Shot In Detroit

by Patricia Abbott

  On a whim, I started the car and drove to the main branch of the Detroit Public Library downtown, parked in a Wayne State University lot for five dollars, and entered the DPL through the main door. Things were a lot easier now than when I’d tried to track my father down twenty years earlier. I put aside the urge to google Howl Heart and instead googled “Cajuan Grace.”

  Thousands of entries appeared, but his recent death notice topped the list. I clicked the first link and found an article listing Cajuan’s survivors: a mother, a brother (Tyrone), and three sisters, (Helena, Bonita, and Athena). I’d bet anything Bill hooked up with one of the women. Why couldn’t I remember the name? He’d mentioned her more than once.

  I googled the women’s names. There were no hits for Helena Grace other than additional cites of her brother’s obit. Bonita had apparently tried her hand at acting. She was a featured actress in plays in Ann Arbor and Detroit in 2003 and 2005. It looked like she moved out to LA in 2008. She’d been in Fences last year at the Santa Monica Playhouse. A couple of other small parts were listed. There were several photos when I checked Google images; she wasn’t the woman with Bill at Somerset Mall, but she looked a bit like her. It was Athena on Bill’s arm. I’d bet.

  Athena. The only local Athena Grace was a nurse at Oakwood Hospital in Dearborn. Her resume, posted for a nursing conference in Cleveland last fall, appeared with a PDF file. Athena had presented a paper on new methods of treating pre-diabetic African-American men to a group of practitioners at the conference. I clicked Google images and a photo of a group of nurses standing in the lobby of a hotel, probably the one in Cleveland, appeared. There were two African-American women in the group of ten women and one man. One of the women wore glasses and looked to be in her sixties. The other one looked a lot like the photos of Bonita Grace and a lot more like the woman with Bill at Tiffany’s. I clicked the picture to enlarge it. There was little doubt. Given the rest of the evidence, I felt certain. Athena was the woman on Bill’s arm.

  Athena’s knowledge of diabetes probably drew Bill to her. He’d mentioned his diagnosis—or his mother’s perhaps—when she stopped by the funeral home, and she’d stepped forward, full of information to give him. Maybe their relationship centered on her medical expertise at first; maybe she was a friend and nothing more. But they hadn’t looked like friends coming out Tiffany’s the other day. Not at all. I could still remember the way she leaned into Bill as they exited the store. It was an intimate gesture; so friendly, in fact, it made me run away.

  That intimacy stung but additionally my mother was with me; I couldn’t bear to have her witness my disgrace. A second later and we would’ve met. I could picture the kind of explanation Bill would’ve given, and I immediately flashed back on an early scene in my life when I’d come in on my father leaving the house, Bunny shouting out obscenities from the porch, Daisy watching from an upstairs window. I’d only seen my father once or twice in those first years after his departure, bringing inappropriate gifts for his daughters, leaving long before he should, bored with our suburban life.

  The next to last time I saw him, five or six years ago, I ran into him playing at a jazz club in New York. Hadn’t even seen his name on the bill when I wandered in. If I had, some answers might have come earlier. He didn’t recognize me with the lights making the audience disappear, but I easily picked him out. It was an all-black band, except for my father on the trumpet. Or that’s what I’d thought at the time—not so strange for a jazz group. After the first set, I ran into him coming out of the restroom; he didn’t look twice. Of course if I’d run into him on the street, I probably wouldn’t have known him either.

  No address was provided for Athena Grace on the resume accompanying the conference paper. I tried a few web address sites, but got nowhere and soon I was back in the car again, driving toward Belle Isle, parking as close to Derek’s sculptures as possible, camera in hand, wanting to take a picture of its remnants before it all came down. It was likely to be dismantled quickly now that the cops were done with their investigation. I wanted to take a picture before it was gone.

