by K. J. Emrick
“Okay, you need to give me a little more than that.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Thumbing through the folders, he pulls one out in particular and puts it on top. “I first met Clancy five years ago, when he confessed to a rape we were investigating. I guess he never forgot the way I treated him, and that’s why he comes to me now whenever he’s got something he needs to confess to. I treated him with respect back then. I listened to him, and I took him seriously, when a lot of other cops had turned him away.”
“What? Why?”
He takes in a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. “Turns out, Clancy has a mental disorder. It drives him to confess to things he hasn’t done. It’s a compulsion. He can’t help himself.”
“So… that means he didn’t kill anyone?”
“Nope. He hasn’t assaulted anyone, or stolen anything from them, or raped them, or spit on their dog, either. Guy doesn’t have so much as a traffic ticket to his name in all the time he’s lived in Detroit. Five years he’s lived here, moving from one shelter to another, coming in here to confess to bad things he has nothing to do with. Kind of makes you feel sorry for him, really, but what can we do?”
Oh. I guess I’ve heard of stranger things. “Still, that makes it kind of hard on you guys, doesn’t it? Every time he confesses to something you have to prove he didn’t do it.”
“Exactly. Otherwise the lawyers for the real killers and rapists get to introduce his confession as reasonable doubt to the juries. Which one did it, which one did it, you decide ladies and gentlemen. Only, they aren’t the ones who decide. Us cops are.” With another sigh he looks over at the glass door where Clancy had just walked out. “Poor guy. Must be hell to live like that, almost begging people to punish you for things that aren’t your fault, unable to stop.”
That was an interesting way of looking at it. If I was sitting in Chris’s chair, I’m not sure how I’d feel about it. Could I extend that kind of sympathy to a man who kept overcomplicating not just his life, but mine as well?
I’d like to think so. I guess you never know until it happens.
“Can’t you take him to a mental hospital?” I ask. “Somewhere that they can treat him?”
“Ah, there’s the real hell of it right there. The way the system’s set up, nobody can be forced to receive mental health treatment unless they are a danger to themselves or someone else. All Clancy’s doing is tying up hours of a police agency’s time. Nothing overtly dangerous about that. So, all I can do is be here, and listen to him. I’m basically his therapist, letting him talk about whatever he needs to get off his chest. Okay, enough about Clancy. Let’s talk about why you’re here.”
“Right. You’ve got a job for me. Surveillance, you said?”
“Yeah. It’s going to be boring but with the players involved it could heat up. We’ve had plain clothes detectives watching our suspect but now we’re getting short staffed because of a couple different things so it will be really helpful if you could take over for a few nights. That car of yours won’t ever be confused for a surveillance vehicle, that’s for sure.”
“Hey, don’t you insult my car. Roxy’s my baby.”
Roxy is my 1968 Ford Mustang hardtop, cherry red where pieces of her haven’t been replaced with parts from different color cars from her same line. She might not be all original, but she’s still got the same soul she had when she first came off the assembly line right here in Detroit fifty-plus years ago.
But he’s not wrong. My car does blend into the backdrop of Detroit really well. In a city where there’s always a new push being announced to demolish blighted, abandoned homes, you don’t do surveillance in a new Lexus. You sure don’t do it in a plain sedan cop car. You drive a car that’s been broke in, and still can do zero-to-sixty in six seconds flat.
Overlooking the cheap shot against Roxy, I get back to business. “So what’s the job you need help with?”
From a desk drawer he pulls out a blue file folder and slides it across his desk to me, moving Clancy’s out of the way. “Ever hear of a man by the name of Khalil ‘Casey’ Akrawi?”
“Uh, yeah I have. You can’t live in Detroit and not know that name.”
“What do you know about him?
“Well, publicly he’s an exporter of flowers that his family grows in their own greenhouse. In reality, he’s an enforcer for the Chaldean Mafia, connected to smuggling, intimidation, and several instances of assault and kidnapping.”
