Machine City: A Thriller (Detective Barnes Book 2)

by Scott J. Holliday

  “Excuse me?”

  Barnes made a bored rotating-hand gesture. “Get it over with, Jer. Pull the trigger.”

  “Look, man,” Jerry said, “I—”

  Barnes leaned over the counter, put his face right up to Jerry’s. “Just . . . for God’s sake . . . just do it.”

  Jerry screwed up his face. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Barnes batted the brim of Jerry’s block M hat. It spun a quarter turn but stayed on his head. “Come on, big man.”

  Jerry sneered. “Hey, don’t make me—”

  Barnes slapped the hat again, knocking it off to reveal a salt-and-pepper buzz cut covering the splotchy skin on Jerry’s head, the suction rings on his temples.

  Jerry put up his hands. “Yo! What the fuck?”

  Barnes slapped Jerry’s bald head.

  Jerry spun on his stool to dodge the next blow. Barnes pulled his Glock and placed it on the countertop, spun it until the barrel was pointed at Jerry. “Serum.”

  “I . . . I only know of one place,” Jerry said from behind his hands.

  “Where?”

  “Dude,” Jerry said, “you don’t want to go there.”

  “Where?”

  “Machine City.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know his name,” Jerry said. “Some skinny white guy.”

  Barnes sat in his truck sipping bad coffee between belts of Jack Daniel’s. He was parked at a twenty-four-hour gas station on Keisel Street, just a couple of blocks down from the projects at the cul-de-sac. Since leaving the motel he’d spent hours talking to street kids in the area, seeing who might have info on a skinny white serum dealer. The best he got were shrugs, the worst, threats. Eat a dick, cracker. Step off, bitch! Why don’t you go find Little Cher, asshole?

  He’d been ready to give up, but the gas-station attendant who’d sold him his coffee and talked into his chest with a nearly unintelligible accent seemed to recall a guy who called himself Verbatim coming in and out of the store now and again. Said he heard him mention “munky juice” once or twice on his cell. Said the afternoon clerk, a girl named Sharon, might know more.

  So Barnes parked and waited.

  His cell phone rang.

  UNKNOWN.

  He connected the call and said, “Since you won’t tell me your name, I’m gonna call you Shadow.”

  “I like it. Where are you?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “I want to help. I thought we. Established that.”

  “You’re doing a shit job. I’m on Keisel Street. Machine City.”

  “Rough place.”

  Two munkies were fighting over what looked like a Snickers bar on the other side of the parking lot. Tug-of-war. They were kicking at each other, both so thin they might have been two scarecrows hopped down from their crosses. Their clothes were torn, barely covering their frames. Into the phone, Barnes said, “They say we’re all God’s children.”

  “No. Religion,” Shadow said. “Or politics. Among friends.”

  “So what, we’re friends now?”

  There was a pause on the line, and then, “What do you. Believe in. Barnes?”

  “I believe in what I see. What I can touch. What’s real.”

  “You don’t. Believe there’s. A higher. Power up there. Looking down at us?”

  “If so, he’s not seeing much.”

  “You want to save. This world?” Shadow said.

  “I want to help where I can. Take scum like you off the streets. Keep you from hurting people.”

  “You want. To play God. Then?”

  “No,” Barnes said. “That would be you. You’re playing God with a man’s life as we speak. A little girl’s life, too.”

  “But you have. The power. To save him.”

  Barnes didn’t reply. He’d looked up to find a young black woman walking across the gas-station lot. She strode like a runway model past the pumps and under the rain guards. Her hair was tied up in two little tufts on either side of her head, revealing high cheekbones and colorful eyes. She wore a puffy red jacket with a furry collar and blue jeans.

  “My mother,” Shadow said, bringing Barnes back to the phone call. “Was a maid. When I was a boy. She used to. Drag me. To the homes. She would clean. I’d sit all day. While she scrubbed away. Other people’s filth.”

  Barnes watched the woman enter the store as he spun the decoder ring on his finger. He said, “What company did she work for?”

