1 Motor City Shakedown

by Jonathan Watkins

  “What’d you say?”

  “Did he turn out to be a creep?”

  Issabella groaned, “Darren Fletcher was a professional associate, Mom. Not a boyfriend or potential boyfriend. It wasn’t a ‘he turned out to be a creep’ situation. It was business. And now there is no business and I just want to sit here and not think for a week or something.”

  “Did he… fire you?”

  “Wasn’t my boss, mom! I’m my own boss.”

  “Of course you are, sweetheart. It’s just—“

  “Our client died! I didn’t get fired. I didn’t find out the dreamy lawyer-guy was secretly a creep. The client was in a coma and now he is dead so there is no case anymore. Prosecutors don’t charge dead people with crimes.”

  “That poor, poor man.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think you can get more work with Mr. Fletcher?”

  Issabella ran her fingernails across her scalp and grimaced. She had gotten away from Detroit, away to this bathtub and her childhood memories to relax. The last few days had been one rotten disappointment after another.

  She’d suffered through being the bearer of bad news to Eugene Pullins on Friday.

  Saturday, she’d called Darren a dozen times from her office. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, it was apparent it wasn’t anything that involved her. If his refusal to return her calls was any indication, their partnership was completely over. It had taken her most of Sunday to admit to herself that the idea hurt her. She didn’t want it to. She didn’t have a rational reason for it. But there it was: the wrinkly-suited, exasperating lawyer had cut her loose. And it made her want to cry.

  She didn’t. Instead, on Monday, she changed course halfway to the office and drove back down to her childhood home for some self-indulgent comfort. She wanted a long bath. She wanted to eat a grilled-cheese sandwich on the front porch in her bare feet, and to fall asleep on the living room couch with a book in her hand. She didn’t want to rehash the whole ordeal with her mother.

  “Bella?”

  Fine.

  “The city says he had a seizure. Probably from the coma and whatever injuries he had from when he was arrested. It was, like…a giant seizure. He couldn’t breathe and…”

  “That is so horrible.”

  “Yep. Mom, I’m going to just soak a while more, okay? I’ll be out in a while.”

  “Of course, honey. I’ll make coffee. You come out when you want to.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Issabella repeated the process of draining out some of the now-tepid water, replaced it with hot. She reclined comfortably, closed her eyes to the world and tried to not think about anything.

  She saw Darren, standing in the doorway to her office. Saw him sitting with her as they talked about the case. His smile was crooked, and he was quick to put it on for her. She saw him in the crematorium, handing her an apple he’d brought for her. Smiling. Encouraging. Yet, there was a sadness there-- in his eyes, a sadness that was always just below the surface.

  She thought of him touching her shoulder in the parking garage as she fell apart. Grounding her with his presence. He spoke to her softly.

  As the minutes drew out, the water lost its warmth. Issabella didn’t notice at all.

  *

  Agent Isaac Schultz leaned against the porch railing and stared out at the emptiness that surrounded Elaine Bright’s old, two-story farm house. The nearest neighbor was just barely visible down the dirt and gravel road— another old farm house, with a new-looking red barn easily ten times as large as the house itself.

  Corn was everywhere, a shag-carpet of row upon row stretching from one horizon to the other. Mrs. Bright’s house was surrounded by those fields of corn, to the point that there was very little yard at all between her house and them.

  Apparently, she was making a nice monthly bundle by letting the neighbor use her land to grow more of his crop. Isaac had stifled a yawn with his fist at some point during the woman’s explanation about the place, so she’d excused herself with a disapproving frown and now he was alone on the porch.

  He pulled his little notepad out of his shirt pocket, flipped it open to a new page and wrote the date, the time and ‘Interview with Issabella Bright re: CI# 201012’.

  He was slipping the pad and pen back into their pocket when the screen door creaked. He turned, and Issabella appeared on the porch wearing a yellow cotton summer dress and open-toed sandals. Her still-damp hair was pulled back in a pony-tail. Her face was freshly scrubbed and free of makeup.

  Her hand was extended, and she said “Agent Schultz? Is that right?”

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  They shook hands.

  “Ms. Bright, I’m sorry to come out here without any kind of notice,” he said. “But it’s important, and I tried your office first…”

  She waved a hand in the air and smiled.

  “It’s fine. But, ah, I guess I don’t know what you could want with me. I don’t have any federal cases.”

  “It’s about Vernon Pullins.”

  “Vernon?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand. Vernon’s dead. “

  “Vernon was getting ready to become one of my confidential informants, Ms. Bright. I think that’s why he’s dead now.”

  Issabella was quiet for a minute, and a small wrinkle of consternation appeared between her eyebrows.

  “I see,” she said. “Okay. Well, I guess we should talk.”

  “Share a meal?”

  “What? Oh. Sure, yeah, that’s a good idea. I haven’t eaten.”

  *

  Darren stared out the big plate-glass window in the front of Harper’s Bar, squinting into the glare of the noon hour. A grim sort of resolve overtook his face, like a man staring into a troubled and uncertain future.

  “Want another one?”

