Whorl Read online

  Aaron huffed. “You want some truth?” He scowled and shook his head. “Detroit is seventy percent black. The blacks have been running this city for decades. There wasn’t a white mayor for forty years, and look what happened in those forty years. It’s so bad Detroit has lost two-thirds of its population; forget ‘white flight’, even the blacks are leaving this sinking ship. You don’t like the way the city is, then fucking do something about it. Stop shouting ‘racism’ and claiming that it’s ‘the man’ keeping you down. In this city, you’re ‘the man’, and I’m a minority.” He gestured around the back of the armored car. “I guess that’s why I’m riding in the back of the fucking bus.”

  Dave looked back at Aaron through the mesh window. “Rosa Parks was twice as tough as you’ll ever be.”

  Aaron nodded and sat back in the captain’s chair. “Ain’t that the truth. Ain’t that the fucking truth.” And he stared out the window at the cars.

  Elmo looked back and forth between the two of them, trying to figure out if they were making some sort of joke, but it sure looked to him like they were serious. Which left him seriously confused.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Detective John George got off the Southfield Freeway at the Grand River/Fenkell exit. He had to wait through three lights to get through the intersection. The Southfield Freeway met with both Grand River Avenue and Fenkell at that point, and the confused jumble of corners looked a little like the Star of David when seen from above. The Omega Grill, a Coney island, sat at one of the corners, and was always busy. South of that on the corner of Fenkell was a Chase bank built like an oversize pillbox. When he finally cleared the traffic cobweb he headed westbound on Fenkell.

  Should he? Just a drive by, just a look. It was on his way. He knew he shouldn’t, he should stay as far away as possible. But it was a hell of a thing, what he’d set in motion. All because of one word, that might have been misheard. Everything else fit, though, that was the problem.

  George shook his head and took a left down Glastonbury into Rosedale Park. The neighborhood had actually been named a “historic community” or some such a few years back, and as Detroit neighborhoods went it was one of the nicer ones. The houses, mostly two story red brick, were big and had character. They’d been built, for the most part, in the thirties and forties, when some of the men who laid brick were real artists. All the streets featured grassy and landscaped medians, although the medians stopped and started in no discernible pattern. Where there weren’t medians, the front lawns of the houses were big, much bigger than the back yards.

  Glancing to either side as he slowly cruised down the street, George saw that the houses all had detached garages to the rear, added almost as afterthoughts. Well, who could have known eighty years ago just how many cars there would be in this country? Well, Henry Ford probably, but back when Rosedale Park was being built, Detroit had a well used public transportation system, and only the very well-off owned cars. Now everybody owned one, or three. In fact, he believed that was one of the reasons the traffic in the Detroit area was never as bad as it got on the east coast or Chicago. The roads and cities had been built up around the automobile as the main method of transportation. George had been to Boston, and he didn’t know how anybody got anywhere. If he had to move there, he’d probably ride a bicycle to work.

  The residents of Glastonbury Avenue—most of them, anyway—still cared about their houses, and did the maintenance and mowed the lawn and trimmed the hedges. Daylilies were blooming, and rosebushes. In fact, there were nicely trimmed bushes and flowerbeds in the medians. Idly he wondered who took care of the medians, which had been freshly mowed. Considering the state the city’s finances were in, his bet was on the locals taking care of it themselves.

  Neighborhood Watch signs were everywhere, for what good they did. In the first block south of Fenkell he only saw one empty house, and there were no vacant lots. The neighborhood actually reminded him a lot of one of the Grosse Pointes, the very expensive very white very small suburbs located to the east of Detroit on Lake St. Clair. Except….the houses in the Pointes sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and didn’t have wrought iron grates over their windows and doors. The same thing couldn’t be said for Rosedale Park. These same houses in one of the Pointes would cost two, maybe four times as much. The Detroit housing market was in the shitter.

  He’d read recently that the average cost of a house in Detroit was $15,000. Some days driving through certain neighborhoods he could believe it, but other days he shuddered at what that meant for the city. Goodbye tax base. Not for the first time he wondered whether his pension would be more fiction than fact.

