1 Motor City Shakedown

by Jonathan Watkins

  “Cripes, who knows? He didn’t say. He just said you should come down and post the bond. Normally I handle that when it happens, but he said he needed to go over the case with you, so just call you up and there you go.”

  She put her head in her hand and was awash in the memory of Judge Hodgens assigning her to the case. What had she said? Darren needed a voice of reason. Darren needed someone to keep him on the rails.

  She’d had a hundred questions about him, about what exactly this agreement was he had with a judge that required he have co-counsel. But she’d never asked them. She’d gotten caught up in the thrill of being on the case. She’d gotten caught up in the thrill of working with him, of seeing him smile at her and invite her to play his game.

  “I’m a freaking moron,” she whispered into the phone.

  “Well we all got our faults, right? Jail’s on Beubien, downtown. You’ll have to bring the five hundred in cash or money order.”

  “Wait—“

  Theresa had hung up.

  *

  Darren buckled himself into the passenger seat of Issabella’s old Buick sedan, set the orange envelope containing his personal effects on his lap and let out a long, gaping-mouthed yawn.

  “Boy,” he said. “I need a shower bad. And food. I couldn’t eat anything in there. You know what they call it when its lunch time? Feeding. I heard one of the deputies say it, ‘Time for feeding’. If that doesn’t tell you how they view inmates as so much livestock, I don’t know what would. Take a left out of here and get on Woodward. I’m actually just a couple blocks.”

  He sighed, without a sign of discontent. He scratched absently at his scalp and stared out the windshield with a kind of easy anticipation. Finally, he blinked a couple times in puzzlement, realizing the car was not moving. He looked to his left.

  Issabella was staring at him with a calm sort of resolve. She was just as lovely as any time he had seen her, with a recently-scrubbed and healthy glow to her skin.

  “You have a lot of talking to do, Darren,” she said.

  “Hmm? Oh. Sure.”

  “No,” she said. “Not ‘sure’. This car isn’t moving unless we reach an agreement. I will take you home. You will have your shower and your feeding time. And then you will answer every question I have about you and what the hell it is you’re doing to our case.”

  “Ohh,” he said with a chuckle, and his expression sharpened into a wry grin. “Now it’s our case again. Good to hear it, because there’s a lot we have to do.”

  “Say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “That you’re going to sit still and we’re going to have the talk about you we should have had the day you asked me to put my reputation on the line by partnering up with you. Say ‘Yes, Issabella, I am grateful for being rescued from jail and will happily explain myself to you’.”

  Darren looked back out the windshield. He could see the upper-floors of his building from where they were parked outside the jail. Considering traffic lights and the maze of the parking garage under his building, he was sure he could walk home and get to his front door before she could make it there in her car.

  But that would mean leaving her presence, and probably losing her as a partner forever. He could see that much in her flat expression. There was an undercurrent of real conviction in her voice. This was a woman, he realized, who was making up her mind if she wanted to know him anymore.

  “Alright,” he said.

  “Say it.”

  “It.”

  “Good enough,” she said. She started the engine. “Crack a window, Darren. You smell like jail.”

  *

  Noel Hammond pulled into an empty spot on the curb once he saw the car carrying the two lawyers disappear into the parking garage under the Fort Shelby Tower. He was positioned near the corner, with a full view of the garage entrance and the main door to the street.

  He reached into the backseat and grabbed up a plastic bag full of beef jerky, bottled water, a couple little bags of peanuts and a Big Book of Crossword Puzzles. He set the bag next to him, adjusted his seat into a reclining position, and started to wait.

  When the sun was dipping low behind the downtown sky-line, Noel’s cell chimed. Setting the crossword book down, Noel answered with a “What’s up, Chief?”

  Allen Phelps explained the desperate realities of the world to him.

  TWELVE

  Issabella’s relationship to kitchens was problematic. She liked good food, but she had no idea how the various raw materials involved were combined to make something anyone would consider palatable. Her own kitchen was stocked with frozen, square pre-made dinners, bags of chips and canned vegetables.

