While the core of Detroit—even through the city’s bankruptcy—may have been experiencing a much-needed and dramatic upswing in multimillion dollar businesses, new restaurants, Portland-style mass transit and dynamic entertainment offerings, including Comerica Park, Ford Field and the Fox Theater, there were still hunched and decaying corpses along the riverfront that had been waiting decades for final burial. Abandoned buildings, half demolished buildings, factories where even the chain link fences had oxidized into oblivion. Some buildings had collapsed under their own water-soaked weight into mountains of stone and steel rubble. Others were soon to be mercifully plowed under as Detroit struggled to reinvent itself.
Not even Detroit’s few gangs risked trolling down by the river near historic Fort Wayne. Too many stories of ghosts and demons. Too many night creatures with sharp teeth and ravenous appetites. Then there’s the ghost of Oppenheimer’s “Little Boy” said to haunt the soil itself.
This is where I brought the man thrashing about in the trunk of my car.
Perfect place for a friendly little chat.
He clumsily kicked at me once I opened the trunk. For this act of belligerence, I pulled him roughly out of the trunk, turned him over on his stomach and dislocated his right forefinger.
It had been a long time since the violence in me had made its dark presence felt. It had always been there, somewhere in the pit of my stomach, in the submerged recesses of my brain. The marines had helped me focus the violence. My time on the Detroit police force had given it a purpose.
Now, it had reemerged. Tangible and unapologetic.
Blessed be the Lord, my rock,
who trains my hands for war,
and my fingers for battle
Before pulling the man up into a sitting position against my car, I rummaged through his pockets and found his wallet. Then I undid the belt around his mouth and neck. While going through his wallet I knelt down and said, “You come for me or Tomás?”
He didn’t answer. I motivated him by pressing the barrel of my gun to his right knee and cocking the hammer.
“I have no compunction about making you a one-legged sideshow attraction,” I said.
“For you,” the man finally said. “You break nose, motherfucker!” He had an Eastern European or Russian accent. Hard to tell since, as he so eloquently put it, I’d broken his nose. In the pale light drifting across the river from Windsor, Ontario, I made out the name on his driver’s license: Bob Franks.
If this guy was “Bob Franks” then I was George Clooney.
Three hundred cash in his wallet, plus a MasterCard, Visa and a gas card for an off-brand gas only sold on the east coast.
And a condom.
Bob Franks: Eternal Optimist.
“Why, Mr. Franks?”
“Who?”
“Bob Franks,” I said. “That’s you.” I showed him the license. He squinted at it. “Remember? Now who hired you?”
“Don’t know.”
“You don’t know why you made a run at me?”
“Just get paid,” the man said. He snorted and spat a wad of blood and mucus. “I gonna kill you, you black motherfucker piece of shit! I gonna break you nigger ass in half!”
“Yeah, well so far you’re just breaking my heart,” I said, pressing the barrel of my gun harder into Bob’s kneecap. “Why me?”
“Man say follow you. Give tune-up is all. Easy money.”
“Well, Bob, ‘easy’ has gone exactly the same way as you getting lucky tonight,” I said, holding up the condom for him to see, then tossing it into the nearby darkness. “Who told you to put a beatdown on me? The man in the car?”
“No,” the man said, still struggling to catch his breath. “Man in car partner. Other man.”
“What’s the other man’s name, Bob?”
“Why you keep calling me ‘Bob’!”
I held up his poorly faked driver’s license again and shouted, “That’s you, asshole! Unless you wanna give me a real name and cut the bullshit.”
He gave me a hard look and said nothing.
I asked him again about the other man. The man who had hired him and his partner to scare me. After a quiet-tough-guy moment he said he didn’t know. The job came as a phone call. Half the money was left at a bus station in Toledo.
“Why?” I said.
The man shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t fucking care. Money’s money.”
“Are you shitting me?” I said. It was way early morning. It was cold. And somebody had put a lame-assed contract out on me that had put a good friend and his family in harm’s way. “You got a partner who leaves you holding the bag. An employer you don’t know. And I bet this mystery employer said half up front, other half when the job is done, right?”
The man gave me a sheepish look then nodded.
“Dear God,” I said standing and shaking my head. “You make stupid sound like an aspiration.”
“A what?”
I might as well have been talking to a freshly cut slab of slaughterhouse beef. Still, I persisted, hoping there was at least one kernel of usable information rattling around in this Neanderthal’s skull. “Did your employer happen to mention Eleanor Paget?”
“Who’s this?” Bob said.
“Nothing about a bank?”
The man shook his head. Then he laughed and said, “I know about you. Cop who couldn’t cut it. Take off with big wad of police money. Maybe some nigger cop buddies hire me. Maybe want money back.”
Anything’s possible when you don’t know a damned thing.
In the faint light I took note of the right side of his neck. A portion of a tattoo. I took the barrel of my gun and pushed aside his shirt collar. Two church steeples. I’d only seen tattoos like this twice, maybe three times before. And every time I’d seen them, they meant trouble.
I pulled out a pocketknife I keep with me and flipped out the two-inch blade.
“Hey!” Bob Franks said squirming. “What you doing!”
I cut a slit in the knee of his slacks and opened it up.
A star tattoo.
“So you bow to no one, huh?” I said to Bob Franks.
Russian prison tats.
“Fuck you,” Bob Franks snarled. “I American citizen now! This profiling!”
“Okay,” I said, putting my knife away, then easing the hammer of my Glock down. “I expected better from you, Bob, but you have been a disappointment.” I pressed the barrel of my Glock to his broken nose. “If you, your partner or anybody else comes within a hundred miles of that house again, I will kill you. I will shoot you in your star-studded knees. I will shoot you in your hands and your elbows. I will take a hot steaming piss on you while you bleed out. Then I will find your employer and kill him, too. Understand me, Bob?”
I stood, got in my car and started the engine.
The man calling himself Bob Franks struggled to his feet. Thumping his heavy body against the car, he shouted, “You don’t leave me here!”
I rolled the window down a bit. “I give you twenty/eighty odds of hobbling back to where the streetlamps work. By the way: a lot of wild dogs come down here at night to feed on ducks, geese and fish chewed up by boat propellers. You’re fresh meat, Bob. They’re gonna love you.”
“Fucking nigger!”
I rolled up the window and laughed as my rear tires kicked dirt and gravel in Bob Franks’s face.