“How should I know!” Brewster shouted, finally revealing his frustration.
“You control him,” I said. “It’s your business to know.”
I was starting to think Brewster might have made one too many deals with a few too many devils. And I was just a minor demon that had tipped already tenuously balanced scales.
Brewster took in a sharp breath of chilled air, then exhaled slowly. “He is an impetuous, solipsistic little prick, yes. But I believe he appreciates the forces he has aligned himself with. Such unsanctioned actions on his part would be dangerously inconsiderate of those forces.”
“This is holy ground,” a gruff voice boomed.
It was Big Jake, the groundskeeper, obscured by a tight grouping of three old-growth oaks on a slight rise behind and to my left. For a man in his late sixties, Big Jake moved with the agility and speed of a Big Ten college running back. Within a second or two he had the highly polished nickel-plated barrel of a large semiautomatic handgun to the temple of the second bodyguard. “Son, you got a choice: Put the gun down and embrace Jesus. Or get ready to suck the devil’s dick. Now, what’s it gonna be, boy?”
The man eased his machine pistol from beneath his Navy pea coat and let it drop to the ground.
“Praise Jesus,” Big Jake said before cracking the butt of his gun on the back of the man’s head. The bodyguard collapsed near a tombstone inscribed Beloved Son.
“Now I’d suggest y’all be on y’all’s way fort I call the po-lice,” Big Jake said, his gun level and steady on Dax. “Unless y’all want me to kill you dead right here, right now. And I can guaran-damn-tee ya: when I buries yo ass, it’ll be so deep you gonna have to look up to see hell.”
Brewster glared at Big Jake, then brought his eyes back to me. “Perhaps another time, Mr. Snow,” he said.
“This is my last offer to you, Brewster,” I said. “Come at me one more time and I will make you suffer before you die.”
Brewster turned away and began walking up the tree-and-headstone-covered incline. Dax closed his coat, showed the palms of his hands and began walking toward us to retrieve his co-worker sprawled on the cold ground unconscious.
“Leave him!” Brewster shouted.
Dax stopped, gave me an easy smile and said, “Be seein’ ya.”
He turned and walked away. Big Jake and I kept our guns leveled at the two retreating men. Without looking back at me, Brewster said loudly, “I assure you, Mr. Snow—my third offer will not be so generous.”
Big Jake and I watched them disappear over the knoll.
“Friends of yours?” Big Jake said.
“How’d you guess?” I said.
I looked at the piece Big Jake held in his thick hand—a renowned limited-edition gun.
“Desert Eagle?” I said admiringly.
Big Jake held up the weapon, gazing fondly at it. “Yessah, it is. First Gulf War. Given to me by General ‘Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf hisself.” Big Jake tucked the gun back into its holster, sighed and said, “Lots of us in the sand.”
“Nine years in Iraq the second time and thirteen in Afghanistan. That’s a lot men in a lot of sand,” I said. “Thanks for the help, Big Jake.”
“Ah, hell, son,” Big Jake said, giving me a slap on the back. It hurt. “Didn’t really look like you needed no help. I’m pretty sure you coulda took them white boys.” He furrowed his bushy eyebrows and scowled at me. “Just don’t be makin’ it no habit bringin’ shit like that around here, you feel me?” He squinted, assessed my face and said, “Look like you already done had more than your fair share of shit for one day.”
I told Big Jake I’d take the machine pistol. I’m sure either the weapon or the man’s prints or both would prove useful to O’Donnell. I looked down at the unconscious man lying next to his machine pistol. “I’ll clean this up.”
“No,” Big Jake said. “My cemetery, my cleanup. Plus, I might just got something make this young man repent of his evil ways.”
“Should I ask?”
Big Jake winked at me. “No, but I’mo tell you anyways: Put him in a coffin with a pint of MD 20/20 for fourteen hours and pipe in some Winans praise music. That oughta tenderize his soul a bit.”
“Extraordinary rendition,” I said.
Twenty-eight
Before leaving the cemetery, I wrote out a check and handed it to Big Jake. He stared at the check for a moment, then squinted at me.
“What I’ma do with this?” he said.
