“When did you learn he was your father?” Charlie asked Joyce.
“Oh, I think I’ve always known. My mother and I have never had a typical mother-daughter relationship,” Joyce said. “My grandfather and Anna would have bitter fights about Grant. I figured it all out before anyone tried to tell me.”
Charlie desperately wanted to ask Freeman about his involvement with the FBI but kept her promise to James. So the next order of business was to convince Joyce to cooperate with the bureau.
“The FBI thinks we have a good chance to arrest Owens, and his henchmen. Owens is probably the one who had Paul killed,” Charlie said.
“The police have always maintained they don’t know who killed Paul and Andrew,” Joyce said.
“Right. But they do have a witness and there could be another,” Don reported.
“Oh really?” Freeman looked uncomfortable.
“We don’t know that for sure, but the Bureau says Owens has informants here in Birmingham,” Don confided.
“Joyce, the FBI wants your help to capture Owens,” Charlie said. “We’ve discussed the idea with them and we think it has some merit.”
“What kind of help?”
“They want to use you as bait, to draw him out.”
“Draw him out?” Freeman said. “Would she be in danger?”
Charlie was about to confess the peril when Joyce preempted her.
“It doesn’t matter, Grant. I’m tired of hiding, and I want Owens to pay for what he’s done.” Then Joyce directed her comments to Charlie. “I never meant to harm Mr. Abrams. He’s been very good to me, like a second father.” She gave Freeman a sideways glance. “What I did was for Paulie. I thought I was helping him, but all I did was get him killed.”
Joyce cried again and Freeman looked as if he might. It was clear to Charlie that he cared deeply for this woman who was born of his union with Anna Stringer. He likely had the same feelings for Paul.
With help from Don and Gil, Charlie explained to the father and daughter the general plan to catch Owens and Walter Barnes. They discussed the location proposed by Owens, and the inherent flaws in the meeting site.
“Charlie will be there and we’ll be around as well but hidden from you,” Gil assured Joyce and Freeman. “There will also be a lot of FBI agents. I can’t tell you the plan is foolproof but we’ll do everything we can to protect you, Joyce.”
Freeman was watching Don. “What do you think, Mr. Rutkowski?”
Don didn’t hesitate in his assessment. “I think it’s a foolhardy plan. Belle Isle is a big place, lots of places to hide. We don’t know how many men Owens will hire. We’ll have to get to them before they get to you, and we have to keep somebody alive to roll over on him, in order to charge him with attempted murder. I think the FBI doesn’t really care about anything but getting their man, and Joyce is expendable.”
Don hadn’t pulled his punches. Everyone in the room, and those listening in, broke into a sweat.
“But that’s the downside,” Don added. He leaned across the coffee table to look directly into Joyce’s eyes. “The upside is, if the FBI can get Owens in their custody, and keep him there, you’ll be able to rest easier and begin picking up the pieces of your life.”
Chapter 30
Ernestine Mack was having a good day. It was Saturday morning and Charlie was coming to take her shopping. They’d spend the whole day together, have lunch and maybe go to see a movie. It would be a girlfriends’ outing. Hanging out, was what the young people called it. Ernestine didn’t think she’d ever be modern again. Things have changed too much.
She knew Charlie worried about her and to be honest, she sometimes worried about herself. Her short-term memory was sketchy. Some days she had no trouble recalling the names of the other residents of the building, and other days she needed a reminder. But, the memories of her distant past were like treasured friends. Her doctor had suggested she attend the oral history workshop at the downtown YMCA and it was wonderful to listen to the recollections of Detroit’s more prosperous days, from those who lived them. Her own accounts of teaching in the public schools on Detroit’s east side elicited gales of laughter and gasps of shock from the diverse group of seniors in the room. But two hours later when the young man who drove her to the workshop returned to pick her up, she couldn’t remember his name.
Like anything else that interested her, Ernestine had researched Alzheimer’s and knew it was only a few rungs on the ladder from dementia. Common symptoms included forgetting, confusion, anger, and ultimately, dependence on others for every basic need. But Alzheimer’s was also a personal disease and its devastating trajectory was different for each of its victims.
