Let It Burn Read online

  “No, probably not. Good luck finding me, even if he wanted to.”

  The sergeant laughed at that. “Yeah, what, you’re where, in Paradise? I gotta be honest, I had to look up where that is before I called you.”

  “It’s a long way from Detroit,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll have to watch my back.”

  “No, like I said, I don’t expect this kid to do anything. I keep calling him a kid, I realize, and he’s not a kid now. But you know what I mean. You just need to let people know.”

  “I understand. So you called me…”

  “And Detective Bateman, yes.”

  “Wow, Arnie Bateman,” I said. “Another name I haven’t heard in a long time.”

  “Yeah, he’s off the force now, too. Left right around the same time I did. Things were just getting a little too crazy in the department. More and more politics every year.”

  “Okay, so me and the detective. I assume you’re letting the victim’s family know, too?”

  “The court system does that. Certainly won’t be me, and no thank you, anyway. That would be a whole different thing.”

  “I can’t even imagine,” I said. “I remember talking to the husband. It’s been a long time, and maybe he’s moved on with his life. Gotten married again, I don’t know. But in a way it probably feels like it just happened, you know?”

  “Exactly. Now they’re telling you the guy who killed your wife is going to walk free.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” I said. “Was it first degree murder in the end?”

  I wasn’t there for that part. I was in the hospital when the trial took place, or maybe I was already out of the hospital and off the force and living through my lost year.

  “Second degree, I think. After they cut that deal or whatever they did. But still. It’s not right.”

  “Well, I appreciate the call, Sergeant. It was good to hear from you.”

  “Tony, damn it. And you know what? We have to have a drink sometime. You ever get down this way? I live in Plymouth now.”

  “Plymouth? Really?” Last I saw it, Plymouth was a little town in the middle of a cornfield or something, twenty miles west of Detroit on the way to nowhere.

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t recognize the place now. Look who’s talking, anyway. At least you don’t have to look up Plymouth on the map.”

  “Fair point.”

  “But I mean it, Alex, I should have called you a long time ago. It’s not right to lose touch like that. You gotta get down here so we can catch up for real. We’ll have that drink, and your money’s no good down here.”

  “Next time I’m downstate. I promise.”

  “You’d better, Officer. That’s an order. You take care of yourself, all right?”

  I promised him I would. Then we both hung up, and I’m not sure either of us really thought we’d ever see each other again.

  *

  An hour later, I was still thinking about the call. That name, Darryl King, which had been so important to me, so long ago. To the whole city of Detroit, really, in that one hot month of June. I had done my small part to bring him to justice, and then my own life had gotten turned upside down, just a matter of days later. I had had no reason to ever think about him again. Until now.

  I was in my truck, rolling down to the end of the logging road, past four empty cabins. The family in the second cabin had just left that morning. That left only the couple in the last cabin, the same couple I had seen that evening, down at the Glasgow. The lights were on when I pulled up. I could see that they were inside.

  I took an armload of firewood from the bed of my truck and stacked it next to the front door. Then the door opened and the man was standing there, looking out at me.

  “Don’t mean to disturb you,” I said. “It’s just getting a little cold tonight, so I thought I’d leave some wood.”

  “It’s August,” he said, with some kind of fake outrage. “It’s not supposed to get cold.”

  He thought that was pretty funny. When he was done laughing, he thanked me for the wood.

  “This has been such a great week,” he said. “We really love it up here.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that.”

  “It’s not even that cold in here, but I think I’ll start a fire anyway. It really gets Gloria in the mood, if you know what I mean.”

  I just nodded at that one. Definitely more than I needed to hear, but what the hell. You’re lucky enough to be alone with someone who loves you, in a nice cozy cabin at the end of the road in the most remote place you could ever find yourself in. Your real lives, all of your responsibilities and all of the demands, they’re all back home, three hundred miles away. Why not pretend you’re newlyweds again?

  “You have a good night.” I got in my truck and drove back down that lonely road to my lonely cabin. I had already made the decision by the time I got back inside.

  I called back my old sergeant, surprising the hell out of him, I’m sure. I told him I’d be coming back downstate to take him up on his offer of a drink.

  Then I made one more call.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Another summer, the one that would turn out to be my last wearing a uniform. Half my life ago. Detroit, back when Detroit was still on its feet. It was a wobbling prizefighter, holding on to the ropes with one hand, but nobody was counting it out yet.

  Seven thirty in the morning, on the first day of June. I remember that part because the first day of any month was hell for most Detroit police officers, on account of something they called MAD. It was a three-shift system for patrol officers, M for midnight, A for afternoon, D for day. You did one month on one shift, then you switched over to another. If you were lucky, you got a day off on the switch day, but of course you can’t give everyone the same day off, so most of the time you had to do a quick turnaround. Day-shifters going home and grabbing a few hours of sleep before reporting back at midnight, midnight-shifters going home in the morning and then coming back for the afternoon shift, which started at 4:00 p.m. Or on that particular day for me and my partner, coming off the afternoon shift at midnight, stumbling home, and trying to get as much real sleep as possible before that alarm went off and you had to be right back for morning roll call. The smarter criminals in Detroit had a rule—never mess with a cop on the first day of the month.

