And there were more disguise elements: false teeth, three different colors of contact lenses, another wig, various glasses, spirit gum and prosthetic noses.
Her name was Lucy Elise Pensoneau, originally from the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Most recently from electromagnetically tricking one-armed-bandits to pay out in Las Vegas as a few tokens and modified keycards from the Bellagio, Ceasars Palace and ARIA suggested.
After ten minutes, she came downstairs wearing oversized, multi-pocketed forest-green cargo shorts and a T-shirt that read, “There are two types of people in this world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.”
She also had a Sig Sauer P220 10mm pistol pointed at me.
“Seriously?” I said, exhausted from a crappy late night and shitty early morning. “You know how many times people have pulled guns on me in my own fucking house? Do you? Now put that peashooter away before I dip it in salsa and make you eat it!”
“Sorry,” she said, lowering the weapon. “Habit.”
“Jesus.” I grabbed the gun from her. “What kind of situations make that a goddamn ‘habit?’” I ejected the bullet in the chamber, took the clip out and laid the now impotent piece of metal on my coffee table. “Now go sit down,” I said, pointing to the stools at my kitchen island. “And tell me who the hell Lucy Elise Pensoneau is—”
“Actually I prefer Lucy Three Rivers.”
I cut her a look. “Just tell me who you are and why I shouldn’t toss you out on your ass.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “You always this emotional?”
“Talk!”
While she talked, I calmed myself by making vegetarian tacos with chopped and grilled Vidalia onions, flash-grilled jalapenos, black beans, tomatillos and queso fresco. I opened a jar of the salsa and dropped a spoon in it.
In my mother’s old stovetop percolator coffeepot I made four cups of Michigan cherry-infused coffee and sat down at the kitchen island with a cup.
“I saw some beer in there,” Lucy said, nodding to my refrigerator.
“Yeah,” I said. I opened the refrigerator, retrieved a can of naturally flavored cherry seltzer water and handed it to her.
“Hey, I’m old enough for beer.”
“Maybe in the Netherlands or the Philippines,” I said. “Not around here.”
“You saw my driver’s license,” she said. “I’m twenty-two.”
“It’s good,” I said after a bite of taco and a quick swig of coffee. “Just shy of undetectable. How old are you really?”
“Skittles said you were a piece of work.”
“He said that?”
“Yeah.” She grabbed another taco and gobbled it down. “Said you fired up some burners he gave you a while ago. Said you might need some help. I’m the help. Don’t I look twenty-two? I mean the guy at the strip club thought I did.”
“The guy at the strip club had a nose full of coke and a belly full of champagne,” I said. “Not exactly the stuff of sound judgment.” After a sip of coffee, I said, “Why the reindeer games?”
“That’s me helping you,” she said. “Got it on the down low you was heading to that recording studio. I spoofed your phone there and laptop when I got here.”
“And the strip club?”
“Just wanted to see if you were some kinda perv,” she said, her left cheek rounded with a large bite of taco. “The guy you talked to in the back office—”
“Nicky Karnopolis.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Him. He was pretty shaken up after you and the big guy left, so I knew you wasn’t there for the tit show. Called some doofus named Barney Olsen. Speaking of tits, that chick who gave you the lap dance and motorboat jug job? You get off on that or what?”
“Aren’t you a little young to have such a bad attitude?”
“Live a year on my rez,” she said. “Then ask me again. And be the only girl—only red girl—in Michigan Tech computer science classes for two years. So anyway, wherever you went, I got there first. Figured you might want some intel beyond old school shoe-leather shit. I blue-jacked the strip club guy’s phone. And that black guy—Duke Whatever.”
“Jesus.”
“I don’t trust people as easily as Skittles,” she said, snatching the last taco and slathering it with my salsa. “I had to make sure you was legit.”
“And?”
“You’re okay I guess,” she said. “You feel guilty about what you did to him?”
“Yes.”
“He said you would,” Lucy said with her mouth full. “But I wouldn’t be here if he hated your guts. Skittles? He’s cut different.”
