1 Motor City Shakedown

by Jonathan Watkins

  Her cell rang and she was grateful for it.

  “Hey, mom.”

  “Morning, Bella.”

  “You too.”

  “Everything fine?”

  Issabella rolled her eyes to the ceiling as if her mother, the head librarian of the Monroe County Public Library System, were sitting across from her. Ever since her mother had taken it upon herself to Map Quest Issabella’s business address and drive up I-75 to see it first-hand, she had been calling at exactly 8:30 in the morning to ask “everything fine?”

  The first time she made such a call it was to relate her harrowing journey through “that wretched, just awful neighborhood.”

  Throughout the week that followed, Issabella found herself amused with each subsequent morning-time call, as they always brought to mind the image her mother had painted of herself-- doors locked, one hand clutching her cell with “9-1-1” pre-dialed and ready to go if some hooded denizen of the netherworld lurched at her while she was caught at a light or stop sign.

  Now, two weeks into these daily safety-calls, Issabella was growing tired of the whole thing. They seemed less motivated by genuine concern and more like daily reminders that her mother thought she had made bad choices. They were a way to say “I told you so" in disguise.

  “Yes, mom, I‘m fine,” Issabella sighed. She tossed the coffee cup in her trash basket and leaned backwards in her swivel chair, one hand massaging the skin of her creasing forehead.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am in my office, the door is locked and I am non-raped.”

  “Bella!”

  “I know.”

  “To even say that--”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

  “I wish you’d at least make an attempt to find a spot with a firm. I don’t know what you think you’re proving.”

  “Mom…”

  “Well, I don’t. I know you don’t want to hear it, but there it is. What are you gaining with all of this?”

  Issabella closed her eyes, wanting to say “Independence. Autonomy. The ability to never compromise myself. You know, all the things you preached to me when I was a kid? Those words that were easy to say, but that nobody ever seems to actually want to adhere to? That’s what I’m gaining, Mom. I’m gaining the self-respect you earn knowing that you’re living entirely on your own wits and grit.”

  But she didn’t say any of that. Not only because it would wound her mother, but because she was battling her own doubts about her lot in life. Fighting the near-daily bouts of panic was all she could manage. She didn’t have the strength to also shoulder the guilt of having lashed out at her mother.

  “I guess I’m just stubborn,” she sighed.

  “I’ve always said that. Since you were a little girl. You get so hard-headed…”

  “I know.”

  “But you’re okay?”

  “I am. I’m fine.”

  “You’re taking your prescription?”

  Issabella looked sidelong at her purse in the client chair. The little orange bottle full of little white pills was inside—the anti-anxiety pills that made her feel dull-witted and sleepy, like a sleepwalker going through the motions of life without really experiencing it.

  “Yes,” she lied, because she didn’t want to have a fight about it.

  “Alright, then. Good. So…did you read about that man who killed a police officer yesterday?”

  “Really? No, I haven‘t heard anything about it.”

  “You really should keep informed.”

  “Alright. I’ll get right on that.”

  “He was a Detroit police officer.”

  “Really?” She had the cell wedged between ear and shoulder now, her hands reaching through the pile of files on her desktop.

  ‘Time to wrap it up and get to work.’ Her mother would wind herself down on her own if Issabella limited her responses to one word.

  “Well, apparently, the police came to arrest him and he barricaded himself in his home. That’s when he killed one of the police.”

  “Sad.”

  “It sounds like he was in to all kinds of things. Guns all over the house. That poor man he killed. Can you imagine? I wish you’d think about practicing somewhere else, Bella.”

  Issabella stopped. An idea was forming in her mind. It appeared there without warning, as hard and exact as a cut diamond.

  She stared at the mass of folders she dreaded opening. She saw the weeks ahead—a never-ending flow of those folders arriving on her desk, building up, towering over her, a wall of mind-numbing briefs and hopeless motions, all waiting for her red pen.

  The idea grew brighter in her mind’s eye. The light it radiated pushed back the shadows of her fears and doubts, promising deliverance from them. She didn’t pause to question it.

