Raylan Goes to Detroit

by Peter Leonard

  “You think it’s Rindo, boy misses his mom?”

  Bobby shrugged.

  “Why don’t you call the number,” Raylan said, “see who answers?”

  “What do you do, pretend you’re selling something? ‘Hey, we’re having a special on window cleaning, save twenty percent’—something like that?”

  “Or you say, ‘Hey, man, I know where you’re at, and I’m coming to get you.’”

  “That how you did it in Kentucky?”

  Raylan glanced out the window at two teenage bangers getting into a Chevy lowrider parked on the street. “You send a BOLO on Rindo to the marshals in Toledo and the PD?”

  “I’m a step ahead of you, bro.” Bobby made a left turn on a side street and stopped in front of a clapboard house that looked freshly painted and had a garden full of flowers, the Rindo residence standing out, looking good in this neighborhood of abandoned, dilapidated homes, a shiny, brand-new Cadillac in the driveway.

  Raylan said, “What’s this woman do, she can afford a car like that?”

  “Has a son traffics heroin.”

  Bobby knocked on the door. A woman’s voice on the other side, heavy barrio accent, said, “What you want?”

  “US Marshals, we need to speak to Maribel Rindo.”

  Raylan saw the woman looking out the window at them and then heard a deadbolt retract and the door opened. Mrs. Rindo was short and plump with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a scowl on her face, but still pretty in her late forties.

  Bobby said, “Can we come in and talk?”

  “You can talk from there.”

  “Do you know where Jose is?” Bobby said.

  “No tengo ni idea.”

  “Está en la casa?”

  “No, no lo he visto durante algún tiempo.”

  “She says he isn’t in the house and she hasn’t seen him for some time,” Bobby said to Raylan. “But you talked to him on the phone,” he said to Mrs. Rindo.

  “Pepe call on my birthday.”

  “When was that?”

  “Two days ago.”

  Raylan said, “Mrs. Rindo, who do you know that lives in Toledo, Ohio’s been calling you? It’s Jose, isn’t it?”

  Mrs. Rindo said, “No lo entiendo.”

  Bobby Torres glanced at Raylan. “Says she doesn’t understand.” He fixed his gaze on Mrs. Rindo.“Quien le ha estado llamando de Toledo, Ohio?”

  Mrs. Rindo shook her head. “No conozco a nadie en Toledo.”

  “Says she don’t know anyone in Toledo. Anything else you want me to ask?”

  “Does she know the penalty for aiding and abetting a fugitive?”

  Bobby said, “Sabes la pena por ayudar e instigar a un fugitivo.”

  “No lo ayudaba.”

  “Okay, we can go,” Bobby said.

  Walking to the car, Raylan said, “Isn’t that nice. Boy’s on the run, a fugitive from justice, but doesn’t forget his mom’s birthday.” He paused. “What was the last thing Mrs. Rindo said?”

  “She hasn’t helped him.”

  “She knows where he is, doesn’t tell us, it’s about the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “You want to arrest her? Cause I was hoping we’d go after Leon Harris.”

  •••

  Bobby Torres was chewing a bite of sandwich as he brought the binoculars to his eyes and, still chewing, said, “Somebody’s in there, I can see him.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Looking out the window at us. Knows all the cars on the street. Sees one he doesn’t recognize, gets paranoid. Leon Harris has two warrants for attempted murder. Last week the PD said Leon shot at his brother five times after a verbal altercation outside Cliff Bell’s, a nightclub over by Comerica Park.”

  Raylan said, “Good thing for the brother, Leon doesn’t know how to shoot.”

  They were parked on Westphalia in East Detroit, one of the worst precincts in the city, doing surveillance on Leon Harris’s girlfriend’s residence. Raylan studied Leon’s face on the wanted poster, a black dude with an Afro and big diamond studs in his ears, reminding him of earrings his ex Winona used to wear. They looked better on her.

  Bobby took another bite of his sandwich that had a strange smell.

  “What is that? Raylan said.

