EIGHTEEN
When the woman left the apartment, Burke tossed what was left of his cigarette, watched her walk the flagstone path to the parking lot. Black girl, midtwenties, straight hair cut in bangs, designer blouse and jeans. Sunlight glinted on a thick gold necklace.
Late afternoon, and he’d been parked here for an hour, watching the pale green door to apartment 105. The address Ferron had given him wasn’t what he’d expected. These were garden apartments, almost all the way out to Troy. Neat lawns, flower beds. He’d come directly here, worried that Cordell might be on the move again soon. He’d parked the Impala in a visitor’s spot across the lot, waited for someone to come out that door.
The woman got into a Honda Civic with a University of Michigan decal in the rear window. She started the engine, backed out of the spot. He watched her drive past. She never looked in his direction.
He waited another five minutes, to see if anyone else came out. The complex was two identical buildings linked by an outdoor staircase and breezeway. Apartment 105 opened into the common area in the center of the complex. One window faced the parking lot, shades drawn.
No telling when the woman might be back, so he had to take his chances, move fast. He got out of the car, went up the path. There was a spyhole in the door of 105. He knocked, stepped back and to the side. If Cordell was inside, he was probably armed, might be jittery and frightened enough to lose his shit, start shooting through the door.
He knocked again, louder, right hand on the Browning in his coat pocket. He tried the doorbell then, held his thumb on it, heard the buzzing inside the apartment. A series of quick stabs, then holding it down again, letting anyone inside know he wasn’t going away.
Footsteps on the other side. Burke said, “Detroit Police. Open the door.”
The spyhole darkened, someone looking out.
“You need to open up,” Burke said. “Or I’m going to get the manager, have him open it.”
“What do you want?” A man’s voice, muffled.
“I’m looking for Adrina Elkins.” That was the name Ferron had given him. “I’m Lieutenant Haney. I have a bench warrant for her from traffic court, Failure to appear.” He took Larry Black’s sheet from his pocket, the pages folded lengthwise, held it in front of the spyhole for a moment, then put it away again.
“Traffic court?”
“That’s what I said. Thirty-sixth District, City of Detroit. It’s signed by Judge Rogers. Adrina needs to come out and talk to me.”
“She’s not here.”
“Open the door.”
“You got some ID?”
“You want to see my badge, open this door. You’re starting to piss me off. Stop screwing around.”
“She isn’t here.”
“Then open the door, prove it to me.”
“Hold your badge up where I can see it.”
“Open the fucking door. I’m not having a conversation standing out here.”
More silence, then, “If I let you in and you see she isn’t here, what then?”
“Then I leave this warrant with you and go home.”
“Slide it under the door.”
“You’re wasting my time here, partner. The longer you make me wait, the tougher things are going to be for Adrina when I find her. You want her to spend a couple nights in County? I can arrange it.”
Silence, whoever was inside making a decision.
“Hold on.” Locks being undone, a chain sliding out of its guide. The door opened six inches, and Cordell King looked out. Older than his booking photo, but the same man. Gold-frame glasses, jeans and tie-dyed T-shirt.
Burke grinned, stepped back, and heel-kicked the door at waist height. The edge cracked into Cordell’s forehead, drove him back. He stumbled, fell into a sitting position, and then Burke was inside. He pushed the door shut behind him, drew the Browning. Cordell tried to stand, and Burke kicked him in the chest, knocked him back, his glasses flying off. Burke knelt, grabbed his T-shirt, twisted it tight, socketed the muzzle of the Browning behind his right ear, pressed hard. “Give me a reason.”
Cordell stretched his arms out to the sides, showing he was unarmed. “Don’t!”
“Anyone else in here?”
“What?”
He screwed the muzzle into Cordell’s skin. “Is there anyone else in this apartment?”
“No.”
“Lie there. Don’t move.”
Burke put the Browning away, got out a pair of flexcuffs, bent Cordell’s arms behind him so he was facedown on the carpet, bound his wrists. He patted him down for weapons, found none, then took out the Browning again. When he stood, he was out of breath.
He looked around the living room. A couch and coffee table, big-screen TV. A bubbling tank against one wall, bright tropical fish inside, the water lit with a blue-green glow. A corridor ran the length of the apartment to a closed door.
“Stay there,” Burke said. He went down the hallway. Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom at the end. It was empty. A sliding glass door there gave onto a small redwood deck.
He went back into the living room. “You are one stupid son of a bitch, you know that?”
