1 Motor City Shakedown

by Jonathan Watkins

  She rang the doorbell again. From somewhere in the house, a dog whined.

  “Stop being nervous about scaring me.”

  “I want to be partners,” he said, and reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, the way he had done in the hotel when they were together. She felt a warm rush in her stomach.

  She was going to say something more, but the door opened and a middle-aged Native American man in jeans and a green sweater stood there. His long, raven-black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. At his heels, a Chihuahua skittered and whined and generally looked unpleasant.

  “Johnny Two Leaf?” she said.

  The man looked at her, frowned, and looked at Darren. His eyes narrowed with open suspicion and he made no move to open the screen door.

  “You two don’t look like cops,” he said.

  “No, we’re not police,” she said and tried a reassuring smile. It had no visible effect on the man, who just scowled and remained rooted where he was.

  “We’re lawyers,” Darren offered. “Which, let’s face it, probably isn’t much of an improvement over the five-oh, is it? Historically speaking, I mean. What with the broken treaties and the—“

  “You can stop now, Darren.”

  “—general swindling and all that. But we’re not those lawyers.”

  “Darren.”

  “We’re the good ones.”

  “Christ,” the man said. “You two with that dealership? Because I’ll tell you right now, Johnny hasn’t got a pot to piss in.”

  They both stared with blank expressions.

  “Not the dealership? Not about the broken windshields?”

  Issabella shook her head.

  “And not cops?”

  “We’re here because we think Johnny’s in trouble,” Issabella said. “His boss, Vernon Pullins, was our client. Some people killed him, and we think Johnny needs our help now to stay out of the whole mess. Can we talk to him?”

  The man seemed to be digesting the information, his scowl shifting into a look of concern.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and opened the screen door to them. “I’m Patrick. Johnny’s father. Johnny’s not here, but I think I know where he is. Let me just get my things and we’ll go together.”

  They stepped in and Patrick Two Leaf disappeared into another room. The Chihuahua remained positioned in front of them, whining, sniffing and barking weakly at them both. Darren looked down at the dog and made a face.

  “I hate these things,” he whispered.

  *

  They followed Patrick Two Leaf’s SUV up into the rural heights ringing the town, curving along on roads of hard-packed dirt. Marquette was eclipsed from view, swallowed up in the march of pine.

  “Broken treaties and swindling?”

  “I was bridging the cultural divide.”

  “Of course. You two are like brothers now.”

  Patrick Two Leaf’s SUV turned down into a narrow lane of gravel, and the two vehicles dipped down into a little wooded basin. Darren and Issabella could see a single, one-story cement building squatting in the center of the basin. An improbably tall brick smoke-stack rose out of its flat roof. Darren brought the Buick to a stop next to Patrick’s SUV and offered Issabella a wry grin.

  “When we meet Johnny, you be good cop and I’ll be bad cop.”

  “Good idea,” she said. “Or, even better, I’ll be sane person and you be quiet.”

  “That’s crazy enough it just might work.”

  “Let’s give it a try.”

  *

  The three of them stood in a little semi-circle and stared down at the pyramid of heroin on the office desk. Patrick Two Leaf was silent; regarding the neatly arranged monument of narcotic bricks like it was a dark premonition of the future, a sign-post on the way to his son’s inevitable incarceration.

  Darren glanced around the office at the spoiled food and the crazy pattern of hammer holes in the walls. Issabella looked down to make certain she hadn’t accidently brushed up against anything.

  Darren cleared his throat and put one hand on Patrick’s shoulder. He offered the horrified man an encouraging smile.

  “It could be worse,” he said, and patted Patrick’s shoulder.

  Patrick Two Leaf blinked, coming back to the here-and-now. He turned his head to regard Darren with half-lidded eyes.

  “How, exactly?”

  Darren thought for a second. He looked at Issabella, but she just shrugged.

  “There’s not a pregnant girl involved?” Darren offered weakly.

