by Dan Ames
I sensed there was more to the story than what she was telling me. “Did Dave have any theories about why Barry needed cash?”
“None that he actually came out with, but there were always rumors Barry had a pretty extravagant lifestyle,” Christine said. “Probably because he was so private. I have no idea if they were true or not.”
A part of me wondered if Barry had sent me on a wild goose chase, or if he really believed what he told me. It was amazing how often human beings project their own failings onto others and be completely oblivious to it. I had seen it dozens of times.
A phone buzzed and Christine reached into the pocket of her sweater. The light from it illuminated her face and I saw how tired she looked as she read the screen.
“I have to go,” she said and got to her feet. “Do you need to ask me anything else?”
“No, I’ll walk you back,” I said and we made our way through the dark park. We didn’t say anything else.
The only sound was the lake and its waves hurling themselves onto the rocks.
Chapter Sixteen
At times, my relationship with my sister seemed illicit. Oh, it was fine for her to come to my house and vice versa, but we tended to avoid being seen in public together.
The Starbucks in the village, for instance, was far too busy with locals. Everyone knew we were brother and sister, but professionally, for Ellen, it could be taken the wrong way.
So, she invited me to her house for coffee.
Ellen’s house was a cool Craftsman bungalow with a wide porch and tons of natural woodwork. She’d remodeled it herself and it was a beauty.
The back door was unlocked and I gave a quick knock then went inside. Ellen was at the coffee pot, pouring both of us a cup.
“I wish you hadn’t knocked,” she said. “That way I could have shot you.”
“You probably would have missed,” I answered. “I’ve been working out and I’m practically a twig.”
She pushed a mug across the counter toward me.
“Here, have a cup,” she said. “You could always add some protein powder. I know how you bodybuilders love that crap.”
I picked up the cup and followed her into the living room where a pair of Stickley rockers sat kitty corner, with a leather couch between them. We each took a rocker.
“Whatever happened to Jeff?” I asked her. Jeff had been her last boyfriend, he’d lasted about six months. Men tended to be intimidated by Ellen. I couldn’t blame them. She was downright mean most of the time. I couldn’t help it if I’d gotten all of the Rockne charm, her portion included.
“He referred to me as ‘arm candy’ and while on the one hand I was flattered, I also told him that an arm usually has a fist, and maybe he’d like a candy fist you know where.”
I winced.
“Needless to say, that was all she wrote for Jeff.”
“I wish Anna would refer to me as arm candy. Who doesn’t love candy?”
We sat in silence for a minute.
“I talked to Christine Ingells last night,” I offered.
“And?”
“She pretty much contradicted everything Barry Kemp told me. Dave didn’t want to expand the practice, Barry did. Dave wasn’t in any kind of financial trouble, Barry needed money. There were rumors about Barry’s lifestyle demanding lots of cash.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Ellen said. “I got that kind of vibe from Kemp. We ran him through the database and while there was nothing major, there were a few drunk and disorderlies from a decade ago.”
“Maybe he grew up.”
“Nah, he’s a man child if I ever saw one. Speaking of bodybuilders, you think he works out all the time for his health? Hell, no. He wants women, or maybe men, to look at his body like it’s a sexual playground.”
“Great name for a band,” I offered. “And now, live from the Fillmore, Sexual Playground!”
I started banging my head in rhythm to a song.
“Speaking of man children,” Ellen said.
“I know you didn’t invite me over here to insult me,” I said. “Wait, you probably did.”
“No, that’s just a little icing on the side,” she said. “Actually, I want you to do me a favor.”
“I don’t believe in favoritism.”
She got up and walked past me, then returned with a couple sheets of paper that she dropped into my lap.
“Take a look at the different places Dave’s cell phone bounced. It was all over Detroit and we don’t have the manpower to send people out checking these locations. Most of them are bars and restaurants from an initial look. But maybe there’s a link we’re missing. I figured you’ve got plenty of time on your hands.”
“I didn’t know there was room in the Grosse Pointe Police Department budget to hire a PI.”
She ignored me as we both knew I wouldn’t be paid for this.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yeah, try not to get shot in Detroit. Anna would be pissed at me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Could you trust a guy like Barry Kemp? A doctor with a passion for bodybuilding and who had a falling out with a partner over whether or not to expand the practice?
It was easy for me not to trust him.
I knew Dave and Dave was a standup guy. If someone had a problem with him, that said more about them than Dave.
Still, I knew I was biased.
As I drove away from Ellen’s house, I thought about my next step.
The truth was, something was nagging me about Barry Kemp. No, not the overcompensating, steroid-abusing aspect of his personality. Something else. I thought back to the parties at Dave’s house where I’d met him. Had Dave mentioned something about him to me?
No, that wasn’t it.
It was really going to bug me.
To take my mind off it for the moment, I pulled out the sheet Ellen had given me that showed the different locations Dave’s cell phone had been. I say his cell phone, because who knew if it was in Dave’s possession at the time? Maybe Dave was already dead by the time his phone was dragged all over the city.