  Shadow chuckled weakly. “I remember,” he said. “There was a house. She cleaned for free. Pro bono. One of your lawyers. Would say. She cleaned it. For free. Because the man. That lived there. Was confined. To a wheelchair. ALS. He was nearly. Incapable. Of taking care. Of himself. Much less his home.”

  “Sounds like a bad deal,” Barnes said.

  “Whenever. We were there. My mother. Jerked him off. He grunted. Eyelids fluttering. Until he came. On her hand. She didn’t know I. Was watching.”

  “All that for free?” Barnes said. “Sounds like Mom was a saint.”

  “She was a whore. That man stank. Of feces. And there were bedsores. On his legs. And arms. His body slumped at. Impossible. Angles in that chair. But his eyes. Detective. His eyes were alive. Like shining rubies. Darting. This way and that. Fully aware of. Everything. Around him. Fully aware but. Incapable. Of convincing. His body to move. ‘They pleaded so.’ My mother would say. ‘His eyes. They pleaded so.’”

  “Now you’re going to tell me that God loved this man,” Barnes said, “and that he sent your mother to help him.”

  “No. I’m going to tell you. Detective. That he didn’t want. That from her. He didn’t want. Her to touch him. She did it. For herself. She jerked him off. Because she could. Because it displayed. Her power over him. More power than. Had she hit him. Than had she. Stolen from him. Than had she. Charged him for. Her services. I’m going to tell you. Detective. That before. I killed him. I cut out his eyes. And dropped them. Into a bucket of paint. I’m going. To tell you. That he sat still. The entire time. His jaw working. Mutely. Up and down. Because his wasteland. Of a body. Couldn’t even. Produce a scream.”

  The imagery sickened Barnes. His mouth watered and his guts churned. He closed his eyes and tried to stay calm, but his body trembled uncontrollably. He gripped the oh-shit handle with his available hand until the movement stopped.

  “Is Adrian Flaherty suffering?” Barnes said. “Or did he just get too close?”

  “You. Tell me.”

  Barnes offered no reply.

  “Your friend’s clock. Is ticking.”

  The line went dead.

  The Iranian gas-station attendant walked out of the convenience store and hurried to a beat-up Toyota parked in the alley beyond. The vehicle struggled to a start, belched a cloud of blue smoke, backed out, and sped away.

  Barnes called Franklin. He got voice mail. “I hope you put that trace on my line, ’cause I just got another call from our guy. He said his mother was a maid and more than likely a hooker. Maybe look into any of the Eddie Able cold case suspects whose mothers were maids.” He ended the call and got out of his car, spilling the dregs of his coffee on the pavement. He tossed the cup into an overflowing trash can seated next to two rusted-out Detroit News newspaper boxes. The headline behind the foggy plexiglass read, WHERE’S LITTLE CHER? The gas-station doors opened automatically. An electronic bell dinged as he crossed the threshold.

  The young black woman was behind the glass now, her chin resting on the butt of her right hand, elbow propped on the countertop. Her fingernails were polished but unpainted. Framed in useless trinkets and the lotto tickets taped to the glass, she looked like the reflection from a teenage girl’s bedroom mirror. As Barnes approached he saw she was writing notes with a ballpoint pen, left-handed. There was an open textbook nearby. He rapped the countertop with his knuckles. “Whatchya studying?”

  She looked up and said, “Calculus.” Her eyes flashed to the bulk in his armpit and then
back to his face. She raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re Sharon?”

  Now both eyebrows came up. She reared back.

  “The guy that just left,” Barnes said, thumbing toward the automatic doors, “he gave me your name.”

  She relaxed, pursed her lips, tapped the countertop with her pen. “I am going to kick his Allah-worshipping ass.”

  Barnes smiled. “He said you might be able to help me out. I’m looking for a guy. Calls himself Verbatim?”

  Sharon regarded Barnes for a moment and then said, “I want you to look at something.” She pointed at her book.

  Barnes looked down at the text. Through the thick, scratched glass the words might as well have been hieroglyphics, the formulas no better than chaos.

  “Looks difficult,” Sharon said, “doesn’t it?”