  “Chorizo and peppers, want the other half?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Last night, Lakisha Bell, Leon’s lady, came home in a taxi, went in the house, said she was gonna get money, be right back, and never returned. The cab driver waited and after a time went and knocked on the door. The driver and Leon got into argument. Leon shoots the dude, grazes him. Driver runs to his car, Leon chases, shoots him two more times. Dude’s in the hospital.”

  “Usually, somebody shot three times is in the morgue, but with Leon’s track record all bets are off, huh?”

  “Read his sheet? Leon likes to drink, likes to get high.”

  “Well there you go, that’s his problem, why his aim’s so bad.”

  “What do you think, send him to rehab so he’ll be more accurate?”

  “There’s an idea.”

  Raylan noticed a photograph positioned on the dash over the fuel gauge. “Who’s that?”

  Bobby reached for it and handed it to him. “My wife and boys.” The woman was petite, blonde, and attractive. The three boys looked like Bobby. It was interesting to think of Bobby, the tough deputy marshal, having a normal side to his life.

  “What about you? No romantic interests at the moment?” Bobby paused. “Got kids from your first marriage?”

  “My only marriage. Two boys: Ricky and Randy, grown now, living in LA, and a daughter Willa who lives with her mom.”

  Bobby’s phone rang. He turned it on said, “Talk to me,” and listened for a couple minutes. “All right, let me know.” He glanced at Raylan. “Guy fitting Jose Rindo’s description just shot a state trooper outside Columbus, Ohio. It was a routine traffic stop. Trooper asked for his driver’s license, Rindo pulled a gun. He’s driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a Michigan plate registered to a Caroline Elliott. Detroit Police questioned her, she said the Jeep was stolen from a parking garage downtown.

  “You believe her? She have any connection to Rindo?”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised. Dude’s got ladies all over the city.”

  “Anyone else in the Jeep?”

  “Trooper says he only saw Rindo.”

  “What’s the trooper’s condition?”

  “Critical but maintaining, shot once in the stomach. Ohio law enforcement has a BOLO on Jose Rindo and the Jeep. Someone’s gonna recognize him.” Bobby reached behind him, picked up the heavy vest, slipped it over his head, and adjusted the straps.

  Raylan said, “Meantime, let’s go get Leon Harris. What do you say?”

  “Soon as the team gets here.”

  “Man can’t shoot, you know that. What’re you worried about?”

  “That’s how we do things. Don’t take unnecessary chances. I want to go home tonight, see my family.”

  “What’s your wife think about you being a deputy marshal?”

  “Likes it, except that I’m never around.” Bobby looked in the rearview mirror. “Okay, here they are.”

  In the side mirror, Raylan could see their cars had pulled up, and parked a few houses behind them, Conlon and Street crossing the road with shotguns, and Jim Tom right behind them, carrying an AR-15.

  At the front door, Bobby knocked and said, “US Marshals.” Raylan, five feet to his right, was looking in the big picture window at the living room. There was furniture but no sign of Leon Harris. Bobby gave it a couple seconds and swung the Blackhawk Thunderbolt breeching ram into the door and almost took it off the hinges.

  They entered the house, Bobby leading the way, shotgun racked and ready
, Raylan behind him two hands on the Glock. They secured the living room and kitchen. There was a warm bucket of KFC on the counter suggesting someone had just picked it up and was in the house. Raylan grabbed a drumstick out of the bucket, took a couple bites—it was good—and threw it in a plastic trash bin.

  Bobby called everyone inside. Jim Tom and Street searched the basement. Conlon positioned herself at the top of the stairs while Raylan and Bobby searched the master bedroom. Raylan checked the bathroom, wet towel on the floor. Checked the closet, checking out Leon Harris’s hats: sport caps and fedoras, pork pies and Borsalino Panamas. Man liked his lids. He checked under the bed, found an AK-47 with a full magazine.

  Raylan searched the other two bedrooms, same result. They met in the hall a few minutes later. Street appeared at the bottom of the stairs, looked up and shook his head. Leon Harris wasn’t in the basement, wasn’t in one of the bedrooms, so unless he somehow got past them, there was only one place left to look.

