The wit of Sherlock, the romance of Bones, and the grit of modern thrillers combine when two Detroit lawyers with something to prove go up against the impossible
Read on for an excerpt of MOTOR CITY SHAKEDOWN, the first book in Jonathan Watkins’s BRIGHT & FLETCHER MYSTERIES
Motor City Shakedown
by Jonathan Watkins
Prelude
It wasn’t the cadre of men sent to kill him that woke Vernon Pullins. He didn’t know about them—though if he had, he hardly would have been surprised to learn that such an order had been given.
It was sausage and sauerkraut that jerked him awake, choking and panicked. Acid sizzled in the back of his throat and he rolled himself over in bed to focus on swallowing. His breath caught several times as he gagged, until finally the bile receded enough for him to gulp air.
His breathing improved, but he remained on his hands and knees until he was certain he wouldn’t vomit. Panting, he wiped at his watering eyes and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Three thirty in the morning.
Vernon groaned and pushed all three hundred pounds of himself onto his feet. He picked his underpants out of his behind, yawned mightily and lumbered off into the kitchen of his house on Detroit’s west side.
In the cupboard above the stove, he groped around, pulling out a black Sig Sauer .9mm pistol. He set the gun to the side and resumed his rummaging. Eventually he found the bottle of Tums.
He palmed a mouthful of the chalky discs and was crunching them into a paste as he opened the fridge. Inside, behind the milk and beside a little Glock 19 wedged into a waistband holster, were several pink bottles of Pepto-Bismol.
Vernon swallowed the Tums goop and washed it down with an entire bottle of pink sludge. He stood there in the light of the open fridge, a brown-skinned giant, and waited until a tremendous belch churned up out of him. It didn’t bring the acid sizzle back with it, so he nodded in satisfaction and didn’t reach for a second bottle.
The reflux beast fended off for another night, Vernon scrubbed his palms over his face sleepily and considered the welcome shelter of his bed. He knew he should get a full night’s sleep and have all his faculties ready for the next day. Sunrise would mean a confession. Sharp questions. Accusations.
He was closing the door of the fridge when his eyes lit upon the foil-covered plate on the shelf below the Glock. Vernon pursed his lips and forgot about his bed, forgot about the tricky dance of question and answer he knew he had to perform tomorrow. Food was his bane and his joy. The mere thought of it banished his anxieties, had always soothed and placated his worries, ever since childhood.
So it was that he wound up seated at his dining room table at three forty in the morning, in front of a plate heaping with leftover kielbasa and sauerkraut. The sausage and sauerkraut had been slow-cooked for hours in a brown sugar marinade. Vernon devoured it in great forkfuls, relishing the combination of sour and sweet, but not so much that it slowed the pace of his feasting.
He was halfway through devouring the mound when his phone rang. Still chewing, he reached across the table, plucked it into his thick fingers and stared at the screen.
Blocked.
Vernon frowned and put it to his ear.
“Yeah?”
“Hey. How you doing, big man? Did I wake you up?”
A thrill of apprehension raced through him. Allen Phelps was calling him in the dark of night.
“Vernon, I asked you a question.”
“Al,” Vernon said, managing to get his mouth to work the name out into the air. “What...what’s up, man?”
“I didn’t wake you?”
“Huh? No. I was up. I had heartburn.”
“I get that sometimes, too. It’s a bitch.”
“Yeah.”
Al’s voice dipped into a lower gear, almost a growl.
“Probably it’s because you shovel so much shit in that big fat mouth of yours. I bet that’s what gives you heartburn. You think? You think that’s why?”
“Al...”
“Do you know what gives me heartburn, Vernon?”
“Um, no. I guess I don’t.”
“Rats.”
“What?”
“Rats. Rats give me heartburn.”
That was all the confirmation he needed. Al Phelps knew. He knew where Vernon was going in the morning. He knew who Vernon was going to be talking to. Vernon got to his feet and hurried to the fridge. He opened it and grabbed hold of the Glock. While he yanked it out of the holster, he kept the phone wedged between his ear and shoulder. There was silence on the phone. Al was waiting.
“L-look, Al,” Vernon stammered, “I don’t know what you think you heard. Maybe you heard something. You sound mad. But you don’t need to be. This is actually a funny story. I mean, just listen, okay?”
Al chuckled, a humorless sound, the hum in a jungle cat’s breast.
“Maybe I should count my blessings. Rats are easy to get rid of, Vernon, if you know where they nest. If you know that, all you have to do is pull the fucking trigger.”
The refrigerator door drifted softly shut, its light eclipsed. Vernon could hear his breathing in the darkness, and nothing else.
“Al?”
Nothing.
