Lives Laid Away

by Stephen Mack Jones

  . . . Three . . . Two . . .

  Twenty-six

  . . . One . . .

  The back door burst open. Two men in BMC biker gear rushed in with silenced revolvers.

  “FBI!” O’Donnell said.

  Neither man much cared which letters of the alphabet O’Donnell spouted.

  They turned and leveled off to fire. O’Donnell and I put two slugs in each man. They dropped. One dead. The other soon to follow.

  Lady B limped into the kitchen.

  She’d taken a slug in her left leg.

  “He’s on the run,” she said. “I caught him in the shoulder and thigh.”

  “Which way?” I said.

  “Train station, across the park. I’ll see if I can get this asshole to talk,” she said. “Go!”

  I ran into the thick heat and midnight darkness blanketing the space between the back of the donut shop and the looming carcass of the Michigan Central Train Depot. The land stretching out in front of the station was less of a park and more of an open sore. Any one of the moving shadows I saw could have been a homeless man looking for a spot to sleep or homeless woman looking for a private area to piss.

  I made my way through Detroit’s version of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, past faces pleading their cases from hell.

  I spotted a shadow limping quickly away from the park and toward the train station.

  A car squealed from beneath the Vernor Street underpass to the west side of the station.

  Headlights flashed twice.

  On the edge of the park, fifty yards from the car, I took a stance and fired three shots at the limping man’s ride. I ran, closing the gap. The passenger fired off several rounds at me. We traded fire. A homeless man took a slug in the chest. One of my rounds shattered a rear passenger window. The car squealed away, leaving the limping man to fend for himself.

  He ran for the cover of the train station.

  I pursued him into the looming hundred-year-old train station.

  Echo of labored breathing.

  “You’re losing a lot of blood,” I called out as my eyes followed the lead of my gun sight and his trail of blood. “The harder you make this, the more blood you lose. Talk to me and I’ll get you help. Or you die the hard way. Your choice.”

  “Not much of a choice,” the man said, his voice bouncing off the high, arching walls of the station.

  “Only one you’re gonna get.” I moved through the flickers of shadow and light. “Your ride burned rubber outta here. Be smart and talk to me.”

  “So, what do you wanna talk about, asshole? The Tigers? The Constitution?”

  “No, let’s talk about something you actually know something about,” I said. “Like who runs the trafficking ring. Or who killed Barney Olsen.”

  “Olsen’s dead?”

  I moved slowly up a wide staircase through an obstacle course of steel and concrete rubble, broken glass and junction boxes stripped of wiring. In a time before my birth, the train station had been a jewel in Detroit’s crown with its Greek-inspired high-arched ceilings, frescos and gleaming chandeliers. Now, after decades of pillaging by copper strippers and antiques thieves, all that remained were the whispers of ghosts listening for the call of their train.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Olsen’s been wiped off the planet. His place cleaned out. Guess that means the BMCs have their asses hanging out now. So tell me something.”

  A shadow appeared at the top of the staircase.

  A shadow holding a five-foot length of pipe.

  “Ever imagine how you’d go out?” the man said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Never thought it’d be at a goddamn train station.”

  I snugged my Glock away and said, “So we doin’ this old school?”

  “Why not, homeboy?” the man laughed. “I got nothin’ to lose.”

  “Yes,” I said, picking up a four-foot length of pipe lying on the staircase. “You do.”

  I wasn’t in an ideal position; fighting up an incline is infinitely harder than fighting down, especially if it’s with bo-staff style. Everything Sun Tzu warned against doing in his military strategy manifesto, The Art of War, I was about to do. Always give a dying man a chance.

  Of course, I never claimed to be the smartest guy in the room . . .

  The man brought his pipe down with considerable killing force. I blocked it, pushed hard and gained a quick two steps up. He was bleeding from his left hip and I swept my length of pipe into his wound. He howled and limped back five or six steps, allowing me to finally reach the second level.

  My advantage didn’t last long.

