Lives Laid Away

by Stephen Mack Jones

  Also by Stephen Mack Jones

  August Snow

  Copyright © 2019 by Stephen Mack Jones

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jones, Stephen Mack, author.

  Lives laid away / Stephen Mack Jones.

  ISBN 978-1-61695-959-3

  eISBN 978-1-61695-960-9

  I. Title

  PS3610.O6289 L35 2019 813’.6—dc23 2018040580

  Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For the real heroes.

  James and Evelyn L. Jones . . .

  . . . my brother JR Jones II . . .

  . . . my son, Jacob, who is becoming the man

  I always aspired to be . . .

  And to you, the Dreamers . . .

  Somewhere there must be storehouses

  where all these lives are laid away

  like suits of armor or old carriages

  or clothes hanging limply on the walls

  —rainier maria rilke’s

  “no one lives his life”

  One

  Her secret ingredient was nutmeg.

  Not a lot—maybe half a teaspoon or less—but she got the same complex undercurrent effect that she would have with smoked East Indian paprika or authentic Mexican chili powder.

  I was in my kitchen, slowly blending half a teaspoon of nutmeg into my homemade salsa—pureed tomatoes from Honeycomb Market, blanched and coarse-chopped tomatoes, chopped jalapenos, minced yellow bell pepper, fresh dill, a quarter lemon, squeezed, garlic, sea salt and coarse ground black pepper. I also added just a bit of chopped cilantro.

  While I diced, pureed and blended ingredients, I listened to an old CD of my father’s: John Lee Hooker and Santana’s classic “The Healer,” cranked to top volume on my stereo. Perfect music to accompany a rakishly handsome Blaxican as he made a poor imitation of his mother’s salsa. Courtesy of the potent aroma of the salsa and the music, I could feel my hips, my feet moving in the rhythm of a slow rhumba bolero.

  And yes, cabrón.

  I dance a mean rhumba bolero, thanks to my mother’s patient lessons and the decades of practice I’ve had at dozens of Mexican weddings, one Salvadoran/Colombian wedding anniversary and four quinceañeras.

  I’d even given salsa and rhumba lessons at Camp Leatherneck and FOB Delhi Beirut in Afghanistan to guys who’d just gotten engaged to sweethearts anxiously waiting stateside. Go ahead. Ask former Marine Corporal Francis “Franco” Montoya (Seattle, Washington) or former Marine Sergeant Dwayne “Wee Man” Nixon (Memphis, Tennessee). Marine killing machines who will freely admit I’m the only guy they’ve ever loved dancing with.

  It had been a week since I’d taken Tatina Stadmueller, my long-distance-kinda-maybe girlfriend, to Metro Airport for her flight home—back to Oslo, Norway. Back to begin her last year of Cultural Anthropology doctoral studies at the University of Oslo. I was still feeling buoyant from her visit. Like Paul blinded by righteousness and beauty.

  The air in my house still carried her warm chocolate-and-pepper scent.

  One thing I hadn’t intended Tatina to see during her time in Detroit was a black Chevy Suburban, windows blacked-out, crawling down Markham Street at ungodly hours of the morning. Tatina had casually noted the SUV twice during her nighttime bathroom visits.

  “Who are they?” she asked over breakfast one morning.

  “Probably somebody coming home from a late shift somewhere.”

  Of course, I knew better.

  This is Mexicantown. The black Chevy Suburban with blacked out windows was ICE—US Immigration and Customs Enforcement police—trolling in the dark-heart hours, mapping potential “nests” and safe-houses of undocumented immigrants. Their official motto? “Protecting National Security and Upholding Public Safety.”

  In Mexicantown, we have a different motto for ICE: Si es marrón, enciérrelo.

  “If it’s brown, lock it down.”

  Two

  “Please, Jesus lord,” Jimmy Radmon said as he entered through my front door. “Tell me I ain’t seein’ this.”

  I was carefully ladling my now-completed salsa into six shiny, sterilized Ball fourteen-ounce storage jars. Celia Cruz had just finished her sexy take on “Oye Como Va.” Now I was doing a rhumba bolero to James Brown’s Hot Pants-Pt. 1.