  “Sure does.”

  “And yet here you are, breaking my concentration when I have a test tomorrow.”

  Barnes harrumphed.

  She watched and waited.

  “I’m sorry,” Barnes said. “I’ll be quick. Verbatim?”

  Sharon shook her head no.

  “He’s not in trouble. I need some, uh . . .”

  She impatiently tapped her pen on her book.

  “I think he lives in the buildings just up the street.”

  “Sounds like you already know where he is then.”

  “I don’t know which building, or which unit.”

  “So stick around a bit. Maybe he’ll show.”

  Barnes smiled. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Sharon dropped her eyes back to her textbook, started back on her notes. “Puh-lease.”

  “Yep,” Barnes said, speaking out into the empty store as if an audience were there. “Extremely handsome white guy just hanging around the gas station for hours, eating all the cheese puffs, drinking up all the Mountain Dew.” He checked with her, found she wasn’t looking. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve got Mountain Dew money for days.”

  She kept her eyes down and shook her head. He could sense she was struggling to contain a smile.

  “I might even buy some of these here”—he pulled a small rolled tube, like a miniature scroll, from a box on the counter and read what was printed on the side—“uh, Magic Horoscopes.”

  Sharon raised her eyes but not her head. “You’re a Libra?”

  Barnes spun the tube to see Libra printed on the opposite side. “Nah, I think I’m a Taurus.”

  She stopped writing and pulled up. “You don’t know your astrological sign?”

  He slid the horoscope scroll back into its box. “Who wants to be a couple fish or a set of scales? Or how about Cancer? Screw that. I’m a Taurus, like it or lump it.”

  “That means you’re reliable and practical,” Sharon said, and then she frowned. “And stubborn.”

  Barnes smiled wanly.

  Sharon sighed. “I know Verbatim. He comes in here now and then. Big fan of the Tornados.” She flashed her eyes at a set of coagulating taco-slash-burrito concoctions in the nearby food warmer. They were spinning on steel tubes next to several hot dogs that brought skin disease to mind. “I don’t want to see him taken downtown.”

  Barnes drew a cross over his heart.

  Sharon ripped off a strip of paper from her notebook. She wrote on it and then slid it through the money slot.

  He read what she’d written:

  Building C, Unit 37.

  “Thank you,” Barnes said. He placed a twenty-dollar bill in the money exchanger, grabbed two Tornados, bagged them in one of the wax-paper bags next to the warmer, and headed toward the doors. They slid open as he approached. The electronic bell dinged.

  13

  The three apartment buildings on Keisel Street were eighteen-story neoclassical structures plagued by graffiti, a collection of gang symbols, racial slurs, and threats in low and high places where you couldn’t make sense of how the artist got them there. The projects were a black eye on Detroit’s already battered face, part of what every hater pointed to when they wanted to bust the city’s balls. Not that the state wasn’t busting its own. Barnes had once seen a Visit Michigan! postcard depicting the dilapidated and abandoned Michigan Central Station as a tourist attraction.

  Barnes walked down the third-floor hall in building C. An ammonia scent wafted over that of mildew. The tiles below were worn pale green, and the concrete walls, painted a lifeless gray, were scratched and scuffed from the move-ins and move-outs. The overhead lights gave everything a fluorescent hue.

  Loud bass-driven music thumped as Barnes moved past the steel-reinforced door of Unit 34. Definitely disturbance of the peace. He stopped and kicked the door a few times. “Keep it down!”

  No response from inside. Dude was probably passed out in there.

  A few more kicks. “Police!”

  “Thought you weren’t a policeman anymore.” The familiar voice.

  “Shhh.”

  No one came to the door.

  Barnes walked on. He banged on the door to 37. It opened after a minute or so. Standing in the doorway was a gaunt, middle-aged white guy sporting a patchy beard and clad in a camouflage tank top and gray sweatpants. His eyes were bleary, and he had the hard lines and sunken cheeks of a heroin addict. The apartment smelled of Band-Aids. It couldn’t have been that long since he’d cooked up.

  “Verbatim?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you Verbatim?”