  He brought his pipe down. It glanced off mine, but not before catching the edge of my right shoulder. I could feel the sting of warm blood.

  I backed him up another five feet, the sound of the colliding metal pipes echoing in the dim light and deep shadows of the station.

  He brought his pipe into my right arm, then to the left side of my rib cage. I stumbled back. He advanced and brought his pipe down with crushing strength toward my head. At the last second, I blocked his strike.

  His breathing was labored. Blood streamed out of his wounds.

  I didn’t want him dead.

  I wanted questions answered.

  I swept my length of steel pipe into his wounded hip, then up with a jab to his wounded shoulder.

  He yelped, stumbled backwards and fell.

  I quickly brought the tip of my steel pipe to his shoulder wound and pushed.

  He screamed and released his pipe, letting it roll away.

  “I will shove this pipe all the way through and twist if you don’t give me names,” I said.

  “They’ll kill me!”

  “You’re already dead, asshole,” I said.

  Keeping pressure on the man’s shoulder wound with the pipe, I knelt down, made the Sign of the Cross over his face and said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been blah-blah-blah since my last confession. Now you say something . . . and make sure it’s something me and God wanna hear before the devil snatches your ass.”

  For a man who was losing blood faster than the Lions lose offensive yardage, he was quite talkative. Just before he lost consciousness I got a call from O’Donnell; in the background I could hear the squawk of sirens.

  “You got a back way out?” O’Donnell said.

  “I can find one,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to have to explain you to my boss,” she said.

  “Tell the EMTs you saw a guy run into the train station,” I said. “Maybe second level.”

  She disconnected.

  Before leaving I touched the unconscious man’s carotid artery: His pulse was weak, but he was still topside.

  Then I found a rear exit out of the train station and ran into the thick midnight darkness.

  “Notice the coffee and spice notes with dark chocolate and ginger on the palate,” I said, carefully dispensing two fingers of very rare and expensive Glenglassaugh 30-year-old malt whisky into a Waterford Crystal tumbler—one of a set of four such tumblers my mother had given my father on his fortieth birthday.

  O’Donnell sat at my kitchen island, hunched over the tumbler. Once I’d finished pouring, she took the tumbler to her lips, snapped her head back and swallowed the entire two fingers.

  “Wow,” I said. “Must be pledge night at Alpha Kappa Snow.”

  “I’ve been suspended.”

  I poured her more scotch.

  “I read Director Phillips into the operation. Put him on the phone with his boss. After getting his ass chewed out by his boss, he chewed me out. Said I’d endangered an off-book operation. Said I was ‘uncharacteristically irresponsible.’” This had to be killing her. O’Donnell loved her job. Loved law enforcement. And Phillips was someone she respected, even admired.


  “What about Lady B?” I said.

  O’Donnell gave a bitter laugh. “What about her? I handcuffed her to a support beam before I went out looking for you. By the time the cops, EMS and my office arrive, she’s in her kitchen with four others making donuts and baking goddamn cookies. Place was clean as a whistle.”

  “If it weren’t for her we probably wouldn’t be drinking scotch,” I said.

  “She shot a man in the head, August,” O’Donnell said. “She executed him. This isn’t Dodge City and we’re not the fucking Dalton Gang.”

  “Dodge City got nothing on The D,” I said. “And the Daltons wouldn’t have lasted two minutes past the stroke of noon on Mack Avenue and Helen.”

  Forty minutes later, O’Donnell was completely in the bag.

  Refusing to let her get behind the wheel, I helped her to the staircase landing, assuring her my intentions were honorable. A key clanked around in my front door. O’Donnell reached for a gun that I’d deprived her of after her third whisky. Luckily, I was strapped and drew on the opening front door.

  “I’m not interrupting you getting your pecker wet, am I?”

  Lucy.

  After I put O’Donnell to bed, I came downstairs. Lucy was seated at my kitchen island with one of her laptops open.

  “What are you doing up so late?”

