Detroit police headquarters is located at 1300 Beaubien Street in Detroit. The building is called simply “thirteen hundred” by the city dwellers. In the proper vernacular, the correct pronunciation is “thirteen hunnet.”
Danny worked on the sixth floor in the SCU, or Special Crimes Unit. It was called the Sewer, the place where all the shit goes. The worst crimes in the city ended up there. Danny didn’t like to think about why he’d ended up there as well.
Danny did his best hunting and pecking as he completed the reports on the incident the night before. The papers were stacked in a thick pile on his desk as he struggled to complete them. Erik sat across from him reading the morning paper.
The Sewer was a cramped room full of furniture older than time. The air had a feel to it, heavy, like something just wasn’t right. The desks were placed close together and facing each other so you could talk to your partner. In the far corner was the boss’s office, with its door that was almost never closed.
The division was small, only about eight cops in all. The SCU used to be bigger, but it was downsized after a corruption scandal a few years back. There was Danny and Erik, Lisa Meadows, who had been the only woman in the unit until her partner, Gretchen Taylor, joined right before Danny. No one wanted them to partner, but they requested it. Danny guessed that neither of them wanted to deal with the shit you get from having a male partner. Brian Lane and Joe Canelli were veteran detectives, both survivors of a corruption probe, and Reuben Mitchell and his partner, a young black kid named Wendel Hamilton, rounded out the group.
The SCU leader was Inspector James Cole, an almost legendary cop, twenty-year man, commendations up the ass and the whole nine. Jim was a tall man, about the same height as Danny, only Jim had a face like a goddamned movie star. Jim’s rep was that he was a ladies’ man. Women were always making up excuses to come into the Sewer, and they wore the most revealing outfits when they did. But Cole took it in stride. He was all business and didn’t like it when his men were distracted from their work.
When Danny arrived at the SCU, Jim had walked up to him and said, “I heard about you, since you was a rookie. I got just one rule—you don’t fuck me, and I won’t have to kill your ass.” Then he smiled and shook Danny’s hand. Danny knew what he meant. Danny had to behave himself, but Jim would back him up if he didn’t, as long as Danny did things his way. Jim was a good boss, the kind who actually understands the job and knew how to be a leader.
Jim Cole was also best friends with the Deputy Chief, Tony Hill, the man who’d sworn in Danny as a detective. Hill had made some slick political moves, and had gotten Danny the assignment, and he wasn’t complaining about it. He loved the job.
Hill had given Danny the single best piece of law enforcement advice he’d ever gotten. He’d told him that a good cop can find out what’s in people’s heads, but a great cop knows what in their hearts. Danny understood this to mean that he had to learn how to read people, to use his experiences on the street as a way to figure out what people were capable of. He always had notions about the people he saw and he was usually right. In police work that first instinct could solve a case or save your ass.
Danny sat at his ratty desk, opposite Erik’s. He reached over for his little desk CD player and popped in the newest by DMX, a hard-core rapper who told stories of ghetto life, a world that was familiar to Danny.
When Danny came to the Sewer, he didn’t want a partner. He worked alone, he wanted to tell them, but that was the kind of shit Clint Eastwood would hiss at his commanding officer in a movie. In the real world that will get your butt busted, so he took the partner and made the most of it.
When Erik and Danny met, Erik was taken aback a little by Danny’s demeanor and tone of speech. He was seeing a white man but feeling a black one. He got over it quickly as most people did. All cops are race-sensitive, even if they’re black, but Danny didn’t want their relationship to be defined by all that nonsense. Danny could see that Erik was not the kind of guy to put anything before competency in his judgment of a person.
Danny grew to like Erik after that initial meeting but the real test would be how Erik was on the street. Danny knew Erik probably felt the same way about him. A cop can be the nicest guy in the world but if he was slow, dumb, or, God forbid, weak on the street, he would not make a good partner. Fortunately for Danny, Erik was a tough and smart cop on the street. He was savvy, had good connections, and was always watching his partner’s back. Danny watched and learned from him. Erik tried to keep him in check. He wasn’t always successful.
A few months back, they were investigating a murder on the west side around Livernois and Puritan, a nice enough area, but one that has grown increasingly bad in the last few years. Some woman had gone nuts with a gun. The short word was that drugs were involved. Normally the SCU would not have been called in on such a routine homicide, but Danny and Erik had been out in the area so they’d caught the case, at least for the time being.
