“You doin’ laundry now?”
“This place is legit,” Duke said. “One hundred. Ain’t washin’ nothing ’scept my own funky drawers. Like I told you before, boy; the path I was on didn’t serve me no more—and sellin’ my routes was the cost of this new, healthier path.”
“Give me a name, Duke.”
“Or goddamn what?”
I smiled and slowly walked around to where Duke sat. In rapid succession, I grabbed a fistful of his polo shirt and punched him three times in the face.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said as Duke’s bloodied head lolled on his neck. “Never have been. You wanna play the devil with me? Get to know the demons I’ve already wrestled with.”
Twenty-eight
Two people were waiting for me in the lobby of SoundNation: Tomás and Lucy.
Tomás casually held a long-barrel S&W Model 629 at his side. Lucy, a dwarf next to him, held her six-inch Marttiini hunting knife, her arms folded across her chest.
“You came to see Duke without backup?” Tomás said.
“What’s she doing here?” I said pointing to Lucy.
“Kid’s hard to shake,” Tomás said.
“I can handle myself,” Lucy said defiantly.
“I’m reminded,” I began, “of what someone once said about bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
Lucy smiled innocently.
Then, in a tempered steel flash, she threw the knife. Behind me, White Girl—standing by her desk chair and crying—was pointing her 686 Plus at us in a trembling hand. Lucy’s knife planted itself deep into the headrest of White Girl’s chair. Enough of a signal for White Girl to drop the gun. She collapsed to the floor sobbing.
“You were saying?” Lucy said, walking past me to retrieve her knife.
Once Lucy had retrieved her knife I walked to White Girl and crouched near her.
“You’re no good at playing tough guy,” I said. “And Duke’s gonna get you killed insisting you pretend to be one. Either get good with a gun—or get a new job.”
Before leaving SoundNation, I gave Tomás a download on what transpired between Duke and me. His jaw flexed, veins enlarged and pulsed on his neck as I spoke. I told him I needed to fly solo on my next stop tonight and why, but after that I’d keep him well aware of my movements.
“And since I’m not ready to have another death of a kid haunting me the rest of my life,” I said to Lucy, “you stay put by your computers or I’ll drop-kick you back to Vegas. And you can explain to Skittles why you’re back to jacking one-armed bandits and spoofing room keys instead of doing real shit.”
Lucy was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Speaking of jacking, looks like somebody jacked your face up. What’s up with that?”
I took Tomás and Lucy for a big plate of chorizo, shrimp, steak and chicken tacos at Taqueria El Rey as my act of contrition.
Later Thursday evening, while Lucy took a deep dive into the Sargasso Sea of the dark net, I took a chance and drove to a barber shop on West Grand River Avenue and 7 Mile Road, a stretch where black iron gates offer cold security comfort to liquor stores, fried fish restaurants and hair salons.
Smitty’s Cuts & Curls has been in business for over thirty years. My father occasionally got a trim at Smitty’s. He got a trim for the same reasons I, as a young patrolman and later a detective, occasionally got a trim at Smitty’s: Dependable, boots-on-the-ground intelligence. From three barber chairs and, during the summer months, two lawn chairs out front, information was traded, bought, bartered, gathered and fresh-squeezed by Lucius “Smitty” Smith and his itinerate operatives.
If Smitty’s Cuts & Curls had depended solely on haircuts and women’s weaves, it would have folded twenty years ago. Instead, on a northwest Detroit street always teetering on the edge of bloody explosion or financial implosion, Smitty’s thrived, protected by cops and thugs alike. Smitty mostly put in with doing the right thing even if he would swear on a stack of Gideon bibles he didn’t care who gave or got the bullet.
One of Smitty’s best operatives was a young guy named Sylvian Russo, aka “Sly,” aka “Bags,” aka “Sweets.”
I knew him as “Sweets” and that’s the name I shouted as I approached the lanky black man who was in the middle of a craps game with four other guys.
“Aw, shit, goddammit—” Sweets said just before cutting and sprinting west on 7 Mile toward the Southfield Freeway.
I quickly caught up to him, dragging him by the collar of his knock-off Prada shirt to an alley behind Aunt Loo Loo’s Fried Fish Emporium three storefronts down from Smitty’s.
