Also By T.V. LoCicero
NOVELS
The Obsession (The Truth Beauty Trilogy, Book 1)
The Disappearance (The Truth Beauty Trilogy, Book 2)
The Car Bomb (The detroit im dyin Trilogy, Book 1)
When A Pretty Woman Smiles
Sicilian Quilt
NON-FICTION BOOKS
Murder in the Synagogue
Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue
STORIES
A Round with J.C.
Fixed
Shrunk
The Jungle Plant
The Visit
MEMOIR/ESSAY/INTERVIEW
Selling the Bison
The Lessons of Sport
Dutch on Dutch
T. V. LoCicero
ADMISSION OF GUILT
T.V. LoCicero has been writing both fiction and non-fiction across five decades. He's the author of the true crime books Murder in the Synagogue (Prentice-Hall), on the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler, and Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue. His novels include When A Pretty Woman Smiles, Sicilian Quilt, The Car Bomb and Admission of Guilt, the first two books in The detroit im dyin Trilogy, and The Obsession and The Disappearance, the first two in The Truth Beauty Trilogy. Eight of his shorter works are now available as ebooks. These are among the stories and essays he has published in various periodicals, including Commentary, Ms. and The University Review, and in the hard-cover collections Best Magazine Articles, The Norton Reader and The Third Coast.
ADMISSION OF GUILT
By T. V. LoCicero
The detroit im dyin Trilogy
Book 2
Admission of Guilt
by T. V. LoCicero
Copyright 2013 by T. V. LoCicero
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information on this and other works by T.V. LoCicero please visit:
www.tvlocicero.com
For Victoria
detroit im dyin
only come here on a dare
detroit im dyin
dont you even fuckin care
--Detroit Street Grafitti, early 1990s
Table of Contents
Also By T.V. LoCicero
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Inscription
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Other Books
Chapter 1
Spring leaves, already withering, scratched and whispered in the few Dutch Elms still standing on this dark, working-class street. Birds chirped and chattered on the pre-dawn breeze, and a worn-out Plymouth whined slowly to a stop in front of one of these decrepit wood-framed flats. A smallish figure slipped out, ran to a big front porch, then darted back to the street.
As the Plymouth’s door opened, the dome light's yellow glow lit the black, care-lined, 38-year-old face of Joe Martino. Thirteen-year-old Lissa slid onto the front bench next to him and shut the door. In darkness again he moved the car forward.
“Your turn, Pappy.” The girl reached to the backseat for a rolled-up Free Press in a thin rubber band.
“Pappy?” Martino’s glance raised an eyebrow, and he made a face. “Where’d you get that? Pappy.”
She shrugged, then smiled.
He said, “Okay, how about something that rhymes with table.”
Her guess was quick: “A place to keep horses.”
“No, it’s not a stable.”
Martino brought the car to a stop again, and Lissa opened the door. “How about the name of Mama’s funky old aunt?”
He grinned. “No, it’s not Aunt Mable.”
Out of the car once more, the girl slammed the door, just the way he’d told her not to. He watched as she sprinted toward another porch. In the dome light her thin face and dancing eyes had so mimed her mother that he suddenly found it hard to swallow.
Tossing the paper up on the porch, Lissa ran back to the Plymouth, and Martino again sent it forward. This time she grabbed two papers from behind. “Is it the kind of fur coat that Mama always wanted?”
“No, it’s not a sable. But that’s pretty good for a kid.” When he stopped the car, Lissa opened the door and eyed her father. He reminded her: “Don’t slam it.”
“Right. For a kid? How about the kind of story that Aesop wrote?”
He laughed. “Yeah, it’s a fable.”
“Oh, Pappy, that was a good one!” In the darkness she moved quickly away, carrying the two papers. Her lean teen hips in the jeans he had bought the other day were hinting at the future.
; At the front steps of the first house, Lissa flipped one paper up next to the door and ran quickly past the next two houses, glancing at the old Plymouth whining again slowly up the street and staying just behind her. They both knew every stop without thinking.
One more to run past. But as she moved through the overgrown yard in front of a low, crumbling porch, a loud, percussive crack seemed to explode right next to her ear. Terror bolted through her body. A sharp sting seared her right arm, and the rolled up paper fell from her hand. In a panic, she froze, then spun, unable to find the street.