  “You need to learn the rhumba, Jimmy,” I said.

  “What I need to learn that goofy stuff for?” Jimmy said, walking around me and retrieving an ice-cold bottle of water from my fridge. I kept bottled water in the fridge just for Jimmy and Carlos. They seemed never to be finished making little adjustments, improvements and additions to my house. I didn’t really mind, since most of these were invisible to me. One of their last improvements made my house a virtual Wi-Fi hotspot for the other houses on Markham Street. Not a bad thing since most neighborhoods in Detroit were Internet dead zones.

  I found space in the fridge for four of the six jars of salsa and handed two to Jimmy. One for him, one for his loving landlords, my older neighbors Sylvia and Carmela.

  “You should sell this stuff,” Jimmy said, scrutinizing the jars. “Octavio’s Genu-wine D-City Salsa. It’s good. Better than store-bought.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t think about it.

  Satisfied with the success of my culinary mission, I grabbed a beer—a Batch Brewing Vienna Lager—and retired to the living room. Jimmy followed along, insisting on boring me with renovation status reports, material and equipment requests and subcontractor bids. We’d just flipped two houses—a detached brick three-bedroom to a young couple who’d moved here from Portland with their three-year-old girl, and a two-bedroom brick duplex to some English charitable foundation guy who insisted on wearing his hair in a man-bun and doing yoga on his front porch.

  Then there were the inevitable local newspaper and magazine inquiries.

  “This Renna Jacobs from the Free Press, man, she keep on calling me,” Jimmy said. “Wants to talk to you about bringin’ the ’hood back.”

  “You didn’t give her my number, did you?” I said.

  “No, on account I know you’d kill me.”

  “Damn straight,” I said. “Probably by making you give up Cheetos and Gatorade and force-feeding you healthy food.”

  “Seriously,” Jimmy insisted. “A little press be nice for the ’hood. And for me and Carlos. I mean, we all got to think outside the Markham Street box, Mr. Snow. One house left to reno and flip on the street—then what?”

  Jimmy had just asked a question that I’d been avoiding for the past three months. I never intended for house renovations in the southwest Detroit neighborhood of Mexicantown to become my purpose in life. I just wanted my neighborhood—my street—back. Maybe homage to my beloved parents. Maybe reverence for a long-ago way of life that in this moment seemed to hold no more weight than spirits wandering far from their graves.

  After being fired from the Detroit Police Department, the trial that followed and my twelve-million-dollar wrongful dismissal award, I’d wanted nothing more than to isolate my shattered self in a safe place. That had been the whole reason I’d renovated my childhood home on Markham Street in the first place, and then, by extension, the neighboring houses toward Mexicantown’s business thoroughfare, Vernor Avenue.

  Markham Street—and August Octavio Snow—2.0.

  N
ow, I had a couple good men depending on me for their livelihood.

  And I had no answers for them.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  Jimmy gave me a sideways look that said he’d heard this from me before. “Yeah, well, either way,” Jimmy said, tearing a small portion of paper from his work notebook and handing the shred to me, “here’s that reporter’s number. A ‘neighborhood renaissance,’” Jimmy persisted. “That’s what this reporter lady calls what you done did around here. And, I mean, talkin’ to her might be a nice chance for you to do some reno on your reputation in this town, you know?”

  I feared Jimmy had stepped over a line and into my personal minefield.

  But this was Jimmy. A kid who was, by nature, innocent—maybe even naïve—and without a malicious bone in his rail-thin body.

  “What reputation might that be, Jimmy?”

  “‘Ex-cop who took twelve mil from raggedy-ass Detroit reinvests in raggedy-ass Detroit,’” Jimmy said. “Hometown hero stuff. You could make this work for you, Mr. Snow.”

  “Like I said, Jimmy—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jimmy said. “‘I’ll think about it.’”

  Three

  You move to my street, you get a party.

  Them’s the rules, like ’em or not.

