Beneath the Book Tower: An Alex McKnight Short Story

by Steve Hamilton

  I pulled up behind him. As we got out of the car, he spun around with a look of sheer terror on his face. Like this is it, I’m about to be mugged, raped, then killed, in that order. He dialed it back about halfway when he saw our uniforms, but his hands were still shaking, and he gave the spare tire a great yank until it just about bowled him over.

  Franklin went up to the tire he had taken off and gave it a kick. “Need some help, sir?”

  “Hell of a place to get a flat, huh? But thanks, I think I’m good.”

  Franklin flashed me a quick look. If a man with a flat tire refuses your help, there’s usually a good reason.

  “How’d you end up here, anyway?” Franklin said. “Were you on your way somewhere?”

  “Just on my way home,” the man said, not looking up. He had the spare tire mounted now, and he was fumbling with the lug nuts. “I guess I kinda got lost.”

  “What, were you on the expressway?”

  “On Ninety-four, yeah. Just going home.”

  “How’d you end up all the way up here if you were on the expressway?”

  The man was turning the first lug nut, and I could tell he was wishing he had one of those superfast power tools they have at the racetracks. Ten-second pit stop and then you’re on your way, no time to answer any questions, thank you, officer, have a nice night.

  “No,” the man said, “I mean yes. I had to get off because I had to find a bathroom. Real bad. You know how it is. Then I guess I just took a wrong turn getting back.”

  “Reason I ask is, we’ve got people who come in from the suburbs and they cruise up and down some of our streets, looking to buy drugs. It’s a bad situation for everyone involved, I’m sure you’d agree.”

  The man turned one shade whiter. “That’s not what I’m doing, Officer. I swear to God.”

  “You mind if I take a quick look in your car to make sure?”

  “What? I mean—”

  “If you haven’t done anything, then we’re cool, right?”

  This is where any man with an ounce of sense or any understanding of the law would refuse the search, but it never failed to amaze me. Ten minutes later, he was sitting on the curb while Franklin pulled a small plastic bag of powder cocaine out of the center console. I went ahead and finished changing his tire, even if it was just to make it easier for somebody to tow the car to the impound lot.

  Franklin called another car to come pick up the man and take him downtown. I knew Franklin didn’t want to be tied up for the next hour processing him. Not on this night. Even as the man was being taken away, I could see him looking up the street at two more kids crossing at the stoplight. It was almost 2:00 A.M. now.

  We got in the car, and as we rolled up to the two kids he opened his window and flagged them down. Two more black kids, fourteen, maybe fifteen. No older than that. They both had jeans shorts on, oversized white shirts with gold crowns. Brand-new Nikes.

  “Hold up, guys,” Franklin said. I stopped the car and he got out. “Either you guys seen Antoine Treille?”

  “Don’t know who you mean,” the one kid said.

  “T-Bird, they call him, right?”

  “You mean T-Bill.”

  “So you do know him.”

  “I might,” the kid said. “Depends on what you want him for.”

  “Just looking for him,” Franklin said. “His grandmother is worried about him.”

  The second kid smirked at that one, but the first kid kept a straight face. “I understand he was meeting somebody tonight, to administer a certain amount of ass-whupping. That’s what I heard, anyway.”

  “Do you happen to know where this amount of ass-whupping was going to happen?”

  “Nuh-uh,” the kid said. “Sorry I can’t be more helpful to you.”

  “How ’bout you?” Franklin said to the second kid. “You know anything more?”

  “I knew about your mama earlier tonight, that’s about it.”

  Franklin probably outweighed both of these kids put together, these fourteen-or fifteen-year-old children out on the streets in the middle of the night when they should have been home in bed, getting some sleep so they could get up early for school. Instead they were out there hustling, and I knew there wasn’t much we could do about it. I knew it and they knew it, because that was the whole point of having kids do the legwork. We could bring them in, but because of their age they’d be back out on the streets within a few hours. Meanwhile, the handful of men running the drug trade in this town would be safe at home, completely untouchable. We’d hear rumors of federal cases being put together, built slowly from the ground up, brick by brick. But meanwhile the whole operation kept grinding away, one long useless night after another.

