Dead_Wood

Sixteen

I’d always wanted to meet someone from the Coast Guard. Somehow, I figured it would be a Saturday field trip with my daughters. I’d call ahead, arrange a tour of the Coast Guard place with some guy called Captain Happy, the girls could pretend to steer the ship, we’d get some fake medals and then we’d all take pictures and drink cocoa.

Alas, Captain Happy turned out to be a grumpy middle-aged man who, after a bumpy ride across Lake St. Clair with two men wearing sidearms giving me the cold stare, unceremoniously deposited me with the St. Clair Shores police. Apparently emergency calls regarding an abundance of dark smoke on Captain Happy’s lake didn’t inspire a warm, fuzzy feeling in the Coast Guard official. No cocoa, and he never even let me steer the ship. Good thing I hadn’t brought the girls along.

The cops escorted me to an ambulance that took me to a hospital where after a blatantly cursory inspection, doctors determined I was fine. They didn’t even give me the ‘24-hour observation’ demand.

The cops then escorted me back to the station where all kinds of phone calls were made, some in my presence, most occurring, I’m guessing, while I waited in a conference room. A couple of St. Clair Shores cops took my statement. Then they re-took it. And then, to qualify for the hat trick, they took it again. I kept it not pretty much the same, but exactly the same.

After they left, I took stock of my situation. The hospital had given me some doctor’s scrubs and my wet clothes were in a paper bag that was now soggy. I had a blanket around my shoulders and was trying to stay warm. I was also trying not to think about Nevada Hornsby, the sight of him lashed to the bottom of the log, his dead eyes staring up at me—

The door banged open and my sister walked in.

She took a moment to look at me. Not a glance. A slow, thorough assessment. When she was done, she turned back toward the door.

“Let’s go,” she said.

• • •



I’ve found it’s a pretty good idea when dealing with my sister that if you’re not sure what to say, keep it zipped. So I sat in the front passenger seat of her cruiser, looking out the window as we left the hospital parking lot, heading back, I assumed, to my house.

“Listen, I can explain,” I said, ignoring my cardinal rule. Why do I even bother to make them up when I so rarely follow them?

“No, you can’t,” Ellen said.

See what I mean? I cursed myself for ignoring myself.

“I told you what I was doing,” I said. Another mistake. Don’t defend yourself. Just curl up and let the grizzly bat you around a little bit, eventually she’ll get bored and move on.

“You told me you were going to be involved in a double homicide while investigating the homicide I’m working on?” she said. Boy her voice could sound nasty. It was hard to believe we were related. I guess I got all the sugar, she got all the vinegar. I’d have to get confirmation on that from Mom.

“Do I look like Dionne Warwick?” I said.

She shot me a confused glance.

“Psychic Network?” I said.

This got me an eye roll. Eye rolls aren’t bad. In fact, they’re quite good. It usually means the anger-bordering-on-violence is past, replaced with a mere case of irritation. A mild nuisance.

Ellen turned onto Kercheval, headed back toward the Park. It was early evening by now, and traffic was light.

“Where was the call to let me know you were going to question Hornsby?”

“Again,” I said. “How was I supposed to know anything would come of it—”

“You’re going to back off of this case,” she said. I knew where that expression “iron in her voice,” came from. She practically had a crowbar between her teeth.

I didn’t answer, suddenly terribly interested in the architecture of the houses we passed by. After a couple more blocks, Ellen turned onto my street.

“Aren’t you, John?” she said.

“Aren’t I what?”

“Going to back off this case this minute.”

I didn’t want to answer. I’d made enough mistakes. I wasn’t about to make the granddaddy mistake of all by lying to her. Because I had no intention of backing off this case. In fact, my intention was just the opposite.

“Right?” Ellen asked, not letting me off the hook as we pulled into my driveway.

I imagined a newborn baby, the very picture of innocence. “Right,” I said. What the hell, three mistakes in a row. Pulled a hat trick myself.

• • •



Before I got out of the cruiser, I glanced in the little mirror attached to the back of the sun visor. I looked okay, considering what I’d been through. Pale, water-logged and truth be told, a tad frightened.

“Does she know?” I said, nodding toward the house. My cell phone was on the bottom of Lake St. Clair, and I hadn’t called from the hospital, preferring to tell my wife about my unique day in person.

“I didn’t tell her,” my sister said.

“Good. Your tact typically leaves quite a bit to be desired.”

“Quit stalling,” Ellen said. “Go on, take it like the man you aren’t.”

I got out, slammed the door shut as a response, and walked around the house to the back door. In my mind, I ran through a series of explanations, deciding that I’d already lied to my sister, lying to my wife would be even worse. No way was I going to lie. I might sanitize the truth a tad, but no more outright lies. Besides, I’d tried a fib or two to Anna before – no, I hadn’t eaten the last two chocolate chip cookies, etc. – and I’d always gotten busted. The woman was a walking polygraph machine.