  The bartender was a young guy with gym muscles and salon highlights in his hair. Darren had spied the backpack stashed behind the bar and figured him for a Wayne State undergrad.

  He looked at the three empty shot glasses lined up in front of him, then back at the bartender.

  “Yeah.”

  When the kid came back with the drink, Darren was staring out the front window again.

  “Geez, man,” the kid said. “You look like you’re heading out to a gunfight or something.”

  Darren turned away from the bright rectangle of sun-lit glass and regarded the bartender with a long, implacable stare. He picked up the shot of whiskey and drained it in a swallow. He set it back amid the others he’d emptied.

  “That’ll do.”

  He tossed a wad of bills on the bar, retrieved his worn and battered briefcase from the bar stool on his right, and turned toward the door.

  “You going to be alright, mister?”

  Darren stuck his chin out defiantly and took measured, steady steps toward the door. His gait was stilted, his expression resolute—the picture of a man walking to the gallows.

  “Never can tell, kid.”

  Darren Fletcher was on his way to court.

  NINE

  It was a bright, cloudless afternoon in June and Issabella was having chicken quesadillas and frozen strawberry margaritas with a square-jawed FBI agent.

  Agent Schultz would lean in to take a bite of food, one hand surreptitiously reaching up to hold his tie against his chest so no errant bits of cheese or salsa could find their way onto it, and Issabella would want to chuckle at what a dainty gesture it seemed for a man with a gun strapped under his arm.

  He finished chewing, sipped at his bottle of Labatt Blue and said, “Boy, were you right. This is a fantastic little spot.”

  Issabella had suggested Cactus Bill’s Rooftop Cantina once the two of them were in Schultz’s sleek black FBI car and headed away from the remote comforts of her mother’s house.

  Cactus Bill’s was an open-air restaurant and bar perched atop a three-story brown brick building in downtown Monroe, overlooking t
he narrow, winding Raisin River and the park that ran along its bank. The building was a sort of mall for local businesses, full of little shops that sold ceramic figurines, scented candles and hand-made teddy bears.

  “You know,” she said. “I’ve never actually been here, believe it or not. I just always passed by it on the way to school and I used to imagine sitting up here drinking something fruity and watching people in the park.”

  “And now here you are.”

  “I can check it off my list.”

  Schultz smiled, and it had no irony in it. It was the quick, confident smile of someone who had probably been good at sports in high school and who, even in his early thirties, still had a young athlete’s self-assurance.

  “So how long have you been a secret agent man?” she said-- not because she particularly cared, but it would get him talking again so she’d be free to eat the last wedge of quesadilla without fear of being asked a question while her mouth was full of food.

  “I went in right out of law school,” he said, and there was satisfaction in his eyes when she paused with the quesadilla wedge poised at her open mouth.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Stanford. I went in thinking I’d make it big in corporate law or, I don’t know, whatever area would get me a lot of money and status. But then I went to a Bureau recruiting seminar at the school and heard this old guy—I mean old like he shook Hoover’s hand when he was sworn in –and he talked about duty and service and honor. I guess for a kid like me that was hypnotizing. I jumped in with both feet. That was eight years ago.”

  Issabella swallowed the quesadilla and said, “Wow. Lawyer with a gun.”

  He grinned and shook his head, “Not really. I’ve forgotten everything I ever learned about torts and contracts. Didn’t even take the bar. The Bureau just wanted guys who were professional-minded. They needed people who could actually investigate, not ex-marine cops who just wanted the authority to knock heads in every state in the Union. Now? You’d probably be better off with a degree in Farsi or computer programming than you would with a law degree.”

  The food was gone, and their waitress cleared the plates while the two of them exchanged sipped their drinks. Agent Schultz leaned back and produced a little notepad and pen from his shirt pocket.

  “So,” he said. “Vernon Pullins.”

  “Right-o,” she said and sipped her margarita.

  “Vernon never told you he wanted to be a confidential informant, or what he was doing that got our attention?”

  “Vernon never told me anything,” she admitted. “He was never awake.”

  Agent Schultz set his notebook to the side and leaned forward on his elbows.

  “I’ve been working out of the Detroit field office for the last two years,” he said. “About a year ago I got brought into an ongoing investigation of one of these sad little militias Michigan seems to keep breeding.”

  “Not just Michigan.”

  She said it more out of a protective reflex to stand up for the home team than because of a genuine conviction. Michigan did have a disquieting track record with fringe survivalist types.

  “Well, sure,” he conceded. “There’re nuts everywhere. So these particular nuts are out in Jackson County and there’s like maybe seventeen or twenty of them. Camouflage and beers on the weekends. A dipshit web site where they rant about the socialist world government. And on and on about the second amendment. You know the drill.”

  Issabella nodded knowingly. She didn’t know anything more about militias than what she heard on the news, but it was nice that he included her as someone who would “know the drill”.

  “So we’re watching them,” he continued. “And, long story short, they’re looking to get guns. Not the legal way, or the legal kind. They want full automatics and lots of them.”

  “Oh no,” she heard herself say.

  “Yep.”

  “Vernon.”