  Bobby glanced up at the hallway ceiling, pointing to the attic door. It was too high to reach. Raylan walked into the master bedroom, picked up a chair, carried it into the hall, and got up on it. “Listen, man, be careful,” Bobby whispered. “Don’t take any chances. You see him, come down. We’ll light it up.”

  Raylan reached to take hold of the latch, pulled the door down, and unfolded the ladder. No one wanted any part of a situation like this, going blind into a dark unfamiliar space looking for an armed fugitive with nothing to lose. He climbed the ladder, flashlight in one hand, Glock in the other.

  Almost to the opening, he stopped, glanced down at Conlon holding the 870 Remington. Street was at the top of the stairs and Bobby was directly below him. Raylan went up, sweeping the flashlight beam across the attic walls, over a trunk, a bookcase, and a chair; sunlight from two vents on opposites sides of the room made patterns on the wood-plank floor. “Leon, you up here, drop your weapon, let me see your hands. It’s over, man, you can relax, no more looking over your shoulder.”

  But Leon Harris didn’t show himself, and now Raylan stepped into the attic, crouching, aiming the flashlight beam and the red dot of the Glock’s laser sight. He checked every inch of the room, training the flashlight on layers of insulation between the joists, thinking of the time he’d found an armed robber in a situation like this, hiding under a pink blanket of Owens Corning R-13, sweating, covered with threads of fiberglass.

  Raylan climbed down the ladder, folded it up, and closed the attic door. He looked at Bobby and pointed at the stairs. They all went into the living room where Jim Tom was standing sentry. “Well I guess he’s not here,” Raylan said, winking at Bobby, and whispering, “Leon’s in the house. Man, I can feel him.”

  “I hear you. Okay, let’s do it, let’s go.”

  •••

  Leon Harris saw them in the front yard, the US Marshals with all their guns. Watched them cross the street and get in their cars. Motherfuckers think they good, can’t find a brother in a house. He saw em drive away, Leon still in his secret hiding place where he kept his stash, guns, and money. Had a little bed, had a little window with a screen over it that look like an air vent.

  Leon heard the motherfuckers bust in, heard em downstairs, upstairs, heard one motherfucker in the closet bout six inches away on the other side of the wall—Leon wanted to say, “In here, motherfucker.” Heard em overhead in the attic, and then heard them drive away. Young niggers across the street having fun with it. Like being in a video game: Mayhem In the Hood.

  Though he was jonesing for the pipe, Leon held off, give em like fifteen minutes. He sat on the side of the bed grinning, enjoying the gangsta life. And then, when he thought enough time had passed, he stoked the pipe, inhaled deep, felt the buzz settle over him, put the nickel plate in his waistband, and now it was time to come out of the closet.

  Raylan heard what sounded like a sliding door closing, and then the floor creaking in the bedroom directly above him, and then a man’s voice was talking; he was on the phone. Raylan couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it didn’t matter. Leon would be coming down soon enough. What Raylan didn’t expect was a car pulling up. He stood at the picture window watching the skinny black girl in a pink ensemble approach the house, walk up on the porch, stop and take a long look at the front door and the shattered molding.

  Raylan was crouching behind a chair when she came in, crossed the living room, and went upstairs. On the landing he heard her say, “What happen your door?” Next thing he heard was the headboard banging against the wall, the girl moaning and screaming. Leon didn’t waste any time. Probably his last chance doing it with a woman.

  It went on for a while, and then silence. He heard a toilet flush. Next thing the girl was at the top of the stairs. She walked down, holding onto the banister, looked up, and said, “Nigga, what’d you do to me? I can’t hardly walk.”

  “Call, you want some more.”

  The girl left the house and Leon Harris came down carrying a backpack by one of the straps, and a nickel-plated semiautomatic, a show-off gun in his waistband, Leon singing:

  I can give a fuck bout no hater.

  Long as my bitches love me.

  And he didn’t have a bad voice. When Leon was halfway across the room, Raylan approached him from behind. “Feeling pretty good about yourself, huh?”