  Sergeant Tony Grimaldi was doing the roll call that day. He was about as Italian as the name would suggest, an eastsider from Warren, where a lot of the Italians seemed to come from. He had been a high school baseball star who went on to play for a small college, so he took a natural interest in my minor league career, and it was obvious he thought both of us had come one inch from making it to the majors, even though he never even got a tryout. It was harmless, of course, and he was a sergeant. So I let it slide.

  “All right, listen up,” he said, standing up there by the chalkboard. “Welcome back to the daylight, Officers. Hope you all have some coffee in you. Before we get to the announcements for the day, I’ve got a special guest star who wants to say something to you.”

  Sometimes we’d actually get a genuine celebrity stopping by the precinct to say hello. One of the Red Wings, maybe, because we were the precinct closest to Joe Louis Arena. I think I remember Bob Seger stopping by one morning when I wasn’t there to meet him. But no, today we weren’t getting anybody like that at all. The door opened and in walked Detective Arnie Bateman.

  “I thought you said we had a special guest star,” my partner Franklin said. It was the kind of thing he could say, being all of six foot four and a few pounds over his two-forty playing weight.

  “Just give him a minute of your time,” the sergeant said. “He was so gracious to spare some of his, after all.”

  The detective nodded at this, with a smile on his face like he really was giving up some of his valuable time just to favor us with his wonderfulness.

  “Thank you, Sergeant. Good morning, men.”

  He was dressed just so, as always, still sporting a
Detroit version of the Miami Vice look, including the stubble on his chin. His eyes were bright, and he was practically humming with energy, unlike the rest of us overcaffeinated short-shifters, because homicide detectives almost always work regular hours. His gold badge was displayed prominently on his alligator belt. I’m pretty sure he polished that badge at least three times a day.

  “As you know,” the detective said, “we’ve got the big annual basketball game against the Thirteenth coming up. They’ve been taking it to us the last few years, but this is the year we turn it around.”

  The Thirteenth Precinct was our big rival. The First Precinct extended up Woodward Avenue from downtown, and the Thirteenth was just up the street from us. That left the precincts sitting right on the dividing line in this city, separating the east side from the west side, and it also meant that the infamous “Cass Corridor,” where much of the drug activity in the city was concentrated, ran from one precinct to the other. We’d take turns being the precinct with the highest homicide rate. Once a year we’d try to forget that with a basketball game.

  The Thirteenth had the nice indoor gym, so it was always an away game for whoever played for us. I’d never taken part myself, but I’d seen my fellow officers limping around the next day, some of them with loose teeth.

  “So we really need some help this year,” he said, his hands on his hips, jacket open, that gold badge blinding everyone in the room. “Some height, some athleticism…”

  “Some black guys,” Franklin said. “Tall black guys. Is that what you’re saying?”

  Everybody laughed. There were thirty of us in the room, maybe twenty white, ten black, my partner among them. But we were all pretty tight. As a Detroit cop you get over that kind of thing pretty fast. In fact, if you can’t deal with the realities of race, talk about it in the open, joke about it, laugh about it, then you’re on the wrong police force. For that matter, you’re in the wrong city.

  The detective laughed along with us. He was one of those guys who had probably never been the butt of a joke, going back to his glorious three-sport high school career, and wasn’t about to acknowledge such a possibility now.

  “You can say it that way if you want to,” he said. “But I didn’t, okay? Just see me after roll call if you’re interested. We really need some guys with game this year.”

  Thereby insulting everyone who played last year, I thought, but again, guys like Arnie Bateman get away with that kind of stuff all their lives.

  “All right, back to the announcements,” Sergeant Grimaldi said. “Thank you, Detective Bateman.”

  He waited for the detective to show himself out, then he continued.

  “We’re keeping a focus on Roosevelt Park and MCS this month,” he said, MCS meaning Michigan Central Station. “We continue to see some daytime drug activity, both in the park and in the lots by the station itself.”

  It was a familiar story. A dealer sets up shop, word gets around, the police crack down on it, and maybe a few low-level runners get arrested. Then it all starts over somewhere else. In this case, though, you’ve got train commuters coming and going, maybe taking a little walk in the park on a nice summer afternoon. Maybe some of them are buyers, but the rest are just people trying to get on with their day. A lot of them don’t live in the city. They live in one of the suburbs, and they come downtown to go to work or to see a ball game at Tiger Stadium. It’s one of the unspoken rules around here that if people like that turn into crime victims, then it’s doubly bad for everyone involved.

  And for the city itself.

  “We’ll be putting together a buy-and-bust later this month,” the sergeant went on, “maybe even by next week.”

  There were a few not-so-subtle groans on that one. Buy-and-busts mean more kids in handcuffs, while the real culprits live to sell another day. Sometimes they ask patrol officers to help out, too—which means you get to dress in street clothes, be bored out of your mind, and then risk your life for a few minutes, all in the same day.

