Let It Burn Read online

  “Hey, hold up!” I yelled at him. “Stop right there.”

  I took off after him. He spun his wheels for a moment in the gravel of the railroad bed, giving me the chance to close the distance. But he found purchase and started moving fast. His stride was ugly, but he stayed ahead of me.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “Stop right there! Police!”

  He glanced back at me for one quick instant. Then his right arm came out from his body. He threw something away from him. I couldn’t quite see what it was. Something not that big. A slight flash in the sunlight, maybe a clear plastic bag filled with crack. Big surprise, yet another dealer. At least that’s what I was thinking as I chased after him.

  I knew that Franklin would be calling it in behind me. Another car would go down Bagley Street to intercept our runner. But then I realized that as we got farther from the station, there’d be fences on both sides of the tracks. Tall fences with razor wire curled along the tops. Meaning there’d be nowhere else for him to run except straight ahead.

  “Don’t be an idiot!” I said. “It’s not worth it!”

  Possession with intent, not the biggest rap in the world, and yet here he was adding an evading charge on top of it. Meaning I have to keep chasing you, no matter how much it’s killing me.

  He was running along the railroad tracks now, somehow managing to hit the ties with each stride. One wrong step and he’d plant his face right on the hard iron of the tracks. I stayed behind him, concentrating on my own footing.

  “Stop! Police! I will shoot!”

  It was a lie, but worth trying. I was not going to shoot him in the back. If we’d had Tasers back then, I would have pulled mine from my belt and sent those two barbed hooks into him. With a range of thirty-five feet, then fifty thousand volts of electricity, it would have put him on the ground without, as they say, further incident.

  But we didn’t have Tasers that year. We had guns and we had batons and we had our own bodies. So I put my head down and I kept chasing him. But I had a few years on him, and even though my old scouting report said, “Runs well,” that praise was quickly qualified with “for a catcher.” You squat down, then stand up a couple hundred times a day, each and every day for an entire season. Then you see how well you run.

  The tracks took a slight curve to the right, then went under Bagley Street. I didn’t see any helpful backup sitting up there on the bridge. A siren and some flashing lights, and the knowledge that he couldn’t keep running down those tracks forever—that’s probably all it would have taken. Instead, I saw my suspect disappear into the darkness under the bridge.

  When I finally got there myself, I was just about ready to collapse, but I kept moving down the rails, trying to be careful with my footing. Up ahead of me I saw the tracks straighten out and head right for the tunnel that went under the Detroit River, for miles and miles, all the way to Canada. For one horrible second I couldn’t help imagining this kid trying to make his escape that way, and then the single bright light from an oncoming train, suddenly bearing down on him. Or me if I was stupid enough to chase him down the tunnel.

  I came out from the shade of the bridge, into the sudden glare of the sunlight. I didn’t see my suspect.

  A movement to my left. I reached for my revolver out of pure instinct. But no, he was up against the abutment, where the fence met the bridge. The bottom corner was loose, and he was working himself through the opening.

  “Stop!” I said, running to the spot, just in time to see him slip underneath, feet first. The ragged edge of the fence caught against his shirt, scraping his arm, tearing at his right sleeve. He scrambled to his feet, wincing and looking at his arm. There was a thin trickle of blood on his skin. He looked at me. That one second, the two of us seeing each other on opposite sides of a metal fence. He was close enough for me to see the color of his eyes. Close enough to see the Oakland Raiders logo on his black baseball hat. That close, yet a world apart. I pointed my revolver though the fence.

  “Get on the ground! Right now! Or I’ll shoot!”

  He stood there for another beat, a stone-cold look on his face. Then he turned and ran up the slope, onto Bagley Street. I didn’t shoot him in the back, much as I wanted to. I’ll be damned if anyone’s gonna make me run down the railroad tracks like a maniac, sweating and gasping and generally putting myself into near cardiac arrest. All on the short-shift day, no less.

  I crouched down and pulled up the corner of the fence. I couldn’t imagine how he could get through there. I couldn’t imagine myself even trying. So instead I keyed the radio on my shoulder. I was breathing too hard to speak. I had to wait a moment before I finally got it out.

  “Unit Forty-one,” I said, by way of identification. “I need two-eleven on a suspected dealer heading east on Bagley Street. Young black male, jeans, gray T-shirt, black Oakland Raiders baseball cap.”

  I heard a few responses. Cars in the general area, heading closer for a look. Maybe they’d pick him up. Maybe not. It was up to them now.

  I stood there with my hands on my knees for a while. When I was more or less functional again, I started walking back down the tracks. Under the bridge, then out into the daylight. I tried to remember exactly where he had thrown away whatever had been in his hand. I replayed the whole thing in my mind. Hand comes out, object in the air. There were two sets of tracks running parallel. I pictured the trajectory of the object, figuring it probably cleared the tracks closest to him, landing right around the near rail on the other side. So I crossed over and looked at the ground as I continued back to the station. When I got to what I thought was the approximate spot, I crouched down and duckwalked along the track, looking carefully. But I didn’t see anything. No clear Baggie with white rocks inside. Nothing but the gravel and the usual assortment of trash you find anywhere. Gum wrappers, cigarettes, rain-soaked pieces of paper.