  “Vernon,” he agreed. “Apparently, your client was known in south-east Michigan as a guy who could get the goods. He was all over the different web sites. Nobody was coming out and expressly blogging about him being the guy who could get you an armory full of machine guns. But even with what these goofy shits thought of as code words and subtlety, we were able to peg him as the dealer this group wanted to do business with.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Yeah. And, you know, we just flipped through the book until we got to the chapter labeled ‘Patriot Act’. Next day, we had his phones tapped and him under twenty-four-seven surveillance. Last January he meets with the goofballs from Jackson. He’s got a van-full of machine guns and they’ve got a bag of money they earned running meth labs in the woods.”

  “ And you guys swooped in,” she said, picturing the giant she’d seen in the hospital bed, out in the woods with the whitest of white trash, the look of pitiful surprise that must have filled his eyes when he saw the agents with ‘FBI’ written in giant letters on their jackets.

  ‘Poor Vernon,’ she thought, ‘His brother was right. He wanted to belong to something, and didn’t have the sense to know who he was getting in bed with.’

  Schultz continued on, and she listened attentively even though she knew where it was all going. Vernon cut a deal. The FBI looked at him, looked at the militia guys, and decided he was the lesser of two evils. He rolled on them and found himself testifying in front of a Federal Grand Jury.

  “And that’s when everything kind of went south on us,” Schultz said.

  “How do you mean?”

  Schultz finished his beer with a long swallow, made a nodding gesture toward the waitress across the rooftop from them.

  “You really don’t know?”

  Issabella shook her head.

  “We saw him once, and he was comatose,” she said. “Since then, we were just trying to get enough information together to defend him on what we knew would be murder in the first with a sentencing enhancement tacked on to it since the victim was a police officer. Honestly? The whole thing was over before we’d done any real work at all.”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you find any information?”

  “No. Like I said, he died and we never even interviewed him. I’m sorry, I wish I could be more help.”

  Agent Schultz’s mouth pursed into a frown and he jotted something into his notebook.

  He looked back up at Issabella and said, “Three days before the Detroit cops raided his house, Vernon came into the field office unannounced and sat down with me for a talk. He wanted to know if some more information he had would get his already-reduced charges for the gun running reduced down to a get out of jail free card.”

  The waitress appeared with a fresh beer, and he put it to his lips before going on.

  “And what’d you tell him?” Issabella said.

  “I told him it would depend on the information,” he said. “And he told me he had guaranteed golden information that the Detroit Tactical Response Team—the same guys who raided his house the next day –were running maybe the biggest drug ring in the whole glorious state of Michigan.”

  Issabella knew she was just staring at him, but her mouth wasn’t working. He noticed she was dumbstruck, and a satisfied smile appeared on his face.

  “Miss Bright,” he said, “if I’m even half right about what’s going on, your client was just murdered by the most dangerous group of cops in one of the most lawless cities in the country.”

  *

  The Honorable Richard Sharpe leaned away from the bench’s microphone, coughed raggedly into his fist, and thought ‘God damn it, Chelsea. Don’t think I don’t know who gave me this cold.’

  He leaned forward again and hit the button that turned his microphone back on.

  “Apologies. Please, counsel, go on.”

  The defendant’s counsel, who had been standing at the podium with a patient smile plastered on, nodded and began to speak. As he did, his left arm extended out and his hand came to
rest on the shoulder of the shackled, despondent recidivist positioned next to him in an orange jail jumpsuit.

  “Thank you, judge. Your Honor, my client informs me that these recent transgressions stem from his role as a caregiver to his mother, who is terminally ill. And while there can be no excuse for his…trespassing…we do hope the Court will…”

  His stumbling and awkward sentencing argument blurred and became little more than a buzz in His Honor’s ear. Judge Sharpe had noticed movement behind the lawyer, back in the gallery where a dozen-or-so spectators sat around with the distant, empty expressions people are prone to when witnessing bad theater. Someone had slipped quietly into the courtroom and was walking to the little swing-gate that separated the spectator gallery from the area where the lawyers and he himself were positioned.

  ‘Oh, fuck me sideways,’ he thought.

  Darren Fletcher smiled amiably, pushed his way past the swing-gate, and promptly managed to drop his briefcase on the floor. It made a loud thud and disgorged a pile of papers in a half-circle on the floor. Still in forward motion, Darren tripped over the briefcase, lurched forward two steps and caught himself with his arms splayed out at his sides.

  The hack was still droning on about his sainted, care-giving, home-invading-with-a-firearm client. Judge Sharpe’s throat was beginning to feel like an open wound. And Darren Fletcher was going to try and practice law in his courtroom.

  ‘It’s a misery trifecta,’ he thought, and popped another lozenge into his mouth.

  *

  Noel Hammond stopped reading the paper when he heard the sound of the lawyer’s briefcase thump against the floor. He had been aware of the new arrival on the periphery of his vision, a suited blur brushing past where Noel sat in the gallery pews.

  Over the course of his five years with the Detroit Police Department, he had come to recognize just how rote and routine courts were. There were no inspiring, impassioned speeches or riveting back and forth between masterful lawyers—no sign of the sorts of fiery and eloquent performances found on t.v. or in books.