  “She your girlfriend?

  “No.”

  “Thank the Sun God,” Lucy said. “Too many black, red and brown brothas under the spell of white-girl witchcraft.”

  I held my phone up and showed Lucy a picture of Tatina.

  “This is my girlfriend,” I said. “And I don’t cheat. Now why are you here?”

  “Wow,” Lucy said, looking at the photo of Tatina. “Nice. She live here?”

  “Oslo. Now—”

  “Wait a minute,” Lucy said. “Oslo, Norway? You couldn’t find a black girl in Detroit?”

  “Lucy, swear to God—”

  She turned her laptop screen to me.

  I felt my mouth go dry and my blood begin to boil as I looked at the screen.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Yep,” Lucy said. “It ain’t no milk and cookies keepin’ me up, tough guy. By the way—you got any milk and cookies?”

  Twenty-seven

  It was a sweltering Thursday afternoon and I’d spent the last thirty-five minutes on I-75 North trying to avoid hitting orange-vested road crews that all looked like ZZ Top, elderly drivers going five miles under the minimum speed limit and SUVs with drivers apparently using underdeveloped telekinesis skills to make lane changes.

  Summer freeway traffic in Detroit is enough to turn the Pope into a road-rage maniac.

  “Wow,” the young guy in the parking lot said. He was wearing expensive nut-squeezing jeans, a Tommy Bahama Hawaiian-style shirt, navy-blue Tony Lama cowboy boots and had a leather messenger bag slung over his shoulder. “Nice bike.”

  “Thanks,” I said, not in the mood for small talk. I put the kickstand of my newly acquired Harley down, turned the engine off and dismounted.

  “Me? I got a Kawasaki Ninja,” the guy said trailing me to the door of SoundNation Recording Studio. “S’like having a rocket strapped to your balls.”

  “I’ll remember that if I ever want a kid’s toy strapped to my sack.”

  He laughed, came to my side and put his hand out. “Brad Lanzetti. Viral marketing manager, Shout-Out Communications.”

  I stopped and turned to him. “Listen. Brad. How ’bout you be somewhere else for about fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “Hey, look, pal,” he said. “I don’t know what your problem is, but—”

  I pulled my Glock and ratcheted a bullet into the chamber.

  “Yeah, sure, cool,” Brad said, high-tailing it away from the studio.

  Inside, I approached Dahlia Delaney, aka White Girl, and said, “Duke in?”

  “Mr. Snow! How nice to see you!”

  “Duke,” I repeated. “Is he here?”

  “Uh—yes—but you know the routine, Mr. Snow—”

  “Think I’ll keep my gun this time,” I said, holding up my Glock for her to see.

  I walked past her and started down the ugly Jackson Pollock-style hallway.

  “Stop right fucking there,” she said. She was holding her Smith and Wesson 686 Plus on me.

  I walked back to her and quickly twisted it out of her small hand.

  I turned and began walking down the hallway again.

  “You’re too nice to pull the trigger,” I said. “I’m not.”

  Behind me, White Girl pick up her desk phone. Her voice trembling, she said, “August Snow is here. Lock him down.”

  I got past three of the studios, no problem.

  The Compton twins, like a meat-starved NFL defensive line, were waiting for me by the fourth and largest studio. Black America’s answer to Elvis Presley—Blelvis—was in the studio wearing headphones and gyrating in front of a microphone.

  I slowly laid my gun and White Girl’s gun on the hallway carpet and said, “Let me pass and nobody gets hurt.”

  Funny thing about being well over six feet and having more muscles than humanly necessary: The mass and weight of such muscles tends to slow a person down, accentuating awkwardness in the effort to move quickly. Theoretically, being smaller and lighter would be an advantage in a confrontation with such human hulks. Of course, I only had to be wrong once with these mammoth killers; getting hit by either of them would be owning a face-full of M198 Howitzer cannon fire.

  The twins charged me like two blood-thirsty tackles off the line of scrimmage.

