August Snow

by Stephen Mack Jones

  “My God,” Rose Mayfield said, sounding genuinely upset. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Ms. Mayfield,” I said.

  Mayfield had received a late-night call from Vivian telling her everything that had happened. Colleen got on the call and, in a less frantic and more coherent way, gave Mayfield the highlights. That the local police, state police and FBI were there. That they were all right. And that Mayfield shouldn’t worry about them if she heard or saw anything on the news.

  “Thank God for you, Mr. Snow,” Mayfield said. “I—it’s unbelievable. Everything. It’s all just—”

  “Everything?” I said.

  She drew in a quick breath and said, “Kip Atchison’s disappeared. And Aaron Spiegelman’s wife is—she’s gone.”

  I really could not have cared less about Atchison. If he was gone, he was gone. Another floater in the Detroit River or sipping piña coladas and banging brown girls in a country without an extradition agreement with the US. Didn’t matter. But for whatever reason, the news of Spiegelman’s wife dying was a punch in the gut. The brief relationship I had with Spiegelman was, at best, rough. But at his core I knew he was mostly an honorable, hardworking guy who loved his wife. His only flaw was loyalty to and love for Eleanor Paget.

  “We need to talk, Ms. Mayfield,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said. “When would you like to come into—”

  “Not your office,” I said. “I’m persona non grata there.”

  “Then my house,” she said. “I usually take lunch at my house on Tuesdays. How does this coming Tuesday sound? Two o’clock.”

  “Tuesday at two,” I said.

  Mayfield gave me her address in northwest Detroit. She thanked me again for helping Vivian and Colleen—“Awful—just awful”—then we hung up.

  Frank grabbed the last bagel from the plate on the kitchen’s island and leaned against my refrigerator. “Why do I have the feeling this Traverse City thing ain’t over?”

  “Just stay locked and loaded,” I said. “If you want.”

  Frank analyzed his bagel. “Got nothin’ better to do. Besides. The chow on this job has been really outstanding.” He destroyed the rest of the bagel, licking the crumbs from his fingers. “Plus you shot a guy for me.”

  “There is that,” I said.

  I was always a pretty good judge of character. And Frank’s character had quickly revealed itself as impeccable. The last thing I needed fueling my Catholic-guilt was walking a good man into a bad situation because I gave him limited or bad intel. I’d seen enough of that FUBAR shit in Afghanistan. We talked for another fifteen minutes about what the endgame might look like.

  I told Frank everything I knew about the major players and one ghost operative—the Cleaner. A hired gun whose sole purpose was to kill any member of the organization that jeopardized the full anonymity of the bank take-over operation. A guy like Brewster.

  “Any chance of this Cleaner dude making a run at us?” Frank said.

  “Possible,” I said. “But I have the feeling his job is very narrowly defined. In and out, quick and clean. Cull an already lean herd. At least that’s my theory.”

  “Kinda like Human Resources,” Frank said.

  “Couldn’t have put it any better myself, Frank.”

  I excused myself and made a call to Tomás. I let him know that his prayers had worked. Or at least Elena’s had.

  “So that’s it?” Tomás said. “These are the guys who killed Eleanor Paget?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Isn’t that how this whole thing started?” Tomás said.

  “It’s how it started,” I said. “It’s not how it’s going to end.”

  He asked if I still needed the guns and I said I did because of what could be one last, decisive run at me. This time I could use another gun hand if he was willing. He was. Over the phone I introduced him to Frank.

  “Hey—don’t I know you?” Frank said. “Eleanor Paget’s house? Mr. Gutierrez?”

  I heard Tomás’s laugh boom through the phone’s speaker.

  They knew each other, but by voice only. Frank never got up to Paget’s house. And by the time Tomás left her house to go home, there’d been a shift change. I got back on the line.

  “Sounds like a good, solid man,” Tomás said. “Young. But solid. White boy?”

  “White boy.”

  “Damn.” Tomás laughed. “Solid and white. You don’t find that very often. Good with a gun?”

  “He is.”

  “Better than me?”

