Detroit Noir

by E. J. Olsen

  We came up on either side of the old room, guns drawn, flashlights out. There was no door in the frame and nothing to stop us from moving in quickly, guns covering opposite ends of the interior. Nobody home.

  An old army cot and space heater stood at one end, just as Lonnie had said. A couple of milk crates had been turned over to make a table for a hot plate, and a battered old pot hung from a nail in the wall. Empty soup cans and paper waste filled a tiger-striped trashcan that said Bless You Boys! on the side. Opposite the room from the cot was a stack of cardboard cartons.

  Tucker pulled up the flaps of the topmost box and looked inside. I stood with my back to the doorjamb so I had a clear view of both Tucker and the empty floor beyond. Tucker held up quart-sized containers filled with tablets, capsules. The names were dull in the flashlight beam, but I made out Dilau-did, Percocet, and several other Schedule I and II drugs. It was the mother load.

  I was about to say something smart, when we heard a scrape coming from the stairwell just outside the office. We froze. The scrape came again, then became footsteps pounding up the flight. We flew out of the room guns first. The pounding crossed the floor above us. We took the stairs two at a time.

  As with the level below, the eighteenth floor was stripped bare. Even the windows had been removed. Dimming light leaked in from the holes that once held windows and snow flurries drifted across the concrete floor. Through the window openings we could see the façades of other empty buildings, their edges softened in the falling snow and the late afternoon dusk.

  We were running for the footfalls echoing in the opposite stairwell when we heard the boom of what sounded like a heavy door.

  "The roof," said Tucker between breaths.

  Across the floor and up the first flight, we paused at the landing to listen. There was only the silence of the falling snow. The roof door stood partially open sending a thin shaft of light into the upper flight. Through the gap, we could see footprints trailing away in the thick snow. Tucker crept up the stairs and spread his large hand against the steel door. He looked back at me. I nodded and raised my gun. Tucker slowly pushed open the door.

  We could see the entire rooftop. It looked like a frosted cake with all the snow. Tucker stepped though the doorway and for a moment the stairwell went dark. Then he was out, moving deliberately, his head fixed straight ahead. I followed, ranging off to his right. The flurries were coming thicker now, but I could still see my partner. And beyond him, David Wilkins, the priest.

  Wilkins stood at the eastern edge of the roof. His back was to us and his long black coat hung nearly to the snow. He was framed on both sides by the empty towers that surrounded Grand Circus Park, and in the distance we could see the orange glow from the new baseball and football stadiums.

  "David." My voice was only a hoarse whisper and that surprised me. Or maybe the thickening snow ate the sound. Tucker stood about ten yards to my left. He was looking at me, his eyebrows raised. My mouth was dry and I swallowed to get some spit going.

  Tucker turned his head and said, "David Wilkins," in a clear voice that carried over the rooftop.

  When I remember the moment, I am struck by the silence. The vacant towers around us seemed to bear witness through their dark windows. Streetlights glowed from far below, and the falling snowflakes softened the hard edges and planes of the concrete that surrounded us. Wilkins seemed to cant forward, then disappeared over the edge. I looked up into the sky, into the snow. There was a flapping sound as his coat caught the wind on the way down.

  It sounded like wings.

  THE NIGHT WATCHMAN IS ASLEEP

  BY JOE BOLAND

  Downtown

  Mitchell, the other night watchman at the Guardian Building, was a moonlighting cop. The night Stoner started, Mitchell gave him the once-over— height and build, age, haircut—and decided that Stoner must be a moonlighting cop too.

  Stoner let him think what he wanted.

  "You from the Northwest District?" Mitchell asked.

  "I'm from Downriver," Stoner said.

  "Well sheeit," Mitchell said, putting a twang into it.

  Mitchell was an enormous black man, and Stoner wasn't certain if he was trying to be funny. When Stoner didn't laugh, Mitchell said, "Don't wanna double in your own bunk, huh?

  That's smart, rook. I'm from Farmington Hills. You from Taylor-tucky? Wyan-tucky?"

  "Beautiful Brownstown," Stoner said.

  Mitchell seemed to decide that Stoner wasn't going to be trouble.

  "Oh no," he laughed. "You in beautiful Brownstown now."

  Stoner was from Wyandotte, twenty miles south of Detroit. His family and most of his neighbors were originally from Tennessee, not Kentucky. He'd really only been to the city a few dozen times before, for Tigers or Red Wings games, or to check out the casinos when they first opened. His idea of the city came from the news, and from the bad word-of-mouth he heard every day. As far as he could tell, Detroit hadn't changed much in his lifetime. It was no longer the nation's murder capital, but it didn't seem like a city on the rebound either. He always thought of it as dirty and abandoned-looking, and a couple new buildings and stadiums downtown didn't do enough to change his impression: You were still only a block or two away from being surrounded by black people who hated you.

  He had never been in the Guardian Building before, an office highrise two blocks from the Detroit River with a tiled façade the color of light coffee and a lobby like a cathedral. Stoner had to admit it was beautiful.

