August Snow

by Stephen Mack Jones

  Schmear’s Deli, a staple through good times and bad, was now surrounded by trendy restaurants and upscale boutiques. In order to compete in the new Detroit business core, Schmear’s changed from the small, cigar-scented restaurant with a prominent display of beef tongues to something more appealing to the Monday-through-Friday invasion of tech-savvy iPad-slinging professionals.

  The posters of Che Guevara, Angela Davis, Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and David Ben Gurion that had once yellowed on the nicotine-stained walls of Schmear’s were gone. So were the waiters who had chewed the wet stubs of cheap cigars, retired mostly by virtue of age and throat cancer. The scarred, uneven wooden chairs and tables I used to sit at with my mom and dad had been replaced with gleaming stainless steel, and shimmering seafoam green Pewabic Pottery tiles. In place of the yellowed posters were inoffensive acrylic paintings and smiling photographs of Detroit’s ethnically varied residents. One of the photos was of me when I was five flanked by my mom, dad and the current owner’s barrel-chested, gap-toothed father.

  When I arrived, the young professionals were happily finishing their lunches and paying their tabs. Time to get back to whatever people in Michael Kors and Jones New York suits do.

  A seat at the counter opened up and no sooner had I saddled up than I heard, “The prodigal son returns!”

  Ben Breitler, second-generation owner of Schmear’s, was now in his mid-sixties. With each passing year he looked more like Albert Einstein on a methamphetamine bender.

  Ben was wearing a rainbow-colored tie-dye T-shirt with the bold words “Light One Up!”

  We embraced and I said, “Hate what you’ve done with the place, Ben.”

  “Yeah, well, I hate it, too,” Ben said with a dismissive shrug. “But you gotta give the gentrifying class what they want. Adapt or die. So you’re back now? For good or just slumming?”

  “For a while,” I said. “I started renovating my folks’ old house in Mexicantown before I left. I’ll finish that and then decide what I want to do when I grow up.”

  “Good!” Ben said with a grin that revealed a couple-grand’s worth of West Bloomfield cosmetic dentistry. “Live by example and be an example to live by. Mexicantown’s a great area! And it’s only gonna get better. You mark my words. And as to deciding what you wanna be when you grow up, don’t look at me for advice, kiddo. I still don’t know what I wanna be when I grow up—but somehow I don’t think it’s gonna be a Jewish deli owner tearing his hair out over the cost of good lox and fucking green tea.”

  Ben turned and frantically waved for one of his waitresses—a young, spike-haired redhead with imposing, dark eye shadow, koi fish tattoos swimming up her left arm and a silver nostril ring. Emo wasn’t normally a look I was attracted to. That being said, Lucy “Tank Girl” Tarapousian had always been the exception to this relatively loose rule.

  “Look who’s back!” Ben yelled over the departing crowd.

  Tank Girl saw me and admonished her new customers to “Talk amongst yourselves.” As she walked toward me, she said, “Oh-la, me amigo! Que pasa bangy-bangy?”

  “Your Spanish is still god-awful,” I said. “But the look is workin’.”

  Tank Girl gave me a rib-bruising hug and—much to my surprise and delight—a full kiss. Yet another reason why I enjoyed the ambience of Schmear’s. She tasted like good sex or fresh lox. I often confused the two.

  Ben, Tank Girl and I talked for a while. Mostly about my year-long adventure in international drinking and a bit about how the city tried to screw me. After a while, Tank Girl wrote down her phone number, address, email, bra size and locations of her latest piercings on a napkin and stuffed it in my inside jacket pocket.

  “Text me,” she said. “I’m sick of my boyfriend.”

  “You’re back with boys?”

  She grinned, shrugged and got back to her famished customers.

  “Don’t you have a policy about staff flirting with customers?” I said to Ben.

  “Hey, boychik, if I did, I’d never get laid.”

  Ben wrangled a menu for me: six laminated, colorful pages bound in imitation burgundy leather. It included a list of their bottled waters—domestic and imported, flat and effervescent—and “healthy” smoothies and teas.

  “Jesus, Ben,” I said perusing the menu. “You really have gone over to the dark side.”