  Now, looking through the contents of Darren’s kitchen, Issabella was seized with a unique dilemma. Darren didn’t own a microwave.

  This fact was not the most startling discovery she’d made since he had disappeared upstairs to have a shower.

  Upstairs.

  Issabella could not manage to grasp how Darren—a man who operated his business out of what was likely the shoddiest bar in Detroit –was simultaneously living in a penthouse apartment on the twentieth floor of the most exclusive building in town.

  The living room walls were all glass, affording a view of the downtown skyline and the Ambassador Bridge that was breath-catching in its beauty. Upon her initial, cursory inspection of the first floor she discovered a vine-draped and intimate terrace, a first-floor bathroom with a sunken marble bath, and an entertainment room sporting a full bar with a humongous fish tank built into the wall behind it. The kitchen itself was an expanse of stainless-steel luxury.

  While the sounds of the upstairs shower started, Issabella found herself torn between fulfilling her assurance that she would make something for the famished lawyer to eat, and the siren call of the little ceramic-tiled terrace with its wrought iron chairs shrouded in climbing ivy and a view of the Renaissance Center Towers.

  She was sitting in one of the terrace chairs, sipping a red wine cooler labeled ‘Jamaican Me Happy’, when Darren finally emerged from his shower.

  “Hmmm,” he said, and folded himself into the chair next to her.

  “I can’t cook. So I raided your bar.”

  “Really? I love to cook.”

  “I know. I saw all the cookbooks in there.”

  “I’ll order something. Pizza or Chinese?”

  Issabella sipped her wine cooler and watched as all the photo-sensors in the city seemed to communicate in unison, bringing the street lamps to life and stringing the Ambassador Bridge’s length with what looked like white, winking Christmas bulbs. The Renaissance Center towers were glass pillars swimming with the reflected lights of the city they dominated. Far below, muted traffic sounds floated up like a soft accompaniment. She had never imagined a perspective existed where Detroit could look beautiful or metropolitan, but here it was.

  “You cannot really be living here,” she said.

  “Pizza it is. Anything I should leave off?”

  She looked over at him and saw that he was transformed. Dressed in loose kakis and a white dress-shirt open at the collar, the Darren Fletcher sitting next to her looked very much like the man she had seen in the internet clip on the courthouse steps. He was clean shaven and his mop of still-damp curls was swept back from his face. Clear-eyed and relaxed, he looked like someone who belonged in this ridiculously opulent apartment.

  “Darren.”

  He had his cell in his hands and was searching through his contacts list, presumably for the pizza shop. He glanced up at her.

  “Hmm?”

  “Who the heck are you?”

  Darren looked at her and winked as he put the phone to his ear.

  “Meat Supreme?”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  Darren ordered the pizza and set the phone down on the little wrought-iron table between them. He settled back in his chair and seemed content to share the view with her. She finished her ‘Jamaican Me Happy’
and set the empty bottle next to his phone.

  “Alright,” she said.

  “Alright?”

  “I think maybe you can tell me why you were in jail, now.”

  “H.”

  “H?”

  “Heroin.”

  “Heroin?!” she gasped.

  “Yeah,” he chuckled, and stood. “Come on. Pizza will take another forty minutes or so. I’ll show you where I have the heroin stashed. Seriously, I have like a crazy amount of it.”

  *

  When Darren flicked a switch behind the bar, a series of little lights came on inside the massive fish tank in the wall behind him. A rainbow of assorted fish darted in sudden panic, settled, and resumed their lazy, circuitous movements.

  “I call it my No Party Room. You want to know why?”

  “Heroin.”

  “Okay, then. Maybe another time.”

  Darren leaned down, rummaging. She heard what sounded like keys in a lock, more rummaging, and then Darren straightened with a cardboard box in his hands. He set the box on the bar.

  “I won,” he said, and stuck his hands in the box.

  “Won what?”