Another explosive crack and with a high-pitched shriek she ran, finally glimpsing the Plymouth. Veering toward the street where the old car’s door was swinging open, she screamed, “Daddy!” Another crack and, almost to the Plymouth, her legs stopped working properly. She saw her father yelling at her but couldn’t hear him, the cracks now coming quickly one after another. Stumbling badly she threw herself at the car and somehow got her head to the seat and her left hand far enough in for her father to grab.
As Martino shoved the accelerator to the floor, there were more cracks and a side window exploded. The car lunged and squealed away, and, covered with shards and fragments and feeling his right arm go numb, he lost his grip on Lissa’s hand.
The car careened weirdly across the street, jumped the curb and crashed into a front porch. The impact echoed for a moment, then faded into the whispers of the dying trees.
Back on the cracked pavement in the middle of the street Lissa was sprawled face down.
Chapter 2
Across the now silent street, in a darkened front room strewn with beer cans and candy wrappers, a 15-year-old boy named Marlon Maples, his heart still pounding wildly, leaned forward in a broken armchair shoved close to the sill of an open window. There was nothing moving out there now.
The muffled sound of a car door slamming at some distance had jolted him awake. Moving the tattered curtains covering the window, he had searched with fear in his throat the long porch, broken steps and weed infested front yard. With headlamp beams skewed, one low to the right, the other up to the left, a car had moved slowly in the street.
A sharp pain still wracked the base of his chin where he had slammed it against the sill, trying to duck when that figure in the dark had suddenly dashed toward the porch. His aching eyes felt the breeze that moved the curtains now. All he had seen was the figure and the car’s lights, but that had been enough for his sweaty, nerve-wracked hands to squeeze the machine pistol until it was empty. He cradled it now in his lap,
The echoes of the car’s collision with the house across the street had died away, and it was quiet enough to hear Marlon whimper.
Chapter 3
Two hours later John Giordano’s eighth grade class at the Lincoln Middle School on Detroit’s southwest side was starting its day. Twenty-five, with olive skin and dark, curly hair, John sat on a table at the front of the room, reading the roll for May 9, 1993. The walls and woodwork were dented and scraped, but the classroom was neat, colorful and decorated with posters and pictures cut from magazines. Magic Johnson urged the pleasures of reading. Denzel Washington hugged Oprah. A black man toiled in a surgeon’s mask. A Latino woman presided in a judicial robe.
In desk chairs were 30 youngsters in their early teens, mostly black but with a few whites and Hispanics. As usual a half-dozen desks were empty.
“Shaun Dailey?”
No answer. Near the back a boy nudged Shaun, in pigtails and thick glasses, lost in a book.
“Shaun, are you here?” The teacher looked up.
The girl’s hand waved. “Yes, Mr. Giordano.”
“Are you sure?” She was one of his favorites. He noted the usual smiles, giggles, rolled eyes and smirks.
“Yes, Mr. Giordano.”
“Eric Garner?”
Again no answer, and a few feet away he found Eric’s small, black, beautiful face with a pursed smile.
“I wasn’t sure, Mr. G,” said Eric. The room filled with laughter and exaggerated guffaws.
John put his class list down on the table and stared at it to avoid smiling. When he got silence, he gave them a stern stare and said, “Very funny.” And after a pause: “Look, folks, I don’t like doing this any more than you do. It wastes my time and yours. And I figure if you want to be here because you get something valuable out of this class, then you’ll be here. And if you don’t, you won’t. But it’s the law that we take attendance, and so we take attendance.”
“If it’s a dumb law,” piped Eric, the smile impish now, “why don’t we break it?”
“Because,” said John, “if people go around breaking any law they think is dumb, we might as well be living in the jungle.”
In the room’s back row a lanky black boy named Mark Simpson stirred from his slouch. “What’s wrong with that, man? Survival of the fittest.”
John gazed at Mark, who was bright but usually said little in class. “Maybe nothing, if you’re the fittest. But sooner or later you’re gonna cross someone more fit.”
“Yeah, maybe, but that’s nature, man.” As usual, Mark seemed to mix fatalism with a false bravado.
John picked up the class list. “Yeah, but what we’re trying to do on this planet, usually without great success, is rise above the level of animals. Okay, enough of this. Rashad Jamal?”