She examined her face in the mirror, reassured that she could still see beyond the lines, dark spots and thinning eyebrows to the young woman she once was. She’d turned heads with her good looks and self-confidence. John Mack had picked her out of a room full of women when she attended a party at his fraternity house in Ann Arbor. He was an upper classman and had pressed her cousin Jesse, a sophomore, for an introduction. John admitted he was smitten immediately, but she’d made him wait more than two years to marry her so she could finish her own college education.
Ernestine carefully applied lipstick and smoothed in just a bit of makeup on the lines curved like parentheses around her mouth. She’d had her hair done yesterday in the salon downstairs and it still held soft curls at the crown. She tried on several pairs of earrings until she found ones that perfectly accented her striped turquoise and coral blouse. She slipped into black flats that would allow her to walk the entire day without complaining, then checked her image in the full-length mirror, turning to one side, then the other. Her wristwatch showed almost nine-thirty Charlie would be arriving soon.
She scrutinized the apartment for anything unexpected. The plants were watered, drapes open. She sometimes slipped up with the cupboards so she headed to the kitchen. There it was. The orange juice was on the shelf next to the dinner glasses. When did I put it there? It must have been yesterday because she hadn’t had orange juice for breakfast that morning. What did I eat for breakfast? Oh, that’s right, cereal. I’d better check the refrigerator. Yes, the milk was where it belonged. The label on the orange juice bottle read “Please refrigerate after opening” so she unscrewed the cap and gave it a sniff. It didn’t smell spoiled so she put the container next to the milk.
Ernestine checked her watch again. Usually Charlie came early. At a quarter to ten Charlie called.
“Mom, I’m so sorry. I just remembered we were supposed to go shopping this morning, but I’m not home. I had to return to Birmingham and I won’t be back until later tonight.”
“Oh. Well that’s alright.” Ernestine’s voice betrayed her disappointment.
“No, it’s not alright, and I’m so sorry. This case has me turned upside down, and things keep coming up that I can’t control.”
Ernestine didn’t respond.
“Mom, I know you probably spent a lot of time getting ready. Do you want me to call Gloria and see if she can find someone to take you?”
“It’s just that I was hoping to spend the whole day with you. I’m having a good day, today.”
“Mommy, I promise to make it up to you. As soon as this damn case is over.”
“There’s no need for profanity, Charlene.”
“Sorry. I’m just so mad at myself. I’m always getting on you about forgetting things and now just look at me.”
After Ernestine disconnected, she stared at the phone a few minutes. She opened her purse, checked for her glasses, keys and credit card, then rode the elevator to the lobby. She paused at the reception desk.
“Going out Miss Ernestine?”
Charlie said Gloria was a very nice woman but Ernestine always felt the girl was spying on her.
“Yes, I’m going shopping. Would you call a cab for me?”
“Why sure. Where are you going to shop?”
“I’m going downtown t
o the Renaissance Center, I think.”
Ernestine waited in a chair near the front window so she could see the cab when it arrived. A few times she considered deserting the idea to go out alone. If the elevator comes to the lobby before my cab arrives, I’ll just go back to my apartment, she thought. She caught Gloria looking at her. I’m not a child, I’m still very strong and I’m having a good day. I’ll just go out for a few hours. Maybe buy some cosmetics and some new earrings. Then I’ll have a nice lunch.
“Your taxicab is here.” Gloria was standing over her.
The woman had startled her but she didn’t want to appear flustered.
“Oh. Thank you, Gloria.” She gathered her purse and her black cardigan.
“Do you have enough cash for the ride?” Gloria asked. “You have your ID, and your keys?”
“Of course, I do.” Gloria was starting to get on her nerves.
“You’re wearing two different earrings,” Gloria said sounding curious.
Ernestine touched both earlobes, feeling the round turquoise stud on one ear and the coral bangle on the other. She felt color rising from her neck but recovered quickly.
“I’m making a fashion statement.”
