DUANE COOPERSMITH HAD BEEN with Detroit Homicide seven years and had the dead face that came with the job, as if someone had tied off all the nerves that controlled the muscles of expression. Lew Canada had never acquired the knack, and after six months of body parts in dumpsters and wives in fuzzy bathrobes with their faces blown off by their husbands and dead naked babies with cigarette burns all over their bodies he had gotten a transfer. Career homicide men were like morticians and proctologists, welcome when they were necessary but not the sort of person you invited to a barbecue. Canada, seated on a corner of Coopersmith’s desk on the third floor of 1300, shuffled through the Polaroid photographs the lieutenant had handed him: Eight different angles of the same blue 1966 Cobra with a hole rammed through its rear window and thumb-size punctures in the trunk. “Double-O buck?”
Coopersmith nodded. He had a young face and thin fair hair on top of a high forehead, and could have passed for some kind of scientist but for the nerveless features. “The scroat has good reflexes. If he hadn’t ducked we’d still be hosing him off Cadieux. They took another pass on their way around the car but the angle was bad and most of the pellets skidded off the roof.”
“Where’d we find the Caddy?”
“Parked on Brush. Steering wheel and door handles wiped clean.” He consulted the report on his desk. “Registered to Sylvanus Humbert, eleven sixty-three West Grand River. He didn’t even know it was stolen until the uniforms called on him.”
“Sure it was stolen?”
“Humbert’s sixty-eight, a deacon at New Bethel Baptist. You’re the inspector. I don’t think he did it.”
“Where’s DiJesus?”
“Interrogation, making lawyer noises. I was about to kick him when you called. It’s not against the law to get shot at, thank God; can you imagine the paperwork? Anyway he’s too lively for Homicide.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“Sure. Here or in Interrogation?”
“Here. It’s less formal.” Not by much, he thought; there wasn’t a single personal item in Coopersmith’s office. Everything about the man was department issue, from his thick-soled Oxfords to the scarlet-backed volumes of the Michigan Penal Code arranged in order on the gray file cabinet behind the desk.
The lieutenant used the intercom and sat back. “I expected a visit from Civil Defense or the commandoes in Motor Traffic. These race things are their meat. What’s your squad want with it?”
“I don’t think it’s race related.”
“These days it all comes down to race. NAACP, CORE, ACME, AAUM, AAYM—every colored with an axe to grind and a working knowledge of the alphabet belongs to some rabble-rousing group. Mostly they’re fronts for blind pigs and policy operations. It’s getting so Vice can’t bust one without back-ups from TCU and PREP. More initials; the reports are starting to look like eye charts. It isn’t like the old days when it was just Jews against Italians and you booked the ones that were still standing. I’ve got a sergeant in my detail working on a degree in Sociology at Wayne State. The next generation of Detroit cop is going to be so socially conscious it won’t shoot a rat without studying the impact its loss will have on the neighborhood.”
“Things change.” Canada got off the desk. “They were still talking about the last chief of detectives when I joined plainclothes. His name was Kozlowski. He was in charge of the old Prohibition Squad during those good old days you were talking about. I’d trade ten of that miserable son of a bitch for that social worker sergeant of yours.”
“You still haven’t told me why you’re interested.”
“I haven’t, have I?”
The lieutenant waited, then said, “Okay, boss. I’s jus’ de he’p.”
A detective whose name Canada didn’t know entered with his hand under the arm of a man of medium height in a tight blue T-shirt and Levi’s. The man was built like a weightlifter and tanned like no white man in Detroit that early in the summer. Grains of pulverized glass glittered in his long blond hair. When he started to sit down, the detective swept the plastic scoop chair out from under him. He landed hard on the linoleum floor. “Nobody said sit.”
“Help him up,” Canada said.
“He’s an asshole, Inspector.”
Canada looked at Coopersmith, who nodded at the detective.
DiJesus slapped away the proffered hand and sprang to his feet, using only his legs. He tossed his hair behind his shoulders.
Canada said, “Okay.”
Coopersmith and the detective left. . “Hello, Harry. I’ve been reading about you.” The inspector returned the chair to its original position.
DiJesus ignored the invitation and remained standing. “Yeah? I don’t know you from Adam.”
“My name’s Canada. My friends call me Lew. You can call me Inspector Canada.”
“What I want to call is a lawyer. I been here two hours on no charges.”
“Nobody’s charging you. You can leave now if you want.”
DiJesus wheeled and opened the door.