  “What can I say?” Ben said with a dismissive shrug. “The dark side pays better.”

  The mayor, city council and at least a third of the DPD had thought the same thing a year ago …

  Four

  I ordered the Turkey Reuben “Extraordinaire” with buffalo-seasoned sweet potato fries and a side order of cole slaw complete with chopped walnuts and McIntosh apples. Ben gave me a bear hug, then excused himself.

  I was only three bites into my sandwich when a squat black man in his late forties entered the deli. He sported a thick black mustache, round tortoise shell glasses, a nicely cut tan suit and Oxblood loafers. He mounted the counter stool next to me and said, “This seat taken?”

  Captain Ray Danbury, Detroit Police Department. The man Cowling was supposed to have delivered me to.

  “How’s the sandwich?” Danbury said with a wide grin.

  “It was good,” I said. “Then you walked in.”

  “What can I say?” Danbury laughed. “I have that effect on people.” Danbury was a good cop in a city where good wasn’t always recognizable and ethics were often amorphous. His rise to captain had been a slow, arduous one; he didn’t play favorites and his politics hadn’t always aligned with those of his superiors. But he got the job done. And after the corruption indictments of the last few years, the people of Detroit were finally ready for someone like Danbury.

  “You buying?” he said to me. “Word on the street is you got some serious coin.”

  Danbury ordered coffee black, three sugars and a Jewish Farmer’s Omelet: peppers, onions and rough-chopped lox with toasted challah bread. He dug into his food as if he hadn’t eaten for several days—which I doubted considering he was twenty pounds over what a man of five foot ten should be.

  “You’re not gonna invite your puppy in for a bowl of kibble?” I said, staring out at the navy-blue Ford Taurus parked near the Campus Martius traffic roundabout.

  “Cowling?” Danbury said, chewing while he spoke. “Don’t be too hard on him, August. He’s right where I want him and he’s happy in his gilded cage.” Danbury took another forkful of his omelet. “Besides. Last thing this city needs is another cop trial. You pretty much sealed the deal on that.”

  “What do you want, Ray? I mean besides my always-illuminating company.”

  Danbury shrugged. “Heard you was back in the D. Just wanted to say hey’s all.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Yeah, you right,” Danbury laughed and took a slurp of his diabetes-inducing coffee. “Guess who’s been missing you?” He paused for dramatic affect before saying, “Eleanor Paget.”

  I felt the muscles in my shoulders tighten.

  “Yeah,” Danbury said brightly. “Shocked the shit outta me, too. But the bitch’s been calling my office, the chief’s office and the commissioner for the past two weeks asking for you. I keep tellin’ her you ain’t a cop no more and you off God-knows-where getting your knob polished. But you know what the woman’s like.”

  “I do indeed.”

  Danbury turned to me and in a quiet voice said, “You think you could slip back in town and nobody’d notice? Hell, man, I knew you was back before you was wheels-down at Metro.”

  “What’s she want?” I said.

  “How the hell do I know?” Danbury said. “I’m just a highly paid messenger. And besides. Don’t wanna know. Got me enough to worry about, never mind that woman and yo narrow, half-wet ass.”

  We sat quietly for a moment before I worked up the courage to say, “Why didn’t you testify on my behalf, Ray?”

  “Because your wounds are your wounds,” Danbury snapped, “and
mine are mine. And I don’t need anybody reopening my wounds and twisting a finger in ’em.” After a moment or two, he sighed and said, “You know how much tuition is at U of M?” Then he said, “You’re a good cop, August. Were a good cop. Always liked you, man. Liked your daddy, too, God rest his soul. But it’s been a long time and a lot of rough road between then and now. I got me two kids in college, a mortgage and a wife that likes the remodel on her kitchen which, by the way, ain’t gonna be paid off for another two fuckin’ years.”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  “No, I don’t think you do, August.” Danbury pushed his empty plate away. “But, hey, that’s awright. You find you a lady who pops you a couple kids and—” Danbury stopped mid-sentence, then said, “Sorry.”

  I shrugged and said, “It’s been three years.”