Even so, if that was the case, it would at least maybe tell me what the killer was doing, if I could put together some kind of logic between the paths the phone had taken.
I drove to Jefferson Avenue, turned right, and headed toward downtown Detroit. Once I crossed the border at Alter from Grosse Pointe into the city things changed rapidly. The buildings along Jefferson were mostly abandoned, with neighborhoods branching off on either side. Most of the homes directly bordering Jefferson were abandoned as well.
The businesses doing well were the liquor stores and convenience stores, as well as fast food.
A developer had purchased large tracts of land near Grosse Pointe and development had begun in places. A few large tracts of land had been cleared of chest-high grass and weeds, replaced with flat expanses of dirt, and a few piles of preconstruction materials.
I wondered how long it would take the redevelopment to reach Jefferson Avenue.
The first address where Dave’s phone had pinged was near a street called St. Aubin. I got there, then turned left and made my way down toward the river. This was a mixed-use area with some new restaurants and a brewpub going in recently. However, there were still a lot of empty, uninhabited warehouses.
What the hell was Dave doing down here? I could see him going to a brewpub, the guy liked beer as much as the rest of us. But to be down here on a Thursday night, close to midnight? Didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Plus, he obviously hadn’t told Christine or she would have mentioned it.
Finally, my GPS brought me to the exact point where Dave’s phone had been.
Weird.
It was an intersection with vacant lots on three of the four corners. To my left, was a warehouse of some sort painted black, with blackened windows. There were chains on the doors and the windows sported security bars. There was garbage scattered about and it looked like there hadn’t been a human bei
ng around in the last decade or so.
I pulled half up onto the crumbling remains of a sidewalk – who would walk around down here – and got out, locking the car behind me.
Not the best place to be, even now, in the morning. I wondered when angry, homeless junkies were more dangerous – at night? Or in the morning when they might wake up with their addiction clamoring for relief?
There was no point in wandering around the vacant lots, it was the empty warehouse that caught my eye. If Dave had been here for any reason, this would have been the only thing he could have gone into. Unless he wanted to go sprawl out in the empty lots and take a nap.
I walked up to the twin doors and tested the chain with its lock. Sturdy, and still locked. No sign of recent entry. In fact, the cement from what was maybe a driveway at one point was now buckled, and a huge chunk of it protruded upwards, effectively blocking the doors from getting open.
So no one had opened these doors recently.
And, by recently, I meant years.
A quick peek around the edge of the warehouse’s exterior showed it ran the length of the block. I tried the other way, and it was the same, except halfway down I could see there was maybe a courtyard of some sort. I followed it along until the space opened up and I saw a rusty picnic table with its top removed, empty beer cans and a broken floor-to-ceiling window.
An entrance.
Now I got a little nervous. It was one thing to walk around outside, but to go in? It didn’t seem like a good idea.
Well, I never really listened to that little voice that warned me about doing stupid things. Because if I did, I never would have asked out Pam Hitchins while she was dating Jack Wang. Jack Wang knew tae kwon do and he kicked the shit out of me.
On that note, I ducked through the window into darkness.
What was I worried about?
It was fine.
The place had been stripped clean and it was totally empty. I walked the length of the space from one end to the other and all I found was a used condom and more empty beer cans. Apparently someone threw their litter everywhere, but were very careful with their seed. Strange contradiction.
Had Dave been here? And if so, why?
Something seemed off about the place, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I heard a movement behind me and turned.
A rat the size of an armadillo ran across the concrete floor.
Rats were the worst. I’ve never forgiven them for the Black Plague.
Outside, I walked back to my car and was relieved to see no one had smashed my windows to get inside and find nothing but an empty pack of gum.
Behind the wheel, I thought about what to do. The next address on the list was, at first glance, right next to Ford Field where the Detroit Lions liked to lose football games.
Knowing full well Dave hadn’t attended a night game as there wasn’t one that night, I put the car in gear nonetheless.
I glanced over at the river as I drove parallel to Jefferson, waiting for a cross street. My mind wandered to Barry Kemp and suddenly, I realized what it was he’d said that had been nagging at me.
It was when he was trying to convince me that Dave had accosted him with this aggressive plan to expand the practice. He’d said something about how it would require him to spend ‘more’ money on lawyers.
I knew Dave pretty well, and if he had been in some sort of legal trouble, he would have told me. So when Barry had talked about spending even more on lawyers, something in the back of my mind wondered what he meant. I think I knew now. He was talking about himself. About how he was already spending money on lawyers.
It begged the question: why?
Ellen had mentioned Barry having some trouble way in the past, as in over ten years ago.
Was it something with his medical practice?
Or was it personal?
Ellen’s official police check on Barry Kemp would have only revealed active problems. Maybe there was something else going on with Barry Kemp. Something that required lots of attorneys.
I picked up the phone.
It was time to do my own squat press on the little guy.