“The guys that took a shot at you have had time by now to find out they missed. It wouldn’t be the first time someone waited for someone else to step out the front door here. The steps of a police station are kind of a psychological Demilitarized Zone. You’d be surprised what you can get away with. This isn’t Vegas.”
He closed the door and sat down. “I wouldn’t put it past you cops to do it and lay it off on the jigaboos.”
“I thought you didn’t see them.”
“I saw their car. Who else would drive a big gray piece of shit Cadillac like that?”
“The car was stolen. We found it abandoned downtown.”
“Maybe I saw their faces were black. They all look alike, that’s why they call each other brother.”
Canada reclaimed his seat on the desk. “How are your friends Scavarda and Alonzo?”
“Who?”
“Max Scavarda and George Alonzo. We keep track of the visiting talent. Until the eleventh of last month they were bouncing drunks out the door of the Flamingo Hotel. Now they’re registered at the Sheraton-Cadillac here, same floor as you. The Flamingo is your address in Vegas, isn’t it?”
“Any law against traveling with friends?”
“We only become interested when they pack ski masks and shotguns. It wasn’t the blacks that made a run at you today. Not the ones you think.”
The double-whammy appeared to have no effect on the man in the chair. “The more a cop talks the less sense he makes,” he said. “We’re here on vacation. Nevada’s too hot this time of year. Nobody there even owns a ski mask. I heard about these guys knocking over the nigger joints. Sounds to me like you’re sore at them for doing your job better than you.”
“They’re plenty sore at you. But that wasn’t them who shot up your car.”
“We got coons in Vegas. I guess I know one when I see him.”
Canada flicked a shred of lint off the knee of his black trousers; now they were spotless. “You heavyweights are stupid. It’s no wonder you never get anywhere in the outfit. If Twelfth Street Negroes are planning to take out a mob guy they aren’t going to lift a car with Soul Brother written all over it. Nobody was out to kill you today, shithead. They just wanted to make you piss your pants and run to Patsy with what you saw.”
“Who’s she?”
“This war with the coloreds isn’t escalating fast enough for somebody. Whoever it is wants it to blow up big enough to wipe out all the small operators. Then when the smoke lifts he’ll stroll in and scoop up the change.”
“What’d he do, smear burnt cork on his face?”
“Muscle’s cheap, and in this town it’s mostly black. If I wanted you to think the coloreds were after you I’d put the hired help in big pimp hats and boost a nigger diesel and do it up brown; get it?”
“Who’s you?” DiJesus was interested.
The inspector slid a four-by-six manila envelope from his inside breast pocket and tipped a stiff-backed photograph out onto the desk. It was a front-and-profile mug shot of a Latin face with thick gray hair in waves and sleepy-looking eyelids, an aging Valentino with numbers underneath stenciled white on black. “The picture’s fifteen years out of date,” he said. “I hear he’s porked up lately on linguini and clam sauce. It was taken at the federal correctional facility up in Milan, just before the State Department shipped him off to Sicily.”
He barely looked at it. “Everybody knows Frankie Orr. I thought he’d be dead by now.”
“Frankie made a deal with Old Nick: eternal life in return for the soul of the City of Detroit. He means to make good on the contract. Ever meet him?”
“I never been abroad.”
“How about Puerto Rico?”
No reaction. “Back home, I want to see spicks, I go down to Mexico.”
Canada didn’t pursue that line. If DiJesus was playing it ignorant it wasn’t worth the trouble to confirm and if he really was ignorant, Canada didn’t have a teaching certificate. “Frankie wasn’t born behind a desk,” he said. “By the time he was your age he’d committed two murders in front of witnesses, one in New York with a garrote and one here with a knife. Just now it’s in his interest to let you go on breathing. As soon as it isn’t you’ll stop, simple as that. He’s no bigot. He’d ice one of his own as quick as anyone if there’s profit in it.”
“Frankie Orr.” The man in the chair chewed on the name. “It don’t figure.”
“Why not?”
DiJesus stopped there and Canada realized he was leaning forward off the desk. He relaxed. Because I’m working for his son Patsy, only DiJesus didn’t say it. Suddenly the inspector had had enough of him. “Get out of here,” he said.
“What about the niggers?” The other man stood.
“They aren’t waiting for you. I just got through saying if they wanted you dead we wouldn’t be talking now. The ones that peppered your car, anyway. I can’t answer for Twelfth Street.”
“What about my car?”
“It’s in the impound. You can pick it up in a couple of days.”
“Why not today?”