  Nearing the end of the second block he slowed down, and his eyes scanned the area. Not a lot of cars parked on the street, and nothing big—no vans, no repair trucks, nothing like that. The house was on the corner of Eaton and Glastonbury. Dark red brick, two stories, white trim, in pretty good shape. Nothing to see, he told himself. Keep on moving. Instead, George came to a complete stop at the stop sign, then turned right.

  The house’s garage was set at the rear of the yard with the short driveway running out onto Eaton. It had peeling wooden siding and looked a little rickety. There were two cars parked in front of the garage, a Charger and an Explorer, and several more vehicles parked on Eaton.

  George rolled slowly by the house and he could see the whole back yard, as only a black wrought-iron fence ran along the sidewalk on Eaton. He wasn’t expecting to see a handful of people hanging out on the concrete patio behind the house, but there they were, and a few glanced his way. Shit. Before he realized what he was doing he pulled to the curb and hopped out of the car.

  “Verlander’s in over his head this season. He just doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing.”

  Paul Wilson stopped scrubbing the grill long enough to look over his shoulder at Randy Parker. “The fuck you talking about? He pitched seven no-hit innings yesterday, they destroyed the Jays eleven to one.” Wilson had on a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, and had even worn it on raids a few times before the lieutenant had seen it and chewed his ass. He’d been a fan ever since he was a kid, when his father used to take him down to Tiger Stadium. They’d buy hotdogs and sit in the bleachers and talk about catching home runs. Wilson had come close a few times, but he’d never gotten a home run ball. The best, though, the absolute best was his father managing somehow to get them two tickets to Game 4 of the ’84 World Series. Tigers versus the San Diego Padres, and he’d just turned twelve years old. The game itself wasn’t that exciting—it was over in the 3rd inning, not that the Padres knew it, and the Tigers would go on to clinch the Series in Game 5. How his father managed to get them he’d never say, but that day had been almost magical. Now Tasia was thirteen, older than he’d been at that game, and Tiger Stadium was history. Where the hell had the time gone?

  Parker took a slug out of his Budweiser bottle. “One good game doesn’t mean shit. He’s been wild all season, yesterday he just found a little control.”

  Wilson looked over at their third. “Roo, back me up here. You hear what he’s saying?”

  Eddie “Kangaroo” Mitchell looked over at his DPD SWAT teammates. “Baseball? The fuck I know about baseball? You want to talk about OchoCinco or LeBron or something, I’m in, but not that slow-ass cracker game.”

  “I look like a cracker to you?” Parker said, his eyebrows going up. “‘Austin Jackson’ sound white? Prince Fielder lookin’ a bit pale these days? Maybe you need your eyes checked.”

  “Whatever,” Eddie said with a quick wave of his hand. He finished his beer and reached for another. “Fall asleep watchin’ that shit.”

  “You see his wife, Chanel?” Wilson asked Parker. “She’s pale. Normally I don’t like that much cream in the coffee, but she fine.”

  “Fielder’s wife? That sister’s hot, but she be nuts,” Parker said. “Going all vegetarian and shit. Man need to eat meat. Can’t hit no home runs eatin’ fucking celery.”

  Wilson tosse
d a handful of burgers on the grill and listened to the sizzle. He had a few hot dogs as well, but they took less time to cook, so he’d wait to put them on until he flipped the burgers. The grill was new and looked it, all polished stainless steel and chrome. He had it parked right outside the glass-walled enclosed porch off the back of his house. The porch was too cold to sit in in the winter, but the rest of the year it was pretty nice. They’d put up vertical blinds for a little privacy, but most of the time left them open. Closing the blinds cut too much light, turned the porch into a cave.

  “Top, you know this dude?” Parker asked him. Wilson looked at Randy, then swung his head the other direction to see a white guy in a suit walking across the street towards them. He looked familiar, but it took him a second to place him.

  “Ringo?” Wilson said in surprise. “The fuck man, what are you doing here? Haven’t seen you since…shit, I don’t know.” He peered at the man. Last thing he’d heard, Ringo was a detective on the east side.