  Franklin was waiting about fifty yards down the tracks, talking into his radio. He shook his head as I came closer.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Why did I do that?” I asked him. “Some dumb kid with ten bucks’ worth of crack probably, and I gotta chase him a half mile down the railroad tracks? I could have tripped on one of those railroad ties and killed myself.”

  “I’m kinda surprised you didn’t.”

  “Nice backup we got there, too. One man standing on the bridge, that’s all we needed.”

  Franklin smiled and looked away from me.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Did something funny happen here that I missed?”

  “What, besides you running after that boy, like there was any chance in hell of you catching him?”

  “So it wasn’t a complete loss, is what you’re saying. Because at least you were entertained.”

  “Don’t you remember what we were saying earlier? About how all we needed to make the day complete was you chasing somebody, climbing a fence, throwing them into some garbage cans? Then complaining about how we’re too old for this?”

  “Yeah, so? He went under the fence instead of over it. And I sure as hell didn’t catch him and throw him into any garbage cans.”

  “Well,” he said, still smiling and shaking his head. “At least you can still say you’re too old for this. Go ahead.”

  I didn’t bother. I walked back to the train station, already feeling the pain in my legs. I knew there’d be hell to pay the next morning.

  “What was he doing back here?” Franklin said, looking up at the station. Eighteen empty floors, this whole back end of the station not used for anything. Not for years. The one corner of the station still open was on the opposite end. There was no reason to come down this far.

  “You tell me,” I said. “Maybe he was meeting somebody back here.”

  “I didn’t see anybody else. Did you?”

  I shook my head, looking up at the windows high above me.

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t be the first guy who broke into this place,” I said. “There’s probably copper wire and other stuff to steal
.”

  We went inside the door that led to the active part of the building and took a quick look around. There were a few customers waiting on wooden benches, but nobody had seen our suspect. So we went outside again.

  We were heading to our car, but then on a whim I walked back down the tracks. There were high-arched windows all along this abandoned section of the station. I couldn’t see anything inside except darkness.

  “What are you doing down there?” Franklin said.

  “He could have been doing something over here,” I said. “He might have been coming out right around the time we saw him.”

  “Why in hell would he do that? It’s deserted back here.”

  A good question. The ground between the tracks and the building was nothing but weeds and trash and old train schedules. I walked toward the windows, keeping an eye out for snakes or God knows what.

  Then I saw it.

  “There’s a door over here!” I said.

  “Is it open?”

  “One way to find out.”

  There was a rough path through the thick brush, leading to the door. I tried the handle. It didn’t turn, but I could see that the door was ajar. Taking one deep breath, I pulled it open and looked inside.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  All these years later, to see what this place had become. I parked as close I could, got out, and started walking down the sidewalk. Roosevelt Park was devoid of any life, save for a flock of birds roosting in one of the trees. The birds shuffled and murmured but did not fly away as I walked past.

  Michigan Central Station loomed in the sky ahead of me. MCS. The MC Depot. Whatever you wanted to call it. It was half empty back in the day, back when it was part of my beat. Now it was gutted. It was violated. It was torn apart from the inside out. Every window was broken. I mean, eighteen stories high, hundreds of windows. Every single one broken.

  There was a high Cyclone fence around the building. Through it I could see the graffiti and the litter, and in some places I could even see the sunlight from the other side of the building. It was the first time I had stood this close to the building since that other summer, all those years ago.

  “What the hell,” I said out loud. I was looking at the shell of what was once a monument. A palace. And I was thinking of everything else I had seen that day. “How can a whole city come to this?”

  There was something more, too. Besides what had happened to this place, this city. Something about the day itself. It was a low-level hum just starting in my head.

  I walked down past the station, toward the river. The tracks still looked usable. I was sure the trains still came this way, emerging from under the river and roaring right past the old station. There would be no reason to stop here now. Or even to slow down.

  I kept going on the other side of the razor-wire fence, past the big post office building with all the trucks lined up in the parking lot. A sign of life, at least. Some real business still being conducted. I ended up on Rosa Parks Boulevard, looking at yet one more long wreck of a building, a full block of shuttered windows and an old loading dock that hadn’t seen a truck in months or maybe years. The street side of the building was tagged with more graffiti. Already today I had seen so many combinations of spray-painted letters. There was a bridge with a battered rusty wreck of a fence on either side, and then the road curved east as it came up against the Detroit River. I kept walking.

  I saw the five great towers of the Renaissance Center up ahead as I walked along the river. I could remember back when they built those towers, and of course I knew what the word “renaissance” meant to this city. If we could have looked forward to right now, would the whole idea have felt like a lie? Or was there still hope?

  I looked at my watch. The sun was high, but it was pushing five o’clock. Time to get back to my truck. Maybe I’d have the chance to think about the big questions later, but right now it was time to have dinner with Agent Janet Long.