  Now, if Batman was really in that Book Tower, he’d have a different approach to the problem, right? He wouldn’t have to play by the same rules. He’d find the real criminals behind everything and he’d exact his own vengeance, Batman style. On a night like this, I had to admit, the whole idea was appealing.

  “We just ran some guy in a BMW,” Franklin said to that second kid, instead of folding him up and stuffing him down a sewer grate. “Any chance you were the hotshots who sold him the powder?”

  “You got nothing,” the kid said. He was right. “Go find T-Bill and take him home to his grandmama.”

  The kids turned their backs on him and started walking away. For a moment I thought Franklin might do something rash, but sanity prevailed and he came back to the car.

  “Punk-ass little bitches,” he said under his breath. “Talking to me that way.”

  “It sounds like Antoine’s out looking for trouble tonight,” I said. “Do you have any idea where he might be?”

  “Lord knows. If you really want trouble, you can find it pretty much anywhere.”

  “Well, you’re right about that.”

  “Except maybe that town you were talking about,” he said. “Paradise? That’s really in the same state as Detroit?”

  “It is. But I bet you can still find trouble up there if you really want to.”

  He shook his head as I put the car in gear and pulled away. We weren’t more than five minutes down the road when the call came in. Shots fired. Grand Boulevard, in the old Packard plant. We were already on the east side of town, not more than a mile or two away, so I flipped on the lights and siren and we tore through the night.

  Franklin picked up the radio and told them we were responding. When we got down there, I parked the car in the middle of the plant, where the old walkway passes over the street. Out of all the ruins in Detroit, this was the king. Thirty-five sprawling acres of it, this plant where they once made the most beautiful automobiles the world has ever seen. Now it’s just empty buildings with graffiti on the outside and collapsing floors on the inside. Sumac trees growing up through the holes in the roof. Garbage, rats, broken glass. I chased my share of young vandals and thrill-seekers out of that old wreck, believe me. We all did. But tonight there were shots fired, and that meant a whole different level of police work. Hell, maybe it was just a couple of kids taking target practice, but the way this night was going, I didn’t think we’d get that lucky.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Franklin said. “This place is a city in itself.”

  “More cars are on the way.”

  “Why can’t they do this shit in the daylight, anyway?”

  We both got out and stood by the car for a moment. Our lights were still flashing, and we could see the blues and reds reflected in what was left of the glass. We weren’t hearing any shots now, but just then a lone figure crossed the street in front of us, maybe two blocks away.

  I started after him, with Franklin close behind. After all our arguments about which sport had the superior athletes, this was my chance to show that a former catcher can outrun a former offensive lineman. The prize being getting to the end of the street first and having a much better chance of being shot in the head.

  As I got closer, I saw the kid jump the fence and
head into the plant. Another squad car was coming up the street now, but it was still a few blocks away. With Franklin fading behind me, I was still very much the lead man. I jumped the fence in the same spot and felt the top edge catch on my pants for one terrible moment. I could feel myself falling straight down on my face, but then the fabric tore and I was free. I landed on my feet.

  “Police!” I yelled. “Stop right there!”

  But the kid had already pushed through the door and was inside the building. As I shouldered open the same door, I saw the broken padlock. Now I was in darkness, a completely stupid move on my part. I felt a wall on my left and I put my back up against it, catching my breath and waiting for my eyes to adjust. When they did I could see that part of the ceiling had caved in, and it made a sort of courtyard, with the light from the moon coming down and making everything glow. There was an old refrigerator and a baby carriage and a million other pieces of trash from God knows where.

  “I know you’re in here,” I said. “Just come out now so nobody gets hurt, okay?”

  There was no answer, but then soon after that I heard the clang of metal on metal and I knew he was close.

