“Sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Sorry don’t cut it, pendejo,” Tomás said. “On account there’s only four things keeping me rooted to this shit-heap earth: Elena, my daughter, grandbaby June—and you.”
Tomás looked up at the night sky for a moment, then knocked back the rest of his beer.
“Whatever you need done to make my wife safe and get things back to a regular amount of shit, I’m there, Octavio,” Tomás said. “But you gotta be straight with me. No secrets, lies, or bullshit.”
“Tomorrow I’m heading out to Royal Oak. You wanna ride shot gun?”
“What’s in Royal Oak?”
“Duke Ducane.”
Tomás gave me a look. Once upon a time that name had unleashed the hounds of Hell, at least in Detroit.
“He’s not still inside? Or dead?”
“Nope,” I said. “Been out two years.”
“And why would we be going to see that son of Satan’s whore?”
“Because he used to run girls in Detroit,” I said. “Newfoundland to Toronto through Detroit and on to Kentucky and Tennessee. Russians, Chinese, Nigerians. They were a quarter of his business. Had pipelines and safe houses not even the FBI could track or trace. He knows the players in the sex trade. At least he used to.”
“What’s that evil fucker doing in Royal Oak?”
“He’s in the music business.”
“Jesus,” Tomás said. “From bad to worse.”
Fifteen
Royal Oak was once a funky little upper-middle-class hippy enclave fourteen miles northwest of Detroit where aging white liberals could get their “freak” on. The smell of pot and clove cigarettes hung in the air wherever you went: from hip little coffee bars with beat-up sofas and bad paintings of nude women to hole-in-the-wall specialty bike shops to the expansive farmer’s market where, I suspect, the words “organic” and “gluten-free” were first overused. You could buy vintage clothing in one shop then pop next door to be fitted for a latex bondage outfit. Long before being accused of “cultural appropriation,” white kids with lip-piercings and blond dreadlocks skateboarded up and down Main Street, past this little overpriced art gallery or that coveted greasy-burger joint. Film aficionados, stinking of Gauloises or Gitanes unfiltered cigarettes, worshipped at the flickering alter of the Main Art Theater where every week was a celebration of François Truffaut, Roberto Rossellini or Ingmar Bergman.
And there were rattrap, collapsing storefront music clubs where rock bands furiously performed in front of stoned teenagers resplendent in primary-colored hair, tats, piercings, mercilessly ripped jeans and unlaced Doc Martens boots.
Royal Oak is to Michigan what Austin is to Texas: a small citadel of music-loving, free-wheeling, progressive white social liberalism plopped in the middle of a Sargasso Sea of gun-toting, cross-burning, right-wing militias and reactionary neo-con politics, with all the black and brown folk on the outside, staring in with fear and loathing at both.
Royal Oak is what happens when wealthy white people gentrify an area populated by middle-class white people.
For all of my gripes, I had a few squishy spots in my heart for Royal Oak.
When I was ten, my folks took me to see a director’s cut re-mastered rerelease of Alien at the Main Art Theater when the Main Art finally realized pop culture paid the bills. My mother had seen the original with girlfriends. She’d told my father Alien was “like a Mexican children’s story only in space!” Unimaginable monsters and insatiable evil pitted against the virtuous in lands where virtue and righteousness rarely won. My father wondered about my mother’s sanity for a while after that.
There was now defunct Dave’s Comics and the long-gone R&J Café. Mercifully, the Red Coat Tavern was still serving one of the best burgers around with butter-sautéed onions.
My lawyer—David G. Baker—lived here.
“Remind me again why he just did a nickel in Jackson for extortion instead of life for murder, drugs, racketeering, human trafficking and prostitution?” Tomás said as we inched our way north through heavy afternoon Woodward Avenue traffic toward Royal Oak.
“Expensive legal team,” I said. “Not to mention half the judges and politicos in the state were in his pocket. If he went down for everything, they went down for more. And the legal system in Michigan crumbles into Lake Erie. I’ve always had the uncomfortable feeling I won my lawsuit against the old mayor because Duke Ducane decided to cut bait with him.”