  “Tomás,” I said. “Nobody’s better than you, mi amigo.”

  “Mentiroso,” he said. Liar.

  We hung up.

  I was not looking forward to my next call. But it would get me finally, completely off the FBI hook and clear me with the DPD. At least concerning this situation.

  I dug the red burner phone that Skittles had given me out of my bedroom closet and started to dial, interrupted by a knock on my front door. I went downstairs drawing my weapon. Frank’s was already drawn.

  “Yes?” I said brightly, ten feet from the front door.

  “Señor Snow?”

  It was the kid from across the street, Manolito Rodriguez.

  I signaled for Frank to stash his gun, then I opened the door: the Rodriguez boy stood at the door holding a foil-wrapped plate. He grinned widely up at me and said, “My mother, she made these for you. Her and Señora Elena. I didn’t drop any.”

  I lifted a corner of the foil: homemade cinnamon and sugar churros.

  I gave an exaggerated scowl at the plate. “Looks like one’s missing.”

  The Rodriguez boy’s wide grin disappeared. I took the plate from the boy, slid one of the churros out and handed it to him.

  “There,” I said. “That looks like the one that’s missing.”

  “Gracias, señor—I mean—Mr. Snow,” the boy said before bounding down my steps and running happily across the street to his house.

  After I closed the door Frank said, “Man, this is a great little neighborhood you got here.”

  For a second I couldn’t help but wonder where the hell Frank lived. Then I looked at the street through my living room window. The few houses where my neighbors lived. The houses where people had once lived and, though now empty, stood strong and resolute. Waiting for families to bring breath back to them. I thought about my house. My childhood home and how it was beginning to feel like home again.

  “Welcome to Mexicantown, Frank.”

  Thirty-five

  Most bad guys don’t take weekends off for family, church or chores around the house.

  However between the Friday night Frank and I returned from Traverse City and Sunday evening, I’m sure Brewster discovered through various news reports that seven of his men had failed in achieving their objective and were subsequently shot to pieces. Such news might force any self-respecting bad guy like Brewster to take a weekend breather to consider his next play.

  Hence, the relative quiet before Monday’s shit storm.

  Frank, Tomás and I were seated in the single booth at Café Consuela’s, huddled over a bowl of warm corn chips and green salsa. In an hour or so the lunch crowd would be pressed against the door awaiting a coveted table or the prized single booth.

  An hour earlier I’d received a call from Brewster. The usual lofty arrogance was gone. More of his true accent came through in his voice. Austrian or German. Maybe Swiss. There was a noticeable undertone to his anger. Something vibrating below the threatening words.

  “I am done being magnanimous, Snow,” he’d said. “This gets done tonight. Midnight. A place called Rocking Horse. I guarantee you will take the offer I present.”

  My stomach tightened.

  Dani, one of the café’s co-owners, brought us each a mug of hot black coffee, then sat a plate of tortillas and a large bowl of sliced fruit drizzled with yogurt between us.

  “Does he always eat like this?” Tomás said, watching Frank demolish tw
o tortillas in less than a minute.

  “Hey,” Frank said between chomps, “I grew up near Eureka, Montana—small town a stone’s throw from the Canadian border. There weren’t any Mexicans or Mexican food there. So excuse me if I love this shit!”

  Tomás and I shared dumbfounded looks. Tomás said, “I thought we were everywhere?”

  “At least that was the plan,” I said.

  I’d given Tomás a detailed download on what this whole thing was turning out to be. I didn’t want to spring any surprises on a person who was proving to be one of my last living friends. He had no obligation to help me out, especially in light of the breach of his home and the real threat to his family’s safety. At the end of my full disclosure, Tomás’s only question was, “You buyin’ lunch?”

  I said I was.

  “Cool,” Tomás said. Then he furrowed his eyebrows and narrowed his eyes at me. “You know you could just call your FBI girlfriend. Let her handle the heavy lifting tonight. Or maybe your shoulder’s not the only thing that was wounded, Octavio.”

  I didn’t say anything but met Tomás’s hard look with my own.

  “What’s he talking about?” Frank said.