  It seemed I was compiling a record of Derek—why I didn’t know. I had a photo of him alive—he’d managed to slip into one of the photos I took of the mounted hands and feet—in fact, he was like an apparition on the print. I’d almost tossed it when I saw it at home the night I developed them. There he’d been with his scarecrow’s smile, waving a Salem cigarette around, looking bleary-eyed at his artwork. He looked ghostlike—an omen perhaps. I also had the photos from his viewing, the ones from the prep room.

  Easing through the underbrush, I came out on the shoreline. Things had changed a lot in two days—what do they call it—a sea change? Derek’s sculptures, or what was left of them, were now encircled by flimsy, orange, plastic link fences—the kind of fence that slumps and doesn’t protect anything—just marks it off.

  Derek’s work, now almost invisible behind the barrier, had been violated with crude additions, vile incursions into his space. People had stuck objects in the holes of the cheap fencing: flowers made of Kleenex, straw, and silk; toys; tiny stuffed animals; crosses; rosaries; baby shoes; pictures of Jesus; a picture or two of people I didn’t recognize. Nothing more than debris—yes, that’s what you’d call it—and on the face of it not so different from Derek’s work. But if Matisse had added a flower to a woman holding a bouquet in a Vermeer painting that would be defacement too.

  People had poked dozens of doll’s hands and feet into the fence. Mimicking Derek’s find, I suppose. The story was too visual for the average nut to pass up. It was the kind of display you saw on bridges over freeways or in roadside memorials. But here? How different was it from Derek’s own work? Or Tyree Guyton’s? Maybe Derek would find it fitting—recognizable. A tribute even.

  Someone had also made a fairly professional sign and hung it from the fence: The Derek Olsen Project. Evidently its creator also saw the link between Derek’s work and Guyton’s Heidelberg Project. Even now a few people were here with cameras.

  “Would you mind moving aside?” one man called out to me. “I’m taking a few shots for the Free Press.”

  Well, la-di-da. I was speechless. Derek, in death, had outmaneuvered me in creating edgy work. Despite all I’d felt for him, a frisson of jealousy passed through me. Not nice to admit it, but it was true. But I pushed it aside as I wondered if Derek’s sculptures were eventually deemed art, would it be reconstructed, perhaps from my photos, to stand as a memorial? Or was it like those roadside tributes for people killed in car accidents, stuff that disappeared in a few weeks or after the first storm? It’d be nice to think that Derek would be remembered through his work.

  “I’m taking photos for Derek’s mother,” I shot back. “She asked me to come down.”

  The guy shrugged, unimpressed, and we jockeyed for the best angles for the next fifteen minutes.

  As I walked back to the car, my cell rang.

  “Ms. Hart?” I recognized Joe Saad’s voice right away. I could also hear background noise from police headquarters.

  “Yeah,” I said, looking around guiltily. I was pretty sure I’d promised him to stay away from Belle Isle. Had someone spotted me and my camera?

  “I can hear the geese. Pretty, aren’t they? Until you look at the soles of your shoes or try to find a clean place to sit.” His voice grew indistinct as he spoke to someone in his office. “Excuse me,” he said, returning to the line. “Look, good news. You can breathe easier. We have the guys responsible for Derek’s death. And the first guy’s death too.” I could hear him shuffling papers. “Jorge Sanchez was the victim. His brother turned up today and identified him. Or what we had of him.”

  “So quickly?” I said, exhaling the least constricted breath I’d let go of in days. “You know who did it?” Could it be over this fast?

  “They’re in the interview rooms right now. Finally lawyering up.” He laughed lightly. “All of them wearing the damned ankle bracelet too. It’s a cobra. They s
hould’ve called their attorneys an hour ago. Or at least before one of them tried to strangle an officer. The guy’s hands were as big as a catcher’s mitt. A lucky break we picked the right guys up. The gang’s new here in the Detroit area, but big in prestige and growing in numbers.”

  “So it was gang-related? Something to do with cobras—the bracelet, I mean?”

  “Yep. Cobra Real,” he said, easily affecting a Spanish accent. “One of the bigger gangs in the Midwest and growing deadlier.”

  “Why did they go after him? Jorge, was it?”