“What’s your hurry? You’re getting your interior cleaned for free, courtesy of the mayor. Remember that when you vote in November.”
“Come November I’ll be doing laps in the pool at the Flamingo.” DiJesus left.
Lieutenant Coopersmith was reading the Free Press at a desk in the squad room when the inspector came out. “I sure hope the News doesn’t go on strike,” he said. “This liberal rag burns my butt. What’d you get out of our boy?”
“Oh, I’m his official biographer. Let me know if you turn anything.” He started past the desk.
“I just got off the phone with the lab. They found a partial thumb on the Caddy’s rearview mirror that doesn’t match the owner’s. I told them to run it over to the FBI. Probably belongs to the last mechanic who serviced the car.”
“Okay, keep me up to speed.”
“You want this squeal? I was going to drop it in Special Investigation’s lap.”
“Yeah, I’ll take it.”
Coopersmith shook his fair head. “Must be awful quiet up there on seven. You need any more open files, just buzz. I’ll send them on up with a forklift.”
Upstairs in the men’s room, Canada took off his coat and shoulder rig, rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands and face, rinsing them first with warm water, then with cold, a ritual he’d observed ten or twelve times a day since his release from the Rabaul stockade. For sixteen months he’d shared a latrine with three other officers, eighteen inches from the filthy pad he slept on. At any given time two of the men had suffered from dysentery, and their aim was unreliable. He’d spent the last twenty-one years trying to scrub off the prison camp.
While he was combing his hair a toilet flushed in one of the stalls and Sergeant Esther came out to wash his hands.
“How’s your daughter?” Canada asked.
“She brought her boyfriend home day before yesterday.” The sergeant shook his hands dry and buttoned his cuffs. “He had on a belt buckle shaped like a cock.”
“He probably just wanted to make a good impression.”
“I’m pretty sure he busted her. If she gets knocked up I’ll give her the boot. Find anything out downstairs?”
“Only that DiJesus is dumber than the average lifetaker.”
“That’s pretty dumb. Think we should haul Springfield in and sweat him a little?”
“Springfield doesn’t know anything.”
“That again.” Esther put on his heavy-duty sportcoat. Everything he wore was either double-stitched or leather-reinforced; an iron ring protected the dial of his wristwatch from blows and scratches, as if his sedentary lifestyle exposed him to anything more hazardous than hemorrhoids. “Why would Frankie put the dump on his own kid’s muscle?”
“Because it’s Patsy’s muscle. He’s not a total washout; some of his younger lieutenants barely remember Frankie and they’d support the Crip in a war with the old man. A war between Patsy and Twelfth Street will clean out the coloreds and kick a hole in Patsy’s set-up big enough for Frankie to step through and rebuild it from the ground up, Frankie’s way.”
“He can’t show himself. The feds would just turn around and send him back home.”
“He’s had fifteen years to figure a way around that. My guess is he’ll fight that old prostitution charge. That means a new trial, which costs money. His rake-off from a citywide policy racket ought to just about cover it.”
“Pretty cold even for Frankie.”
“He and Sal Borneo did the same thing thirty years ago when Joey Machine and Jack Dance were beating the hell out of each other. When it was all over, Dance was dead and Machine was out of capital. Sal’s Unione Siciliana bought into his operation and when they didn’t need him any more they blew him out from under his hat.” Canada put away his comb. “The only thing about these Sicilians that ever changes is their tailors.”
A uniformed officer came in to use a urinal. Canada and the sergeant went out into the squad room. “I hope to Christ you’re wrong,” Esther said. “Frankie’s been gone a long time, he doesn’t know what’s been happening with the niggers. He could light a fire that you and me and the mayor and the whole fucking fire department couldn’t put out.”
“Let the boys in Civil Defense worry about that part. Worry about where Albert Brock fits into all this.”
Later, in his office, the inspector watched a tide of rain blur the window on the other side of the steel mesh, like transparent silk dragged across the glass. His eyes were blurring too and he realized with a little start that he’d been at work since midnight and was halfway through a second shift. That wouldn’t have happened before his marriage went bad, when home was more than just a change of walls. He yawned and reached in his pocket for his keys. His hand closed around a wad of paper. Instinctively he drew it out; he never wrote notes to himself and hated contraband in his suits. It was the napkin he’d gotten from Connie Minor, the retired tabloid reporter. The Cadieux shooting had driven it out of his mind.
He sat down and dialed the number written on the napkin. After two rings a woman’s voice answered.