Cordell didn’t answer. His left cheek was pressed against the carpet.
“Where did your girlfriend go?” Burke said. “When’s she coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
Burke knelt beside him, said, “Not too soon, I hope. Because if she comes walking through that door in the next few minutes, I’m going to shoot her in the head. How’s that sound?”
Cordell twisted to look at him.
“Try again,” Burke said. “When’s she coming back?”
“I’m not sure. An hour maybe. Maybe less.”
“Bad news for her if it’s less.”
He searched the apartment. On the floor of the bedroom closet was a black tactical bag. He dragged it out, unzipped it. Inside were banded packs of money, two automatics, a pistol-grip shotgun, and boxes of shells. The money was in thousand-dollar packs, but there were only eight of them. He took one of the packs, went back into the living room.
“Sit up,” he said. Cordell didn’t move. Burke gripped the flexcuffs, dragged him into a seated position. He knelt, slapped him lightly on the head with the money. “There better be more than eight thousand around here. For both your sakes.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
“You’re as bad a liar as you were a thief, Cordell.” He stood. “If you make me rip this place apart, your shorty will probably come home while I’m doing it. How do you think that will end?”
Cordell let out his breath, looked at the floor.
“Time to give it up,” Burke said. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“It isn’t here.”
“Where is it?”
“Storage unit. In the city.”
“There we go,” Burke said. “That’s a start.” He got Cordell’s glasses from the floor. There was a hairline crack at the bottom of the right lens. He fit them onto Cordell’s face, pushed them up into place. “That better?”
Cordell made faces to get the glasses into position. He looked at Burke. “You work for Marquis?”
“Who’s that?”
Burke went into the bedroom, put the money back in the tac bag, zipped it shut. He pulled a North Face coat off a hanger, carried both into the living room.
“How’d you find me?” Cordell said.
Burke took Ferron’s license from his shirt pocket, dropped it in his lap. “That’s cold, leaving a partner behind like that. Boy was in bad shape when I found him.”
“What did you do?”
“I helped him out. We had a good long talk, too. So don’t try to feed me any bullshit. I’ll know it’s bullshit, and I’m not in the mood. Can you stand up?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on, you can do it.”
Burke took his arm, lifted until he could get his feet under him and stand. He swayed, and Burke steadied him.
“You got a lot of stones, kid. Ripping off Marquis Johnson, not trying to run afterward. I don’t know if you’re brilliant or stupid. You tell me.”
He fit the coat over Cordell’s shoulders, hiding the flexcuffs.
“You know what happens now, right? We go find the rest of that money you stole. And if we don’t, or you give me some sort of runaround, I’ll pop you, then come back and pop that sweet piece of tail you call a girlfriend. You believe me?”
Cordell nodded.
“Good,” Burke said. He picked up the tac bag, gave Cordell a push toward the door. “Let’s take a ride.”
* * *
In the car, Cordell was silent. He looked out the window, watching the buildings go by. He was done.
“Don’t look so down,” Burke said. “You may come out of all this okay after all.”
“We were supposed to go to Cali.”
“How’s that?” They were on Eight Mile, headed to the address Cordell had given him. It was almost dark.
“Kevin had a brother in L.A.,” Cordell said. “We were going to lay back there afterward, figure out what to do next.”
“What happened?”
“When Kevin got shot, that changed everything. He’s the one had it all set up. I didn’t even know the man.”
“You’re lucky,” Burke said. “Lucky it was me found you first, and not Marquis or Damien. If they’d caught up with you, they’d have killed you and your girlfriend both, just on general principles. You smoke?”
Cordell looked at him. Burke took the Newports from his coat pocket.
“Sometimes,” Cordell said.
“How about now?”
Cordell nodded.
“Lean forward. To your right.” Steering one-handed, Burke slipped the jacket off Cordell’s shoulders, then took the scarab cutter from his coat pocket, opened it. “A little more.” Cordell hunched, and Burke fit the blade on the flexcuffs, sliced through.
“Move those arms around,” Burke said. “Get the circulation back.” He closed the cutter, put it away
Cordell brought his arms around front, rolled his shoulders.
“Sorry I had to do that,” Burke said. “But I couldn’t take the risk, you know? Bad-ass like you, who knows what could have happened.”
He tossed the pack of Newports on the dash. Cordell rubbed his wrists, took the pack, and shook one out. Burke gave him his lighter.
“Couple things you need to face, Cordell. This big adventure you had, it’s over. You’re still alive, and you got your baby mama, or whatever she is, back there. You came out ahead. But that money you took, you can’t keep it. You need to accept that.”