“Here,” said Rashad promptly.
“Jimmy Long?”
“Here.”
“Lissa Martino?”
There was no answer, and the teacher lifted his gaze with a frown. “Lissa?”
“She ain’t here,” said Jimmy Long, a thin, quiet black boy with an obvious but hopeless crush on Lissa.
“She’s not here,” said John.
“It’s what I said,” said Jimmy.
John again dropped the class list. “No, Jimmy, you said ‘ain’t,’ probably in an effort to prompt for the one hundredth time this year my speech on the importance of using standard English. Probably with the hope that I’d forget about the spelling test you’re all gonna be taking in about one minute.”
Laughter and groans filled the room.
“Okay, settle down.” He returned to the roll. “Maria Mendez?”
“She ain’t here neither,” said Jimmy Long.
More laughter and this time their teacher joined in, flipping his pencil two feet in the air and grabbing before it fell on the table. When the room was almost quiet again, there was a knock on the door. Sara Whitaker, a pretty, beige-skinned young woman who worked in the principal’s office, cracked the door and leaned in.
“Excuse me, Mr. Giordano. May I speak with you for a moment?”
“Sure.” He got stiffly to his feet. “Okay, Mr. Simpson, since you’re so fit, you come up here and keep order. There’s a spelling test to study for, folks, so get to it.”
In the grumbling commotion of students reaching for books, John joined the secretary in the hall.
Chapter 4
Standing next to the ancient metal lockers lining the hall, he continued to watch his class through the window in the door. In contrast to the relaxed, casual feeling he usually had with his students, he was immediately awkward and uncomfortable with this slim young woman. He couldn’t even look her in the eye, but all it took was a glance to know she had nothing but bad news.
“John, something terrible’s happened.”
“Really, this couldn’t wait?”
“No, I mean yes, it couldn’t. Lissa Martino was shot and killed this morning.”
For a couple of seconds, he did not move or speak. Finally he whispered a scream, “Oh, Jesus Fucking Christ!” And he slammed his palm against a locker door so hard it sounded like a bomb.
The secretary flinched badly, and knowing he had alarmed his students, he turned his back to the door and moved a few steps away.
Moving with him Sara said softly, “I know, it’s horrible. Dr. Carter’s been on the phone with the police since seven this morning.”
“What
the fuck happened?” He fought to control the fury in his voice and finally managed to say, “I’m sorry. It’s just that...” He couldn’t finish.
“No that’s okay. She was delivering her newspapers, I guess, with her dad this morning. So she goes up to this one house, and this 15-year-old kid just starts shooting. Actually he used to go here, a boy named Marlon Maples. I think before you got here.”
Shaking his head, he radiated so much anger that Sara moved a step away. Finally he stopped. “But why, for Chrissake? Why shoot a little girl?”
“Well, I don’t really know, but the police have already got him. Apparently he was drinking all night and waiting for these other guys who were coming to fire bomb the house.”
He shook his head again. “Fuck-ing dope.”
“Yes, well they say this Marlon is with this with one crack gang, and it’s in some kind of war with this other one.”
“They’re all shitheads!” He stared down the hall.
Sara moved another step away. “Really. But, John, Dr. Carter thinks we should wait until last period to tell the kids. Otherwise they’ll be upset all day and won’t get anything done.”
He watched two tardy boys opening lockers at the other end of the hall. “That’s ridiculous! Somebody’s bound to come in late and know about it and tell everybody else. And that’ll be worse. Tell Dr. Carter I have to talk to my class about it right now. Lissa was in my room, and I don’t want them hearing about it from anyone else.”
Sara looked uncertain. “Well, I’ll tell her, but...”
“Good. Thanks.”
He turned away abruptly, but stopped, trying to gather himself before getting to the door. When he walked back into the room, Mark Simpson got up from the table with his spelling book and sauntered back to his seat.
“Thanks, Mark. Okay, listen up, folks. We just got some very bad news.”
“School’s closed till next year,” piped Eric with an arm thrust in the air. His classmates cheered and laughed.
John stood in front of the table and held up his hand. “All right, all of you, settle down! Sorry, but this is really bad news and really sad.”
Admission of Guilt (The detroit im dyin Trilogy, Book 2) (The Detroit Im Dying Trilogy) Page 1