“Even so,” Tomás said, “you was the one who perp walked him. A lot of cops tried—including your old man—but you got the collar, young blood.”
I remained unconvinced of my own heroism when it came to arresting Marcus “Duke” Ducane.
Before leaving on our quest north to Royal Oak, we made the obligatory stop at the large gun locker in Tomás’s basement.
“Jesus,” I said, staring at the gun locker. “What the hell’s this?”
Gone from the locker was the poster of a maniacal looking Generalissimo Emiliano Zapata Salazar, replaced by a poster of popular Mexican-American comedians George Lopez, Gabriel Iglesias, Paul Rodriguez and Cristela Alonzo. The bare light bulb and pull chain in front of the locker was now outfitted with an imitation stained glass shade that read “¡El hogar es donde está el corazón!”—“Home is where the heart is!”
“Elena did that,” Tomás said. “Zapata kept freaking her out when she came down to do laundry. Something about the eyes following her.”
“Dear God,” I said unnerved by the changes. “It looks like you keep frijoles and puppies in there now.”
It took a lot for me to convince Tomás that maybe one—just one—semi-auto rifle might be good enough for our visit to Duke’s Royal Oak recording studio, SoundNation. Reluctantly, he settled on the impressive-looking IWI Tavor XB95.
“But I’m taking two clips,” Tomás said. “If I gotta kill that fucker, I wanna make damned good and sure he’s dead.”
Instead of a second assault-style rifle, Tomás settled on a Beretta 92 Series 9mm with a shoulder rig, a Ruger .357 Mag snugged in a back-belt holster and a Ka-Bar Snody “Snake Charmer” knife in his left cargo pants pocket.
“Feel like I’m fucking naked,” Tomás grumbled as he closed the locker. “Coupla goddamn peashooters and a Mexican toothpick.”
I well understood Tomás’s reluctance to see Duke Ducane without heavy artillery.
There are dark legends in the Detroit crime world. The Purple Gang, a notoriously vicious prohibition era gang comprised mostly of Eastern European Jews. Vito “Billy Jack” Giacalone and his brother Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone, Italian Mafia bosses who were suspected in the disappearance and murder of International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. And notorious black drug kingpin Frank Usher, who so impressed his Italian mob partners with his business acumen and unrepentant violence that he was given the moniker “Frank Nitti” after Al Capone’s vicious enforcer.
Then there was Marcus “Duke” Ducane: Drug dealer, extortionist, gun runner, numbers runner and human trafficker.
By the time I came to the force, Duke Ducane had already outlasted two mayors, a DPD commissioner, three Ducane task forces, one joint DPD-FBI investigation, and a mistrial.
Like Tomás said, I was the one who perp walked Duke Ducane into the 14th Precinct.
And I was the one he winked at as he walked away from eight charges that could have landed him in a super-max prison for life, drawing only five years for extortion. That’s when I came to the uneasy realization that Duke let me arrest him. He dangled just enough bait in legal waters to get him out of a business that had become a decentralized, depersonalized and anonymous global machine. Autonomous nation-states with byzantine agreements, shadow contracts and mountains of snakes each with multiple heads, each with killing venom.
I was Duke Ducane’s last, best shot at retiremen
t without a double-tap to the back of his head. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t seemed to hold much of a grudge against me.
After my wrongful dismissal trial I got a letter from Ducane.
“Sorry for your troubles, Detective Snow,” the letter began. “You may not believe this, but I am truly sorry for your trial and tribulations. Wherever your path, know this: I am changed because of you. Perhaps not transcendently—I am not Saul. Just remember Deuteronomy 31:6, ‘Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you.’”
Even the devil quotes scripture.
I pulled into the small parking lot behind a two-story red brick building just off of Main Street a couple miles north of I-696 and parked.
Duke Ducane’s SoundNation Recording Studio.
Tomás and I did a quick safeties-off weapons check.
Satisfied we could fend off any number of small island nation armies and quickly be coronated we went inside.
Sixteen
The sign next to the simple polished maple wood door for SoundNation Recording, Inc. could very well have discreetly announced the entrance to a CPA’s office.