  “This is all taking place above and beyond the usual Roosevelt Park activity,” the sergeant said. “The solicitation, both male and female. Now that the candy store has moved to the same location, well … As you can imagine, it’s gonna be a hot spot for a while.”

  “One-stop shopping,” somebody said. “Get high and get off.”

  “You’ve summarized the point well,” the sergeant said, not looking up from his day sheet. “So just keep an eye on the area whenever you drive by, okay?”

  There were a few other announcements that didn’t have anything to do with me or my partner, so I tuned out. A few minutes later the sergeant gave us our ten-eight, meaning “officers on duty” and kind of an inside joke because Detroit cops never use ten codes. Then we were on our feet and heading to the locker room for a last pit stop before hitting the road.

  My partner was yet another ex-jock on a squad full of them. An ex–football player, once a promising walk-on at the University of Michigan before he blew out his left knee. He still wore a brace, and he took a moment to adjust it while I waited for him. I was just about to ask why the detective hadn’t come up to us personally when Franklin slammed his locker shut and there, in a perfect movie moment, was the smiling detective himself.

  “You gotta be what, six-three?”

  “Six-four,” Franklin said. “But I don’t hoop anymore.”

  “I understand you might not move like you used to,” the detective said, “but I’d like to see one of those guys at the Thirteenth move you out from under the basket.”

  “I’d love to help you out, Detective, but the ligaments in my left knee have their own agenda. Why don’t you ask Alex? He’s the only ex–professional athlete around here.”

  I was already composing my thank-you note to Franklin when the detective stepped over to look me up and down. “I thought you never made it to the majors,” he said.

  On a morning when I had a little more sleep under my belt, and a little more patience, I might have taken the time to explain it to him. You get paid to play ball in the minors. You can even make a decent living in Triple-A. Which makes you a professional, by any definition.

  “No, you’re right,” I ended up saying. “I played four years for free. Now if you’ll excuse us…”

  “All right, we’ll talk later,” he said. “You don’t look very fast, but I’m sure you could help us.”

  With those words of encouragement ringing in my ears, I grabbed my partner and we rolled out into the day.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I got an early start the next morning and saw the sun coming up as I crossed the Mackinac Bridge. I grabbed a quick breakfast in Gaylord, got back on the road, and kept going. I can drive as fast as anyone, partly because my old Ford F-150 truck still rides smooth going eighty or over, partly because I’m an ex-cop who took three bullets on the job and nobody’s going to write me a ticket. Not in Michigan, anyway.

  I still wasn’t exactly sure that this was a good idea, but I knew if I didn’t do it I’d be sitting in front of the fire at the Glasgow that night, telling myself I should have gone. So what the hell.

  I rolled through Bay City and Saginaw. Then Flint. The traffic started getting heavier. You forget how empty the Upper Peninsula is, how you can drive for twenty minutes and see one car going the other way. Then you come down here and you realize there are too many people in the rest of the world, and too many cars.

  I got off on I-96 and headed southeast, toward Detroit. I remember this road being ripped up and under construction all the time, even way back when. It was nice to see that one thing hadn’t changed, at least. A few more miles down a single lane marked with orange cones and I was in Oakland County. I was running a little early, so I pulled off at Kent Lake and parked the truck for a while. I closed my eyes to recharge my batteries. When I opened my eyes again I was looking out over the lake. It hadn’t been a conscious plan, just something I gravitated to without giving it a thought. If I ever had reason to move down here again
, I’d have to live on a lake for sure, or else I’d probably end up going insane.

  It was kind of strange to get an actual good cell phone signal down here, so I took the opportunity to give the sergeant a call while I was sitting there, just to let him know I was closing in. He seemed a little surprised I had gotten down here so fast, but he gave me the address of a sports bar on Haggerty Road and told me he’d meet me there.

  I made the mistake of taking the secondary roads to get over to Haggerty, ending up in Novi. There’s a huge mall there, plus a million other stores all over the place, and as I sat in the traffic I couldn’t help remembering what the corner of Novi Road and Twelve Mile once looked like. Two roads crossing, fields on all four corners. A traffic light. Now that one corner had more retail shopping than the entire city of Detroit put together.

  More memories hit me when I finally got over to Haggerty Road. It was two lanes through the countryside back in the day, with a mom-and-pop store and a gas station every mile or so. More old-timer’s talk, I know, but damn it all, I swear it wasn’t that long ago. A place shouldn’t be able to change this much, this quickly. There was another strip of retail on every corner now, and every straightaway with enough dry land was lined with new housing developments. I didn’t ask myself where all of these people had come from. I already knew the answer. The people who lived in Detroit were moving out to the first line of suburbs, and the people who lived in those old suburbs were moving out here, in a great second wave. Or hell, maybe it was the third wave by now. Another few years and people would be moving to the moon, just to get away from Detroit.

  I found the sports bar. It was right on Haggerty, between a couple of restaurants and a movie multiplex. It was one of those places with seventy television screens. In the men’s room there were three more screens above the urinals. When I came back out, I saw my old sergeant standing at the door, looking for me.