  John George smiled and paused on the sidewalk outside the wrought-iron fence. “I thought that was you, Paul. As I was rolling through the neighborhood I thought I remembered that you lived over here, but it wasn’t until I was driving by and saw you that I recognized the house.”

  “It’s been a while,” Wilson admitted. He looked at the detective. “You working on a weekend? Thought you were stationed on the east side.”

  George put his hands on the fence and nodded. “I’m in the Eastern precinct, but the family’s out of town and I’ve got a bunch of cases stacked up.”

  “Same here.” Wilson gestured at the men sitting behind him. “This is Eddie Mitchell and Randy Parker, they’re on the team with me. Boys, this is Detective John George. He and I went through the academy together, then worked the Sixth Precinct for a few years, sometimes in the same car. My man Ringo.”

  “I know Eddie,” George said, nodding at the man. “He was in the Academy with us, remember? How you doin’, Roo?”

  “Shit, that’s right,” Wilson said. He’d hadn’t gotten to know Eddie until he’d transferred out of the Sixth Precinct. In the academy he’d just been another face.

  “’Sup?” Eddie said, then sucked hard at his beer. He squinted at the detective. “They never said, how you get the nickname Ringo?”

  “My name’s Jonathan, John Paul George.” He smiled self-consciously.

  “Yeah, and?”

  Both his SWAT teammates turned to look at Eddie. “Really dude?” Parker said incredulously.

  “So what are you doing on this end of the city?” Wilson asked him. He watched George as he answered.

  “Caught a rape case, the victim’s sister also used to date the perp. Talked to her once at the station, but I thought maybe banging on her door might make her remember a few things. She still seemed sweet on the asshole, even though he busted up her sister. Lives around the block on Stahelin. Emily Green. Know her? Just off of Lyndon.”

  Wilson shook his head. “Don’t know anybody on that block.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” George looked around the patio. “Just guys this weekend? Where’s your wife and daughters? It’s daughters, right? Two?”

  “Thirteen and eight. They’re with their mother visiting family in Tennessee.”

  “So you got some quiet time, nice. Okay, sorry for bothering you, but it was good to see you. Guys.” He gave a little wave to the two other men, then trotted back to his unmarked detective’s ride and headed off down the street.

  “Ain’t nobody gonna tell me how he got the name Ringo?” Eddie complained a minute later.

  “You never hear of the motherfuckin’ Beatles?” Parker said in wonder.

  “Why would I listen to that shit?”

  “Top,” Parker called out to Wilson. “Smells like the burgers are burning. You want to check that?”

  “Yeah, hold on,” Wilson said. He had a fast wi-fi connection, and could work his thumbs pretty fast on his iPhone. The online phone directory did show an Emily Green living right down the street on Stahelin. Still, that had been weird. Ringo showing up like that, out of the blue, after how many years? Wilson knew he was on the task force handling the club heists. And Ringo had to know he knew. Could the detective know something, have something? They hadn’t left any evidence, he was sure of it. Hell, if they’d left any evidence, it wouldn’t have been one detective driving by, it would have been a raid team knocking down the door with a ram. Some lily-white SWAT team from out in the suburbs or something, maybe feds. Nah, he was just being paranoid.

  “Top?” Parker said again. “Shit’s on fire there.”

  George climbed back into his department car. He wanted to sit there and think, but he knew he had eyes on him, so he started it up and pulled away. After the conversation with Paul Wilson he felt like going home and thinking for about an hour, and maybe drinking half a dozen beers, but instead he turned left at the next corner and found Emily Green’s house. He didn’t think she would or could tell him anything useful, but she was the sister to a rape victim.

  She was home, and let him in. He didn’t have much to ask, and she had even less to say, so he was back out on the porch less than ten minutes later. He looked up to see a silver Durango doubleparked next to his department ride. As he stepped slowly down off the porch, the driver’s window of the Durango slid down. A white male in his thirties, in a polo shirt, was behind the wheel, and he just gave George a dirty look. As George started walking across the street, he could just start to see the logo on the man’s shirt.