  “If you have a gun, put it down,” I said. “Step out and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  I waited to see movement. From somewhere behind me, I could hear Franklin laboring to get over the fence. I was thinking I should wait for him to show up so we could have this kid outnumbered, but then I saw the gun barrel. He was hiding behind a concrete column, maybe twenty feet away, and he was about to turn the corner and fire on me.

  “Drop the gun now!”

  I went into a crouch and held the gun with both hands, taking dead aim at the exact spot where his chest would be in another half second. But then I saw the gun falling to the ground. The kid stepped out with both hands up. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt despite the heat. A suitable place to hide a gun, no doubt. He was wearing a Tiger baseball cap. He couldn’t have been older than fourteen, I swear to God.

  “Okay, turn around and keep your hands in the air,” I said. “Then walk backwards to the sound of my voice.”

  He tried to comply, but there was too much garbage on the floor to walk backwards without killing yourself. I told him to stop. That’s when Franklin came into the room.

  “Is this your man?” I said to him.

  “Turn around,” Franklin said.

  The kid turned around.

  “That’s not him. That’s not Antoine.”

  I saw the kid’s eyes narrow. Something was going through his head.

  “Have you seen Antoine tonight?” I said, thinking maybe this was the kid who had the appointment to get the ass-whupping. “Have you seen T-Bill?”

  The kid didn’t answer. He didn’t move a muscle.

  Another car pulled up just outside the building. We could hear the squawk of the radio. Something else was happening, on the other side of the plant. I had a bad feeling about it. I knew Franklin did, too.

  By the time we got over there, they had already put a sheet over Antoine’s body. There wouldn’t be any kind of high-tech CSI forensics going on here. No footprints or fibers or angle of entry. It was just one more kid shot dead by another kid on another summer night. Nothing that would even make the back page of the newspaper.

  As Franklin walked up to the body, he asked one of the other cops to pull back the sheet. I stood next to him as he looked down at Antoine’s face. These kids pretend to be such grown-up bad-asses, but the spell breaks and it all drains away when they’re lying on the ground like that and you can see them as children again.

  “I never got to meet him,” Franklin said. His voice was so soft only I could hear it. “I never saw him after she left.”

  I looked over at him. He was staring at the kid’s face, and I could see this was something more than anything I’d been imagining that night, going straight back to that odd silence he held on the subject of Antoine’s mother.

  “I always wondered,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” I said, although I think I already knew the answer.

  “I never got to ask her,” he said. “But I always wanted to know.”

  “Franklin…”

  He looked at me finally. “Guess it doesn’t even matter now, huh?”

  I didn’t know what to say to him. So I just kept standing there next to him while they covered up the kid again, and then loaded his body into the back of the ambulance and drove away.

  There was nothing else to be done that night. Nothing else but a long drive back to the other side of town, to give Antoine’s grandmother the news. Franklin tried to tell me he could do it on his own, but there was no way I was going to let him do that. We went over there together.

  It was our last full summer on the job, now that I look back on it. Within another year, Franklin would be gone. His two daughters would grow up without a father. I’d be off the force with three holes in my chest and a bullet still sitting a centimeter away from my heart. A divorce. My father would die. Then I’d go up to Paradise intending to sell off his cabins. Instead, I’d feel something about the place, something that matched the way I was feeling inside, and I’d stay.

  I don’t get down to Detroit much anymore. But I know they finally tore down the Hudson’s on Woodward. They imploded it from within, and days later they were still cleaning up the dust for blocks all around it.

  They tore down St. Cyril’s, too. Hell, they even tore down Tiger Stadium. But the Packard plant is still there. It’s thirty-five acres, after all. Maybe it’s just too big to tear down. Maybe it’ll be there forever.