  Markham Street had seen three new sets of neighbors move in all within two months: The Bergman-Hallseys, Alan and Michael, a young transplant couple from Portland, Oregon with a three-year-old daughter, Kasey. Mara Windmere, some sort of hotshot tech firm marketing manager who thought she’d give urban living a fun little hipster spin. And Trent T.R. Ogilvy, the man-bun Brit, who moved from Rochester, New York (where he’d moved from Manchester, England). Ogilvy worked for an international charity foundation out of London whose goal was to bring laptop computers and Wi-Fi to Internet deserts. There are certainly enough neighborhoods in Detroit that qualify. Too many people doing job searches through the classifieds in two dying daily newspapers.

  “I rather enjoy a drink or five,” Trent told me when I dropped by his house to invite him. “I hope that’s acceptable.”

  “More than acceptable,” I said. “It’s expected.”

  I made a trip to The Honeycomb Market to put in an order for the summer Markham Street party a month away. You don’t live in Mexicantown without making at least a once-a-week sojourn to Honeycomb, a neighborhood institution: pyramids of brightly colored jalapeños, mangos, tomatillos and succulent cactus leaves; shelves crowded with spices, imported packaged Latin American foods; colorful cans and bottles of Mexican and Nicaraguan coffees and soft drinks; fresh handmade tortillas and chorizo, and enough Mi Costeñita candy and Pingüinos sweet cakes to make a child’s eyes pop.

  I’d been coming to Honeycomb since I was a boy holding my mother’s hand. These were the people who converted my father from being a Falstaff beer philistine to a Negra Modelo and Pacifico aficionado who indulged in the occasional cop’s guilty pleasure of a smuggled Noche Buena at Christmas.

  He was never much of a michelada man, however.

  “Who inna hell puts hot sauce and lime juice in a damn beer?” I remember him saying.

  My mother, head swiveling on her neck, forefinger waving No! No! No! in the air, said, “My people put hot sauce and lime juice in everything! Choo got a problem with that, cabeza de burro?”

  For this summer’s block party, I estimated we were up to at least two hundred chicken and pork tortillas, thirty pounds of rice, twenty pounds of refried and whole black beans, maybe forty pounds of ground chorizo and seasoned ground beef, and God-Only-Knows how many sausages.

  At the expansive meat counter at the back of Honeycomb I waited for help.

  And waited.

  After five minutes, Nana Corazon-Glouster—the meat counter manager—appeared.

  “Well, look what the gato dragged in!” she said, grinning broadly. “I’d come around and give you a big, wet kiss, but I’m afraid you’d get addicted!”

  “Those lips? Those eyes?” I said. “Yeah, it could become a habit!”

  “Like hell,” Nana laughed. “What can I do you for, Augusto?”

  “Well,” I said, looking around, “first you can answer me this: Where the hell is everybody? Usually you’ve got three, four people working the counter.”

  Nana winced as if she had a bare nerve in a back tooth. Lowering her voice, she said, “People are scared, Augusto. They see them ICE bastards cruisin’ day and night and all anybody can think is, ‘They’re coming for me.’ I mean people who’ve been citizens for ten, twenty—fifty years! None of our employees are undocumented.” She lowered her voice and said, “Okay, maybe one or two. But no drugs, no gang tats! They show up on time and work hard. They scrub toilets like they were polishing gold and they say ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, ma’am,’ ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you.’ Where’s the citizenship path for these people?”

  She asked if I’d seen any patrols.

  I told her about the late-night cruises down Markham Street.

  “And they don’t scare you?” Nana said.

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause I’ve seen scary up close and personal,” I said. “Afghanistan. Pakistan. With me, they got a problem: Deport him to Mexico? Or send him back to Africa?”

  My little joke did nothing to allay her concerns.

  “You were a cop,” Nana whispered. “Can’t you do something?”

  “I kinda think we’ve all got our asses hanging out on this one, Nana.”

  “What about Mrs. Gutierrez?”