  “Duh,” the guy said. He thumbed his chest. “Josh.”

  “I’m looking for Verbatim.”

  “That’s what he’s calling himself now?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “The little twerp showed up a few weeks ago like he owns the place.”

  “May I come in?”

  “What are you, the head vampire?” Josh said. He left the door open and walked back into the apartment’s small living room, the ass of his threadbare sweatpants sagging low.

  Barnes stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Josh sat down in a sweaty, busted-up microfiber recliner. He yanked a lever to kick up the footrest, sproing-click-clack. Everything in the apartment was trampled and strewn, as if the place were a giant blender and someone had just pressed the “Pulse” button. The television had on a rerun of Two and a Half Men. A woman lay curled up on a cheap love seat, the crooks of her arms bruised and possibly infected, her feet sticking out from beneath a red-and-white striped afghan, her toenails painted pink.

  A heroin kit was on the end table, plain as day.

  “He’s in his room,” Josh said, his dead eyes now locked on the television.

  Barnes stepped down the only hallway toward the bedrooms in the back. There were two doors, one open, one closed. He knocked lightly on the closed door.

  He heard two heel thumps hitting the floor and then the door flew open. A tall, skinny boy appeared. He loosely resembled Josh in the other room.

  “What’s up?” the kid said.

  “I’m looking for some—”

  “Who let you in?”

  Barnes pointed over his shoulder. “Guy in the other room. Josh.”

  The kid squinted. “What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for some serum.”

  “I don’t sell serum,” the kid said. “Have a nice day.” He started to close the door.

  “Wait,” Barnes said, sticking out his foot to stop the closing door. He showed the kid his cash.

  The kid opened the door back up. He leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked Barnes up and down, stopping momentarily on the spot where the Glock hung. “Let’s see your badge.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “And this ain’t a memory shop,” the kid said, but he didn’t move.

  “What’s it gonna take?”

  “You ever seen me before?” the kid said.

  Barnes shook his head.

  “How’d you know where to find me?”

  Barnes sighed. “We gonna m
ake a deal or what?”

  The kid stared at Barnes for a moment, his eyes boring into Barnes’s own.

  Barnes reached inside his jacket and pulled out the two Tornados tucked in the wax-paper bag. He proffered them like cigars.

  A smile broke across the kid’s face. He stepped back and held the door open.

  Barnes entered the room. It had the furnishings of a prison cell—a twin mattress on a steel frame, a small wooden chair next to a nightstand, and a rickety bookshelf. He approached the far wall, coated corner to corner in posters for old 4-H rodeos. The posters spanned back through the years and covered different towns in different states, a variety of colors. Barnes moved closer to examine one that depicted a man riding a bucking bull, and underneath the image, GO RODEO! The event was to be held from September 26 to October 1, 1982, at the state fairgrounds in Hastings, Nebraska.

  “My gramps collected them,” Verbatim said, indicating the posters. “Gave them to me before he passed. He was a deacon. They were all rolled up in one of those cardboard tubes with endcaps. Thought it was silly to keep them hidden like that, ya know? So I put them up.”

  Barnes nodded. There was something about the posters that spoke to the nomad inside him, called for him to rip up the roots of a stationary life, to go out into the world and get lost. He moved toward the bookshelf to find a collection of Hardy Boys and Choose Your Own Adventure paperbacks, plus some classics: Catcher in the Rye, 1984, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

  “You like to read?” Barnes asked.

  “Reading is fundamental. Don’t you know?”

  “Once a kid starts to read . . . ,” Barnes said, bemused.

  “. . . the world is an open book,” Verbatim completed.

  “What are you, like eighteen?”

  “Have a seat,” Verbatim said, gesturing toward the lone chair in the room. “What is it you said you need?”

  “You know what I need.”

  “Right.” Verbatim sat down on the edge of his mattress, reached down between his legs, and produced a full bottle of serum from beneath the bed. “My own mix. Better than the original.”

  “How’s that?” Barnes said, noting the black rectangular shape of a machine lurking beneath the bed.

  “Just trust me, man.”