the d
Someone murdered Detroit.
It hadn’t died like they said in the media. The city didn’t pass from a natural cause. It was taken out, like it had been killed by the dead-eyed drug fiend with a jagged pipe, or the cold, street hitter who’d shoot you, then roll with his crew to get dinner.
Detective Danny Cavanaugh thought this every time he looked at a street and saw the lost youth hanging around waiting to die, or the vacant lots that multiplied like viruses on city blocks.
He thought it when he could see three streets over through the gutted body of a dying neighborhood that had once been vibrant with life.
And he felt it when he watched the prostitutes; dealers and night people push their way from the inner city to its borders. Only a true, old time Detroiter could understand the tragedy of hookers walking boldly on Telegraph Road in broad daylight.
The city had many names, Motown of course, Motor City and of late, Hockeytown. But for many inner city inhabitants, it is simply called the ‘D’––and it was dying.
Danny Cavanaugh is a big man, with an easy-going handsomeness framed by dark, reddish hair that he keeps cropped short. His eyes are intense; piercing some would say, and a shade of green that would make any Irishman proud. His shoulders are broad, flowing into thick, muscular arms and torso.
But it is when he speaks that people get a full measure of him. His intonations belie the white face and bring to mind a man of color, a black man specifically.
He has come by this voice naturally, having been born and raised in the heart of The D.
It is an odd combination that has sometimes been a gift and at other times, a nuisance. He is intense and enigmatic and so people think many things of him, but one perception is common: he is not someone to fuck with.
Tonight, Danny is sure his city is dead as he watches the paramedics take the boy from the incident house.
He’s seen this one before: a black single mother barely holding on; raises a sweet little boy who is born never knowing manhood in the form a loving father. The child grows into a vessel of anger filled with hopelessness and ignorance, always one moment away from igniting.
Then one night, the mother pulls a controller out of a videogame because she’s tired and needs to get some sleep and a few minutes later, someone is on the floor, bleeding.
Only this time, it was the son being loaded onto a gurney by the paramedics. Maybe the mother just lost it or maybe she could feel her boy being turned by the incessant misogyny and nihilism of street life, where even mothers are just bitches.
The woman had argued her dominion and adulthood to the young man but he refused to recognize these respectable truths and then made the mistake of calling her a vile name. So, the mother made her point again, this time with a baseball bat wrapped in duct tape, a weapon kept by her bed for intruders.
Then standing over her now unconscious baby and smoking a no-brand cigarette, the mother called the police and waited to be taken to jail.
Danny talks with a young uniformed officer who’d stepped out of the house looking rattled. She reacts a little hearing the black man’s voice coming from the white man’s face. Danny hardly notices her reaction.
Danny reassures the young officer and sends her to an assignment away from the house. This is good because at that moment, the attendants bring out the injured boy and it is clear that if he recovers, he will never be normal again.
This is the kind of crime that brought Detroit more unwanted press, Danny thinks. The city is a media fascination but not the good kind. The news outlets quote the staggering unemployment rate, the murder rate, the poverty rate and the shrinking population. They talk endlessly of leadership gone bad and government gone wrong. So, whenever some talking head wants an example of the failure of America, they have only to invoke the city’s name.
Detroit’s new Mayor hadn’t helped the situation either. Everyone held so much hope for him when he was elected. Sure, he was young, but youth was what the city needed, they had all said. He would be the one, the messiah, the man who saved Detroit.
But it had not happened.
The young leader so far had turned out to be just another politician, trampling on good intention and incapable of living up to the nobility of the people he led. All the celebratory fireworks anointing him had quickly turned to shit and rained down on everyone.
So the media have their joke, Danny thinks. But they don’t know the city was murdered, killed by neglect and sins that have festered for decades.
He loves his city. He couldn’t explain it to a person who didn’t live there. It’s like an old dog, loyal and loving and you respect it for the innocence and greatness it harbors inside. And when anyone dares to assail his city, he is ready to defend, if not fight for its honor. To mess with Detroit was to taunt that old, sweet dog and find its mouth full of sharp teeth.
The paramedics roll off as the police finish taking their witness statements. Danny scans the faces of the people and sees that familiar look of fear and worry that he has seen so many times.
The little crowd that dared to come out starts to go back inside their homes and Danny wonders if any of them will sleep this night.
The female uniformed officer comes back to him and says that the officer in charge is done and he thanks Danny for coming out to help, even though this was not his case. Danny waves at the officer, whom he knows from work.
Danny turns and walks the short distance between the crime scene and his home, which is just across the street.