Fourteen

To my knowledge, no one has packed fried chicken, potato salad and beer for a nice summer picnic on Zug Island since 1876.

In fact, I doubt anyone has enjoyed a lazy sun-and-sand day on Zug Island since furniture and real estate entrepreneur Samuel Zug first drained 334 acres of swampland to create his exclusive River Rouge family get-away. By 1886, the affluent Zug family—exhausted from battling the ravages of flooding—sold the island in the biggest American real estate deal of the decade for $300,000.

The island hasn’t fared any better in over 100 years. It’s become its own circle in a Hell even Dante could not have imagined: Gaping, red-mouthed blast furnaces and grim mountainous fields of coal, coke and iron ore. Tall chimneys belched out thick, dark clouds while generations of men took the black, sooty air deep into their lungs. Generations of rain water runoff helped turn the surrounding river water into a murky, poisonous soup.

Even now communities near Zug Island complain of a consistent, low thumping sound emanating from the island . . .

. . . like maybe the devil’s heartbeat.

The remains of the second Hispanic girl, branded seven times with a swastika, had been steeped in the acrid chemical stew of the River Rouge near Zug Island, which had exacerbated her decay and left little if anything to point to her killer or killers.

“You making a link between the girl’s murder and this white whale thing?”

“Circumstantially, yes,” O’Donnell said. “She was fantasy dressed and there were traces of barbiturates and amphetamines in her system. At least what was left of her. Problem is, if the news media sinks its fangs into this thing then we’ve got a serial killer panic on our hands. And that could muddy the already-dirty waters.” She polished off her second scotch. She didn’t request more and I didn’t offer. “I need you to get to those people I asked you to talk to, August. I do it and nobody talks. They just size me up for a thong and four-inch Lucite heels. You do it—a disgraced cop—and maybe they’ll feel an affinity with you and open up.”

“I think it’s only good manners not to call me a ‘disgraced cop’ while drinking my sixteen-year-old malt. Just for future reference.”

“Sorry,” O’Donnell said, uncharacteristically. “Just find out what they know. And I need to know before anymore shit hits the fan.”

Shortly after O’Donnell left at the onset of evening, I got a call from Tomás.

“You home?” he said.

“Yeah. What’s—”

He disconnected.

Five minutes later Tomás was pounding on my door.

“You knew,” he said.

“Knew what?”

“About Elena! About her and this ICE guy, Foley! And the priest and all that secret bullshit at LaBelle’s! And nobody told me nothing!”

“Listen—” I said in a calm voice.

That’s as far as I got before Tomás put my lights out.

When I came to on my living room floor, it was night.

Standing over me, a thick fist clamped around a bottle of Negra Modelo beer, was Tomás.

“’Bout goddamn time,” he said. “I didn’t hit you that hard, Tinkerbell.”

“How long?” I said.

“Long enough for me to catch the last inning of the Tigers and Cubs.”

I struggled myself off the floor, shook my head to clear the cobwebs and leaned against the back of my sofa. There was a little blood from my nose and, though I could feel my nose throbbing, it wasn’t broken.

“Who won?”

“Cubs,” Tomás said. “Eight to three. Ain’t our year. You wanna beer?”

“And a shot,” I said. Now I knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of Tomás’s jagged and callous knuckles. “Tequila. You hit me, goddammit! In my house!”

“Yeah, well, you deserved it, you little punk-ass.”

Even though I knew it would do little to appease Tomás, I explained why I kept Elena’s involvement with the White Whale Club a secret. And I suggested Elena had every right to a private life, even within her marriage, and to decide her own adult fate. A suggestion that was met with dismissive grunts and the occasional punctuation of a disbelieving “bullshit.”

I knocked back my shot of tequila, and then we took our beers and sat outside on my porch steps.

It was a warm night. Maybe low eighties with thick humidity.

Neither of us said anything for several minutes.

We just looked at the houses along Markham Street, listened to dogs barking in the distance and the continuous whoosh of night traffic on I-75 and the nearby Ambassador Bridge. Above the neighborhood was a waxing crescent moon in a mostly black and starless sky, the stars having been washed out by I-75’s nocturnal glow.

Tomás finally pointed to Carlos’s house across the street and said, “Elena told me about his wife and kid being forced into hiding. How’s he doing?”

“Not good,” I said. “He spent a long time up here without them. He finally gets ’em here and now this. He’s trying to keep busy and Jimmy looks out for him. But—he’s not doing good.”

Tomás nodded, took a long pull on his beer. “My pops? One hard-workin’ sonuvabitch. Jesus, that man could work! The family? Started out harvesting apples, moved on to asparagus and beets, lettuce and peppers, melons. Hated watermelons!” He took a moment, and another swig of beer. Craning his neck, he looked up at the night sky. “My younger sister, Angie—she worked harder than me. My mamá and Angie. Like machines. Sometimes, my pops, he’d beat the livin’ shit outta me.” Tomás laughed, full and long. “He’d say, ‘This is your family, you little bastard! You work hard for family!’ Then when he was done whippin’ my ass he’d say, ‘You think that hurt? Wait till gringos get a hold of your lazy brown ass!’” Again, Tomás laughed, but this time in the pale light coming from inside my house I could see his eyes flooding with tears. “Sundays would come. Him and Mamá sitting at a rickety table in some migrant motel or farmer’s roach-infested migrant housing. Mamá counting the money, writing shit on a scrap of paper. Then I hear my pops whisper, ‘Can we do it?’ After a couple minutes, Mamá would touch his arm, smile and say, ‘Si.’ Then he’d turn to me and Angie and say, ‘I think we should get some ice cream. You guys think we should get some ice cream?’ Same man who beat the shit outta me, he’s got his arm—brazo grande y fuerte!—around my shoulders. And we’re eating ice cream.”

“These days,” I said, “he’d probably be arrested for child abuse.”

“Fucking white people,” Tomás said with a slight laugh and shake of his head. “They ruin everything, don’t they?” Then he took a deep breath and said, “He taught me how to be a man. How to be strong for family. Protect the family. Showed me how important the right woman is. A woman that sees bigger dreams—bigger possibilities—in her man. A woman that knows how to patch you up, lift you up and get you back in the fight. I got that in Elena. More than that in Elena. She’s the only reason I kinda believe in God, Octavio, ’cause somebody like Elena don’t come from random. Angels ain’t accidents.”

“Sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“Sorry don’t cut it, pendejo,” Tomás said. “On account there’s only four things keeping me rooted to this shit-heap earth: Elena, my daughter, grandbaby June—and you.”

Tomás looked up at the night sky for a moment, then knocked back the rest of his beer.

“Whatever you need done to make my wife safe and get things back to a regular amount of shit, I’m there, Octavio,” Tomás said. “But you gotta be straight with me. No secrets, lies, or bullshit.”

“Tomorrow I’m heading out to Royal Oak. You wanna ride shot gun?”

“What’s in Royal Oak?”

“Duke Ducane.”

Tomás gave me a look. Once upon a time that name had unleashed the hounds of Hell, at least in Detroit.

“He’s not still inside? Or dead?”

“Nope,” I said. “Been out two years.”

“And why would we be going to see that son of Satan’s whore?”

“Because he used to run girls in Detroit,” I said. “Newfoundland to Toronto through Detroit and on to Kentucky and Tennessee. Russians, Chinese, Nigerians. They were a quarter of his business. Had pipelines and safe houses not even the FBI could track or trace. He knows the players in the sex trade. At least he used to.”

“What’s that evil fucker doing in Royal Oak?”

“He’s in the music business.”

“Jesus,” Tomás said. “From bad to worse.”