  “How bout you and me have a little talk, Ringo,” the FBI agent said.

  “You do realize that we’re in the middle of an investigation here, don’t you? I mean, aren’t you the one who came to us? Are you trying to spook him? What the fuck.”

  George was sitting in the passenger seat of the Durango in the parking lot of a McDonald’s on Grand River, his sedan parked the next spot over. The FBI Agent, who’d showed George ID that identified him as Special Agent Abil Safie, was not happy.

  George didn’t blame him; he wasn’t happy either. Eleven days earlier he’d knocked on his lieutenant’s door and stuck his head in. “Lou? I need to take you to lunch today.”

  Lieutenant Fred “Freddie Mercury” Avila looked up from his desk. “Ringo, that’s great, I appreciate it, but you would not believe—“

  “No, Lou,” George said firmly. “I need to take you to lunch.”

  The lieutenant looked at him, saw the look on his face. “Yeah? Shit.”

  They ended up at Fishbone’s in Greektown. After ordering, Avila took a sip of his water, smoothed his tie, and crossed his hands. “Okay, why are we here?”

  “It’s about the crew hitting the strip clubs.”

  “Yeah? Where are you on that?”

  “Honestly? Nowhere. They’ve used three different vehicles for four scores. We’ve recovered two out of the three, and they were stolen. Interiors soaked with bleach, so even if there was any trace evidence, hair, skin cells, the bleach killed it. Three black males go inside, and a fourth man stays in the getaway car—haven’t been able to get a description on him yet. These guys are professionals, and know how to handle themselves. The last takedown gave us the most physical evidence in that the one guy fired his rifle into the ceiling. We recovered the slug, but it was so mangled we’ll never be able to match it to a rifle. We recovered the case as well; steel case commercial Wolf ammo. Very common. No print on it. Firearms and Toolmarks should be able to match it to a rifle using the extractor marks, if and when we ever find a rifle to match it to. But even so…”

  “All we’ve done is place the rifle at the scene,” the lieutenant said, nodding. “Okay, so….?”

  “Bouncer at Coconuts was a real good witness, solid. Did a couple of tours in Iraq with the Marines, looks like it would take a lot to shake him. He specifically heard one of the crew call the guy who fired a round into the ceiling ‘Roo’.”

  “Roo?” Avila tried to make sense of that.

/>   “Yeah. Line was, ‘Roo, you got this?’ This ‘Roo’ had just buttstroked one of the customers and fired a round into the ceiling.”

  “Right, I remember,” the lieutenant said. “But I don’t remember that line in your report.”

  George pursed his lips. “You don’t have my full report yet. So you’re covered.”

  Avila cocked his head. “Why do I need to be covered?”

  “I went through the academy with Edward Mitchell. His nickname was Kangaroo. Roo. Right now he’s on the SWAT team. Shit, I mean SRT.” Special Response Team? He couldn’t quite remember what the initials stood for, but it still meant SWAT. Hell, the A&E channel called their show about the DPD’s SRT team Detroit SWAT.

  The lieutenant looked like he was going to be sick. “I know we’re not here just because somebody said something that might have sounded like somebody’s nickname, back in the day.” He smoothed his tie again, nervous habit.

  “No, and my hope was, what I was trying to do was put this to bed without causing any problems. We’ve already taken enough black eyes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I talked to Ben Broussard. He’s a Sergeant on the team, handles operations and logistics. We spent almost five years together in the same car.”

  “Didn’t you take a bullet for him?”

  “My vest did, back in the day. I don’t recommend it, it really fucking hurts. So yeah, we’re tight. I asked him for the SRT schedule for the last two months. I didn’t tell him why, and told him not to ask.”

  “What if he’d been one of the guys…”

  George shook his head. “Some guys you know, some you don’t, some guys you’re never sure of. I know Ben. Broussard is all about being the Good Guy. He couldn’t start pulling heists, it would wreck him. He’s straight, and he knows I’m straight, so he handed it over no questions asked.”

  “Okay, and?”