  “So…he’s still alive?” she said.

  “No, I told you: the man shot him. He was young, too, with a family.”

  “No, not the cop. The other guy. The shooter. They didn’t kill him?”

  “You shouldn’t say cop. It’s disrespectful—“

  “Hold on a sec, mom."

  Issabella peddled her chair Flintstones-style around her desk. Lying in the chair reserved for clients (a myth, Issabella thought, these ‘clients’ who stroll into law offices and spend large sums of money therein) were her purse, keys, and the day’s edition of the Detroit Free Press. She picked up the folded rectangle of newsprint, snapped it open, and stared at the front page.

  LOCAL MAN KILLS OFFICER IN DEADLY POLICE RAID.

  The idea solidified, and she knew what she was going to do.

  “Holy Shit.”

  “Bella!”

  “Mom, I have to go.”

  “A professional degree is no license for vulgarity, and I don’t--”

  “Love you, mom.”

  She flicked her phone shut, eyes scanning the contents of the headline’s accompanying article.

  Fifteen minutes later, Issabella Bright had paced the length of her office thirteen times, re-read the lead paragraph of the story twice, sat down and stood up three times, and written a list in pen on the cover of one of the file folders on her desk.

  *.

  The list read:

  1. Reviewing documents for others is NOT your

  future.

  2. This would take a lot of balls.

  3. Gumption, not balls. Mom’s right about the

  language.

  4. The worst that can happen is he says no.

  5. If you pull this off it means real clients and real

  money.

  6. You won’t have to work across from that

  spooky old building. It looks like a creepy

  stone penis and you need to get out of its

  shadow.

  7. Stop making lists. You’re just wasting time.

  8. That’s a fair point. Okay, I’m going.

  TWO

  Detroit Police Lieutenant Allen Phelps parked on the deserted upper deck of Detroit Mercy Hospital’s parking garage, got out of his car, and stood there staring in silence at the huge complex of interconnecting buildings that made up the hospital.

  Somewhere inside it, he knew, there was a man who could ruin Allen’s life.

  He lit a cigarette and kept staring; huffing jets of smoke though his nose. He was an average-sized man, all-in-all, but the intensity of his stare was larger than life. His eyes trained along the windows of the hospital, machine-like and patient. He rarely blinked. Finally, his deliberate searching came to a stop and he settled on one window in particular.

  ‘724,’ he thought. ‘Bingo. Hello, Vernon. You rat fuck.’

  Identifying the room brought little satisfaction, and he sucked down two more cigarettes before Noel Hammond appeared, pulling his gray Buick Regal up alongside Allen’s red Saturn.

  Allen watched Noel get out and walk over to him. Where Allen was all coiled-energy and focus, Noel was a soft-featured man with an easy, self-deprecating smile.
<
br />   “Chief,” Noel said.

  Allen flicked his cigarette out over the ledge of the garage, where it was caught in the wind and carried away in a looping spiral. Allen watched it with a nervous certainty in his gut that he was that cigarette butt, plunging down and down, undone.

  He pushed the foreboding away and turned to look at Noel.

  “Let’s hear it,” he said.

  Noel pulled his notepad out of his jacket pocket and flipped through it until he came to the most recent page.

  “Let’s see. His attending says fractured left forearm. Broken left wrist. Fractured jaw. Fractured left orbital bone, probably with some loss of vision, but we don’t know yet. Severe concussion. Two broken ribs. Severe bruising all over. Laceration to the forehead—that was me, I think. I took a swing at him as they were pulling him down and caught him with the edge of the barrel.”

  Noel pulled his duty pistol out from under his arm and held it up.

  “See? Caught him there and kind of tore, I guess.”

  Allen scowled.

  “I don’t care about your fucking love tap, Noel. Is he awake and yakking his head off? That’s the only thing that matters. Because if he is? You and me, we need to start thinking about heading for the border, pronto. Get it?”