“Jesus,” I said, releasing his collar.
“Really, niggah?” Sweets said. “You gon make a brotha run in this heat? I mean do I look like I’m from damned Kenya to you?”
“You used to make me work for this,” I said, trying to catch my breath in the thick humidity.
“Yeah, well.” Sweets laughed. “You look like you’s gettin’ old, ma brotha. Thought I’d cut you some slack.”
We clasped hands and gave each other “bro” hugs.
Sweets said, “Damn, boy. I done heard you was back in The D. Had some banking trouble a while ago. FBI and shit.”
“You still got it, Sweets,” I said. “And that’s why I’m here.”
I extracted a thick fold of hundred-dollar bills from my pocket, peeled off one and handed the crisp bill to Sweets.
“It’s two these days, ma man,” Sweets said. “Inflation and all.”
I stripped off another bill. The cost of opening a dialog. He shoved the bills into his shirt pocket.
Smitty, as Sweet’s contract employer, would get a healthy cut of the payment.
“Somebody bought Duke Ducane’s guns and girls trafficking pipeline while he was doin’ a nickel in Jacktown. I need to know who. And I need to know how ICE is involved with that purchase.”
Sweets cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at me. He said, “Wha’chu up in this shit for, Snow? You ain’t no cop no mo’. Word on the street is you some kinda neighborhood sugah-daddy. Like Spider-Man only without no superpowers or no cool mothafuckin’ outfit.”
“Money is a superpower, as anybody in the US Congress will tell you,” I said.
“Seriously, though,” Sweets said. “If’n I had yo cash money, I wouldn’t be carin’ ’bout no everyday, down-here-below niggah shit. And I sure as hell wouldn’t be chattin’ up no hood rats in a dark alley. Me myself? I’d be in Belize or Columbia, some pretty brown thang on my lap bouncin’ on my joint while I sucked down a piña colada and watched the sun rise.”
“Ain’t built like that.”
“Yeah,” Sweets sighed. “I know. You always was Captain Mothafuckin’ America.” Then he held out the palm of his hand. “Five,” he said.
I peeled off seven C-notes, stuck them in the palm of his hand and said, “Two for you.”
“Much appreciated, ma man,” Sweets said, making the bills disappear. He took a sharp breath, looked around for a cautious second. Then, in a lowered voice he said, “Some brotha by the name of Tootie employed by Buddy Lane—you remember Buddy?”
I did. Chesterton “Buddy” Lane owned a small, seedy strip club in northwest Detroit—The Nappy Patch. The club was once a cash-stash for Duke Ducane, a place where he could hold money for short periods of time before moving it for a quick wash through ATMs he owned. After I put Duke in an eight-by-eight, Buddy Lane assumed he was heir apparent to Duke’s vacated throne. Unfortunately, Buddy couldn’t even claim the throne’s foot stool. He ended up losing millions and was left with only his seedy strip club and a poor pimp’s percentage of the prostitution run out of the club.
“Real ashy-lookin’ niggah from Ypsilanti,” Sweets said. “So, this Tootie, he goes out to see Duke in the joint, make the play, see what I’m sayin’? Tootie got no damn idea what he was talking to Duke abou
t. He was coached to use coded words and phrases. And Duke knew the code.”
“And Tootie takes Duke’s coded responses back to Buddy?” I said. “Who’d Buddy pass Duke’s code on to?”
“Don’t know,” Sweets said. “Rumor has it some small, high-tone S&M shop in Birmingham. Could be a way station for trafficked girls. Don’t have no intel on that.”
“You think Duke knows where this way station is and who runs it?”
“Word is maybe an old girlfriend,” Sweets said. “But Duke ain’t gonna talk. Whoever paid Duke didn’t pay him to talk outside of his deal and he knows this. He talks, and whoever’s running this new game comes down on him like a hammer in the Hand of God. This got to do with them two Mexican girls, right? One off the bridge, the other, Zug Island?”
I felt a lump grow in my throat.