“So I noticed.”
“By the way,” Lucy said. “Your phone? Somebody else spoofed it. Somebody else is monitoring your calls.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know,” she said, finishing the taco and licking a couple fingers. “Weird configuration. Not feds. Not local PD. Just—weird. I can find out if you give me an hour. Which room is mine?”
“The one next door,” I said. “I don’t need my neighbors wondering why an nineteen-year-old girl is bunking at my house.”
“Wow. Skittles said you were an old-school altar boy.”
I called Jimmy Radmon, who was at my door within five minutes. As was usual, his knock was just a courtesy; he opened the door and bounded in.
Seeing Lucy sitting at my kitchen island was apparently a bit too much for Jimmy; his eyes became as big as saucers and his jaw slackened. If I was his age, I probably would have reacted the same way: she was as a budding beauty.
“Jimmy,” I said. “This is Lucy . . .” I hesitated, unsure of which name I was supposed to use.
“Three Rivers,” she said.
“Lucy Three Rivers,” I repeated. “She’s going to be staying with us for a while. She’s taking your place at Carmela and Sylvia’s. That’s Lucy’s stuff.” I pointed to the backpack on my sofa. Then to Lucy I said, “Carmela and Sylvia are very special people to me, so behave or you’re out on your ear, IT department or not. Don’t go pulling a gun or knife on anybody, okay? And whatever you do, don’t eat their brownies.”
Lucy said to Jimmy, “You seein’ anybody? You’re kinda cute.”
Jimmy’s jaw just about hit and bounced off the floor.
“I—uh—I got me a girlfriend,” Jimmy stammered. “But—you know—thanks.”
“In an hour, I wanna know who’s crawlin’ around in my phone,” I said to Lucy. “Besides you.”
Lucy saluted, took a big pull of her cherry-flavored seltzer water, burped, then said, “Are you really a tough guy? Skittles said you were a tough guy. Real Rock-’Em-Sock-’Em Robots kinda shit. You ever, like, beat somebody senseless?”
I cut my eyes to Jimmy and said, “Get her settled at Carmela and Sylvia’s. Now.”
Twenty-One
I was wearing a black summer-weight Tom Ford suit with light grey silk pocket square, white shirt, black tie and a pair of black Santoni double-buckle shoes. Perfect for the grim business of kneeling by the coffin of a young woman I had not known and, into folded hands, whispering, Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum . . .
I emerged from my house at the same time Lucy Three Rivers bounded out of Carmela and Sylvia’s.
“Dude!” she said.
As I made my way across the street to Carlos’s garage to retrieve my rental Caddy, Lucy walked backwards in front of me.
“I got something for you, tough guy—”
“Not right now, Lucy,” I said, unsuccessfully trying to side-step her.
“Yeah, but this shit’s really new-metrics weird.” She skipped backwards so she could continue to face me. “That second spoof of your phone? It’s so old tech it’s new! It’s like a pterodactyl with a jet pack!”
Jimmy Radmon, appearing out of nowhere, stepped
between me and Lucy. Facing Lucy, he said, “When Mr. Snow say ‘Not right now,’ he mean ‘Not right now,’ Miss Fire.”
Lucy stopped skipping and planted her fists firmly in her waist.
“It’s Three Rivers,” she said. “And if you weren’t so cute, I’d probably deck ya.”
Jimmy turned to me. “You okay, Mr. Snow?”
“No,” I said. “Not really. Thanks, Jimmy.”
As I continued walking to Carlos’s garage I heard Lucy behind me say, “Wow. What’s his serious problem?”
“He don’t like good people gettin’ hurt,” Jimmy said. “And he really don’t like seein’ ’em buried.”
Since its founding in 1880 on the corner of Junction Street and what’s now Vernor Highway, Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church has gone through three building phases: the modest clapboard parish built on hard dirt and thick mud, the spired red brick European Gothic-style cathedral built sixteen years later, and its substantial 1927 remodeling which stands today.