  “Pride,” I finally said, my eyes still locked with Tomás’s. “He’s saying I’m risking my life—maybe yours—because of a bruised ego.”

  “Ego,” Tomás said. “Pride. The distinction is small but real, cabron. Either one can get you killed. So. Give me an honest answer right here, right now, or I walk and pray for the blessings of Christ on you.”

  I drew in a deep breath, and then said, “My dad used to say, ‘The only ground a man truly owns is the two square feet he’s standing on at any given moment. And God help him if he gets pushed off of that.’ I’ve been pushed off my two square feet too many times. By this city. And now this. And I want it back. Every fucking inch.”

  “Okay.” Tomás smiled.

  “Neither one of you owes me anything,” I said. “This is all on me.”

  “Name the time and the place,” Tomás said.

  “Twenty-four-hundred hours. A place called Rocking Horse, 221 South Industrial Road—”

  “Jesus,” Tomás said. “Southeast Mexicantown? Even I wouldn’t feel safe going there in broad daylight, never mind midnight. It’s a no-man’s-land down there.”

  “Fifty-yard perimeter. Just in case the studio’s a kill box.”

  “You don’t look the type that scares easy,” Frank said to Tomás.

  “I’m not,” Tomás said. “But the biggest part of not being scared is not being a fool, gringo.”

  “Did you just call me ‘gringo’?” Frank said.

  “Yeah,” Tomás said, his muscles coiling and ready to snap. “So?”

  Frank exploded with laughter and slapped the table with both palms. “Jesus! I love this part of town!”

  “Frank?” I said. “In or out?”

  He grabbed a tortilla, looked at me and said, “In, dude. For sure.”

  “I’m asking you guys to risk your lives for a fight that’s mine. Big ask.”

  “It’s only a risk if I die,” Frank said, staring at the tortilla like it was manna from heaven. “If I live through this then there wasn’t no risk, right?”

  If Brewster had sent seven men to handle two women in Traverse City, then tonight would be his version of the Invasion of Normandy, Tet Offensive or Korengal Valley. I had caused his banking enterprise irreparable damage—and that meant his life was on the line. A life, I imagine, that had until now consisted of expensive suits, champagne, beautiful whores and the aphrodisiac of power fueled by other people’s money.

  We ate a light lunch—at least light for Tomás and me—and agreed on the perimeters of our counterinsurgency at Rocking Horse.

  I had some other things to do before the witching hour. Tomás said he would take Frank back to his house and introduce him to Generalísimo Emiliano Zapata Salazar.

  I paid for lunch and left Café Consuela’s.

  Today was Ray Danbury’s funeral.

  He would be buried with full honors: color guard, twenty-one gun salute, bagpiper playing “Amazing Grace.” The mayor would attend, as would the police chief and commissioner. The choir from his church would be there along with several hundred of the church’s parishioners.

  And there would be his family.

  His wife of twenty-five years. His daughter, a sophomore at University of Michigan studying criminal justice. And his son, a freshman at Michigan State University, studying girls. Portions of the funeral would be videotaped from afar and broadcast on the evening news. Ray’s face was already on the front pages of the newspapers beneath the bold black headlines Fallen Hero of the Thin Blue Line and A Life of Service.

  I would not be there.

  I would be preparing for war against the man who had killed Danbury.

  But first, a side trip.

  As I drove north on the Lodge Interchange toward Detroit’s northwest side, my wounded shoulder began throbbing more than it had been. I didn’t have time to think about the pain so I didn’t. Thank you, United States Marine Corps.

  I made a call on Skittles’s red burner phone. I had been putting off the call, and now there were no more delays.

  No answer.

  I disconnected.

  By the time I was near Detroit’s Boston Edison neighborhood, it was nearly two o’clock.

  Longfellow Street is one of the major residential arteries in the thirty-six block historic Boston Edison neighborhood. Tall pines and old-growth oaks had over the decades formed dreamlike canopies over many of its streets. Boston Edison was a neighborhood of immaculately preserved and meticulously landscaped Tudor Revival, Mediterranean Villa, Italian Renaissance and English Manor style homes detailed with leaded glass windows, cherry wood libraries and carriage houses that now served as garages. This is where those who brought wheels to the masses and soul to music once lived.