I unlocked the back door, which opens into the kitchen, and Anna was at the kitchen table, helping Isabel with her homework. She looked at me, then did a double take.

“Everyone’s favorite man is home!” I sang out, my voice as merry as an elf on Christmas Eve.

My wife took one look at me and I knew it was game over. “Isabel, go upstairs,” Anna said. “Finish your math sheet in your room.”

After my daughter left, without a hug for her Dad I might add, Anna folded her arms and looked at me.

I began describing what happened, editing out the worst moments. I was only about halfway through the story when Anna started crying, and I immediately started feeing guilty. The girls ran down from upstairs upon hearing the sound of a grown-up crying.

“Mommy, what’s wrong?” Isabel said, her lower lip immediately starting to tremble.

Anna was trying to get herself under control, but failing miserably. I idly wondered when I would get my framed certificate proving once and for all that I was in fact, the world’s biggest jackass.

I decided to divide and conquer. Leaving Anna in the kitchen, I took the girls upstairs, immediately distracting them with a game of tackle and tickle, then we read some books and I tucked them in for the night.

I went back downstairs and found Anna drinking. Turning to booze was always a bad sign. But a small glass of Amaretto wasn’t a bad thing. I splashed a cocktail glass half full.

“Finish the story,” she said as I sat down on the couch next to her.

I told the rest of it to Anna, glossing over the part where I’d almost been blown to a million pieces of man gnocchi and minimizing how close I’d come to drowning. I told her exactly what the doctors had said, embellishing only on the soundness of my overall health. Still, she was pissed. Whenever she got upset, she cried first, then got pissed right after that. Super pissed, in fact.

“Why didn’t you take your sister with you?” she said. You have to understand, she was mad, but she wasn’t mad at the guy who tried to kill me. She was mad at me.

“She’s a cop, honey,” I said. “She can’t just take off with her brother when he’s got a case. Besides, I had no idea this was going to happen. I thought it would be a routine interview. As boring as those Barbara Walters specials. Do you remember the one with Bo Derek? God that was—”

“What about Nate? Why didn’t you take him?”

“Nate?” I said. “Well, he’s best in culinary emergencies — you know, when you can’t decide whether to have the roast duck or the broiled flounder.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I know.” It wasn’t. The part about Nate was a little bit funny, but no, the rest was definitely not.

“So what are you going to do?” she said.

“I’m going to keep working,” I said. She nodded. Anna now knew the details of the case, was caught up in it nearly as much as I was, and she probably didn’t want me to stop.

“I just want you to be more careful. Call Ellen if you think you’re going to be in any kind of danger, all right?”

“All right.”

“Because you know, you’re not a tough guy. You’re no Russell Crowe.”

I took that one in stride. “Very true. Very true.”

All in all, I thought it had gone pretty well. Anna didn’t seem too unhappy. I was safe. I would be more careful. I would get to the bottom of all this and it would be a good case to solve.

Things were going to be okay.





Seventeen

Muddy’s Saloon is a blues bar just a stone’s throw from the Detroit River. All of the greats have played there, leaving behind them the wail of a blues shout and a framed, signed picture.

The Spook stood in the lobby and looked at the pictures. John Lee Hooker, young and handsome with a sharp-looking felt hat and thick black sunglasses. Elmore James with his lean face and hawk nose. B.B. King and Lucille. Howlin’ Wolf. And Muddy himself.

The Spook walked through the doorway to the right of the bar to the small room in back with the stage. It had a small wooden platform with a dozen tables scattered around in front. Thick cigarette smoke filled the air and the wood floor breathed with the smell of thirty years worth of spilled beer.

The stage itself was only up a step or two and it had a piano in one corner, a big mahogany upright that probably weighed a ton or two. There were two microphones at the front and an old wooden stool sat in the middle.

The Spook had been to Detroit before. Quite a few times, in fact. After leaving the Agency and going freelance, some of his first jobs had been right here. There always seemed to be a lot of open contracts in Detroit.

In fact, it was on one of his first jobs that he’d heard about open mic night at Muddy’s Saloon. Back then, though, he’d been too busy to attend. Tonight was different. His job hadn’t officially started yet, which gave him a rare night off. He’d brought his guitar and was ready to play.

Half of the tables were occupied, mostly by other players, although the Spook noticed one table with a man and a woman sharing a pitcher of Heineken.

A man was on stage playing a serviceable Taj Mahal tune. His accompaniment was simple, his voice good if a bit tentative. The Spook took a seat and ordered a beer. He would hardly touch it.

Two songs later, the man on stage hit the last note of a Howlin’ Wolf song and quietly put away his guitar and left the stage. The Master of Ceremonies, a big pudgy white guy with a fedora and black shirt asked the audience who would like to play next.

The Spook immediately stood and headed for the stage.

“All right! We got an eager one!” the MC said.

The Spook slid the Martin guitar from its case and tuned by ear. He launched into the Midnight Rambler’s shuffle and everything felt good. Felt tight.