As the façade of the church changed, so did the face of its patrons; from white European immigrants thanking God they hadn’t drowned or gotten dysentery on their journey to the promise of America to Mexican and South Americans thanking God for pretty much the same reasons.
To step inside Holy Redeemer is to step inside the Basilica of St. Paul’s in Rome. Breathtaking frescos, a high and expansive altar, side altars and devotional shrines. Kneeling in a pew on a prayer rail you might half expect to raise your head and see a contemplative pope at the altar smiling at you.
This mid-June Tuesday morning, there were no smiles.
No benevolent pope smiling at the faithful.
Lying in a shiny grey coffin with chrome rails at the head of the altar was a nineteen-year-old girl who’d been drugged and brutally raped.
Bobby Falconi and his wife, Jen, stood by the main door of the church greeting people as they entered for the service. They were footing the bill to give Isadora Rosalita del Torres the modicum of dignity in death that she’d failed to find in life.
“Thanks for coming, August,” Bobby said as we shook hands. “What you’ve done? I owe you, brotha.”
“You owe me nothing,” I said. “You doing this for her is more than a lot, Bobby.”
I gave Bobby’s Japanese-American wife of twenty-three years, Jen, a kiss on her cheek.
Much to my surprise, at least sixty people were already in attendance.
Sixty people who most likely didn’t know the girl in the coffin, but who came to pay their respects and offer their prayers. Many of these people were friends and associates of Elena Gutierrez: Nadine Rosado, the District 6 City Council representative; community activists, Mexicantown business owners. There were the ladies from Café Consuela’s and, of course, a phalanx of abuelas, their elderly heads covered by black lace mantillas. They may not have known the girl in the casket, but they knew she was young, Mexican and dead. Enough to mourn and say the rosary.
Much to my surprise, Carmela and Sylvia were seated in a pew.
“We’re so sorry about your friend, Mr. Snow,” Sylvia whispered, taking my hand in hers and squeezing.
After giving an emotionally drained Elena a hug and kiss on her cheek, I took a place next to Tomás.
“You clean up nice,” I whispered.
“This tie,” Tomás whispered back. “It’s like being choked by a baby.”
Ten minutes before the service began, several other of my Markham Street neighbors entered the church, including Jimmy, Carlos and Trent T.R. Ogilvy. I’d never seen Jimmy or Carlos in suits and the sight both managed to stun me and fill me with a strange sense of pride.
And Lucy Three Rivers was with them dressed in torn black jeans, black Converse All Stars and a black Bellagio casino t-shirt. The closest she could come, I assumed, to respectful funeral wear. I recognized the look on her face as she passed by me. It was the “shit just got real” look. The look of youth suddenly realizing the young could die.
The arrangements Bobby and Jen had made at Holy Redeemer included the church’s choir—twenty members, young and old, resplendent in white robes—seated near the altar.
And may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Father Irwin Prescott may not have been of Mexican descent, but you would never have known from his command of Spanish and the emotionally effusive way he delivered the funeral mass and his homily.
Concluding the service was the choir, forming a semicircle around Isadora’s casket and singing some 1980s song—“Yah-Mo Be There”—in Spanish.
Not a dry eye in the house.
Except for mine.
And Tomás’s.
Tears would have obscured our view of the blood and bone vengeance we intended to take in Izzy’s name.
After the mass, Bobby stopped me at the door and said, “You coming to the luncheon?”
“No,” I said. “I gotta see a man about a thing.”
Bobby knew better than to ask. He’d known better since my days on the Force.
“Hey!” Tomás said, catching up with me in the parking lot. “You goin’ to the lunch thing over at Armando’s?”
All I could do was look at him.
Compression of intent.
Concentration of purpose.
Focus of rage.
Target acquisition.
He turned to Elena and said, “I’ll see you at home, baby.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
Tomás briefly glanced at me. Then to Elena he said, “I gotta see a guy about a thing.”
She quickly made the Sign of the Cross over her chest and said, “Mia madre.”