Inside, it quickly became apparent this wasn’t a CPA’s office: The walls had a Jackson Pollock-on-a-bourbon-and-cocaine-bender splatter vibe to them. Hung from the ceiling was a white frosted glass chandelier in the shape of a giant bottle of Jack Daniels.
There were two curved loveseats on opposite sides of the hallway, both done in white-and-black leopard print, adding to the nausea-inducing effect.
Sitting some thirty feet away at a frosted glass desk outlined with white LED lights was an attractive young woman with impossibly white skin, Emo plum-purple hair, black eye shadow, matching lipstick and a silver nostril ring.
“Hi!” the young woman said enthusiastically. “Welcome to SoundNation!”
“I’m August Snow,” I said, returning her enthusiasm. “This is my travel companion and personal chef, Tomás Gutierrez. And you are?”
“White Girl!”
“Uh—okay,” I said. “You wouldn’t mind if I called you by your Christian name, right?”
“Not a Christian,” she said. “Buddhist. And it’s Dahlia Alanis Delaney.”
I told her that I’d very much like to see Duke. She made a brief call on a white phone that looked like it had been designed for the Queen of England. After a second or two she said, “Yessir,” then hung up.
“Mr. Ducane will be with you in just a minute, Mr. Snow,” Dahlia Delaney, aka White Girl, said. “If I could just get your weapons?”
Tomás and I gave each other looks.
“How’d you—”
Dahlia pointed to her computer screen: A frozen image of Tomás and me was on the screen rendered in X-ray black and white. It clearly showed all of our weaponry.
“Seriously?” I said.
Dahlia opened a desk drawer and retrieved a Smith and Wesson 686 Plus and pointed it casually at me. “Seriously.”
“What about Duke or the Compton twins?”
“The Compton twins?” Tomás said in disbelief. “Oh, this just gets better and fucking better.”
“Mr. Ducane, yes,” she said, still holding the shiny business end of the gun rock steady on me. “The twins, no. Everybody—guests and clients—surrenders to me. Best practices and industry guidelines for the twenty-first century.”
Reluctantly I surrendered my Glock to her. She stowed it away in a lockbox and gave me a ticket: No. 26.
Then she looked at Tomás.
“No way,” Tomás said. “No fuckin’ way.”
Her desk phone rang and she answered it while holding her gun on me and smiling. She listened for maybe five seconds, nodded, lowered her gun and said, “Of course,” then hung up. “You may retain your weapons,” she said to Tomás.
“Thanks, doll-face,” I said.
“What the hell was that?”
“Bogart. Maybe you’re too young—”
“That was the worst Bogart I’ve ever heard,” she said, her nose turned up.
“She’s right,” Tomás said. “You never could—”
“Okay, I get the point!”
White Girl gave us instructions to get to Duke’s office and we started our long walk down the nauseating hallway.
Along the way we passed four recording studios: In the first, a young black woman was singing her heart out while an engineer adjusted levels on a massive control board. Seated behind the engineer was a young black man, eyes closed, head slowly bobbing to a rhythm neither Tomás nor I could hear.
In the next studio, a tall white guy was reading from a script on a music stand. Two corporate-type women held an animated discussion with their engineer. The sign on the studio door said soundnation welcomes the western michigan ford dealers association.
In the third was a young black man wearing jewel-bedazzled sunglasses, a colorful silk shirt, blue velvet bell-bottom pants cinched with a wide white patent leather belt and white jeweled cowboy boots. His bushy afro and sideburns completed his Elvis Presley look. He was talking to an engineer and pointing to sheet music laid out on the sound board.
The fourth studio was dark.
A small young woman wearing business professional clothing and carrying a nice leather briefcase passed by us. She smiled and winked at me before heading toward reception.
I stopped and looked at the woman as she walked away.
“’S the matter?” Tomás said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Could swear I’ve seen her before.”
“Guys like us think we know every chica guapa,” Tomás said. “Let’s get this shit-show started.”