  Oh, and Franklin was right about the train station. He didn’t live to see it, but they did close the place down a few years later. Now it’s like some kind of ghostly black monolith on the edge of the river, all of those windows broken now, every last goddamned one of them. The stone accents torn off, the wiring and the copper pipes stripped from the interior. The whole place gutted and vandalized and turned into a broken wreck. They keep talking about what a treasure it is and how they need to restore it, but for now it’s just sitting there in some kind of limbo between death and life.

  Like the city itself? Yeah, I know. I get it. But like I said at the very beginning, I hate to hear people complain about Detroit. I saw the place at its worst, God knows. But I saw the good things, too. Believe it or not, I still love that city. It keeps getting knocked down, but the city gets back up every time. The city keeps on fighting. No matter what.

  Yeah, that was one night in my life as a cop in Detroit. A long time ago.

  I almost forgot, but the Book Tower? I hear it’s closed up now, too. It hasn’t fallen apart yet, and apparently they might reopen it again soon. For now, it’s dark. It must be a strange sight, especially those Gothic upper floors with the carvings and everything else, so high above the ground but with absolutely no signs of life.

  Batman’s not in the Book Tower now, that much is obvious. He never was. He never will be. He’ll never swoop down in the middle of the night to help the city.

  Detroit, as always, you are on your own.

  The following is an excerpt from MISERY BAY by Steve Hamilton

  Part One

  Chapter One

  It is the third night of January, two hours past midnight, and everyone is in bed except this man. He is young and there’s no earthly reason for him to be here on this shoreline piled with snow with a freezing wind coming in off of Lake Superior, the air so cold here in this lonely place, cold enough to burn a man’s skin until he becomes numb and can no longer feel anything at all.

  But he is here in this abandoned dead end near the water’s edge, twenty-six miles from his home near the college. Twenty-six miles from his warm bed. He is outside his car, with the driver’s side door still open and the only light the glow of the dashboard. The headlights are off. The engine is still running.

  He is facing the lake, the endless expanse of water. It is not frozen because a small riv
er feeds into the lake here and the motion is enough to keep the ice from forming. A miracle in itself, because otherwise this place feels like the coldest place in the whole world.

  The rope is tight around his neck. He swings only slightly in the wind from the lake. The snow will come soon and it will cover the ground along with the car and the crown of his lifeless head.

  He will hang here from the branch of this tree for almost thirty-six hours, until his car runs out of gas and the battery dies and his face turns blue from the cold. A man on a snowmobile will finally see him through the trees. He’ll make a call on his cell phone and an hour later two deputies will arrive on the scene and the young man will be lowered to the ground.

  On that night, I know nothing of this young man or this young man’s death. Or what may have led him to tie that noose and to slip it around his neck. I am not there to see it, God knows, and I won’t even hear of it until three months later. I live on the shores of the same lake but it would take me five hours to find this place they call Misery Bay. Five hours of driving down empty roads with a good map to find a part of the lake I’d never even heard of.

  That’s how big this lake is.

  “It’s not the biggest lake in the world. You guys do know that, right?”

  The man was wearing a pink snowmobile suit. He didn’t sound like he was from downstate Michigan. Probably Chicago, or one of the rich suburbs just outside of Chicago. The snowmobile suit probably set him back at least five hundred dollars, one of those space-age polymer waterproof-but-breathable suits you find in a catalog, and I’m sure the color was listed as “coral” or “shrimp” or “sea foam” or some such thing. But to me it was as pink as a girl’s nursery.

  “I mean, I don’t want to be a jerk about it and all, but that’s all I hear up here. How goddamned big Lake Superior is and how it’s the biggest, deepest lake in the world. You guys know it’s not, right? That’s all I’m saying.”

  Jackie stopped wiping the glass he was holding. Jackie Connery, the owner of the place, looking and sounding for all time like he just stepped red-faced off a fishing boat from the Outer Hebrides, even if he’d been living here in the Upper Peninsula for over forty years now. Jackie Connery, the man who still drove across the bridge once a week to buy me the real thing, Molson Canadian, brewed in Canada. Not the crap they bottle here in the States and criminally try to pass off as the same thing.