“Buy yourself a case of Auchentoshan scotch,” I said. “You deserve it.”
He scowled. “This ain’t no blood money is it?”
“It is,” I said. “My blood.”
He nodded, shoved the check in the inside pocket of his work coat and said, “Got me some nieces and nephews. Momma’s been on hard times since this city done fell off the face of God’s green earth. Think fort I get me that scotch, I’mo make me a little trip to Toys “R” Us.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said.
We shook hands and I left.
On the way back to my house, I called Frank. After Brewster’s visit to the cemetery, it seemed a good time to get a download on what was happening in Traverse City. Especially since Brewster appeared determined to make good on his threats.
“Oh, man, the colors up here have just exploded, dude!” Frank said. “Colleen made some awesome chili. No meat, but really good. Then we went to Traverse City State Park and—”
“Listen,” I said, wheeling my rental car into the narrow driveway of my house, “I’m glad your fall color tour is a screaming success, Frank, but something’s just cut loose down here and I need you locked and loaded. I’m coming up.”
“Bad?” Frank said.
“Bad enough.”
“On the job, boss man,” Frank said.
No sooner had I entered the house—hand on the grip of my Glock—than Jimmy Radmon knocked on the door.
I let him in.
“Oh, damn, bro,” he said, surveying my face. “Them cable guys again?”
I wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. “What’s up, Jimmy?”
“That Mexican dude across the street?” Radmon said. “Rodriguez? He come down to Carmela and Sylvia’s. Got his tool belt on talkin’ ’bout helpin’ me out. What’s up with that?”
“You two are partners now,” I said. “He helps you, you help him, you both get paid.”
Radmon nodded. By this time I think I’d earned at least a bit of trust from the kid.
“Listen, Jimmy,” I said. “I got things to do, okay? I’m gonna be away for a while. If I’m not back in three or four days, I need you to take a letter to my lawyer.”
I quickly wrote out a letter assigning ownership of the house to Radmon, along with a bit of money and a stipulation about him going to school. I didn’t let him see it before I stuffed it into an envelope, sealed it and wrote my attorney’s name and address on the front of the envelope.
He took the envelope, stared at it for a moment, then looked up at me. “Those weren’t the cable guys, were they?”
“No.”
Radmon nodded and we stood quiet in the kitchen for a moment. Then he said, “I don’t know what you into, man. All I know is you helped me out, so anything—”
“Keep an eye out for Carmela and Sylvia,” I said. “You’re putting your mark on what’s left of this neighborhood. It’s yours now. Take care of it.”
Radmon nodded again, and I sent him on his way.
It took me less than ten minutes to pack a bag for Traverse City. The same black leather duffel that had seen me through a year in India and Europe was now full of ammo for my Glock and my Smith & Wesson .38. I didn’t feel confident with only two handguns; Brewster’s men appeared well-equipped. Two guys like Dax strapped like the men at the cemetery would be all it would take to wipe out a village. A beaten up ex-cop, an ex-grocery bagger, a watercolor artist and her wife didn’t stand much of a chance against odds like that.
I made a stop b
y Tomás’s house north of me near Bagley Street in Mexicantown.
“Jesus,” Tomás said. “You look like crap.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been a crappy couple days. Any other night crawlers?”
Tomás shook his head. No one else had bothered him or his family.
Tomás offered me a cup of strong Mexican coffee and a pastry. I said no to the pastry and yes to the coffee. I was operating on a sleep deficit and could use the caffeine charge to keep the battery going. Elena was with her daughter and Carlos Rodriguez’s wife, Catalina, at Home Depot looking at interior paint color chips. Tomás didn’t expect Elena home for another two, three hours—he suspected the ladies had made a joyous labor of the paint selection by stopping for a glass of wine or two first.
“You got any weapons I could borrow?” I said, knocking back the coffee and pouring another demitasse.
“Jesus,” Tomás said. “Most people borrow a cup of sugar or a fucking lawn mower.”
“I’m not most people,” I said.
“Ain’t that the God’s honest truth.”