Hang up. Call Schultz, he thought, clinging to the first lifeline that presented itself in the flurry of panicked thoughts racing to the fore. Yeah. Call him and convince him to get you out of here.
He only had time to thumb one button on his phone before the front and back doors of his house blew in off their hinges.
One
* * *
Darren Fletcher flipped his phone shut and leaned out of his booth at the back of Winkle’s Tavern. Looking down the length of the empty interior, he could see Theresa Winkle’s stout, robust form perched on a stool behind the bar, where she was chain-smoking and reading celebrity magazines.
“Theresa, I think today’s the day.”
Theresa’s unicorn figurines hung on strings from the ceiling like a fairy tale mass suicide. Others were glued to the shelves between the alcohol bottles, and upon the bar itself. Some were glass, others pewter. A few were plastic children’s toys the colors of sherbet and cotton candy.
Centered on the wall behind the overweight proprietor’s perch hung a framed copy of the only write-up her bar had ever received, from Detroit’s Metro Times:
“... I’m afraid it’s difficult to adequately describe Winkle’s Tavern, as it is singularly unique among Detroit’s watering holes. It is a small, poorly lit alley of a place with no music, stale beer and a bartender/owner who has never bothered to learn how to mix any drink more complicated than a rum and Coke.
More astounding than said owner’s incompetence at mixing a drink is her flagrant violation of Michigan’s smoking ban. During the half an hour I spent inside Winkle’s Tavern, I never once saw her without a cigarette dangling from her lips. She sat there behind the bar, ignoring me and the other two souls unlucky enough to have wandered in seeking relaxation or sustenance. We were all subjected to the heavy, noxious cloud her habit generated, as she appeared blissfully ignorant of our displeasure.
When I attempted to broach the topic, I was told, “You think you can get a city inspector to come on down here, be my guest, buddy. Last one I ever met got himself shot and rolled three blocks south when he got out of his car to get gas. I ain’t seen one since.”
This is the level of service to be had at Winkle’s Tavern.
It would be the dankest and most depressing bar this writer has ever reviewed, if not for one fact: Winkle’s Tavern is an inter-dimensional prison. A herd of unicorns have, inexplicably, found themselves trapped there. Hundreds of them are being held prisoner as of this writing. I will say no more, and though I cannot recommend the dining, the company, or any
other aspect of Winkle’s Tavern, I urge you, Dear Reader, to find your way there. It is worth the trip just to see this bizarre fairy-horror corner of D-Town.”
“Theresa,” Darren repeated, sliding out of the booth.
“What’s up, Fletcher?” she said around the cigarette, not looking up from the glossies spread across the bar top.
“I think I have a case.”
“Need another?” she asked, still not looking up.
“A case. Theresa.”
“Give me a sec, Fletcher.”
“I need a cold shower.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep.”
Theresa stabbed her cigarette out on the scarred back of a pink, plastic unicorn.
“Gotta see a judge?” she asked. “Someone make an ethics complaint?”
She stoppered the sink, turned on the cold water tap and started scooping heaps of ice from the beer freezer into the sink.
“Nope. It’s a client,” Darren said, walking behind the bar. His tie was undone, his suit was a maze of wrinkles and he hadn’t shaved in two days.
She blinked and stopped filling the sink. “Since when does a jail visit rank a cold shower? I’ve got like three pounds of ice in here, Darren...for some misdemeanor loser?”
Darren put both hands on her shoulders and gave her a wolfish grin.
“Not a misdemeanor,” he said. “A real case. Murder, believe it or not.”
With that, Darren turned and eased his head down into the sink-full of ice water. His hands followed suit, sloshing water over the back of his head and kneading it through his dark, tangled hair.
“So, what’s the rush?” she said.
Darren grabbed a hand towel from under the bar and started vigorously scrubbing his hair dry. Water dripped freely from his chin. He gave Theresa a wide, enthusiastic grin.
“This’ll be in the papers,” he answered. “Apparently my guy is laid up in Detroit Receiving Hospital with all kinds of injuries. He shot a cop. That was his brother on the phone. Wants me to handle the case. I need to get over there and sew it up before some other shyster shows up in his hospital room with a fee agreement and a solid sales pitch.”
“I thought you weren’t allowed to do that.”
Darren laughed and looped his tie into a knot.
“You’re not,” he agreed. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen every single day. Killing a cop’s guaranteed life. You want to make a name for yourself as a defender, that’s the way to do it fast.”
“No, I mean I thought you weren’t allowed. Felonies.”
Darren shrugged and tossed the towel on the bar top.
“I’ll talk to Chelsea,” he said. “Get her to agree.”
Theresa reached under the bar and pulled out the little cardboard box that contained Darren’s emergency supplies: a stick of deodorant, spearmint gum, electric razor, comb and Visine.