  One second.

  One bullet.

  Two lives.

  Danbury finally extended his hand. “We cool?”

  Reluctantly, I nodded and shook his hand. “We cool.”

  Danbury reached into a coat pocket and retrieved a folded piece of paper.

  “Eleanor Paget’s number. Call it. Or don’t. I couldn’t care less. But just so’s you know: Eleanor Paget can make a lot of people’s lives miserable when her calls ain’t returned. And Lord knows—my life’s hard enough without any more of that woman’s shit on my shoes.”

  Danbury stood and thanked me for the lunch. As he turned to leave, I said, “Tell Cowling if he ever approaches me like he did outside of St. Al’s, I’ll put him down.”

  “Acknowledged and understood,” Danbury said with a decisive nod. He left.

  I looked at the number written on the piece of paper.

  The black emo waitress named Crazy Horse filled my glass with fresh iced green tea, leaned on the counter and, offering a dimpled smile, said, “Feel like eating anything else, champ?”

  “Yeah,” I said, still looking at Eleanor Paget’s number scribbled on the paper. “A bullet.”

  Five

  Once upon a time, the mantle over the living room fireplace was crowded with photos of my black grandparents and my Mexican grandparents, baby pictures (mine, cousins and neighbor kids too numerous to remember), my folks’ wedding photo, my dad looking intrepid and invincible in his Detroit Police Department dress uniform and my mother looking beautifully languid on the sands of Sleeping Bear Dunes. There was a framed photo of our used 1979 Oldsmobile 98 (Dad loved that car), a Day of the Dead celebration at a local Mexican restaurant and, of course, the Holy Mother Mary framed prayer card.

  Over the years the pictures changed: Me receiving my yellow belt in karate at the age of six; grandparents lying placid in their coffins; a family trip to Traverse City; Rusty, a greyish-brown mutt who was my first, only and best dog; my graduations from high school, Wayne State University and the police academy. The number of pictures of cousins and neighbor kids steadily declined over the years as the number of cousins and neighbor kids who went to prison or died increased. The only photos that remained were of the Holy Mother Mary framed prayer card and the 1979 Oldsmobile 98.

  Now, there were only two pictures on the mantle: my parents’ wedding photo and one I’d taken of Tatina in Oslo.

  There were no books yet in the bookshelves.

  As I stood in the middle of the empty living room assessing what to do with the house and my life, the doorbell rang and was quickly followed by a knock on the front door. Instinctively, I found myself reaching for my Glock.

  I walked to the door and peered out through the high sliver of window: there were two very small elderly women standing at the door, one Mexican-American, one white, both in matching purple North Face bubble coats.

  I opened the door and said, “Hi, ladies.”

  It must have been my delivery since the two women giggled.

  “Mr. Snow?” the Mexican-American lady said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Hi!” she said. “I’m Carmela Montoya. This is my friend Sylvia Zychek.” Sylvia gave an enthusiastic wave even though we were less than two feet from each other. “We’re your neighbors!”

  “We just wanted to stop by and thank you for the wonderful job you did on our house,” Sylvia said. The houses I’d bought and renovated on Markham were simply a way to keep myself busy and to feel connected with people without having to actually connect with them. Obviously, these ladies hadn’t gotten my memo. “And that man? The Mexican gentleman who’s been watching your house while you were away? Oh my, what a nice man. A little scary looking, but really nice.”

  “We also wanted to thank you for helping bring this neighborhood back,” Carmela said. “My son and daughter-in-law didn’t want me to move back to Mexicantown, but—well, this is home. It’s where I feel alive.”

  “You’re very welcome, ladies,” I said.

  “Not much,” Sylvia said to her housemate. She was craning her neck to peek around me for a better view inside my house.

  “What?” Carmela replied.

  “I said he doesn’t have much!” Sylvia said, louder.

  “I just got back from a long trip,” I said. “Most of my stuff’s in storage.”

  “Well, you need any help,” Carmela said, “you give us a call. Or just come on over. We’ve always got cookies and cake, sometimes our special brownies and—”

  “Oh, she makes the absolute best strawberry-filled churros!” Sylvia said.