  Darren produced four rectangular blocks from the box and set them in a neat row in front of her. The blocks were brown, each about a foot long and half as high, and sealed in plastic wrap. Issabella peered close and saw that they all bore a sticker on top that read “DPD. File: 08-2237”, followed by a signature that was indecipherable.

  She looked back up at Darren. He smiled mischievously.

  “Our game,” he said. “I win.”

  “This is heroin?”

  “It is a breathtaking amount of heroin,” he agreed. “I liberated it. From the ceiling above the bathroom in Vernon’s crematorium.”

  Issabella leaned back on her stool and stared at the row of neatly packaged drugs. Darren grinned and waited for her to speak.

  “Those labels mean the drugs are from the police department,” she said.

  “She has taken her first step down a treacherous path,” he intoned. “Can fair Issabella venture further into such dark and unknown territory? Or will she balk and rush back to the safety of her ominously shrouded office?”

  She stuck out her tongue.

  “Keep going,” he said.

  “Well, it’s evidence. It’s a bunch of heroin that was evidence in a case. ‘DPD’ is Detroit Police Department. The identical file numbers indicate the case the evidence belonged to. And the signature is likely whichever cop was in charge of logging all this into evidence.”

  Darren rummaged around behind the bar again. He turned around, opened a little panel on the upper lip of the fish tank, and started sprinkling flakes from a box into the water. The individual fish moved in what looked like telepathic symmetry to get at the cloud of food.

  “Jesus,” Issabella sighed. “Vernon Pullins.”

  “Maybe our client was not, despite all appearances to the contrary, the most upstanding of citizens.”

  Issabella remembered her lunch with Agent Schultz. The bars of heroin suddenly made sense. The drug-dealing SWAT… or Tactic Team… or whatever goofy acronym they were.

  “Izzy?”

  “I know what’s going on,” she said in an animated rush.

  She related what she knew to Darren. He sipped his drink as she talked about militiamen and automatic weapons and, finally, about the FBI agent’s suspicions that Vernon had been killed to keep him from betraying the SWAT team.

  “TAC team,” Darren offered. “But yeah, they’re essentially SWAT.”

  “Right. Agent Schultz is certain they’re running drugs. Vernon was involved in it somehow, but he never got specific because he was waiting for Schultz to get him a written proffer agreement. He wanted immunity before he gave up the names and everything else.”

  The doorbell chimed, and Darren disappeared. When he came back, he was carrying a large pizza box. He laid it and a stack of paper napkins out in between them. They both ate pizza in silence for a few minutes.

  “Darren?” she finally said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Why did you get held in contempt of court?”

  Darren wiped pizza sauce from the corner of his mouth and said “Because I served Judge Hodgens and a prosecutor with a lawsuit in open court.”

  She took another sip, and another bite, and chewed thoughtfully.

  “Darren?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why did you do that?”

  He drained the last swallow from his glass and started making a second.

  “Well, I had a hunch,” he said. “I had the heroin and the heroin had police tags on it. I couldn’t think of a way that anyone except a cop could ever get that kind of evidence out of an evidence lock-up successfully. So, I guessed.”

  “Guessed what?”

  “Guessed that Vernon was somehow involved with at least one dirty cop.”

  He sipped his new drink and laid another piece of pizza on his napkin.

  “That doesn’t explain anything.”

  “I used the file number on the bars of heroin,” he said. “I ran the number in the Wayne County court database and it came back as evidence in a distribution case against someone named Walter Lucas. Walter Lucas is, by the by, serving his time in Jackson. Habitual offender. So I filed a civil claim against the judge on his case, and on the prosecutor’s office, alleging that they violated his due process. Then I went to jail.”

  The pizza was nearly gone, but neither of them was making a move to finish it. Darren rattled the ice in his glass and rubbed his face like he was tired.

  “Let’s go back outside,” she said. “Fresh air.”

  *

  Allen materialized outside the passenger-side door of Noel’s car and rapped his knuckles on the window. Noel hit the button to unlock the door, and Allen climbed in.