“Allegedly,” Chris makes sure to point out. “Despite our best efforts we’ve never been able to pin anything on him. We’re hoping that will change now, based on a surveillance warrant we got by the skin of our teeth.”
People like to think the mafia is a thing of the past, done and gone with the days of Bugsy Moran and Al Capone. The names have changed, but the threats and intimidation and shady business practices are straight out of the 1930s. The Chaldean mafia’s a real problem in Detroit. Look it up if you don’t believe me.
Intrigued, I grab up the folder from the desk and begin to flip through it. “You want me to do surveillance on Casey Akrawi?” And he said this would be boring…
“Not Casey himself, no. We’re surveilling his cousin Ragheed. He’s a minor player in the organization, but Casey likes him. We’re hoping he’ll lead us to a storage building where the Chaldeans have a shipment of cocaine ready to send to Canada. We find him with the drugs, we can flip him on Casey. Guy’s the weak link. We just need to get something on him.”
Okay, so not as exciting as I was hoping for, but not exactly boring either. I’ll take it. “Sounds good. I see the address here… yeah, I know that neighborhood. I know a couple of good places to park where nobody will notice me. Piece of cake.”
“Glad you think so.”
“I can keep this folder, right?”
“Right.”
“You want pictures of the storage building if he leads me there?”
“If you can get them without being obvious about it, yes.”
“Come on, you know me. Stealthy is my middle name.”
“No. It isn’t.”
I give him a smirk. “No, not really. You know me so well.”
He smiles back, but not for long. He’s got a lot of work to do as it is, and his mind’s on a dozen different things. Poor man. What he doesn’t know, is it’s not over yet.
His phone’s about to ring.
When it does, he glares at it for a long hard moment before punching the blinking red extension light with his finger and grabbing up the receiver. I don’t know who’s calling him, of course. I only see ahead three seconds into the future. I’m not psychic.
“Hello, this is Detective Caine.”
Well, I’ve got my assignment and Chris already told me that my consultant agreement with the PD is still in effect, so there’s no reason for me to stick around and bother him when his day’s going to be this busy. If I was a good friend, I’d bring him some lunch. I am a good friend, actually, and I think that’s exactly what I’ll do. I’ll bring him a salad, extra tomatoes. Chris hates salads. He’s a carnivore, all the way. According to him, salads are rabbit food and he ‘ain’t no damned rabbit.’ His words, not mine.
So, yes. I think I will bring my good friend a salad, and then run just as fast as I can.
I quietly get up from the chair and hold the folder up while I mouth the words ‘thank you’ to him and turn to go.
Only to have him hold up a finger for me to wait again.
I move my lips in a silent question, What?
He points to the phone, although that doesn’t answer anything.
I motion with my hands spread wide. What?
He points to the phone, then points at me.
Fists on my hips, tapping my foot, I lean in and give him my most serious look. WHAT?
“All right. Okay. Got it,” he finally says, to the person on the phone, not to me. He hangs up, and leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers against his chin. He’s looking at me over
his fingertips.
“Okay Chris, seriously. WHAT!”
From nearby desks, a few of the other officers turn our way to see what the commotion is. I avoid looking at any of them, but I refuse to be embarrassed. So, maybe my voice got a little too loud there. I mean, it is a police station after all.
I lower it a couple of notches and ask one last time. “What is going on?”
“There’s a woman in our downstairs processing room,” he tells me. “She’s under arrest for murder, and she’s asking to talk to you.”
Huh. Even with my future sense I didn’t see that coming.
In my mind, I ran through a long list of people who might be downstairs. I’ve worked with and for any number of women who might have gotten into legal trouble again. People I either know personally or who would remember my name. There’s a lot of them who I wouldn’t be surprised to see under arrest here in the Seventh Precinct house. Not even on charges of murder.
But I sure wasn’t prepared for who it turned out to be.