  “Oh sweet heaven,” Patrick moaned, and buried his face in his hands. He said something else, but it was muffled in his palms.

  “What’s that?”

  Patrick Two Leaf lowered his arms and looked straight ahead at the drooping, abused Union Jack pinned and stapled to the wall.

  “My son is going to prison isn’t he?”

  Darren’s expression became somber, and he straightened as he looked the worried man in the eye. An earnest sort of dignity seemed to infuse him.

  “Mr. Two Leaf, we’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen. We need to find him. If we can do that, we can help him. And I promise you that’s what we’re going to do. No matter how bad it is.”

  Issabella watched as the panic that had been threatening to overcome Patrick Two Leaf receded under Darren’s clear-eyed assurance. The wrinkled, unshaven lawyer was gone, replaced with the man Issabella had glimpsed occasionally over the last week, the man who had been trembling with outrage over Vernon’s death. This was the Darren who had risked his license on a rash scheme to smoke out his client’s killer by targeting a sitting judge with a bogus lawsuit. This was the Darren who had challenged her on the terrace of his apartment, a fire in his eyes, moments before seizing her and taking her for himself.

  Issabella blinked. Darren and Patrick Two Leaf were both looking at her with quizzical expressions. She felt herself blushing, so she turned away and rounded the desk, careful to watch where she stepped. The swivel chair behind the desk looked free of clutter or anything that might stain, so she sat down.

  “Darren’s right,” she said. “We need to find your son, and fast. He’s got two warrants out, and we need to get those addressed as soon as possible.”

  Patrick nodded and crossed his arms across his chest.

  “Johnny’s been in plenty of trouble,” he said. “Not the kind that this amount of drugs would get him. But he’s only twenty-two and the cops around here know him on a first name basis, so…”

  Issabella pushed the button on the computer monitor and tapped some keys on the computer’s keyboard. The monitor flashed to life.

  “Honestly, I thought Vernon and this crematorium thing was just what he needed,” Patrick continued. “He was in charge up here. Picking the bodies up at the county and the funeral homes. Doing the oven work. He’d even wear a suit when he was delivering the urns back. I thought maybe he was turning a corner.”

  Darren cleared his throat.

  “Vernon wasn’t the most, ah, conventional person,” he said. “These drugs are his, Mr. Two Leaf. I think Johnny was involved. But he didn’t dream all this up on his own. Vernon brought him into it.”

  Issabella tapped keys and watched the screen. The web browser opened and she inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. There was internet access. She half-listened to the two men speaking while she focused on her on-line search.

  “What are we going to do with these drugs?” Patrick said.

  Darren leaned forward and started lifting the individual bricks in his hands, turning them over one-by-one. There were no evidence tags. He squinted at one of them, holding it closer. Like the heroin he had found in the Westland crematorium, these were a brown color-- but darker, obviously from a different batch or source.

  “We’ll flush them,” he said.

  “That’s a lot of material to flush down a toilet,” Patrick said, and the two of them nodded in agreement the way men do when they’ve agreed that there is a
physical project at hand in need of a solution.

  “I found him,” Issabella said, and both men looked at her. She leaned back in the swivel chair and sighed. “His probation officer picked him up. He’s in the county jail.”

  “We’re too late?” Patrick Two Leaf whispered. He stared at the pile of heroin and his face drained of color. Seeing where the man’s mind was going, Issabella shook her head.

  “Not the heroin,” she said. “If they’d found this stuff it would be in evidence. Johnny’s in for violating his probation conditions and for malicious destruction of property. Which was…smashing car windshields? Is that right?”

  Patrick nodded his head vigorously, seeming to come back to life with the knowledge that his son’s peril wasn’t tied to the drugs spread out in front of him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “He got soused about a month ago with some of his friends. They threw some bricks through a few cars in a dealership lot. One of them got arrested a week ago on something else and told on everyone. I’ve been getting phone calls from the probation guy ever since then. He’s not a bad guy, really. Wanted to give Johnny a chance to come and turn himself in. I guess he got tired of waiting.”