  “Jorge had a conscience apparently and came to the police a few weeks ago with the story of a fourteen-year-old girl the Cobras had gang-raped and left for dead. Couldn’t stomach it, I guess.”

  “So they had to kill him?”

  “Of course—how else to establish their ‘don’t fuck with us’ ethos. And gangs have a way of signaling their intentions through graffiti. More and more warnings go up on their turf when trouble’s about to go down.”

  “Like war drums?”

  “I guess. Anyway, Jorge’s initials were all over the place in bombs with a ‘K’ after his gang name. And the number one-eighty-seven started to appear too in the most recent tags.”

  “‘K’ for kill?”

  “Right. And one-eighty-seven is the California Penal Code number for homicide. Worst number you can see after a name. He should’ve come to us for protection. Once the bombs go up, well, it’s gonna happen.” Anticipating my next question, he said, “Bombs are tagger-talk for graffiti with multi-colored, bubbled letters.”

  “And Derek Olsen looked like a threat?”

  “Haven’t gotten them to admit knowing about Derek’s death, but we will. The catcher’s-mitt-for-hands guy is pretty limited mentally. I think he’ll roll over before the day is out. Just have to hope he’s not so dumb or crazy that a judge or jury will take pity on him. Anyway,” Saad added, “I don’t think anyone from Cobra Real linked you with Derek. They seem too unimaginative to put it together—that a woman would come into it at all. I’m not saying you’re completely out of danger, but I doubt anything’s gonna happen now we’ve made our case without mentioning your name.”

  “Thanks for calling. I know you didn’t have to.”

  “Sure I had to. But I’d still be a little careful—at least until we get the case wrapped up tighter. Till we’re sure this death squad can be put behind bars or controlled.”

  “You’re not expecting me to testify, are you?”

  That idea occurred to me for the first time; I took the photograph showing the marks. I’d figured out what the marks were. Wouldn’t they need me to back them up?

  He echoed my thoughts. “Might have to testify you were the one who took the photo showing those marks. But that happened only after they were mounted on Derek’s sculpture. So what does it mean in the scheme of things,” he continued. “We’ll see. I think they’ve said way too much already. Go find your boyfriend and have a nice dinner.”

  “I only wish.”

  “So it’s like that, huh?”

  Detroit Free Press: Two men have been arrested in the slaying of 22-year-old Marcus Denton, whose cash and sunglasses were the motive in his shooting, police said. Witnesses said the suspects pulled out guns and told Denton to empty his pockets and hand over what they believed to be designer sunglasses, shooting him when he didn’t immediately act. The shooting took place at the City Party Store in Highland Park. The men are awaiting arraignment in the Wayne County Jail.

  (September 2011)

  Driving again, I found myself headed for southwest Detroit, curious to see these “bombs” Saad’d mentioned. It’d never occurred to me the initials or words slapped up all over the city were meant to do more than get recognition for a lonely soul. Or, at most, express a sentiment.

  Years earlier, a tag on an overpass near my freeway exit read “Eunice Williams, I love you forever.” I was taken with the romantic gesture at the time; the thought of the whipped teenager hanging from the railing, spray paint can in hand, was compelling. I shot the tag from several angles, trying to make something of it, but it didn’t go anywhere. I’d always looked at the bulk of graffiti as annoying, ugly, pointlessly destructive, derivative—but relatively harmless. Saad set me straight. It could be deadly; the gang equivalent of a newspaper, the throwing down of a gauntlet: a bomb.

  “Why don’t they put a stop to it?” I asked Diogenes on my cell. “The cops, the city, someone.”

  He’d refused to come along on the drive through southwest Detroit, so I was talking via cell while I meandered along city streets, driving too slowly for the honking cars behind. Many of the houses had disappeared in recent, or not so recent, years. The landscape looked almost rural. At one point, I spotted a pheasant perched on the rusted chassis of an ancient Oldsmobile. His mate roamed on the trash-filled ground below him, elevating the surroundings through their disregard. They looked like elegant ladies with their skirts hitched.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Any of the fucked-up stuff you’re up to lately.”