  “Nothing?” he said.

  “Nope,” Noel replied, and tilted his chin toward the Fort Shelby Tower. “I bopped over to the front door an hour ago. This Fletcher guy is listed in the top floor. A goddamn penthouse. Lights are on and they’ve stayed on. If him or the woman comes out, I’ll see it.”

  Allen nodded and said “Good”, but it had a vacant ring to it. He had a washed-out haggardness hanging over him. He stared blankly out the windshield at nothing, his hands held limply across his thighs.

  “They hit you hard?” Noel said.

  “Suspended,” Allen answered. “Pending further investigation. Too many protocols ignored. It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

  “You’ll be back on in a week, Chief. It’s just a show for—“

  “It doesn’t matter, Noel,” Allen said, and cast that empty, far away expression on his co-worker. “Neither one of us is ever clocking in for work again. Haven’t you worked that shit out yet?”

  He stabbed an accusatory finger out the windshield at the distant lights of the penthouse Noel had been watching. Allen’s face twisted into an ugly and venomous mask.

  “That fucking shitbag lawyer,” he spat. “That cock-sucking, preening little ambulance chaser blew us out of the water. That suit he filed? That bullshit? That bullshit means the prosecutor’s office—and the judge, for fucksake –are going to comb over the Lucas case like nothing else. Doesn’t matter if it gets dismissed. That asshole just made sure that everyone who matters is about to find out three pounds of heroin went missing off our case. Once they get that, everything’s going to come out. All they have to do is keep pulling on the string until its long enough to fucking hang us with.”

  Noel nodded along and kept quiet. He’d seen his Lieutenant sink into seething fits of rage before. Allen could focus like a laser on an annoyance, stare at it, ponder it, and work himself into a wild-eyed outrage. When he did, Noel understood his job was to listen and agree and nothing more.

  “Which, by the way, isn’t nothing compared to a grand jury investigation,” Allen hissed. “That’s the end, right there. The end of the whole thing. We lose our jobs because o
f the Lucas case? So fucking what, right? Boo-hoo. But that agent. Noel, that fucking guy knows. It was all over his face. He knows. Vernon spilled enough. We didn’t cut him off in time, and now that agent convinced some U.S. attorney to run a grand jury on us. Game over. Fucking game over.”

  Allen fell quiet and stared into the night.

  Noel finally let himself understand. When Allen had called him earlier and told him about the grand jury and the subpoenas, Noel had kept the information filed under ‘wait and see’. He had an infinite amount of faith in his lieutenant. Since the day he, Allen, and Lee Weens had first decided that their drunken talk about dealing themselves into the local drug trade was going to move from talk to action, Noel had known that Allen had the skills and temperament to navigate any problem.

  It was Allen who had the right connections, who knew the right guys still doing stints in Afghanistan. They were the ones who had first reached out to the TAC Lieutenant and suggested that some of the bottomless supply of Afghani heroin could turn up on the streets of Detroit.

  Allen had been the one to push for expansion once it was obvious how easy it was to move their product. Allen had schemed and brooded and found the perfect transportation solution. Allen had driven the entire affair with a flair and confidence that Noel could only admire. The same patience and focus that had made him a death-dealing sniper in the service had been effortlessly broken down, re-assembled and brought to bear in the drug game.

  But now that same man was telling him it was all over. Noel felt the pressures plaguing Allen seep into his own bones. Subpoenas and grand juries meant one thing—convictions. They never meant anything else.

  “I can’t do prison, Al,” he said.

  Allen let out a sharp, bitter gale of laughter.

  “Prison?” he barked. “Noel, they’ll get us on the murders, brother. Plus conspiracy to commit. Plus furtherance of an organized scheme. Shit, for all I know they’ll figure out a way to use that burning project being a federal building to charge us with domestic-fucking-terrorism. Either way, don’t worry about prison, buddy. Worry about the needle in your fucking arm and the pitchfork that comes after.”