  One twin went high, the other low, both with their arms outstretched.

  I kicked one in his head, sending him crashing into a wall. That gave me a split second to duck the other twin. On his way flying past me I was able to land two quick punches to his solar plexus. I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t expect they’d be quite so fast on their feet.

  Both men, hunched and grunting like angry buffalo, sized me up for a second before making another run at me. This time I wasn’t so lucky: One of the twins grabbed me around the waist and lifted me off my feet. I managed to keep both arms free. Just as I started feeling my ribs crack, the other twin came up behind his brother and landed two solid punches to my face. I felt warm blood spill from my nose and pool in my mouth. Another hit to the face or another three seconds in the vice-grip of the first twin’s arms and I’d be slop-in-the-trough.

  I could feel my ribs getting ready to snap from the twin holding me in a bear hug. I brought the palms of my hands hard and fast against his ears.

  He howled, dropped me and stumbled backwards, holding his bleeding ears.

  Knee to his ribs.

  Kick to the sweet-spot just above his left knee.

  He dropped like a three-hundred-pound bag of wet sand.

  But not before his brother reached one of the guns I’d laid on the floor.

  He leveled off.

  I shouldered my way through the door of the fourth recording studio.

  A bullet popped into the doorjamb.

  “Stop! Now, goddammit!”

  Duke.

  He stood in the doorway of his office, fists planted in his hips and staring up at the Compton Twin holding the gun. The twin hung his head like a shamed child, then handed the gun quietly to Duke. With surprising affection, Duke said, “Look after your brother.” Then he scowled at me. “Next time, make a mothafuckin’ appointment.”

  I brushed myself off, wiped most of the blood from my face, then pointed to Blelvis and said, “Love your work, man.”

  “Thank you,” he said with a half-smile, half-snarl. “Thank you very much.”

  Today Duke was wearing lime-green plaid golf shorts with matchi
ng ankle socks, white buck golf shoes, a marine-blue polo shirt and matching Kangol bucket hat.

  “I shoulda let Fin pop you,” Duke said as we entered his office.

  “You sonuvabitch,” I said. “You sold them your old pipeline and you didn’t tell me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The routes you used to traffic guns, drugs and women,” I said. “You sold your proprietary smuggling routes while you were in prison. That’s how you can afford this place. I’ve seen the banking records. The deep records. The Bank of Montreal. Bank of Canada. The Central Bank of Bahamas. Five years ago, you couldn’t afford a pack of cigarettes at the prison commissary. Suddenly, you’re shopping for Royal Oak real estate and recording equipment.”

  “You always prided yourself on being smart,” Duke said, pouring himself a whiskey. “Why should I make your job easier? You a detective—so detect, mothafucka. And stop bleeding on my goddamn carpet!”

  “I should have shot you when I had the fucking chance six years ago,” I said.

  Duke laughed, poured me a whiskey and said, “And yo daddy shoulda shot me fifteen, twenty years before that. Honor and integrity’s gonna be the death of y’all Snow men. Here.” Duke had reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a box of Kleenex. He slid the box to me. While I wiped blood from my face, he took a call.

  “Ain’t about a thang, White Girl,” Duke said. “You done good. Real good, baby girl. We cool. You did everything right and then some. For real.” He hung up and said to me, “See what you done did, mothafucka? You upset White Girl.”

  “She pulled on me,” I said, dropping my used and bloodied Kleenex on his desk and grabbing the tumbler of whiskey. I knocked the drink back and tossed the glass on the sofa behind me. “Now let’s stop fucking around, okay? Tell me who you sold your pipeline to or, swear to God, I’ll bring this whole thing crashing down around that watermelon-sized head of yours.”

  “Ain’t no reason to get all nasty ’n shit,” Duke said. He took an appreciative sip of his whiskey and admired its amber color. “Truth is, I have no clue who bought my routes. Couldn’t care less neither. Deal was done by intermediaries. Folks with lots of dirty cash and nowhere to wash it.”