  Issabella closed out the browser and opened the word processor. There was a printer connected to the computer. She pushed its button and was relieved to see the power light glow to life.

  “I have to prepare a bond motion,” she said, already typing. “You guys figure out how to get rid of the drugs and then we’ll head down to court. If we hurry, we’ll be in time to get in on a supplemental docket.”

  As she said it, she realized that she had just vocalized the intention to destroy evidence. For the briefest of moments, her fingertips paused over the keyboard. But only for a moment. She knew she was crossing some arbitrary line that had been built into her during law school. But she also knew that while deciding she was going to tie her immediate future to the fortunes of Darren Fletcher, that line had been obliterated. Sitting at the computer, she wasn’t concerned about professional rules of ethical conduct.

  She was going to help. She was going to do whatever it took to pull a client she’d never met out of a quagmire of trouble. Vernon was dead and only his reputation, such as it was, could be helped. But Johnny Two Leaf was alive, and in real peril. By all accounts, he was a young man on the wrong path. He was a screw up about to earn himself entrance into a life of regret, unless someone would speak for him. Like so many of the unfortunates who found themselves caught up in the perpetual circuit of criminal jeopardy, Johnny Two Leaf needed a voice.

  Issabella was going to be that voice.

  “You’re right about the toilet,” Darren mused as she started typing. “It would take forever. And that’s if we don’t clog the thing. Roto-Rooter might ask questions about snaking a toilet full of primo brown sugar.”

  “You’re kind of a funny guy,” Patrick said.

  “Just kind of?”

  “The Ojibwe have stories about your type. Wenebojo the trickster. Someone who gets to the truth, but only in a sideways way.”

  “That’s…a compliment?”

  Patrick shrugged. “If you want. A thing is a thing.”

  “This thing is a life sentence worth of heroin.”

  “A hose.”

  “Heroin.”

  “No, no,” Patrick said, and he smiled. “There’s a hose out back. Johnny used it to wash his car before it got repossessed. We can use the hose to dissolve the heroin outside. Just move the stuff out there and drench it until it’s all gone. Deliver it back into the earth where it came from.”

  “That’s a very Native American way to put it.”

  “I try to keep it real,” Patrick said, and turned away toward the door. “You gather the heroin and carry it outside while I check on the hose.”

  Darren paused to look affectionately at Issabella furiously typing. He felt a rush of satisfaction he hadn’t known for a long while, since before the first time he’d opened his mail and found a terrible lime green rectangle waiting for him.

  He scooped bricks of heroin into his arms and turned toward the door leading out to the oven-room.

  Several feet ahead of him, Patrick Two Leaf’s head exploded in a plume of blood and he fell dead to the concrete floor.

  EIGHTEEN

  Allen Phelps was perched at the top of the sloping lane leading down to the crematorium, his car’s engine idling while he regarded the two vehicles parked near the building below.

  ‘The Indian,’ he thought. ‘The Indian… and someone else.’

  The black SUV squatted there, shiny and clean in the afternoon light. He could easily imagine it as belonging to the fleet of vehicles assigned to smug, shit-eating FBI agents. City cops drove dented, beaten sedans. The feds, they drove sleek cool things exactly like the one parked down in the basin.

  In that moment, Allen shifted from ‘flight’ mode, back into the function he was far more familiar and comfortable with: ‘hunt’.

  The smirking agent that had tossed his grand jury subpoena in the dirt at Allen’s feet was inside that crematorium. They’d been putting puzzle pieces together ever since Vernon had decided to turn snitch. That puzzle had been filled in enough to get Allen summoned to a grand jury lynching. And since then, more pieces had fallen into place. Enough pieces that the FBI agent had jumped a plane up here and descended on all the evidence that might be inside the crematorium.