They’d moved her from the processing area into a little meeting room down a narrow hallway by the time Chris and I got there. An officer stood guard outside the door in his black uniform, his thumbs hooked into his belt, his face serious. I recognized Apollo Belson. No way to mistake that long face and that dark black birthmark on his right cheek, a cute and nearly perfect crescent in an otherwise flawless cocoa-powder complexion. Or that crooked smile, either.
“Hey, Sidney Stone. How you doing?”
“So far, so good, Apollo. They got you on guard duty?”
“You know it all pays the same. Standing, marching, fighting.” He gives Chris a nod, then tilts his head at the door. “She’s inside. You want I should wait while you talk to her?”
“Yes. When we’re done, you’ll need to take her to the holding cells until her arraignment. After that ask Lieutenant Baker what he wants you to do. It’s his case, right?”
“Yup. He caught it. Already got the press beating down our front door. Baker wants all the lower-case j’s dotted on this one.”
“Yeah, I was talking to him up on the phone. Nobody talks to the press, right?”
Apollo snorted. “Nobody who wants to keep their jobs.”
“And nobody gets an autograph from her, either. Make sure everybody knows that. I see one scrap of paper with her signature on it that isn’t an official police form then I’m going to make sure the whole precinct house goes on report. All right. We’ll only be five minutes.”
Did he say… autograph? “Why just five minutes?” I ask him.
“Because,” is his answer, “that’s all the time the Lieutenant’s giving us with her.”
“With who…?”
He still hasn’t told me, but as he opens the door I don’t need him to say it. I see it in my future-sense.
Yeah. I should have known.
There she is. Amelia Falconi, in a fancy shirt and brown slacks and her makeup all smeared by her tears. She’s still crying. She’s upset about something, and I’m pretty sure it’s not just from being here in a police station. Something’s happened. Something bad.
Something that put her in handcuffs.
The metal bracelets holding her wrists close together shine under the fluorescent ceiling lights. Her hands are on the metal table, her fingers fidgeting constantly. Obviously, she’s not used to being in a position like this. If she thought the Shake Shack was boorish, this place must have her absolutely beside herself. She’s used to walking the red carpet, being seen and being loved.
No one’s going to love her here.
“Sidney, thank God you’re here.” The expression on her face when she sees me is truly miserable.
She’s not acting. I’ve seen her movies. She’s not that good.
“Amelia…” I’m going to skip over the obvious what are you doing here question, because we all know what she’s been arrested for. “Why’d you ask to talk to me, Amelia?”
“I didn’t know where else to turn. None of my people are going to lift a finger to help me. I called my agent but she’s already distancing herself from me. The best I got from her was the promise to send an attorney when she can find one. And I just know the studio is going to do the same thing because that’s the way our business works…”
She stops rambling when Chris lifts up a hand. “Hold on, Miss Falconi. We don’t have a lot of time. You’ve been advised of your rights. You don’t have to answer anything we ask. You’re aware of that?”
Amelia nods, biting her lower lip.
“Okay, then. Why did you want to talk to Sidney?”
Her hands curl into fists, but I can still see them shaking. “Because,” she says. “I need someone on my side who believes in me. That’s why. Like I told that lieutenant, I want to hire you. I want you to take my case, Sidney.”
I look at Chris. He looks back at me, and shrugs. I mean, what do you say to something like that? I never could stand Amelia Falconi, and yet I’m the only one she thought she could turn to when she got arrested for murder. That’s… a little sad, actually.
Chris clears his throat, pulling out one of the two chairs on this side of the interview table, letting it scrape against the tiled floor on purpose. “How do you two know each other, exactly?”
“We went to school together,” I tell him, because I can’t exactly say me and Amelia are friends. Barely acquaintances at this point.
And yet, she asked for me.
Chris pulls the other chair out, too, and motions for me to sit down. I shoot him a glare. He turns his head to give me a wink. One that Amelia can’t see. He knows I can pull out my own chairs, thank you very much. I don’t have time to argue about it. There are way too many questions circling in my brain. So I sit down with Chris, both of us facing Amelia, and I pick the biggest question of all.