Tomás led me to the basement. In a dark, cobwebbed corner between his workbench and stacks of plastic storage tubs was his gun locker. Tomás pulled the cord of the bare light bulb, illuminating an ancient poster of Emiliano Zapata, the legendary hero of the Mexican Revolution, which he’d taped to the doors of his gun locker, splitting it down the center where the double door seam ran.
“Nice poster,” I said.
“Elena didn’t like how scary the locker looked.” Tomás twirled the combination lock. “So I put the poster on it.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, staring at the maniacal dark eyes and imposing black mustache of the legendary Mexican revolutionary. “Nothing says cute and cuddly like Emiliano Zapata.”
“Fuck you.” Tomás opened the doors of the locker.
Eight rifles, including an AR-15, five handguns and ammo for all.
“Holy shit, Tomás,” I said, looking at the cache of weapons. “Preparing for the zombie apocalypse?”
“This wasn’t always a safe neighborhood. And I wasn’t always an altar boy.”
I carefully surveyed the locker’s holdings. “Mind if I take the Beretta Outlander and the DPMS?”
Tomás pulled the rifles out of the locker and handed them to me. He reached to a top shelf of the locker and retrieved a small lock box. Opening the lock box, he pulled out the firing pins for both. I put the firing pins in the side pocket of my jacket. Then he handed me boxes of ammo.
“I take it the registration numbers have been filed and acid washed?” I said.
Tomás gave me a sour look. I’d asked the dumbest question he’d ever heard. “Sure you don’t want the Winchester Diamond Grade?”
“It’s pretty,” I said, “but I don’t think there’s any elephants in Traverse City.”
“Handguns?”
“I’m good,” I said.
“How ’bout an extra gun hand?”
I put a hand on Tomás’s shoulder. He understood and nodded.
As I loaded the weapons into the trunk of my car, Tomás said, “This is a helluva welcome-back for you, Octavio. I’m sorry it’s come to this.”
I shut the trunk. “It all ends soon.”
Tomás said he and his family would pray for me. Which meant Elena would light novena candles and bow her head in solemn prayer while Tomás planned his own miracles.
We shook hands, then I got in the car, navigated my way out of Mexicantown and got on the I-75 North entrance ramp, heading for Traverse City.
Twenty-nine
“I know you’re not an idiot. So I guess that just makes you stupid.”
Thirty minutes northwest of Detroit I got a call from my accountant, Liz Garshaw. I’d known Liz since we were students as Wayne State. We’d slept together a couple times, but decided we had more going with each other as good friends who talked about who we’d slept with.
Liz had been tracking my expenditures and she wasn’t happy.
“Europe and Asia I can understand,” she said. “And the St. Al’s donations, fine. So are the investment properties, though I’d have to argue your dubious choice of locations. But come on, August. Big checks to random guys? The large cash withdrawals? What’s going on? Please tell me these guys aren’t bookies!”
“They’re not bookies, Liz.” I didn’t tell her about the check I’d just written to Big Jake.
“Then what?”
“Nothing you need to know about.”
There was silence at the other end of the line. Then Liz said, “Are you all right?”
“Never better.”
“Liar,” she said.
I thanked her for her concern, told her I was on the road and we’d sit down sometime soon over too many cocktails to talk about my fiscal irresponsibility and our love lives.
Once you get past the strip malls, dismal grey sprawl of factories and ugly traffic entanglements, the drive north along I-75 in October can be beautiful. In the clear, cold light of late afternoon, the trees crowding the roadside catch the light and flicker their innumerable tones of red, orange and yellow. The farms, working or not, all look like Currier and Ives lithographs.
My rental Caddy was equipped with Sirius XM satellite radio. A nice option for long drives—no obnoxious ads for divorce attorneys, discount meat shops, energy drinks or—my favorite ad—a titty bar in Romulus, Michigan, called Stump Grinders, “where our proud amputee military veterans always get half-price drinks and buffalo wings.”