  Allen saw all of that in his mind’s eye. He saw the blond twit handling the Indian, intimidating him, suggesting deals for cooperation. He saw the Indian producing heroin bundles and babbling everything he knew about Vernon Pullins’ drug dealing business with the Detroit Police Department. Vernon had described him as a pill-popper. Allen had never met Johnny Two Leaf, but he knew one thing was always true: junkies talked.

  He put the car in reverse and slowly backed out of the lane. He drove a quarter mile down the road and pulled down into the weeds at the edge of the road. There was no traffic, just the seemingly endless expanse of forest and an empty dirt road.

  He popped the trunk. Inside were two duffel bags full of cash and heroin, and a third bag, also black and made of nylon. Inside that long bag was the Remington M42 sniper rifle Allen had used to kill thirty-seven men on the other side of the world.

  Allen slung the bag over his shoulder, shut the trunk, and marched off into the trees with a shining anticipation animating his eyes.

  Ten minutes later, he was laid out on his stomach atop the rise of earth overlooking the crematorium. He assembled the rifle with unconscious precision. He thumbed the bi-pod down and settled into the cradle that was his targeting position—sprawled out flat on his belly, his vision flying through the scope and magnifying the windows of the crematorium. Allen was in the wind, drifting between the rifle and the windows, intangible, invisible and all-seeing.

  ‘There is a dark and hungry God above. And I am his hand upon the earth.’

  A fellow sniper named Frank Gillens had whispered the mantra in his ear on the first day after Allen arrived in the desert. Allen had been eager and cocksure and ready to use the skills the military had built in him, and Gillens had taken him under his wing. That had been a week of war stories, with the hardened veteran feeding the flames in an inexperienced Allen Phelps. A week after that, Gillens was just another body in a bag getting shipped back stateside. Allen took the mantra up as his own, a ceremonial carrying-on. He breathed it into existence thirty-seven times, and each time a man was delivered from the world.

  When the raven-haired Indian appeared inside the realm of his vision, Allen pulled the trigger and fed his hungry god.

  *

  Issabella was half-way out of the chair, startled by the sound of shattering glass and something heavy falling on the floor of the oven room.

  Darren filled her vision. He spun and clamored over the desk, grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled the two of them down onto the floor amid the plates of unfinished food and candy wrappers.

>   “Gross! Darren what—“

  He put his hand over her mouth and she saw his expression was wild with apprehension. He leaned over her, his weight keeping her from struggling up to her feet.

  “Patrick’s dead,” he whispered. “Someone just shot him through the window. In the head. Can you do what I tell you to do?”

  A chaotic array of emotions filled her. Mr. Two Leaf was dead? She’d been typing one second ago! What in the world was Darren talking about? That sound had been Mr. Two Leaf’s body?

  “Izzy,” he hissed. “I need you to do what I say. We’re leaving.”

  Issabella nodded, and Darren slipped his hand off her mouth.

  “The TAC team,” she whispered, and Darren nodded. “Oh my god. They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”

  Darren stared down at her with clear, steady eyes.

  “We’re not dying today, Izzy. Follow me and stay on your hands and knees. The windows in the oven-room are several feet up from the floor. The sniper probably doesn’t have a view of the floor.”

  On his hands and knees, Darren crawled around the desk until he was in the doorway, peering into the oven room. He looked back at Issabella.

  “You have to come with me, kiddo. Just crawl like I am and we’ll get out of here.”

  Darren had his arm outstretched toward her, and the concern in his voice silenced all of the conflicting impulses that had swept over her like a deluge. She got on her hands and knees and crawled over to where he was.

  “Good.”

  “Darren, I’m…”

  “I know. I am, too. But we’re just going to run away and get out of here, so just think about that.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to go first,” he whispered. “We’re going to crawl in there and go left to the supply closet. If this place is like the other one, then there’s a little window in the closet and we can go through it and be on the other side of the building than whoever’s shooting.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s a lot of blood around Patrick. Just look away from him and keep right behind me.”