“That’s all I got, brotha-man,” Sweets said. “We link intel and parley sometimes with Lady B, but we ain’t got no comm-share with the south side Mexicans. I mean, we did twenty-five years ago when Maria Sandoval ran a listening post out of her dress shop on Vernor and Stair Street. You remember Maria?”
I did: My mother shopped at Maria’s, dragging me along. I’d never forget the indignity of being a seven-year-old boy surrounded by women’s clothing and customers pinching his cheeks.
I had no idea until this moment that Maria’s was an intelligence hub for Mexicantown.
I peeled off another C-note and folded it into Sweets’s shirt pocket.
“Please tell me you’re getting out of this business soon, Sweets,” I said. In the Marines, I’d known intelligence professionals who had ghosted back alleys, drank cheap whiskey with killers and made dubious deals with any partially informed devil. There was nothing glamorous about what they did. Usually their lifespans were abbreviated and their bodies went unclaimed.
“Six more months and I’m out,” Sweets said, grinning broadly. “Got me a small house on five acres in Comox, northeast coast of Vancouver Island. No TV, no radio, no nothin’. Just a fishin’ pole, boat and some Marvin Gaye vinyl. When Jesus come back to put a hot, nasty sandal up everybody’s ass, I wanna be somewhere He ain’t never heard of.”
I wished him Godspeed. “Should I—you know—hit you in the jaw or something? I forgot how this works.”
“Naw, man, we coo,” Sweets laughed. “That’s white movie cop bullshit. I’mo get me some fish. You want some fish? Aunt Loo Loo for sure put her foot up in a basket of perch.”
Twenty-nine
The following Monday, the noon temperature reached ninety. It was the second week without rain and Detroit recorded its third heat-related death; an elderly man alone in a home without a fan or air-conditioning. His water had been turned off by the city for non-payment a week earlier.
I very much doubted prayer or the lighting of a Vigil candle would be of much use to the man now.
Still, I found myself at St. Al’s.
Father Grabowski was sitting on a beat-up puke-yellow sofa in his office at St. Al’s, furiously scribbling on a yellow legal pad, when I knocked on the open door and walked in.
“Makin’ a list and checkin’ it twice, padre?” I said.
As per usual, Father Grabowski stood and gave me a hug.
“Just making a wish list for our seniors,” he said. “You know. Silly stuff like food, clothing, shelter, donations to pay outrageous water bills and back property taxes that amount to pillaging the village.”
“Have you talked to Lady B about the meeting you missed?” I said. “Frankly, I’m thinking you need to be as far from Lady B as humanly possible. At least for a while.”
“Did you hear what I just said? About my list? The seniors?”
I pulled out my wallet, retrieved my lone charge card and handed it to him. “Just get it back to me by tomorrow. I need to get another rental car.”
“You’re serious?” Grabowski said staring at the card as if I’d just handed him a key to the Narnia armoire. “I mean, we’re talking maybe a couple grand, August.”
“Your limit is ten grand, father,” I said. “We’ll do cash after that. Now, about Lady B—”
“Yeah, it has been hotter than the bowels of hell,” he said, pressing a stubby forefinger to his lips. “How’s Tomás and Elena doing? Tell me about that girl of yours again. Tanya?”
“Tatina.”
We play-talked about a number of inconsequential things as we made our way downstairs. The cool, dark thirty-pew overflow altar was a maddening echo chamber of concrete and marble. The only way any conversation could be understood was by whispering within an inch or two of a person’s ear.
“I fear they may have bugged the place,” Father Grabowski whispered, his breath smelling like bacon and cigarettes.
“Who?” I said. “ICE? Here?”
“Probably,” Grabowski said. “There’s a van out front on the boulevard. Hasn’t moved in four days. I’ve seen a couple guys get in and out of the van. I think my sanctuary network’s blown.”
“I’ll take care of the van,” I whispered. “Forget what I said about Lady B. Get her in here to sweep for bugs. And call the diocese lawyer.”
“Holy cow! Lady B can sweep for bugs? Just who the hell is she, August?”
“She’s an enigma wrapped in a mystery rolled into a croissant.”
“What are you gonna do, son?”
Back in Father Grabowski’s office I used his desk phone.
“Nine-one-one. What’s the nature of your emergency?”
