panicked, and he doesn’t sound scared, even doing triple digit speeds. He just sounds pissed. I’m guessing the only reason those guys are still alive is because the cops got to them before he could. Hell, it’s like that guy with the bad luck to try carjacking Audie Murphy back in the day.”
“What? Who?”
Cashman smiled and waved his hand as he talked. He loved this story. “Audie Murphy. Little scrawny guy, maybe five-six, buck thirty soaking wet. So small the Marines turned him down when he tried to enlist. Ended up being the most decorated soldier of World War II. Killed three hundred Germans from the top of a burning tank. Three hundred, and that was just one gunfight. Well, sometime in the fifties, I think in Texas or Oklahoma, some big dude with a Colt .45 tried to carjack some little guy, steal his car.” He laughed. “Foot taller than him, outweighed him by maybe fifty pounds, and he’s got a gun, sticks it in the little guy’s face. When the deputy showed up this big guy looked like he’d been mauled by a pack of Rottweilers. When he found out that the smaller gentleman was Audie Murphy, the deputy turned to the bad guy and told him he was just plain lucky he wasn’t dead.”
Cashman shook his head. “Last few days, I’ve gotten calls from half a dozen Warren cops, vouching for this kid. I guess he was doing a ride along with the Warren P.D. about five years ago, and he and the training officer ran into—I mean literally ran into—a car load of bank robbery suspects. From what everybody is telling me, Anderson killed several of them in a shootout that left a bunch of cops in the hospital. I checked into it. It’s true, but it appears Anderson did everything he could to keep his name out of the press.”
“What? When was this?”
“Five years ago. It puts it before his parents getting killed, sounds like. He got sued civilly by family members of the deceased, but the suits didn’t go anywhere.” Cashman shook his head again. “So, gunfight with a bunch of bank robbers, gunfight with SWAT cops, and he walks away without a scratch both times. Some bad guys get lucky, but some just pick the Wrong. Fucking. Guy.”
Dixon was silent for a while. “You believe in coincidence?”
“No, but detectives from Troy, Oakland County, Shelby Township, Detroit, and the FBI have been looking into this one for four days, and right now you know everything the task force does. We’re also looking into that original shooting of his, to see if any of the guys he killed are somehow related to the Detroit officers he shot, but so far that avenue of inquiry, as they say, is going nowhere.”
“I don’t suppose Anderson was driving a dark-colored full size sedan, was he?”
“Sorry, black Mustang.”
“Hmm. He didn’t own that at the time of the hit and run. Well, shit. Okay, you’ve got my name, I guess if you turn up any cars buried in Anderson’s backyard or he happens to mention running over someone, can you give me a call?”
Cashman laughed. “Yeah.”
Dixon hung up his phone and looked around the office. He was the only one around, but there are some things you didn’t do inside a police station. “I’m heading out to Starbucks,” he told Joyce Rubin, who was manning the front desk.
“You want to grab me something?” she asked.
“Sure, what do you want?” Not even a Kevlar vest could hide the fact that she had a big rack, and Dixon was a sucker for a big rack. He was also quite the ladies’ man, but Rubin liked having sex with women as much or more than he did, so she was a lost cause.
Armed with her order Dixon headed out to his department-issued detective’s sedan, a new black Charger. It was a three minute drive to Starbucks, but when he got there he sat in his car and pulled out his cell phone.
“Oops, shit,” he said, and put that one away, and pulled out the other phone, the prepaid one he’d bought with cash.
“Yeah.”
“I’m calling you back about that purchase your client wanted to make,” Dixon said.
“Okay.”
“It definitely was the same model that he saw, but I haven’t been able to learn anything about whether or not it had anything to do with that purchase he wanted to make.”
“My client is definitely interested in buying something.” The emphasis was impossible to miss.
“I’m well aware of that. But we don’t want him wasting his money now, do we? Having to buy the same item twice?”
“You’re going to keep looking into it?”
“Yes. And if I find anything, I will—” Dixon found he was talking into a dead phone. “Fuck,” he muttered, and realized his armpits were swampy with sweat.
At the other end of the call, Miller closed the cell phone and slid it back into the pocket of his suit coat. He turned to his boss. “The West Bloomfield detective says that the Anderson kid involved in that shootout with the SWAT cops is the same one he likes for Paulie, but he still can’t prove anything.”
Pietro Bufonte, his black hair faded mostly to gray, face deeply lined with wrinkles, frowned and sipped at his Espresso. He looked around his back yard. The lawn was as flat and closely trimmed as a putting green, and the arborvitaes had been trimmed by professionals into geometric shapes. He didn’t see any of it, didn’t hear the birds tweeting at each other. “I’m beginning to think he never will.”
Miller clasped his hands in front of his body and waited. “Just say the word.”