“Who’d you kill, Amelia?”
Her mascara-streaked face turns to Chris. He shrugs. “I haven’t told her anything. I wanted to see how this played out. But, like I said, we only have a few minutes to talk to you. The investigating officer doesn’t want us contaminating his case.”
“Exactly,” I say, trying not to let the frustration I’m feeling leak into my voice. “So tell me who you killed.”
“I didn’t kill anyone!” Amelia almost screams. “I did not kill him! That’s a lie! A lie!”
This is getting us nowhere. “Amelia, just hold on. I’m afraid you misunderstood me when we met yesterday. I’m a private investigator. I’m not an attorney. I can’t take your case, or whatever you’re thinking.”
“You were looking for work,” Chris reminds me.
I shoot daggers at him with my mind. “I. Am. Not. An. Attorney.”
Through more tears, Amelia sputters out a laugh. “I’m not stupid, Sidney. I’ve got lawyers. My agency has, like, twenty lawyers on retainer at any given time. They’ll send one down to speak with me and I’ll tell them the whole story and then they’ll do what’s best for the studio, not me. I know how these things work. If that means hanging me out to dry, then that’s what they’ll do. They won’t be on my side. I need someone who will be on my side.”
“You can hire your own attorney,” Chris tells her. “I’m sure the officers who took you into custody advised you of that right, too.”
“Oh, they sure did. And I’ve got the money to hire my own, I don’t need a free attorney paid for by my fans, thank you very much.”
She shakes her head at the idea of that, and I’m struck once again by her shallow nature. Paid for by her fans? Seriously? As if everyone out there paying taxes is a fan of Amelia Falconi and her movies.
Well, to be fair, her last movie did tie Aquaman for highest domestic gross. So yeah, she’s got a lot of fans, and yeah, the taxpayers of this state would be paying for her attorney if she couldn’t afford it. So maybe it’s not all ego on her part.
Whatever. She’s still full of herself.
Chris taps his finger against the desktop. “The point is, you’r
e entitled to an attorney, not a private investigator.”
“I’m entitled to have someone who’s working just for me. Someone who believes in me.” Snuffing back her tears, she turns to me, her eyes pleading. “I want to hire you to prove I’m innocent, Sidney. I need you. Will you take my case? Please?”
“I think that’s enough.” Chris stands up, shoving his chair back. “Our time’s up, Miss Falconi. This is over. Come on, Sidney.”
“No, wait,” Amelia begs, holding her cuffed hands out to me. “Sidney, please. I don’t have… I don’t have a lot of people in my life that I can call on when things go… when something bad happens. When we met yesterday, I thought it was just a funny coincidence but now I’m thinking… you know… maybe it was for a reason?”
Chris’s hand is on my arm, and he’s picking me up out of my chair, and I don’t stop him. I let him do it. This is too surreal. A woman who wouldn’t give me the time of day back in high school is now begging for my help. That’s a complete, one-hundred-and-eighty-degree flip flop if ever I saw one.
And all it took was her getting charged with murder.
There’s a cosmic irony in there somewhere. I just don’t have time to care. Me and Chris are leaving.
At the door, she calls out to me one more time. “Sidney?”
Looking back over my shoulder, I give her the only answer I can. “No, Amelia. I’m sorry, but no.”
I’ll never forget how completely lost she looked as that door closed.
Apollo gives us both another nod but there’s no time for talk as Chris leads me down the hall, to another interview room almost identical to the one where we just left Amelia. This one’s empty, however.
Which gives Chris the freedom to raise his voice.
“What are you doing, Sid? Are you kidding me right now?”
“Excuse me?” I pull my arm away from his hand, and angrily brush at my sleeve like maybe he’d left behind some flakes from the crazy donut he’d obviously been eating. “You want to rein that in a little, and maybe tell me what the hell you’re going on about?”
“You’re friends with a murder suspect, Sid. You didn’t think maybe that would be something worth mentioning before my boss called to chew me out on the phone?” Which he would do once he found out.