“Go,” he said, handing her the keys to his truck. “I’ll see you later. Promise.”
Then we got in my Caddy and left Holy Redeemer.
We made one stop.
Tomás’s house.
His gun locker.
“What should I take this time?” he said.
“Take it all.”
“Oh, shit.”
And from Tomás’s house in Mexicantown we took the fight to the northern Detroit suburb of Southfield.
I wanted justice.
I wanted Barney.
Twenty-two
Travel the highways and byways of Metro Detroit and you’re bound to see the always startling moon face of Barney Olsen, Esq. plastered on billboards and buses. Next to the multimillionaire ambulance-chaser’s massive, grinning face is the quote that has been his advertising tag line for the past twenty-five years: “You want justice? You want Barney!”
Olsen has been occasionally plagued by rumors of raucous parties at his multimillion-dollar modern split-level, eight-bedroom Spring Lake house. Nothing new, considering most people with homes hugging the shore of the lake are well-off and enjoy drunk boating, drunk fireworks and drunk barbeques in the summer and especially on the long Fourth of July weekend. (Nothing says “I Love America!” like losing fingers to fireworks and beer-bloated rich people fucking on powerboats.)
The stories of Olsen’s parties included the added bacchanalian debauchery of underage girls engaging in sex and drugs. Rock ’n roll was optional.
Now that I’d shaken a branch of the trafficking tree, Olsen had called out some mentally deficient neo-Nutsy bikers to do me bodily injury.
And that just wouldn’t stand.
I brought my Caddy to a screeching halt in the parking lot of Olsen’s five-story office building along the Mariana Trench of the Lodge Freeway in Southfield, prepared to do to him what he apparently had intended to do to me.
“Listen, Octavio,” Tomás said. “Don’t go in there guns blazing.”
“Said the man who broke a federal agent’s jaw.”
Olsen employed a number of other attorneys each taking a percentage of slip-and-falls, car and motorcycle accide
nts, medical malpractice lawsuits, etc. But Olsen chose to occupy the expansive fifth floor all by his fat-ass lonesome.
Tomás and I each carried Coach 20-gauge shotguns. And those were just the weapons you could see. With irreproachable authority Tomás flashed his wallet at the security guard.
“Need backup, officers?” the security guard said as he made sure his shirt was properly tucked in.
“No,” I said. “Just fifth floor access.”
“Yessir,” the guard said, swiping his card in the elevator’s reader and pushing the button for Olsen’s private floor. He saluted us and the doors closed.
“Amazing how far a driver’s license and Macy’s charge card can get you at thirty paces,” I said to Tomás.
“Ain’t it though?”
On the fifth floor we walked past a fully equipped gym, large conference room, law library and, oddly enough, a sushi bar where the Japanese chef stood leaning against a wall, looking bored and reading from his iPad.
Finally, we arrived at a tall, curving oak desk where a slender brunette sat.
“Where is he?” I growled. “Where’s Olsen?”
The woman stood, visibly shaken by our hard-charging march toward the doors leading to Olsen’s office. I yanked on the glass double doors behind her. They rattled and remained locked.
“Do you have—”
“No, I don’t have a goddamn appointment,” I said. “But I’m sure he’d just love to see me. Now open the damn door!”
Tomás made his way around the receptionist’s desk and found the button release for the doors.
“Sir!” the receptionist said, following Tomás and me into the executive offices. “Sir, Mr. Olsen is—”
“Mr. Olsen is what?” I said standing in the wide doorway of a large empty office bearing the nameplate “Barnard J. Olsen, Esq.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sir,” the receptionist said breathlessly. “He’s not here. Mr. Olsen hasn’t been in the office for a couple days now. Nobody’s heard from him. Partners. Associates. Clients. Nobody. He’s missed two court dates and three depositions. He’s not answering his phone. We’re all kind of—you know—worried.” Nervously, she glanced at our shotguns. “Are you—clients?”
Lives Laid Away Page 11