Charlie moved sluggishly through the hotel restaurant where Gil and Don had already begun their breakfasts. She dropped into her chair and pushed away the plate of bacon and scrambled eggs that waited for her.
“Was your mother mad?” Don asked.
“She should be. We planned this day a week ago, and I completely forgot.”
“Didn’t you put it on your calendar?” Gil asked, stuffing a forkful of western omelet into his mouth.
“No, because I thought I’d be at home on Saturday.”
“Join the club,” Don said. “Hey, are you going to eat those eggs?”
“How can you be so hungry after all the food you put away last night? The two of you set me back almost two hundred dollars.”
“I’m an emotional eater,” Don said, feigning hurt feelings.
Yesterday, Joyce and Freeman had left Charlie’s suite with a tentative date for Joyce’s return to Detroit and a promise she’d be in touch with Charlie on Monday. A couple of minutes later, Freeman returned to the room with the excuse that he’d left his phone, and seconds later James knocked on the door.
“What’s up?” James said to Freeman.
“I left my phone.”
“No, you didn’t. You gave your phone to Joyce.”
Caught in a lie, Freeman was neither apologetic nor embarrassed.
“I want to take these folks to the old neighborhood tomorrow,” Freeman was emphatic.
James thought for a moment. “What good will that do?”
“It’ll do me some good.” Freeman suddenly looked tired.
“I can’t agree to it,” James responded.
“Look here young man. Don’t you get high-handed. You need me as much as I need you.”
“Would somebody mind telling us what the hell is going on?” Don said.
James beckoned for Freeman to precede him in leaving the suite. “I’ll be in touch with you shortly,” James said, his glance sweeping across Charlie, Don and Gil. An hour later, James called Charlie’s newly bugged mobile phone, instructing the Mack partners to meet him in the lobby Saturday morning at nine-thirty.
“You better eat something, Charlie, you had quite a bit to drink last night,” Gil said.
Charlie yanked her plate away from Don. Half the eggs were gone but the bacon was left. She buttered a piece of whole wheat toast and added strawberry jelly. The waitress came around to warm up the coffee and Charlie added a bran muffin to her order.
James and Goodman arrived in the lobby and everyone shook hands to symbolize there were no hurt feelings. Were it not that Goodman stood out like the Fed he was, they might have been mistaken for a group of business colleagues on a weekend retreat. James led the way to the elevators, pushed the down button and when they reached parking level three, they followed him to a white van. The sign on the van read: “Sam’s Rodent Control.” The large, graffiti-like letters arched over the belly-up body of a comic-book rat with large teeth. James opened the side door and the partners took the back seat with Charlie crammed in the middle. Goodman, meanwhile, was slipping into white coveralls. He pulled the one-piece garment right over his suit, suddenly becoming a different kind of bug man. He finished his transformation with a white baseball cap.
“Where’s Freeman?” Charlie asked.
“We’re going to meet him now,” James said.
Charlie peered over her shoulder to the storage compartment where she saw three black plastic bins and wondered where Freeman would sit. Goodman exited the underground parking garage heading west toward I-20/59, then nimbly merged onto Interstate 65, the so-called “malfunction junction” and sped north away from the central city. As usual I-65 was dense with cars moving in both directions; it didn’t seem to matter that it was a weekend morning.
No one bothered making conversation over the background of blaring horns and rubber on pavement. Ten minutes into the trip, James got a phone call but what he muttered into the phone was unintelligible from the backseat. Goodman exited the highway at Finley Boulevard, and Charlie noted the surroundings were industrial—lots of fenced construction yards with heavy equipment, intertwining railroad tracks and the carcasses of abandoned eighteen-wheelers.
“This isn’t far from where Paul and Andrew were shot,” Don said to Charlie and Gil. The police found their bodies under one of these overpasses.” He pointed out the left window.
“It’s a horrible place to die, but an ideal place for a murder,” Charlie observed.
Goodman turned onto a side street, barely slowed at the stop sign, and sped down a block of houses with boarded windows. “We’re close to the Meadows house, aren’t we?” Gil asked.