  My friend Tomás’s wife, Elena, was respected throughout the community as a champion of Mexicantown residents and a defender of civil rights in general. Five years ago, a small group of residents and business leaders tried to draft her into running for District 6 city council representative. She politely declined, saying she had a husband and granddaughter to care for—and she was still trying to decide which one needed the most attention.

  “She’s doing what she can with some Birmingham immigration and naturalization lawyers,” I said. “And she’s had a couple meetings with the mayor and at Holy Redeemer. But the ICE storm came in fast and hit hard, Nana. People still don’t know what—if anything—they can do. I sure as hell don’t know.”

  With every word I spoke, Nana looked as if her soul was slowly being crushed.

  “I know this won’t help much,” I said, “but if they come for you, I’ll move heaven and earth to get you back.” I made wide puppy-dog eyes and pouted my lips. “And if they come for me, Nana?”

  A devilish glint returned to her large brown eyes. With a crisp salute she said, “Sayonara, baby!”

  I laughed perhaps a little too loud. “Tha’s cold, girl!”

  “Oh, you like being spanked. All you macho guys like being spanked. What can I get for ya, Augusto?”

  I gave her my list and the drop-dead date. With each item Nana’s pretty head gave a decisive nod. “I got your back, big boy.”

  “Never any doubt, Nana.”

  I blew her a kiss. She caught it midair and slapped it to her right butt cheek.

  Like everybody else in Mexicantown, I usually came into Honeycomb for two or three items and left with seven or eight. I figured I might as well pick up a few staples. Couple extra bags of tortilla chips and a pound of their guacamole never hurt anybody.

  As I wandered the narrow aisles, imagine my surprise at running into the rising star of the Detroit Police Department’s Major Case Squad, Detective Captain Leo Cowling. He looked like he was dressed for Port Huron to Mackinac Race Week: Navy-blue alligator shoes, cream-colored linen slacks, a crisp white open banded-collar shirt and matching cream-colored linen jacket. Tastefully topping things off was a tan Cuban-style straw fedora with a wide navy-blue silk band. The kind of high-end fedora one could only get from Henry
the Hatter.

  Improving his overall look was the woman on his arm: tall, glowing bronze skin, athletically built, high-cheek bones, cascading black hair and long, breathtaking legs.

  “Well, how’s this for a Wednesday afternoon surprise!” I said, grabbing Cowling’s hand and enthusiastically shaking it. Were it not for his stunning companion, he probably would have yanked his hand from mine and tried to sock me in the jaw with his embarrassingly slow right cross. In this moment, however, he reluctantly went along with the handshake.

  “Uh—yeah—s’up, Snow?” Cowling said.

  “Nothing!” I said, grinning like the happiest of country bumpkins. “Just a little shoplifting.”

  “I know you,” the woman said, narrowing her eyes at me.

  It took me a second, but I finally recognized her.

  Suddenly, I didn’t find her so attractive.

  “Martinez?” I said. “Internal Affairs?”

  “Yep,” she said. “No hard feelings, right?”

  Reluctantly, we shook. From her handshake it was obvious she had the ability to crack walnuts in her fist.

  In a slapdash, court-of-public-opinion effort to smear me after I was fired from the Force for looking into the former mayor’s criminal malfeasance, an IA case was brought against me: Misuse of department funds (strip clubs, gifts, drugs) and behavior unbefitting an officer of the law; a hooker had been paid to say I’d forced her into giving me free sex and that I’d knocked her around a bit. An unimaginative, classic stitch-up courtesy of the former mayor and his corrupt DPD security team.

  IA’s case fell apart when discovery failed to produce any strip club expenditures, and the hooker failed to identify me in a lineup as her attacker.

  Twice.

  It also helped when, after her second misidentification, the hooker stormed out of the viewing room yelling, “Y’all ain’t payin’ my black ass enough for this bullshit! Fuck all y’all!”

  “No hard feelings,” I said to Martinez, still feeling the tweak of a tender bruise on my pride. Fake laughing and slapping Cowling on the shoulder, I said, “Watch out for this guy! I can tell you right now he steals candy from the Fourteenth’s vending machine!”