  “He’s on heavy morphine, Chief. I swung by the nurses’ desk and got chatting one of them up. Made out like I wanted to know when we could start asking him questions. She says they’re keeping him sedated until tomorrow night. If the swelling in his head goes down by then, they’ll run some scans.”

  Allen nodded along, his hands on his hips.

  “So maybe we have a day,” he whispered. “That’s plenty of time to get it done.”

  “That’s what I figured, too.”

  Al threw him a withering scowl, his eyes narrowing with contempt.

  “Oh, is that what you figured? You know what I figured? I figured you were going to turn his fucking lights out, Noel. That was the plan, right? Or am I remembering it wrong? Is that it? Did I tell you dipshits to smack him with your guns like a bunch of old ladies swinging their purses, or did I tell you to put a bullet in his fucking head?”

  Noel put his hands up between them, as if he could ward off the Lieutenant’s fury.

  “Lee fucked us,” he protested.

  “Lee? Lee’s dead. Lee didn’t fuck you. Lee got fucked. I just came from the M.E.’s. They were opening his chest with a giant saw! Lee! Lee, with his brain getting weighed on a scale and his guts laid out, and you’re blaming him?”

  Noel watched the lieutenant building up his outrage, and recognized it as a situation he didn’t want to let continue. If left unchecked, Allen Phelps was fully capable of feeding a slight irritation until it was a roaring wrath that only physical violence could quench.

  So Noel did what he’d learn to do over the years he’d served under the restless, fury-prone leader of the Detroit Police Department’s TAC Team. He shouted right back into that reddening mask of bluster.

  “Lee broke cover and got between us, Al!”

  He stuck a finger out between them, and watched it pull Al up short, so he kept on.

  “He moved out-- unprotected --and Vernon emptied a Glock in his face. Ewald came in the back and body slammed the giant bastard with his riot shield. Then Mitchell got on him, then Conner, and that was it, man. Everyone was on the ground. What am I going to do? Ask them to lean away so I can shoot him in the head when he’s already subdued? With Ewald there? That fucking guy? He’d have me under Internal Affairs’ thumb in an hour, man, and you know that’s true.”

  Al seemed to chew it all over for a long moment, and Noel wasn’t sure which way it would go. Al was unpredictable. He might grudgingly agree with Noel, and even make some sort of off-hand joke to diffuse the situation. Or, just as likely, he could seize hold of Noel and hurl him off the top of the parking garage like a discarded doll.

  Working under Lieutenant Allen Phelps meant always being ready to adapt to the stormy whims of his nature.

  Finally, Al lit another cigarette and shrugged once.

  “Yeah, Ewald’s a kid,” he said. “I keep thinking maybe he’ll show me something, you know? If he’d just get seasoned and sharp, I’d maybe trust him enough to bring him in to our thing. That’s what screwed the pooch, not having just our guys on the team.”

  “Sure,” Noel agreed, just to be doing it. The idea of sending out invitations to a criminal conspiracy didn’t, on its face, sound like a wildly smart idea to him. Standing there in the heat of June, with the threat of Vernon Pullins still very much alive, Noel realized an uncomfortable truth: the death of Lee Weens had an upside. It meant there was one less person in the world who could testify against him if everything fell apart.

  It wasn’t a pleasant idea, and he felt vaguely guilty about it.

  “Alright,” Al continued. “I’ll handle getting the job done on Vernon. I need you playing interference on anybody who comes to talk to him. He wakes up or gets clear-eyed, you make sure he does it alone, right?”

  Noel looked in the direction Al was staring, and realized the lieutenant must have picked out Vernon’s room among the rows of windows.

  “I got a guy on the door,” Noel said.

  “Who?”

  “Big uniformed kid. I forget his name. Big as a shit house, though. Told him nobody gets in until he hears from TAC command. He seemed to understand.”

  “Seems ain’t good enough, Noel.”

  “How’re you going to handle it?” Noel asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.

  Allen grimaced. “If he’d pop his big black head out the window, I’d get the M42 out of the trunk and shoot him from here.”

  “That ain’t likely.”