Cordell got the cigarette lit, coughed. Burke took his lighter back, dropped it in a pocket.
“Your buddy Kevin told me you walked out of that house with nearly two hundred K.”
Cordell shook his head. “Wasn’t that much. Those other two got most of it.”
“Which two?”
“Woman and the white man.”
Burke took the folded papers from his pocket, smoothed them on his thigh, held them out. “Look at that photo. That him?”
Cordell took the papers, nodded. “He and the woman got away.”
“He didn’t get far. One of you tagged him good. They found his body around the corner. Tell me more about the woman.” Trying to keep the kid calm, talking.
“Charlie brought her in.”
“That your cousin? One that got burned up in the house?”
“Yeah. He’d worked with her before. The white man, too. He knew her from way back.”
“What’s her name?”
“They called her Crissa. Never heard a last name.”
“Where’s she from?”
“Don’t know.”
“Hard to believe, a woman running with a crew of hard-core stickup boys like that. She and Black come out here together?”
“I think. Yeah.”
Partners, then, Burke thought.
“So you took what, three twenty-five K, something like that, out of that drop car, right? Split it in half?”
Cordell nodded, drew in smoke, coughed again.
“And this Crissa got away with one-eighty of that?”
“Their split.”
“And you stashed the rest? Kevin didn’t get a piece?”
“Wasn’t time. He didn’t seem too bad at first, he was walking around okay. Looked like it went right through. I patched him up best I could, but he kept getting worse. Couldn’t bring him to no hospital.”
“You leave him that black tar?”
“Yeah, went out and copped it. Least I could do.” He looked at Burke. “He dead?”
Burke nodded. Cordell looked away, blinked. His eyes were shiny.
“Man up, son,” Burke said. “You wanted to play with the big dogs. This is no time to start acting like a bitch. This where we turn off?” A sign ahead said SOUTHFIELD FREEWAY.
“Yeah.”
“Tell me something else,” Burke said. “About this Crissa.”
“What?”
“When things started to jump off back at the house, everybody shooting, she get hit?”
“I don’t think so. She moved too fast. Shoulda had her right there, but she went out the window. Kevin tried to get her, but he’s the one got shot instead. Bitch was fierce.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“What you mean?”
“You ever hear what they tell commandos, the antiterrorist teams, Navy SEALs? Kind that go into a situation, rescue hostages, blow the bad guys’ shit up?”
Cordell shook his head.
“Thing is, in those terrorist groups, the women are the real hard cases. It’s the same with gangbangers, right? You don’t mess with the women.” He took the cigarettes from the dash, got one out, speared his lips, used his lighter. “So when they’re training these counterterror teams, they tell them when they’re going into a situation where there’s multiple targets—men and women—you shoot the women first.”
“Why?”
He blew out smoke. “Because in a gang or a crew or whatever, a woman’s got to be three times as tough, three times as committed, three times as hard-ass for the men to take her seriously. And a man’ll naturally hesitate if he’s pointing a gun at a woman. Long enough to get shot himself. That’s why they tell them take out the women first, even the odds.”
“I never heard that.”
“It’s true. That’s what you should have done in that house. Would have saved you a lot of time and trouble. Look where you are now, because of her.”
“She fucked things up for sure.”
“No, you fucked things up. She was the professional, you two were the amateurs. This shit ain’t a game. Not everyone’s made for it.”
He followed Cordell’s directions to where the freeway turned into Southfield Road. The storage facility was the only light on a dark block, a small city of low flat buildings. He slowed as they neared the entrance.
Cordell’s cigarette was done. He powered down the passenger window, dropped the butt out.
“You know, I’m not like Marquis, or Damien,” Burke said. “I don’t have anything against anybody. All I want is the jack.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’m going to haul ass out of this town. I’ve done some things you can’t undo, you know? Time to start over somewhere. What you should be doing, too. How much you need?”
“What?”
“You’ve got to run. You understand that, right? You don’t have a choice. If Damien catches up with you, he’ll cut off those big balls of yours, feed them to you before he puts a bullet in your head. How much for you and Adrina, get out of Detroit, go somewhere he can’t find you?”
Cordell looked at him, didn’t answer.
“I’ve done some bad shit last couple days,” Burke said. “Things I’m not proud of. Don’t want to do anymore if I can avoid it. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, a couple hours ago, all that money belonged to you. And now it doesn’t. But you need to concentrate on tomorrow, not yesterday. Will twenty thousand do it?”