  The ladies thanked me again, turned and began walking away. “The streetlamps?” I said quickly. “When did the city put those in?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t the city,” Sylvia said. “It was some private company. I think it was—”

  “LifeLight,” Carmela said. “That was the name on the truck. LifeLight.”

  “They look nice, don’t they?” Sylvia said.

  I watched the ladies descend my steps hand in hand and slowly make their way back to the house next door. They walked like I remembered people walking in this neighborhood a lifetime ago, with casual confidence, as if this narrow street were the best of all possible worlds.

  For whatever reason, talking with the two old girls brought a certain buoyancy to my spirit. Maybe there was hope for this nearly forgotten part of the city. Maybe I was a part of that.

  I was also thankful Carmela and Sylvia hadn’t mentioned any aspect of my trial. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe they didn’t care.

  Twenty minutes and one phone call later I was in a suit and on a trajectory toward a world that might as well have been Camelot—or Mars: the northeastern tip of southeastern Michigan, zip code 48236.

  Grosse Pointe.

  Gringos emerging from beneath the Cobo Hall Convention Center on the Lodge Freeway and driving northeast on Jefferson Avenue are welcomed to the city by a four-ton black cast iron fist. Don’t let fellow Mexican-American Robert Graham’s beautifully sculpted forearm and astounding fist of iconic boxer Joe Louis scare you: rarely has it actually punched anybody.

  I drove past the fist and gave it a respectful nod.

  Take that, Hitler …

  The steel-grey Detroit River churned on my right as I negotiated my white rental Cadillac CTS through mid-afternoon traffic. Past the tourist-friendly expanse of Riverwalk. Past Mariner’s Church (like a good Mexican with years of Catholic muscle memory, I involuntarily made the sign of the cross for the lost crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald), and the imposing cylindrical towers of the General Motors Renaissance Center world headquarters.

  Further east I passed Belle Isle—alternately known throughout the decades as the jewel in the crown of “the Paris of the Midwest,” “Blood Island” and, most recently, Michigan State Park No.101, courtesy of a bankruptcy restructuring deal. Beyond the white cantilevered Belle Isle Bridge, high-rise condos, apartment buildings and motels streamed past. There were low-slung grocery stores and a boarded-up gym where legendary boxing trainer Emanuel Steward had given boxing champions like Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko and Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns PhD lesso
ns on “the sweet science.” Monuments to a once-proud history collapsing in on themselves.

  To the right off of west-bound Jefferson Avenue there were still neighborhoods that served as the gateway to hell. Where black children cowered in the corners of abandoned houses reading stolen books from school libraries by the last light of day. Places where the devil was fed his daily dinner by a state that hated its largest city and a country that unctuously pitied those who lived here.

  Most of the restaurants and funky bars that had once dotted the shoreline were years gone. Victims of failed real estate schemes, encroaching poverty and a Byzantine city government intent on following the playbook for the fall of Rome.

  A few remained, but for the most part the small redbrick, low-lit bars where Sippie Wallace, John Lee Hooker and James Cotton once performed were nothing more than ugly brown fields where feral dogs and the occasional coywolf hunted by night.

  Further on and nearing Lake St. Claire was the first of the Grosse Pointes: Grosse Pointe Park, the anteroom of the other northern Pointes. A community designed for those who may have been related to Grandma’s money, but kept at a comfortable distance because of a marriage outside of the Protestant faith or to someone not of generations-pure Anglo-Saxon blood.

  Next was Grosse Pointe Farms. This is where the patresfamilias of old money live, sequestered in their redbrick and leaded glass mansions, listening to either Mozart or Duke Ellington while sipping their sherry or port and tsk-tsking on the state of modern Detroit.

  And then there is Grosse Pointe Estates.

  Grosse Pointe Estates, perhaps the second port-of-call for the Mayflower, was the epicenter of Grosse Pointe wealth. This was where great-great-grandma’s money was firmly ensconced. A citadel where whispers toppled empires, expanded territories, or created histories and futures in their image. That “shining city on a hill” protected by the battlements of an arcane real estate algorithm.