  Mitchell walked him through the building. At first Stoner was apprehensive, wondering if the tour was going to be an excuse for Mitchell to talk cop-shop with him, but Mitchell only seemed interested in talking on his cell phone, which rang every few minutes. Half an hour after their shift began, Mitchell put a hand over the mouthpiece and said, "Listen— you got this, right?"

  Stoner nodded. "I got it."

  "Just do like the flashlight stiffs on your beat," Mitchell said, backing away. "You know. Pretend you a cop."

  Stoner's second cousin, Hawkins, had gotten him the job. After work, Stoner waited for him at the bus stop near the corner of Woodward and Larned, on the west end of the Guardian's block. Hawkins guarded a bank building on West Grand Boulevard in the New Center area, ten minutes north of downtown. Stoner stood around for twenty-five minutes, staring at the statues along Woodward—Joe Louis's fist, the crouching naked man who was supposed to be the Spirit of Detroit—before Hawkins pulled up.

  Hawkins's Grand Marquis Brougham—white-on-white, rust-shot, passenger-side mirror hanging down, driver-side mirror missing—might have been one of the cars jamming Hawkins's family's driveway, or up on cinder blocks in their side yard, back when Stoner and Hawkins were kids.

  He handed Stoner a warm tallboy in a paper bag. "How was your first night, sweetie?"

  "This about the time you'll be getting down here, man?"

  Hawkins laughed. "Don't worry about it, bitch. Nobody's gonna fuck with you, not in this uniform." He made a right onto Jefferson Avenue, taking the Lodge to I-75 South. "I thought you were a cop myself."

  Stoner decided to let it go. He didn't like standing around a bus stop, but the alternative was waiting inside the building for Hawkins to pull up to one of the entrances and honk the car horn. He didn't want Mitchell or the guards who relieved the both of them or the neighborhood patrolmen to know that he didn't have a car of his own.

  It was the Motor City, for Christ's sake. What kind of a man didn't have a car?

  It was a temporary situation—he'd get his truck running again soon enough—but there was no need to make it worse by pissing off Hawkins.

  Stoner didn't really know him anymore.

  "I think you're gonna like it," Hawkins said. "And remember, this is just getting a foot in the door."

  Hawkins was talking about his big plan again: to start his own security company. "There's gonna be more call for security work than ever. First we get in the hotels Detroit's building. Then you get contracts w
ith the bigwigs who come to stay in the hotels. When they're looking for a bodyguard to travel with them when they fly to China and shit, they're gonna say: Get in touch with the people at the Book Cadillac, the Pontchar-train, their security force was the bomb."

  Hawkins was the only night watchman at his building. Stoner pictured him pacing the empty building alone, hiding his beer from the janitor, reading every inch of the Free Press or the News, listening to the radio through the night, dreaming his dream of founding a world-class security company.

  They were friends in childhood, then drifted apart— helped along by Stoner's mother, who dismissed Hawkins's family as "country." He barely remembered Hawkins in high school: a solitary figure, starting to get heavy, reading Soldier of Fortune magazine when he thought no one was looking.

  Stoner felt a sudden emptiness thinking about it. He took a long swallow of his beer.

  "Yeah, I'd like to get Mitchell on board too," Hawkins said.

  "Oh yeah? You talk to him about it?"

  "No, dude, but he'd be great. It would be cool to get a cop on board, especially at the beginning. It'd help, too, to have a brother, you know, help us get situated in Detroit." Hawkins lit a cigarette. "And Mitchell's from Oakland County, too, up there with the richies, so he knows how to talk to people."

  "He thinks I'm a cop," Stoner said. He filled Hawkins in, repeating the conversation he'd had with Mitchell, at Hawkins's insistence, word for word.

  "And you played along?" Hawkins laughed. "Well, I hear the man's getting married soon, going over wedding shit all the time. His brain's probably fried. You're gonna hafta set him straight—not now, but sometime."

  Mitchell introduced Stoner to the neighborhood patrolmen as a cop too.

  Red and McSmith, both high-yellow black men in their forties, stood with their fists on their hips, regarding Stoner dubiously, as Mitchell said, "Stoner's on the job, down in Brownstown."

  "That so?" Red said.

  "We're going to the Lafayette," McSmith said. "You want a Coney dog, Mitchell?"

  That night Stoner told Hawkins he wanted to come clean before it was too late. "They didn't buy it."

  "It's too late," Hawkins said. "Listen, if push comes to shove, tell everybody you're a dispatcher."

  "What if they quiz me? What's a seven twenty-one? "

  Hawkins was certain it wouldn't happen.

  Two nights later, Red and McSmith pulled up next to Hawkins's Grand Marquis at the bus stop as Stoner was walking up to the car.

  Stoner tensed. He could see that Hawkins already had an open beer between his legs, and was reaching down to grab a beer for Stoner out of a bag on the floor of the front seat.

  They had already settled into a pattern, driving around the city after work, drinking beer in the early morning hours, Hawkins giving Stoner uninformative tours of various sights Stoner didn't even want to see in daylight, putting off heading for the freeway home just a bit longer each day.

  With the mirror on his side of the car missing, Hawkins hadn't noticed the cops. McSmith was resting an arm on the open window in the passenger seat of the patrol car, noting the absence of the mirror, and hearing the country music that Stoner noticed was, regrettably, coming out of the stereo.