  If you moved any one of these homes a quarter of an inch outside of Detroit’s northwest Eight Mile Road boundary they would sell for four times their currently assessed value.

  Instead they were architectural masterworks surrounded on all sides by the encroaching poverty and decay of a bankrupt city.

  I parked in the driveway of a three-story Tudor on Longfellow Street behind a black BMW. The trunk of the BMW was open. I rang the doorbell and waited.

  The door creaked open.

  “Mr. Snow!” a very surprised Rose Mayfield said. “I—I thought our meeting was tomorrow.”

  “I was in the neighborhood. Just thought I’d take a chance on you being home.”

  “I—this is inconvenient,” she said, bracing her body against the door. “I have to get back to work. I’m just home for a quick bite.”

  “I don’t think there’s any rush to get back to the bank,” I said. “The FBI just raided Titan Securities Investments Group with thirty agents and twenty-six warrants. Frankly, I don’t think you wanna be anywhere near your office right now.” I leaned into the door. “But you do want to talk to me, whether you know it or not.”

  Reluctantly, Rose Mayfield opened the door and let me in.

  The foyer was large and decorated with colorful, hand-painted Spanish tiles original to the home. Behind Mayfield was a winding staircase with a handcrafted wrought iron handrail that led to a landing where a round leaded glass window softly diffused the afternoon light. On the landing were two suitcases. I nodded to them. “Going somewhere?”

  “My sister’s,” Mayfield said hesitantly. “In Cleveland. She’s not well and—”

  “I thought you were going back to work.”

  Mayfield looked confused for a moment, then said, “After work. I was leaving directly after work.”

  “Can we sit?” I said. “I promise not to be long.”

  After a tense few seconds, Mayfield nodded and gestured to a room off to the left. A large, dark library occupied by hundreds of thick, serious-looking books and a large, ornately carved desk. In front o
f the desk were two low-back leather chairs. There were framed photos and news clippings on the walls.

  “My husband’s office,” Mayfield said. “I don’t really use it much.”

  “How long has he been gone?” I said.

  Mayfield nodded. “Eight years. Would you like some coffee? Tea?”

  “No. Thank you. I won’t be staying long.”

  We sat in the chairs facing her late husband’s desk.

  “What did your husband do?” I said, looking around at the photos. Her husband smiling and shaking hands with several ex-mayors, including the late Coleman Young and Dennis Archer. And there were awards and citations from the NAACP, the National Black Lawyers Top 100, American Civil Liberties Union, United Auto Workers Union and Detroit City Council.

  “Criminal law for fifteen years,” she said. “Then civil rights litigation. Thirty years of fighting meaningless little skirmishes in a war that will never be won.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you’re very proud of his accomplishments.”

  She gave a short, bitter laugh. “What accomplishments? Dez was an idealist in a world without vision or courage. Did I love him? Yes. Of course. But look around, Mr. Snow. Here we are in the much-lauded 21st century. Fighting the same battles of the 19th and 20th century over and over again. Nobody cares about anything except what color their next iPhone will be.”

  “Without men like your husband,” I said, “I wouldn’t be able to eat at the same lunch counter as a white man. Or I’d be picking lettuce fifteen hours a day for twelve cents an hour.”

  “Eating at a damn lunch counter or sitting at the front of a bus are the little tokens that would have you believe progress has been made,” she said. “The lines are still drawn in black and white. Even for the president of the United States. They’re just drawn in mostly invisible ink. Especially in Michigan. In Detroit. This place—these people—corrupt black politicians and bigoted white business people—it’s Louisiana 1965, only with better lakes and more Starbucks.”

  I held her in my gaze for a moment before she said, “Why are you here, Mr. Snow?”

  “What happened to Kip Atchison?”

  “I—why are you asking me?” she said, sounding both confused and exasperated. “I have no idea where he is! Check the local whorehouses!”