After a long pause, Bufonte shook his head. “Enough boys are dead. I’m not going to do anything until I know. And even if I found out today, I’d have to wait. There are too many eyes looking at him right now.” He took another sip of his espresso and stared out at his huge empty yard.
Ten minutes after hanging up the phone with the West Bloomfield detective, Cashman’s partner came walking up with a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Guess what I’ve got?” Linklater said.
“Crabs,” Cashman replied. His headache hadn’t gone anywhere. His partner ignored him.
“Two things you’re not going to believe. One, we’ve finally found something that ties Anderson to the SWAT guys.”
“Really? What?”
“One of the strip
clubs they hit was Goldfinger’s. Turns out Anderson’s girlfriend works there. Not only that, after they got hit, as a favor or something to her, Anderson took out a couple of the bouncers and the manager and gave them some shooting lessons.”
Cashman thought. “So….what? You saying the Detroit guys were so pissed at him that, if they ever decided to take up a life of crime again, he made their job more difficult if they hit that same club?”
Linklater shrugged. “Doesn’t make sense to me, but shit, at least we actually turned up a connection.”
“You said two things, two things I wouldn’t believe. What’s the second?”
“You know who gave us the info? The FBI.”
“The FBI shared information? Holy shit, miracles really do happen. I better go out and buy a lottery ticket.” He paused. “You been getting a weird vibe from the FBI? Normally they seem to love playing the jack-booted thugs, but in that big meeting right after the incident their agent in charge was almost acting like Anderson’s second attorney. Marx didn’t know what to make of it. You hear his conspiracy theory yet, that Anderson’s FBI, undercover?”
“No, but….” Linklater thought for a few seconds. “That sure would explain a few things. Like how he didn’t get shot.”
“I don’t buy it, but who knows. Anyway, the FBI’s why the kid’s not still locked up while we try to figure this out.”
“This is really the first time I’ve ever dealt with them on anything.”
“Hmm. Hey, wait a minute, did you say Anderson was dating a stripper? Seriously? This fucking guy, Jesus.”
PART V
TROUBLE
You never have trouble if you are prepared for it.
Theodore Roosevelt
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ringo sat on the hood of his abused Impala and sipped coffee. It was standard McDonald’s coffee, with a little cream and sugar, and tasted just fine. He wasn’t one of those who’d drunk the Starbuck’s Kool-Aid (so to speak), and been brainwashed into spending $4 for a cup of coffee. Actually, he’d tried Starbuck’s a few times, and thought their stuff tasted too damn burnt. $4 for a burnt cup of coffee? No thank you.
The sun was bright, and he squinted behind his sunglasses. He checked his watch—9:28 a.m. Still no human movement on either Northfield or East Cobb, and nothing to hear other than a lot of small birds and the distant sound of traffic. It was peaceful, actually. The sun was off to his right and slightly behind him, and for the moment he was in the shadow of a decaying abandoned house. The air was still cool, but he could feel the humidity on his skin; as soon as the sun got to work it would turn into one of those muggy miserable days that made every Michigander appreciate winter.
“It’s like breathing soup,” Detective Sergeant Bill Rochester said, standing off the passenger side of the sedan. He was looking around, and had his own cup of McDonald’s coffee.
“Not yet, but that’s why I wanted the meet to be early,” Ringo agreed.
Rochester, a dark complected black man, shook his head. He had a big round belly that looked hard as a basketball. “The wife’s family is from Tennessee, and she keeps talking about moving down there when I retire.” He spit onto the cracked asphalt, then looked at Ringo. “You know how hot it gets in Tennessee this time of year? And it’s just as humid as here.”
“You might like the heat in a few years,” Ringo said, suppressing a smile.
“I want to move someplace hot, I’ll move to Arizona or Texas, someplace dry. I don’t want to live in soup. Every year we go down there in July for the family reunion, you know? My wife’s aunt always gets everybody matching t-shirts in these bright colors, you know? Red, yellow, fire engine green, makes everybody look like Skittles, and they say Rochester Family Reunion on the back. But she never washes them before she hands them out, and I’ve got allergies. So I can put the t-shirt on my bare skin and break out in a rash, or put it on over another shirt, and wear two shirts when it’s so hot it’s like I’m sitting in boiling water. Only reason I haven’t snapped and shot somebody down there is they’re all family. And the bar-b-que.”
Ringo looked at him, the smile now playing around the corners of his mouth. “You know, it’s the cold that you’re not supposed to be able to take.” He nodded at Rochester. “With your tan, you strike me as coming from someplace….warm.”