  Di slammed down a pan on the counter in the restaurant kitchen. I held the phone away from my ear. “Lately, having you for a friend is more irritating than parenting an unruly child. You’re like a dervish, whirling through this city and stirring things up. Right now though, I’m talking about you driving and talking on your cell at the same time, a more mundane concern than whether one of these gangland snakes will off you, but still, a real worry for a cautious boy like me. Next you’ll be texting me while you drive.”

  “I don’t text while I drive. They’re going to pass a law against it, right? And it’s cobras, not snakes. They call themselves cobras.”

  “Distinction noted. But I’m gonna hang up if I hear any squeals.”

  “I used to smoke, drink coffee, and drive—all at once,” I said, setting my coffee down. “You never objected.”

  “People never thought of wearing seatbelts once either. It’s called progress. Am I supposed to be impressed with your ambidexterity? And they do try to stop the tagging,” he said, returning to my question. “They—meaning the police, community groups, schools—try all the time.”

  I could barely hear him over the continual clatter of pans. Diogenes was preparing a wedding dinner for the pampered daughter of a U.S. Rep and five hundred members of the Rep’s closest PAC.

  “Don’t ask me why I agreed to it. Business is usually slow in late summer and it seemed like a good idea a year and a half ago.”

  “So what do they do to stop the tagging? The powers that be,” I said, returning to the scene in front of me.

  “One tactic I read about in the Metrotimes was a project called ‘Art in the Alley.’ Area school kids paint murals over the graffiti.”

  “Sort of like sticking a daisy in the barrel of a gun.”

  “Hey, I’m surprised you remember that ad,” he said, “being as culturally deficient as you are.”

  “I always remember a good photo.”

  “They have a gang squad too, I think. Look, I’m no expert on gang activity, you know. Anyway, what are you doing down there, Violet? Looking for your name on a school fence with—what was it—a one-eight-seven after it? Asking in cash-checking places and liquor stores about Cobra Real? Chasing tattooed guys down back alleys? Playing a Latino station on the radio with your windows wide open?”

  “Boy, if you’re not the king of the ethnic stereotype. And aren’t they your people? I haven’t set a foot outside my car. Remember, Saad said I was out of it.” I paused to make a left turn and added, “Actually, I thought I might take a few pictures. Which is what I do. Remember.”

  I was closing in on the end of the project with Bill. No matter how it turned out, I was stopping after a dozen photos. It wouldn’t hurt to start looking around for a new idea. Maybe taking pictures of graffiti would turn out to be another shopping cart fiasco, but maybe not. Graffiti was a show of streng
th in these parts. Location could make the tags compelling: gritty scenes from post-apocalyptic Detroit. That’s what this neighborhood looked like. Except where was the graffiti?

  “Did Saad actually put it like that? Did he say, ‘Vi, it’s okay to drive around southwest Detroit and look for festering trouble. Insinuate yourself into the gangs.’”

  “No. But he did say the case was about wrapped up. Probably the danger was past.”

  “Look if you’ll wait till tomorrow, I’ll come with you. We can stalk the streets, looking for trouble. Get one of those temporary tattoos, wear muscle shirts to show off, swill beer from those huge bottles while we drive here and there. God, I’m turning myself on.”

  “Aw, I’m just driving down West Vernor, Di. A million other women are here too. Look, there’s one now. Going into a bodega with a baby in her arms, and nobody’s tailing her or trying to spray paint. So don’t break out in hives over this. I’m Ms. Nobody in this part of town.”

  I turned off my cell and tossed it on the seat. I needed both hands for what lay ahead.

  Thirty minutes later, I concluded I didn’t know where or how to look for gang graffiti. The stuff I’d seen looked like harmless tagging. Schoolyards, Saad had said—fences, the sides of buildings, railroad yards. The only fences were cyclone jobs. Maybe gangs avoided tagging on the main thoroughfares like Vernor, Fort or Michigan Avenue, transmitting their arcane messages from the neighborhoods behind the central drags. Secret places for those in the know. And that excluded me.