  Leon glanced over his shoulder, right hand dropping to his waist, going for the gun. Raylan’s Glock was holstered but he didn’t have any worries about drawing it. “Leon turn around. I want to give you a fair chance.” Leon turned facing him. “Now I’ve got to ask you. Can you pull your pimp gun before I pull mine? That’s what’s on your mind, isn’t it, making you hesitate? Best you can do is a tie, and you’ll be dead.” Raylan let that sink in before he said, “I want you to pinch the grip with your thumb and index finger, raise the weapon out of your waistband, place it on the deck, and slide it over.”

  Leon Harris did it just as Raylan had instructed.

  “Well, you give yourself an A for following directions. Now drop the backpack and put your hands behind your head.”

  When Leon was cuffed and sitting on the stairs, Raylan called Bobby and said, “You still looking for Leon Harris? Cause he’s here waiting for you. Come and get him.”

  Four

  Caroline Elliott is getting calls from the same Toledo number’s been calling Jose Rindo’s mama,” Bobby Torres said. “What do you think of that?”

  “You check her for warrants?”

  “I ran her all the way around. Did one hundred and twenty days for possession of a controlled substance in 2012. Been clean since.” Bobby paused. “First, though, I got us set up with Rocky Castro, gangbanger switched bracelets with Jose.”

  They met him in a conference room at the Wayne County Jail, Bobby and Raylan sitting on one side of the table as Rocky Castro hobbled in wearing yellow fatigues and ankle chains, his hands cuffed to a transport belt, a rig the Detroit marshals called a three-piece suit. The guard sat Rocky across the table from them.

  Bobby said, “First of all, congratulations. In my experience no con has fucked up bigger than you did. Two days to bond out, you give your bracelet to a man wanted for three homicides. What is it about this place you like so much? Is it the food? The company? Tell me, will you?”

  “Said he was gonna have me killed I didn’t give it to him.”

  “Tough guy like you, that’s hard to believe. What really happened?” Raylan studied the homemade tats: a green-and-yellow snake coming up the left side of his neck, and the number 5 on his forehead.

  “Happen like I tole you.”

  Raylan said, “You know what they’re gonna add to your sentence? Instead of getting out, you’re gonna do a year, maybe two, less you can tell us something.”

  “We tell the court you been totally co-op,” Bobby said, “they gonna take it easier on you, cut you some slack.” He paused
. “Either that or ask Mary, the Blessed Virgin, for help. Might also want to have her inked on your back, the hard-timers won’t make you their bitch.”

  Raylan said, “Where’s Rindo?”

  “You think he tole me where he’s going?”

  •••

  Midafternoon, they were on the Lodge freeway in heavy traffic. Bobby said, “Think Rocky was being straight with us?”

  “You mean did Rindo threaten him? No. I think Rindo offered him money or drugs for the bracelet. And Rocky was dumb enough to take the deal.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes until Bobby said, “Hey, that was some good work this morning. I’m impressed. How’d you know Leon was in the house?”

  “Bucket of chicken on the counter, food in the refrigerator, dishes in the sink, carryout containers in the trash. There was a car in the garage and a wet towel up in the bathroom.”

  “Okay, looked like someone was living there, but how’d you know he was hiding?”

  “I’ve found fugitives in crawl spaces, attics, under floorboards, behind hot water heaters, in car trunks, you name it. I just had a feeling.”

  “You look at Leon cuffed on the porch, see his eyes?”

  “I must’ve missed that.”

  “There was no light behind the windows,” Bobby said. “Dude’s stone cold, got the black eyes of a predator.”

  Raylan said, “Where he’s going, that’ll come in handy.”

  Bobby took a lane and cut somebody off. Raylan heard the horn sound behind them and the car in question, a Ford Taurus, came around Bobby’s side honking, the driver with his arm through the sun roof giving Bobby the finger.

  “You gonna let him get away with that?”

  Bobby looked at Raylan and grinned.

  “All the people to fuck with, he picks a US marshal with a shotgun in the back seat.”

  “Luck is with him, man,” Bobby said. “He should buy a lottery ticket, play the horses, go to the casino.”

  The sign said Park Place. They drove into the complex of redbrick row houses, Bobby following the nav system on his laptop till he found the right address, pulled over, and parked. Raylan said. “What’s Caroline Elliott do for a living?”