But this time, instead of listening to satellite radio I brought some of my dad’s old CDs: Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Stanley Clarke, Marcus Belgrave, Koko Taylor and Etta James and, for the more contemplative moments, Earl Klugh. I also brought along one of my father’s Lynyrd Skynyrd CDs—an odd choice for a black man since Lynyrd Skynyrd’s often associated with white motorcycle gangs who drink too much bourbon and salute the Confederate flag. My dad was from Alabama and he loved Skynyrd. Took him back to the better parts of his growing-up years. And when things got bad in Bama his favorite Skynyrd song became “They Call Me the Breeze.”
Occasionally when I was young, after considerable research on my father’s part (including musty old copies of The Negro Motorist Green Book) regarding where a black man could safely lay his head in Northern Michigan, my mom, dad and I would pack up and make a weekend journey north in Dad’s beloved Oldsmobile 98. We would stop at Hollandbeck’s Apple Farm just north of Saginaw and get hot cider, warm cinnamon donuts and a bag of small apples. My dad would bullshit with Mr. Hollandbeck—a squat, blotchy-skinned white man with a Santa beard and belly. My mother would talk with Mrs. Hollandbeck, who was short and round, the perfect Mrs. Claus counterpoint to her husband. My mother’s conversations with Mrs. Hollandbeck were halting and filled with impromptu sign language and gesticulations; Mrs. Hollandbeck was proficient at her native Dutch and able to hold her own in German, but English proved a challenge for her and her Spanish was nonexistent. They seemed, nevertheless, to enjoy each other’s company.
I was usually left to wander the edge of their property, where the unorganized forest met the perfectly aligned rows of apple trees. Sometimes there were other kids pitching small apples into the forest.
“Maybe you see deer come for dem apples,” Mr. Hollandbeck once told me. He smelled like sweat, beef and powerful cheese. “Sometimes—you toss one in, look real hard—maybe you see—a reindeer. And maybe he got de red nose, yah?”
I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be stopping at Hollandbeck’s Apple Farm today, searching for Rudolph one small apple at a time. Today the beauty of a fall drive to northern Michigan held no more promise than that of blood spilling on fallen leaves.
A four-hour drive north was four hours too long, so I mostly took the speed limit signs as passive-aggressive suggestions.
I called O’Donnell and told her the situation. That I had seen Brewster, a.k.a the Consultant, at the cemetery. And how, if Brewster were the creature of
habit I thought he was, taking a run at Vivian was next on his bloody agenda if for no other reason than to cow me. I gave her the license plate number of Brewster’s black Cadillac Escalade and said she could find one of his bodyguard’s machine pistols in my house, which she was more than welcome to with the proper warrants. She listened patiently while I gave her what I knew, occasionally saying, “Yeah,” “Okay” and “Mm-hm.”
Then she said, “Where were you earlier today, August? Around one o’clock.”
My stomach knotted. This was the first time she’d called me by my first name. And her question sounded like the beginning of an interrogation.
“I was at a friend’s house,” I said. “I drove there after visiting my parents’ graves and a brief stop at my house.” I gave her the name of the cemetery. I did not give her Tomás’s name or address. I told her the groundskeeper at the cemetery—Big Jake—would confirm this. “What’s going on?”
“What did you and Ray Danbury talk about in his office earlier today, after you were brought in from the bank? Before I got you.”
“Goddammit, O’Donnell—”
“Maybe you’d better pull off the road.”
“What’s going on?” I shouted.
I heard O’Donnell sigh heavily. “At one-fifteen this afternoon, Captain Raymond Lewis Danbury was fatally shot on the city’s east side. He’s dead. Danbury’s gone.”
My heart clenched and my vision blurred for a second.
“Considering your bank escapade this morning and the loud horsewhipping he gave you, DPD’s laying even money it was you,” O’Donnell said. “There’s an APB out on you.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said, hearing how shallow and distant my voice was. “He was—Danbury was my friend.”
“I know,” O’Donnell said. “I had to ask.”
“And Cowling?” I said. “Lieutenant Leo Cowling? Danbury’s driver?”
“Got off a couple rounds,” O’Donnell said. “Took three. Neck graze, shoulder, lower abdomen. He’ll live. Says it was a black Cadillac Escalade.” She paused. “What do you drive, August?”
“You’ve followed me enough to know the make, model and license,” I said. “And no, I don’t have any other vehicles.”
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