Darren took up the razor and started running it over his jaw. Theresa stared at him, her blunt features dipping with concern.
“You sure, Fletcher?”
“Huh? About lawyers soliciting off a headline? Believe it.”
“No, not that. That you’re up for this. For a big case again.”
Darren paused, his enthusiasm dimmed. Just like that, he felt a familiar dread perch above him like a carrion bird. He wasn’t in the bar anymore. He was in a nameless and desolate place, alone with his regrets, with the memories that picked him clean whenever he wasn’t strong enough to push them away.
“Maybe,” he mumbled.
“Sorry,” Theresa said and squeezed his shoulder. “What the hell do I know? Don’t listen to me. I don’t know anything.”
He forced a smile and started combing the damp curls back off his forehead. “It’ll be okay. Chelsea will get on board. She wants this probably more than I do. Don’t worry about me.”
“I ain’t worried.”
“Besides, you always say I need to get out and get back on my feet.”
“Yeah, but—”
“It’ll be fine,” he repeated and kissed her on the cheek to hush her, before hustling off to the restroom in the back of the bar.
* * *
Issabella Bright pulled her Buick sedan to the curb outside her office, parking in the shadow of the Bingham Tower across the street.
The tower loomed over its corner of Detroit’s carcass, a vacant, moss-draped relic, obstinate in its refusal to give way to nature and just fall in on itself. Its stone length was pockmarked and weather-stained. Its rows of windows had all lost their glass ages ago, so that the Bingham radiated a low, hollow moan when a strong wind gusted through it.
All around the Bingham, the neighborhood was in surrender. It was a landscape of sagging roofs, collapsed porches and drunkenly dipping fences.
Issabella didn’t get out of the car straight away. She remained behind the wheel, her grip on it tightening. She closed her eyes while her knuckles whitened with the pressure. A seasick dread had been creeping up on her all morning, and she knew what that meant: if she didn’t stare right at it and deal with it, this indistinct, forlorn feeling would grow, feeding off every minor frustration or disappointment in her day. Soon, she would be brooding uselessly. Brooding would give way to outright panic—the blind, senseless and certain fear that she was doing everything wrong, that she was failing in life. If she ignored it now, by lunchtime she’d be paralyzed with anxiety.
She took a series of deep, slow breaths in through her nose and concentrated on throwing away every thought that swam into her head.
She threw away the oppressive shadow of the Bingham Tower. She threw away the dilapidated, crime-ridden neighborhood surrounding her office. She threw away the suspicious clanging noise her car’s engine had developed, and then threw away the expensive bill she assumed would be attached to that noise. More worries flooded in, vying for her attention, and she discarded them one at a time.
Eventually, her grip on the wheel slackened. She opened her eyes.
“You’re doing fine,” she whispered.
And even though she didn’t really believe that, she carried on as if she did. That was the only solution, she knew. She couldn’t wave a magic wand and become someone free of these bouts of stormy, all-consuming anxiety. They were a part of her, would always be a part of her.
Soldier on, she told herself. She gathered up her briefcase, purse, the day’s newspaper and her gas-station coffee, then headed inside.
Her rented space included a small room in front where her non-existent receptionist could theoretically work, a bathroom off to the side, and her office.
She tossed her things in the client chair and poured herself behind her desk, aware that being emotionally exhausted before the day had begun was no way to live.
Minutes passed, and she was nursing the weak remains of her coffee while trying not to think about the pile of work stuffed in folders across her desk. That pile was nothing but drudge-work farmed out to her from other law firms—firms that, unlike her one-lawyer show, had real clients.
She sighed with a bleak exhaustion—a weary recognition that her future was laid out in a mound of rubber-banded depositions and inexpertly written motions. Her sole responsibility was to take a red pen through it all, picking and poking, a proofreader for other lawyers.
Three years of law school, seventy grand in loans and I’m a secretary. Issabella Bright, Secretary at Law.
The sentiment was always with her of late, dimming the excitement she knew she should have felt at being on her own. She’d met all the goals she set for herself—graduating law school, a successful internship with a public defender’s office in Washtenaw County, passing the bar. A year ago, if someone had listed those future achievements to her, Issabella would have been delighted her aim would prove so true.
Now there was no delight. There was doubt, everywhere.
Stop. Stop. Before it snowballs and you’re just running in circles again. You’re not going to do that today. Today is productive.
Her phone rang and she was grateful for it. She plucked it out of her purse and put it to her ear.
“Hey, Mom.”
“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 drive up I-75 to get a look at Issabella’s office 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 by 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 phone 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 backward in her swivel chair, one hand massaging her 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 from all of this?”
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