  *

  I met her at the FBI offices on Michigan Avenue. They owned one floor in McNamara Federal Building, along with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Secret Service. The DEA was right across the street.

  I waited in the lobby for her. The elevator doors opened, and she came out chatting with another agent. It was her partner, Agent Fleury. I’d met them both at the same time, when they’d come up to my part of the state. Agent Fleury and I had gotten off to a rough start with each other, although I supposed we’d made our peace in the end. Still, there was probably little chance of me inviting him to join Janet and me for dinner.

  She saw me and waved to me. She was wearing a dark blue skirt and jacket, with a white blouse. The standard uniform of a female FBI agent. As she came over to me, we both had this moment of sudden bewilderment. Like why are we both standing here as if we’re supposed to have anything to do with each other? She broke the spell by giving me a quick hug.

  “You remember my partner,” she said. “Agent Fleury.”

  “Nice to see you again,” he said, shaking my hand. He was younger than us. His suit was tailored. His hair was perfect. He reminded me a little of Detective Bateman, back in his prime.

  He didn’t stick around for small talk. He wished us both a good evening, and then he left.

  “You look good,” she said as soon as he was gone. “But you must be tired. It’s a long way from Paradise to Detroit.”

  “In more ways than one.”

  “I remember how you drive,” she said. “Still using that ex-cop with a bullet angle, huh?”

  “It would be a shame not to.”

  “So I thought we’d have dinner in Greektown. Does that sound all right?”

  “That sounds perfect. You want me to drive?”

  “This is downtown,” she said. “We’ll take the People Mover.”

  We walked a block to the station on Cass Avenue. For fifty cents you can get on this raised monorail that makes a three-mile loop around downtown, stopping at Joe Louis Arena, the Renaissance Center, Greektown, a few other destinations. It’s slow as hell, but it gets the job done, and you don’t have to drive your car. Maybe even more importantly, you don’t have to park somewhere you might not feel that good about.

  We hopped on the tram and stood there looking down as the streets passed below us. Everybody was getting off work in the financial district, and in the GM headquarters. Men with suits and briefcases were walking down the street, many of them joining us in the People Mover.

  “It’s good to see all these people downtown,” I said. “You’d almost think the old city was doing okay.”

  “It can feel that way some days,” she said. “Especially in the summer. Especially down here by the river.”

  When we finally made it to the eastern side of the loop, we got out at Greektown and walked to the restaurant. We passed right by the Greektown Casino, one of the three casinos in the city now. Hard to even imagine back when I was on the police force, going the Atlantic City route and inviting everything else that comes with the gambling money. Yet here they were. I’m sure they were all doing decent business, but I couldn’t help thinking they were really just huge monuments to the city’s desperation. Once the greatest manufacturing center in the world. Now just a place where you can go to play the slot machines.

  “This one was owned by your neighbors,” Janet said as she looked up at the bright lights on the Greektown Casino.

  “It was,” I said, shaking my head. After the Bay Mills tribe started the ball rolling with the first Indian-run blackjack casino in the country, the Sault tribe over in Sault Ste. Marie jumped in with both feet, building the huge Kewadin Casino, and then eventually expanding their operations down here when Detroit passed the new gaming law. Not a year later, the Gaming Board took the casino away from them and gave it to a new group of investors. You can still guarantee yourself an interesting conversation by walking into any bar or restaurant in Sault Ste. Marie, finding a Sault member, and asking him what he thinks of the tribal leaders who let that
happen.

  The restaurant was just down the street from the casino. A Greek place, believe it or not. We got a table upstairs, and Janet ordered us some wine.

  “This is on me,” I said.

  “Think again, mister. You’re the one who drove all the way down here.”

  We put that fight off for later. I sat there and drank my wine and looked at her. There was a calmness to her face that I had found appealing from the first moment I had seen her. She was up in the UP, trying to solve what would turn out to be multiple murders, going back years. Yet there was always this air of self-assurance about her.

  I liked her hair, too. The way it framed her face.

  “Remind me again,” I said. “How old are you?”

  She laughed at that one. “Is that your opening line on all your dates?”

  “So this is a date, you’re saying.”

  She shook her head, but she was smiling. “God, we really don’t know each other very well, do we?”

  “We never got the chance. We were both so preoccupied when you were up there. Then you had to go.”

  “Yeah, I made you promise to come down and take me to dinner,” she said. “I have to admit, I was starting to think you never would.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have come down sooner.”

  “So why now?”

  “One of the last collars I made when I was down here,” I said. “Right before … I mean right before I left the force … It was a homicide over in the old train station.”

  “You’re the one who caught him?”

  “Eventually. I ID’d him, anyway. Was there when he was finally arrested. He’s getting out this week, so I got the courtesy call. Not that I think in a million years that he’ll be coming for me.”

  “Then why did you need to come down here?”

  “I got talking to the old sergeant,” I said. “He said I should come down and see the place. So I figured what the hell.”

  “Ah, so it wasn’t just to see me.” She had a little smile on her face as she said it.