“Uh huh. It’s just a couple blocks away,” Charlie responded. Her sixth sense was sending another message that hadn’t yet been delivered.
“Where are we going?” Don asked.
“We’re meeting Freeman,” James replied.
“So you said,” Don sounded hostile. “But where are we meeting him?”
Goodman turned into an alley and pulled the van up to a small loading dock in the rear of a two-story brick building. The place looked abandoned. On two sides a dilapidated chain-link fence sagged from weeds and time, but the fence had not been a deterrent to those who wanted to discard debris. A late-model black sedan, barely visible under a canopy of tree branches, was wedged between the building and the fence on the right side of the property. Although it was mid-morning, the sun shunned the area and Charlie shivered when she stepped out of the van into loose gravel and damp air. Every window on the building’s lower level was boarded with warped and faded plywood. A fifties-style post-mount light fixture, the kind that would cost you good money at a salvage yard, hung above a rolling overhead door.
James hurried the group along and led the way up three concrete steps to a steel side door where he rang the bell. When the door opened, Grant Freeman, Jr. held it ajar while each of the visitors passed through. When everyone was inside, he stuck his head out and gave a look left and right before closing and bolting the door.
“Is everything okay?” James asked.
“Yes, fine. Did anyone notice you drive in here?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Goodman said. “We drove the pest control van,” he added.
Freeman led them down a brick hallway with the boarded windows on the left and on the right, open doorways which revealed gigantic spaces with concrete floors and old metal cabinets. The floors had a marked slope to the middle of the building, causing everyone to sort of limp along. The ceilings were close to fifteen feet high. More post-mount lamps, affixed midway between the floor and ceiling, were hung every twenty feet.
“This is the old funeral home, isn’t it?” Charlie asked.
“That’s right. My father and a small crew of men built this place i
n the early Fifties.”
“Why are we here?” Don asked.
Freeman glanced at James, getting silent permission to speak.
“I feel like we’re all in this mess together now,” he began. “So, I want to show you something.”
The front areas of the building had been stripped of furniture and fixtures but the hardwood floors, paneled walls and cathedral ceiling hinted at its former use. Freeman unlocked a plastic-covered key switch near a metal door which opened to reveal an elevator. He entered and waited for the rest to join him, then pushed the single button on the door’s jamb which closed the elevator’s gate and sent it rumbling leisurely upwards. James, Goodman and Freeman stood like statues but Gil, Charlie and Don fidgeted nervously. When the door opened, the group stepped into what must have been a storage area. A half-dozen old metal desks and rolling desk chairs were piled in a corner. Natural light from narrow windows near the ceiling poured into the space, capturing the shimmer of dust and illuminating beautiful but dented hardwood floors. Freeman turned toward the rear of the building and like on the floor below, a series of doors opened into the center of the building from the hallway. At the third opening, Freeman pulled out another key to unlock a plain wood door. As the group stepped into the room they saw a man standing in front of the windows, his body in silhouette. The man stepped forward and Freeman met him halfway, putting his arm across his shoulders.
“I want you to meet Paul Gillette Stringer,” Freeman said.
Chapter 31
Ernestine’s excitement about her solo outing grew with each mile the taxi placed between her and the apartment building. She hated the term “assisted living,” knowing it was just one category above “old-folk’s home.” She had been an independent girl in high school involved in many extracurricular activities including debating and writing for the student newspaper. As a young college student she’d regularly traveled with classmates up and down the East Coast and once, in a university-sanctioned trip to Grenada, Spain, she had participated as a delegate in a mock United Nations assembly. The two summers she’d spent working in Alabama as a volunteer with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee had been her claim to a political ideology separate from her parents’ traditional views. As a SNCCer she’d worked, eaten and lived with a diverse group of people who hailed from across the United States and Europe. During her second summer in Birmingham, although unofficially engaged to John Mack, she’d had a romantic fling with a young Jewish boy from Pittsburgh. Those had been heady days and the stream of fresh air seeping through the slightly opened taxi window gave her the same feeling of unlimited possibilities.
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