Rochester looked down at his nearly black skin. “Tan. Shit,” he said with a laugh. “You ever been to Africa? I’ve been to Africa. Did it when I was in college, with a bunch of my fraternity brothers. Getting in touch with our roots, you know? Place is goddamn miserable. Anybody that complains about anything in this country should go there for a few days, see how good we have it.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Kenya and Nairobi. Talk about an education, wow. Didn’t realize at the time how dangerous it was. We thought that since we were black, and everybody over there was black, that things would be cool, you know? Everybody would be our friend. Shit. Ignorance of youth.”
“So that’s where you’re from?”
“Me. No, I’m from the East Side, born and raised. My family might have originally come from Africa, but that was long before I was born. It’s not home to me. Not after having gone there, and seen it myself. I’m from the D. This is my home.” He saluted the city with his coffee cup and took another sip.
They heard the sound of an approaching car and Ringo looked over his shoulder. Bonneville, about ten years old. Had to be a cop, seemed like the only people who’d ever bought those sedans were old white people and suburban police departments.
The black Pontiac pulled up behind their car and a middle-aged white guy wearing khakis and a black polo climbed out with a Starbucks cup in his hand. He had a gun on his right hip and a badge on his belt. Ringo smiled, and got off his car. “Are you Cashman or Reed?” he asked.
“Cashman, Oakland County,” he said. Ringo introduced himself and Rochester, and they all shook hands. Cashman looked up and down Northfield street, then up East Cobb, eyeing the vacant overgrown lots and sagging houses. “City stop mowing the grass on all the vacant land?” he asked.
“Not all of it,” Ringo said, finding the suburban detective made him feel a little defensive of his city. Cashman nodded, and sipped at his coffee. “We’re waiting for one more,” Ringo told him.
Cashman just nodded, sipping at his coffee and eyeing what he thought of as the ruins of a once-great city rotting around him. Damn shame.
Two minutes later a new white Charger came speeding up from Warren Avenue and pulled up beside the three men standing at the corner. The driver rolled down the passenger window. “Reed, Troy,” he said. “Where should I park this?”
Ringo pointed in front of his unmarked unit, where there was enough space for a car between his bumper and the corner at East Cobb. “Right here’s fine,” he said, and they all moved out of the way.
The Troy detective got out of his unit and there was another round of introductions. Reed was tall and skinny, with dark hair. Ringo noticed the man from Troy didn’t have a cup of coffee or any other beverage in his hands. Apparently he didn’t get the memo.
“Hey, somebody forgot to invite the FBI,” Cashman said with a smile, and that got a laugh.
“Okay, who called this?” Reed said. He pointed to Ringo. “You’re George, right? Detroit? So what’s up? Why are we here?”
“I’m just the messenger,” Ringo said. He pointed at Bill Rochester.
Rochester stepped away from the unmarked cruiser and wiggled his fingers for the other detectives to follow him. He walked out into the intersection with East Cobb. No danger of getting hit by any traffic, they hadn’t seen a car moving since they’d arrived. “On June fifth,” Rochester told the assembled detectives, “you might have heard we had the worst day ever for the department. We had two officers roll up on a guy in a van. He shot them, killed them both, then took off. Our units eventually ran him off the road, but he ended up killing another officer, and putting four more in
the hospital.”
Rochester pointed behind Cashman’s Bonneville. “He was parked over there. He actually got called out by a private investigator doing a surveillance. John Phault. He was sitting two blocks down over there,” he pointed in the opposite direction down Northfield, “on the other side of the street. Phault was doing a work comp surveillance, and our two-man car rolled up on him because he was across the street from an undercover narcotics officer’s house. Phault saw the van pull up down here, and told the officers about it. They rolled down here, and the guy, Ralph Marsh, just shot them down in cold blood and took off.”
“Phault ended up killing Marsh, right?” Cashman said. He remembered from the news that a PI had been the one who’d killed the man.
“Right.”
“And we’re here why?” Reed said. The Troy detective was impatient.
“Phault wasn’t working alone,” Ringo said. “He had an employee with him that day. David Anderson. Anderson stayed on the scene and tried to do first aid on the officers while Phault went after the shooter.” The Detroit detectives now had the full attention of the suburban ones.
“Anderson was at the scene?” Reed said. He rubbed his ear. He and Cashman began twisting their heads, looking this way and that. What, exactly, they were looking for neither would have been able to say.
“Yeah,” Rochester said. “For a while I was thinking that the shooter wasn’t just a random nutjob that snapped, that he was here for Phault, because he didn’t show up on scene until Phault was already here. I really liked Phault for the motive on this one, but couldn’t get anywhere with that. Then I heard Anderson’s name mentioned in connection to the shooting last week, and……”
“And he called me,” Ringo said. “And I came out here. Looked around.” He looked around at the faces standing there. “I want to try something.” He looked at Reed. “You have your cell phone on you?”