“Madre Maria!” I said in an exaggerated female Mexican accent. “Oh, my God! That’s not right! It’s just not right!”
“Ma’am, calm down and tell me the nature of your emergency.”
“I’m work to clean the St. Aloysius Cat-olic Church,” I said. “I look out on the Washington Boulevard and me, I see a van. And I see men. They go in and go out of the van. And—oh, my God!—they doing things with each other in the van! In front of a House of God!”
Father Grabowski pressed a decorative sofa pillow to his face to stifle his laughter.
“The men in this van. You believe they are engaging in sex, ma’am?”
“That’s what I say! Si! Yes! I don’t care what the people they do for sex. But then they—they come out and make pee-pee on the street! I think one of the mans he got a gun!”
“I’m sending a patrol out, ma’am,” the 911 operator said. “Stay inside. Stay safe.”
“God bless you, Miss Nine-One-One lady! Gracias! Tank you!”
Forty seconds later, two DPD cruisers—lights flashing—rolled to a halt near the van. Father Grabowski and I stood on the grassy Washington Boulevard median in front of St. Al’s and watched as three men emerged from the van, their hands raised. One of the men slowly reached into a shirt pocket and produced ID.
The DPD patrol sergeant reviewing the man’s ID said, “Y’all ain’t supposed to be perched this close to a church, hospital or school, are you?”
“We’re within legal limits,” the apparent van leader said. “I think maybe your people should back off.”
“Back off?” the patrol sergeant laughed as he handed the leader’s ID back. He turned to his partner, “Hey, Charley! ICE-man thinks we should ‘back off’!”
“That shit’s funny,” his partner replied without seeming amused.
“I’m a federal goddamn agent!” the van leader snarled.
“And I’m a God-fearing son of east side Detroit who don’t really give a rat’s skanky ass what your tin star says,” the patrol sergeant said. “Move your van or we can elevate this to your brass and mine, whereupon my brass will see what a good job I’m doing and your brass will see what a shitty job you’re doing. Spyin’ on a House of God? This ain’t Moscow, mothafucka.”
The two men traded Dodge City gunslinger stares for a long time before the DPD sergeant’s partner br
ought his shoulder-mounted walkie to his mouth. “Dispatch? Yeah, listen, we’re gonna need a tow vehicle at—” The three ICE agents got in their van and the engine turned over. “Cancel that request, dispatch.”
I told Father Grabowski this wasn’t the end of things. It might take the ICE surveillance team time to regroup. But they’d be back. In the meantime, Lady B was to sweep the church for bugs.
After St. Al’s, I needed to clear my head and try to put a few of pieces of the puzzle together.
Twenty minutes later I was slow-dancing in the second-floor boxing ring with Brutus Jefferies at his swanky downtown health club.
“The kid? Jimmy Radmon?” Brutus said after giving me two lightning fast jabs to my nose. “Whip smart. Soaks up karate like a sponge. Loves the philosophy. He’ll be a red belt faster than anybody I’ve ever taught.”
“Including me?”
“Including you.”
I gave Brutus a right cross followed by an upper cut that glanced off the right side of his jaw.
“Pretty good,” Brutus said. “You still droppin’ your shoulder, though.”
“How do I remember not to do that?”
“Just remember this—”
Brutus connected with a left cross to my jaw, then a right cross, then sledgehammered my midsection twice. All of the air in me spewed out and, like a deflated balloon, I withered and fell to the mat.
“Yeah,” I wheezed. “I think I’ll remember now.”
“Good,” Brutus said, offering a hand to lift me up. “It took me a while, but I figured out how I know the kid.”
“You know Jimmy?”
“Back when I was on the job,” Brutus said as we bumped gloves and prepared for another round. “’Bout a year before I got shot. Six-year-old kid, eating out of the garbage bins behind the Motor City Casino. Picked him up, took him back to his house—real shithole somewhere around Gratiot and Rosemary. Mom stank of weed. Don’t know which dude in the house was his daddy. Long story short, I got him out and into foster care. Then the system did what they do best: lost him completely. Never did find out where he got to. Tell you this much, though; I made his case worker’s life a living hell for about a year before the captain backed me off.”
Lives Laid Away Page 15