  "Hey!" Stoner called, trying to draw everyone's attention.

  "Hey, rookie," McSmith said, without looking in his direction.

  Hawkins sat up and looked at the cops and killed the radio. He slowly placed his hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, a gesture meant to be ironic and hostile, lost on no one.

  "Stoner, this your car?"

  "It's mine," Hawkins said, looking out the windshield.

  "You need to do something about the mirrors, my man."

  "And the body," Red said, leaning over.

  "Yeah," McSmith laughed. "Looks like a junkyard toilet. Stoner, see your buddy gets some mirrors, y'hear?" They pulled away.

  Stoner got in the Grand Marquis.

  "Fucking assholes," Hawkins said.

  "Man, don't fuck around with those guys."

  "Fucking Dee-troit police. Bunch of thugs. They just love to fuck with white people. The only time they go into the neighborhoods where their own people are killing each other over crack is when they need to make some quick cash."

  Stoner had seen the stories in the News and the Free Press lately, and Hawkins had filled him in with details that hadn't made the newspapers. Detroit residents reporting shakedowns by cops—or people claiming to be cops. The mayor's personal security detail—made up entirely of cops who'd been on the football team with him in high school—escorting visiting rap stars to afterhours clubs. A stripper who'd performed at a party at the mayoral residence, Manoogian Manor, turning up in a dumpster.

  To Hawkins the stories were gospel truth. They explained why he'd been rebuffed whenever he tried to talk to any of the cops up in the New Center about coming on board, becoming a partner in his security company venture.

  "They don't want to get in bed with Whitey. Might knock ' em out of line for that cushy job at the motor pool, or sitting in a car outside the Manoogian on permanent overtime. Might fuck up their payments from the union in the next round of layoffs or the next strike. That's their whole ambition, dude."

  Stoner knew that trouble was coming, but he wasn't certain what to do. The money that was, in his mind, earmarked for his truck repairs kept going to Hawkins, for gasoline and beer. What was he going to do, not give his cousin gas money? He knew he should turn down the beer, make some noise about heading home when Hawkins started driving around aimlessly at night, make excuses when they pulled into their usual final stop, the bar down by the Ford plant in Wyandotte that never seemed to close. There had to be an easy way to get Hawkins to take him home after work. Stoner needed to separate himself—start drinking less, stop sleeping through all the daylight hours, fix his truck—without crushing his cousin's spirit any further.

  He just didn't know how to do it.

  A few nights later, the Grand Marquis Brougham was already idling at the bus stop when Stoner arrived, the patrol car sitting behind it, Red in the passenger seat this time. McSmith was behind the wheel, writing Hawkins a ticket.

  Red watched Stoner walk toward the patrol car. "Hey, rookie."

  "We were gonna take care of that this weekend," Stoner said, hoping this was about the mirrors.

  "Know what I was gonna do this weekend?" McSmith asked, without looking up from his writing. "Titty-fuck Pamela Anderson." Red laughed and shook his head. "Now I hear that Kid Rock gone and marry her."

  "We don't see a lot of daylight during the week," Stoner said, thinking of his dead truck. "You know how it is."

  McSmith didn't look up. "Woulda, coulda, shoulda."

  "How about one break?"

  Red shrugged. "He's already writing, Stoner."

  "His money's kind of tight, man."

  McSmith handed over the ticket. "Then pay it for him, rookie."

  "Just go slow," Stoner said to Hawkins back in the car.

  Hawkins pulled up to the light. His face and neck had turned bright red. He made the right onto Jefferson.

  "It never fails. Give ' em a badge, they bust on a honky." Hawkins tipped his beer.

  The cops gave a short burst on their siren, a single whoop. Stoner looked back: The patrol car was right behind the Grand Marquis.

  Hawkins spilled his beer down the front of his uniform. "Fuck!"

  "Just be cool," Stoner said.

  Hawkins pulled to the curb. McSmith appeared at Hawkins's window.

  "I don't know about Brownstown," he said, with a certain theatrical relish, "but here in Detroit? We frown on open intoxicants."

  Stoner's door opened. "Come out here, Stoner," Red said.

  Stoner climbed out of the car and followed Red to the middle of the sidewalk. They turned and watched Hawkins hand the rumpled grocery bag filled with beer out his window.

  "Your buddy on the job?" Red asked.

  "No."

  Red sh
rugged. "Army buddy?"

  "Kid I grew up with," Stoner said.

  "Well," Red said. His voice had become gentle. He nodded back in Hawkins's direction, inviting Stoner to follow his gaze and contemplate the battered car and the sullen young fat man in the soiled uniform. "You're all grown up now. Right?"

  He's my cousin, Stoner wanted to say.

  He knew it was too late.

  For a cop, Red didn't seem like a bad guy, and being black, he might have understood about family; and he seemed to be making Stoner some kind of offer—square your shoulders, join the club.

  Stoner had blown him off, though, and dissed his cousin in the bargain. It was too late to take any of it back.

  "They're just fuckers, all of them," Hawkins said, back behind the wheel. "I hope they choke on that beer."