Chapter Eighteen
My car had a Bluetooth connection so when I was put on hold trying to talk to Barry Kemp, I was able to maneuver the sometimes challenging job of driving to Ford Field.
It’s not that Detroit drivers are bad, it’s that a lot of them just don’t care.
There are a lot of folks in what is often referred to as the capital of the rust belt who are going through very hard times. Hence, they have some really shitty cars. And if you drive a shitty car, you don’t really care much if you collide with someone who’s driving a nicer vehicle. Part of the reason why is that you also can’t afford insurance and a lawsuit will net your persecutor absolutely nothing.
Therefore, you don’t have to follow any traffic rules at all.
Don’t use a signal.
Change lanes without looking.
Blow through red lights.
Talk on a cell phone that’s worth more than the car you’re driving.
Put on horrible makeup and/or adjust your wig while driving.
Or my personal favorite, chug from a pint of Night Train while you’re behind the wheel.
Eventually, I caught sight of the newish Ford Field stadium exterior and found a parking space nearby. It was mid-morning and the place was nearly as deserted as the warehouse I’d just visited. I saw a beggar a block ahead shuffle across the street and a smartly dressed couple walking briskly somewhere.
“Mr. Rockne?” the voice boomed from my car’s speakers and I jumped. They hadn’t used hold music and I had let my mind wander. Barry Kemp’s receptionist or secretary or assistant, whatever you wanted to call her, had a voice that cut through the clutter.
“Yeah?”
Up ahead the beggar turned as the couple crossed the street. He said something to them but they kept going without looking at him.
“Dr. Kemp is unavailable, I’m afraid.”
“It took you twenty minutes to figure that out?” I was exaggerating a little, it was only about seven minutes or so, but it had felt like a long time. Way too long for the answer she provided.
“Yes, I apologize for the wait, but Dr. Kemp was with a patient.”
“So he finished with the patient and then told you to tell me that he’s unavailable?”
When she spoke again, it was with an obviously perturbed tone. “May I take a message, Mr. Rockne?”
“Tell him to call me. I have information on one of his very important pending legal matters.”
It was total bullshit, but I had a hunch.
“I’ll pass along the message,” she said, followed with a very enthusiastic click.
I turned off my phone’s Bluetooth to conserve the battery and got out of the car. I jogged up to where the homeless guy was now sitting on the sidewalk, his back against the wall of a bar that was closed.
“Spare change?” he asked as I approached.
From my wallet, I withdrew a twenty-dollar bill. I held it in my hand while with my other hand I scrolled the photos on my phone until I came across a good one of Dave. I blew it up and turned the phone to face the beggar.
Getting a good look at him I saw that he was younger than I thought, although from his apparent lifestyle I’m sure his years had aged him even more. Still, he couldn’t have been beyond his thirties. Maybe early forties at the most.
He had on black pants, a hooded sweatshirt and dirty Timberland boots without shoelaces. I saw newspaper sticking out from the leg of his pants.
“Have you seen this guy around at all? Maybe Thursday night?”
The guy squinted. The wind shifted and I got a really good whiff of him, making me wish I had a portable bottle of Febreze.
“Shit, I don’t know, man.”
What the hell. I handed him the twenty and one of my business cards, although I doubted he had a cell phone in his pocket.
“Haven’t seen him?�
�� I asked again. “Were you down here Thursday night?”
“Shit, I’m down here every night, morning and day, brother,” he said.
“Was anything unusual going on?”
“You kiddin’ me? Weird shit goes down here all the time!” he cackled a little bit. “People disappear like smoke down here. One minute you crackin’ wise with a fool, next minute you standing there with your dick in your hand like some crazy bitch done stole your mind!”
“Excellent observations,” I said.
“Best part?” he continued. “White people the craziest of ‘em all. You muthafucks, what they say, unpredictable as shit? Runnin’ around drunk, high, half-naked pukin’ in the gutters, wrecking cars. Oughta be a law against white people. Stay outta the city. We afraid of y’all.”
A stream of urine began to leak out of his pants, and I saw the newspaper catching some of it before it fell onto the sidewalk. It was an editorial and I wondered if the homeless guy was providing his opinion on the article.
“Well, if you think of something and can find a phone, call the number on that card I gave you,” I said.
Back at the car, I looked over my shoulder.
The homeless guy was gone.
He’d disappeared like smoke.
Chapter Nineteen
It took me a few more hours to hit all of the stops on the Dave Ingells cell phone tour, but they were all abandoned lots.
You’d be surprised how many of them there are in Detroit. There are entire city blocks now home to mostly weeds and rubble.
Occasionally, you’ll find a developer brave enough to start putting up some new homes, which then look like movie sets, temporarily placed on a barren studio lot.
I did check them all out, though.
Mostly what I did was scare some rats and even send some pheasant running for more cover. The city of Detroit, with its thousands upon thousands of abandoned city blocks and long grass, was home to a surprising amount of wildlife, not just the human kind.