  “Yeah, no shit. I’ll use Darnell. Have him call his pet psycho to come out and do what he does. That’ll put an end to Vernon.”

  Al made a pistol with his finger and thumb and pointed it at Vernon’s window. He huffed smoke out his nose and said “Bang, motherfucker.”

  *

  When Darren stepped off the elevator and onto the seventh floor of the Detroit Mercy Hospital, he was achy and dry-mouthed. A thunderous headache was in his near future.

  He paused near the nurses’ desk to apply another round of Visine to his red, watery eyes. Down the hall, he could see a Detroit police officer sitting on a chair, reading a paperback. As Darren approached, the cop’s eyes slid sideways to fix on him.

  “Darren Fletcher. I’m here to see my client.”

  The cop set his paperback on his lap, face-down and open to save his page, and shook his head.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “How many more of you guys are going to try and get in here?”

  “Irrelevant.”

  “What?”

  “Irrelevant. All that matters is I see him. I'm Mr. Pullins' attorney.”

  The cop frowned, folded the paperback shut, set it on the floor, and stood up. He was tall and wide and thick and all-around Big Cop. Darren smiled up at him.

  “You ain’t getting in. She ain’t getting in. Nobody’s getting in. That scumbag in there hasn‘t called anyone and he hasn‘t asked for any lawyer.”

  “She? She who?”

  The cop shot one thumb over his shoulder and Darren leaned to the side, peering past the blue wall of the man’s chest. Maybe thirty feet away, the hall ended. She was leaning against a window sill, arms folded, staring directly at him.

  Blue blazer. Blue business skirt. Blue flat-soled shoes. Briefcase resting on the floor. Challenging stare masking the fact that she had no business being there.

  ‘Yep. She’s a lawyer.’

  Big Cop was still standing there, showing no indication that he was going to change his mind. Darren grinned and he scratched idly at his whiskered chin.

  “Look,” he said, “one of two things is going to happen. Either you’re going to stop pulling this bullshit and let me in to see my client, or you’re going to explain yourself to a judge. You really want to get
yelled at by a judge today? Personally, I’m game.”

  Big Cop shrugged his wide shoulders, but Darren could see a hint of wariness in the man’s eyes.

  “Have it your way,” Darren sighed and pulled out his cell. He pushed one button and put it to his ear. While it rang, he winked at Big Cop and said “Gimmee just one sec. Judge Hodgens should be in by now.”

  Big Cop sneered.

  “Cute. But there’s nobody on that phone, buddy. That’s a weak bluff.”

  Darren held up a silencing finger, his grin widening.

  *

  Judge Chelsea Hodgens was in her chambers playing a game of Hearts on her computer and praying that the night-time cold medicine she’d chugged an hour before would show some sign of having an effect.

  She sneezed, played a high diamond, and dreaded the idea of having to run her day’s docket the way she felt. Her cell rang. She read the number and groaned out loud.

  “You okay?” Judy called out from the reception desk.

  “Darren Fletcher’s calling me.”

  “This early?”

  “I know. It can’t be good, can it? I don’t need this.”

  “Just let it go to voicemail. He’s probably drunk-dialing you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You don’t owe him, Your Honor,” Judy sing-songed from beyond her door, falling back on her rote response to the issue of Darren Fletcher and his unorthodox relationship with the Judge.

  ‘Yes I do,’ Chelsea thought, and pushed the button on her phone. ‘I owe him just about everything.’

  “Darren,” she croaked, her throat raw from a night spent hacking phlegm.

  “Your Judgeship. I’m glad I caught you. Okay, here’s the deal—“

  “Are you sober, Darren?”

  “More or less. But that’s not the point.”

  Chelsea leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling.

  “It’s always the point.”

  “I have a case. A real one.”

  Judy popped her head in the door, her mousy features scrunched up in a disapproving frown. Chelsea stuck out her tongue and waved her hand to shoo her court reporter away.

  “You’re not allowed to have a real case,” she sighed. “And you’re not ready for one, anyway.”