We made a right turn and heard the Compton twins, Duke’s muscle and, in a weird and dangerous way, his ever-loyal surrogate sons. I hadn’t heard either of them in five years since they went away at the same time as their boss. A chill snaked its way up my spine and I found myself reaching for a weapon I’d relinquished at the reception desk.
I hoped the twins didn’t hold a grudge against me for slapping the cuffs on them five years ago. If they did, this could be a very short and painful visit.
“Oh, man,” one of the twins said in a mountain troll baritone. “Bitch be dead.”
Tomás and I peeked around the corner into the conference room; the twins, their massive backs to us, faced an impressively large wall mounted flat screen TV. On the highly polished maple conference table between them were the remains of what I suspected was every item offered on a Taco Bell menu. On the TV, the body of a young woman lay at the bottom of a moss-covered cliff. The woman, dressed in ’40s clothing, clutched a black sequined handbag.
“Hey, guys!” I said.
The twins spun in their chairs, stood, and instantly took offensive guard positions.
“Pause that shit,” one of the twins said to the other. I think it was Fergie, but the egg had split so precisely I was never quite sure which twin was which. Fergie’s brother Fin grabbed the remote control from the conference table and hit the pause button. The TV screen froze just as an old woman, wearing white lace gloves and a lace doily for a hat, appeared and stared mournfully at the body of the young woman.
“Miss Marple?” I said. “Seriously?”
“The fuck you doin’ here?” Fin (I think) said with no small amount of irritation. “Why ain’t White Girl call us? And who’s this Speedy Gonzales-lookin’ mothafucka?”
“So many questions,” I said. “So little interest. I guess your receptionist was so overwhelmed by my charm and good looks she forgot to call you guys. And this gentleman is my friend, confidant and spiritual advisor. By the way—he hates being referred to as a ‘Speedy Gonzales-lookin’ mothafucka.’”
Simultaneously—and with no short amount of spine-tingling creepiness—the twins nodded to me and said, “What y’all nigg
ahs doin’ up in here?”
“Got an appointment with your zookeeper,” I said.
“So, we can’t hurt you?”
“Not today, boys,” Tomás said opening his shirt a bit to reveal his gun in the shoulder rig.
“We owe you a hurt, Snow,” one of the twins said. “Y’all know that, right?”
“Guess it’s just gonna have to wait, Chuckles,” I said.
I grinned, saluted the twin sociopaths, and Tomás and I continued on our way.
I was about to knock on a set of tall maple wood double doors when they whispered opened.
“As-salamu alaykum,” Duke said from behind his large antique rosewood desk.
“Back atcha, toots,” I said, entering the relative darkness of his office. I knew Tomás had one hand around the knife in his cargo pants pocket and the other ready to make a quick withdrawal from his shoulder holster. “Prison conversion to Islam?”
“Just hedging my spiritual bets is all,” Duke said. “Could have said ‘Shavua Tov,’ ‘Namaskaram,’ ‘Allah Abho,’ ‘Jai Jinendra,’ ‘Hamazor Hama Ashobed’ or ‘Peace be with you.’ If I recall, that last one’s more your style, right?”
Duke’s office was narrow and long. He sat behind an antique desk dressed in an expensive lime-green polo shirt and white Kangol driving cap. Behind him was a monogrammed golf bag and set of clubs leaning against illuminated glass shelves bearing, among other things, a few books, small Chinese jade carvings, framed photos and, for whatever reason, a woman’s silver necklace with heart-shaped pendant, a diamond at the center.
“For that special someone?” I said, pointing to the necklace.
“Not anymore,” Duke said dryly.
The most interesting thing the shelves held was a collection of Highland single malt scotch bottles.
One caked with dust.
“So,” I began, eyeing the two tufted leather Chesterfield chairs in front of the desk. I claimed one. “Sure looks like working in the prison cafeteria paid off.”
“Always plan your future, young Snow,” he said, reaching behind him and extracting three crystal tumblers from the shelves. “The Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal and Scotiabank Negril helped me plan mine before my trial and subsequent incarceration. Whiskey?”
Lives Laid Away Page 8