“You serious?”
“Why not? Twenty’s better than nothing, right? Anyway, you earned it, all the shit you went through. And if there’s as much as you say in there, there’s plenty to go around.”
He pulled up to the gate, used the key card Cordell had given him. When the gate swung open, he drove through.
“Left here,” Cordell said. “It’s down about halfway on the right.”
Burke drove slow, no other cars around. The units they were driving past now were all garage-size, the narrow streets brightly lit.
“That’s it there,” Cordell said.
Burke pulled up, put his headlights on the orange metal door. It was padlocked to a small U-bolt in the concrete.
Burke switched off the headlights, killed the engine. He took the Browning from his coat pocket. “Any surprises in there and you’ll go down first.”
“Won’t be no surprises.”
“Good. Get your key.”
They got out of the car together. Cordell was moving slow. He undid the padlock, slipped it free of the bolt, pushed the door up on its rollers. Inside was a silver Lexus, parked nose first against the far wall.
“You first,” Burke said. He tossed his cigarette away.
Cordell went in, hit a wall switch. Fluorescent ceiling bulbs blinked on. Burke came in behind him, used his left hand to pull the door back down until it met the concrete lip of the entrance.
“It’s in the trunk,” Cordell said.
Burke gestured with the Browning. “Open it.”
Cordell took out a key fob, pressed a button, and the trunk lid clicked, opened an inch. He raised it the rest of the way.
“Step back,” Burke said. “Go stand over there.”
He did as he was told. Burke looked in the trunk. Inside were two more black tac bags. He unzipped one, saw banded packs of cash jumbled together. In the second were handguns, extra magazines, and two Kevlar vests. He could see the parts of a disassembled AR-15.
“Start a war with this shit,” he said. “You people were prepared, give you that.” He put the Browning in his coat pocket, hauled out the bag with the money, propped it on the fender, tilted it to get a better look at the bills. “This the rest of it?”
“That’s it.”
“No one else touched it?”
“No.”
“You didn’t stash any someplace else, just in case?”
“Wasn’t time.”
“So there should be about a hundred and fifty thousand in here, that what you’re telling me?”
“’Bout that.” He was rubbing his wrists again.
“Pretty big score for a guy your age. And hell, you almost got away with it.” He dropped the bag on the floor. “Count that shit for me.”
Cordell pushed his glasses up on his nose, knelt, and opened the bag wider. He began to take out bound packs, set them on the concrete floor. Burke leaned back against the Lexus’s fender, crossed his arms.
“Rough count’s good enough,” he said. “Doesn’t have to be to the dollar.”
Cordell nodded, counting out packs, lips moving silently.
“When you’re done, don’t forget to take out your twenty,” Burke said. “That’s twenty. Not thirty, not forty. I’m watching you.”
Cordell moved stacks to one side, took more from the bag.
“Count it twice,” Burke said, “just to be sure,” then took the slapjack from his coat pocket, raised it high, and laid it across the back of Cordell’s head. He grunted, fell forward across the money, and Burke leaned over, hit him again, then a third time.
He rolled him off the money, grabbed his belt, dragged him clear, turned him faceup. He was still breathing. Burke used the slapjack on him four more times. When he was done, there was blood on the leather. He wiped it on Cordell’s T-shirt, then put the slapjack away.
The money went back into the tac bag. He zipped it up, then checked the rest of the car. There was blood on the passenger seat. That would be Ferron’s. No other cash.
He went back to Cordell, wrestled him closer to the car, then gripped his belt, lifted. He got his head and shoulders inside the trunk, then raised his legs, tumbled him inside atop the other bag. His glasses were on the floor a few feet away. Burke threw them in after him, shut the lid.
Out of breath, he opened the gate, looked out on the street. Still empty. He stowed the tac bag in the Impala’s trunk beside the other one, then switched off the lights inside the unit, rolled the door shut, and padlocked it again.
He used the key card at the gate, headed back toward the freeway. He lit another cigarette, threw the padlock key out the window. A mile later, he tossed the key card.
Time for a road trip, he thought. If it worked out, he’d come back here, get the rest of his money from the bank and what he’d hidden in the house. Then head out, someplace far away, worry about Marquis later. Or maybe pay a quick visit to Terry Street first, take out Marquis and his brother both, never have to worry about either of them again.
Time to finish this shit up, he thought, find the woman, find the money.
Just you and me now, honey, he thought. Let’s see what you got.