When they got to the crime scene, there was a drugged-out woman holding a gun on the uniformed officers who’d gotten there first. How they’d let their guard down Danny didn’t know.
Before Erik could say anything, Danny had his gun out. The standoff was tense, and Danny could sense that the bullets would fly at any moment.
Erik stood behind the other cops and assessed, trying to talk her down. Danny had a clear shot at her. Danny didn’t know if she’d jerk and fire at one of the officers, but a hit from an unsteady hand was a better bet than what they faced at that moment. The odds were good.
Danny was about to take the shot, when Erik did something that Danny would never forget. He walked over to the lady with the gun, and snatched it from her hand. She fell in a heap and started to cry as she confessed to shooting her abusive husband.
Later, Danny asked Erik why in the hell he’d stepped into the firing line. Erik said, “She didn’t seem like she was gonna do it. She just didn’t look like the type.”
That display of smarts, instinct, and bravery always reminded Danny that there was another way, an alternative to a violent solution, even if it meant he had to put himself in harm’s way.
The SCU had gotten confessions from the three men on Tireman they’d arrested, and so Danny was feeling pretty good. The shooter was a hard case named Odace Watson. He had three warrants outstanding, and priors going back five years. He was ready for the long stretch. The other two men had sung their asses off about how Watson was the triggerman and they were just along for the ride.
“How about puttin’ some music in that thing?” asked Erik. “Marvin Gaye, Aretha, hell, I’d even settle for Whitney Houston.”
“Don’t got none of that,” said Danny. “What’s wrong with my man, here?” He held up the DMX jewel box, showing the rapper covered in blood.
“He looks like we should be putting cuffs on his ass, that’s what wrong with him,” said Erik.
The other cops laughed. Danny and Erik had an ongoing feud about the former’s choice of music. For Erik, there was only classic soul, anything else was noise.
“Don’t listen to him,” said Wendel Hamilton, the young black detective. “He’s just old. Turn it up.” Danny bumped up the sound a notch.
“That shit ain’t music,” said Erik. “And y’all know it. These rappers just recycling old soul tunes anyway. Damned thieves. Oh hey, Danny, Marsha wants you and Vinny to come over this weekend, to eat me out of house and home.”
“Can’t,” said Danny. “Vinny’s real busy with her law classes, and the rest of the time, she’s got reserved for bitchin’ at me.”
Venice Shaw was Danny’s live-in girlfriend and former partner. After she’d caught a bullet in a botched robbery, she had quit the force and enrolled in Wayne State Law School. Danny was happy at first, but the strain of her first year was taking a toll on the relationship. And it wasn’t as if they didn’t already have enough problems. Vinny was black and her family, a big loving bunch, had never warmed to her living in sin with a white man.
“Can’t believe you got a fine piece of woman like that.” Erik put the newspaper down. “And when she gets that law degree, she’s gonna be making big bank, too. You ready for your woman to make more money than you?”
“It’s all good, baby,” said Danny. “Money’s money, you know. But this law school shit has been makin’ Vinny a real pain in the ass. I already had enough trouble from her damned family. They practically walk around with ‘Fuck the White Boy’ shirts on.”
“That’s what you get for messing around with black women,” said Erik. “Safer to play with fire, or a tiger or something.” He laughed and all the detectives within earshot did, too.
Erik was kidding, but he was more right than he knew. Danny had not expected the resentment he’d get for his love for Vinny. He’d always thought prejudice was the exclusive province of white people. But black people were prejudiced, too, and something worse, they had right on their side when they said you were not good enough. To them, it was not bias, it was truth, and they had a shitload of history to back it up.
“Brown and Cavanaugh!” yelled Jim Cole from his office. Danny and Erik dropped their conversation and went over to him.
“Yes, sir,” they said almost in unison.
“Good work on those drug hits. City hall is happily wiping the sweat off their nuts. But we got us another situation. I want you two to come with me to a crime scene.”
Jim put on his jacket and walked off. That was Jim, quick to the point, quicker to action and don’t ask any unnecessary questions.
Danny and Erik looked at each other for a second then followed, grabbing their stuff. They were reading each other’s thoughts. If Jim Cole was going to a crime scene, then something had happened that was more than murder.