“Have you heard about the Midnight Rambler?” he sang. His voice wasn’t great. He had more of a growl than a true singing voice, but it was his playing that he was most proud of anyway. He played, his rhythm line aggressive and precise.

His intense concentration was broken slightly by something on the periphery of his awareness. He heard the man at the table with the woman snicker softly.

The Spook ignored him, turned back into himself and sang, “The one you never seen before.” His foot tapped the oak floor and the Martin bounced on his thigh. He rocked through the song, feeling strong and confident. When he finished muted applause broke out.

And then the man at the table spoke. Not real loud, but loud enough for most of the people in the room to hear. “Pick a key and stick with it, man!” A little bit of soft laughter broke out.

The Spook ignored him, and did two more numbers: The Spider and The Fly, and Love In Vain.

When he stepped down from the stage, the man at the table who’d heckled him earlier clapped especially loud.

The Spook sat back down at his table. He quietly put the Martin back into its case and wrapped his fingers around his beer, but didn’t take a drink.

He watched as an obese woman with a jumbo acoustic played a haunting version of a Son House song. Her guitar playing was basic, but her voice was beautiful. The man at the table who’d heckled the Spook was ignoring her, concentrating on the woman at the table with him. The Spook studied the man. He had on a white shirt and tie, slicked back hair and glasses. He looked like an accountant. Something shifted inside the Spook’s stomach. For the first time, he took a sip of beer.

The heckler ordered another pitcher of beer from the waitress and then excused himself from the table. The Spook waited while the man passed by the table and out the door to the bathroom.

After a moment, the Spook picked up his guitar case and followed. He leaned his case against the jukebox just outside the door to the bar and went to the men’s room. He stepped inside, shut the door and stood with his back against it as he slid the Ruger automatic out of his jacket’s inside pocket. He lifted the silencer from the other jacket pocket and quickly screwed it onto the end of the pistol. There was only one stall in the bathroom and no urinal. The Spook stood with his back against the door as he listened to the man finish up. The stall door swung open and the accountant appeared. He looked up at the Spook, then away, then back again. An “o” formed on his mouth as he saw the gun. He started to raise his hands.

The Spook shot him twice in the face.

The man fell back into the stall and the Spook stepped in, placed the barrel of the gun against the man’s skull and fired once more. The Spook then slipped the gun back into his pocket and hoisted the dead man onto the toilet and shut the stall door.

From the doorway, it looked like just another guy taking a crap.

The Spook walked back to the door, picked up his guitar case and stepped outside. As the door swung shut, he heard the faint voice of the obese woman singing “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.”

Ain’t that the truth, he thought.





Eighteen

I attended a seminar once. It was hosted by a private investigator and believe me, I know a write-off when I see it. Anyway, the seminar was put on by a woman from Los Angeles who claimed to work for celebrities and had, at least according to herself, been involved with some extremely big, high-profile cases. I suppose when an actress insures her left ass cheek for five million dollars, they probably hire a lot of security personnel.

I ponied up the three hundred bucks for an afternoon of learning the tricks of the trade from one of the self-proclaimed experts in my field. Personally, I thought the woman was worthy of investigation herself, but I can be rather skeptical. And as a con, wouldn’t it be a hoot to pull the wool over the eyes of a room full of wannabe private investigators? Reference check, anyone?

Anyway, I remember laughing out loud at one of her points. She had quizzed the audience about what abilities we felt were the most important for a P.I. to possess. The crowd threw out self-delusional concepts such as courage, tenacity, and perceptiveness.

It turned out the correct answer was the ability to listen.

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. It just sounded so New Age to me. I mean, I understood her point and all, but I just pictured myself in my office, acting like Bob Newhart. A client tells me his wife is cheating on him and I say, “Go with that. How does that make you feel? I’m listening, friend.”

Listening? Come on. I would have guessed the most important ability was to be able to photograph both faces of two people f*cking.

Of course, like so many things in life, over time the concept kind of grew on me. The more cases I had, the more times I realized that something I’d heard ended up playing a pretty big role in the case. So maybe the afternoon had been worth a little more than a sore ass and few glasses of watered down Coke.

I thought of the seminar when I realized that something Nevada Hornsby had said to me, that hadn’t registered then, was now simmering on my brain. At the time, I hadn’t really been listening. But now, I knew I had. Because he had told me something important.

It was just before he slammed the boat into gear. He’d said something about we’d be out there for eighteen hours and that I would have to work because someone had called in sick. Now I searched my brain for the name. Had he said a name? I thought about it, cursing that hotshot from L.A. I never should have laughed at her. Karma.

Rudy.

No, that didn’t sound right. But it had definitely started with an R. I was sure of that.

Ralphie.

Rodney.

Randy.

Randy.

That was it.

Randy had called in sick the day the boat blows up and everyone but a scared P.I. dies. I’ve always been wary of coincidences and that was just too glaring for me to take in stride. Maybe I’d host a seminar one day and make that my big point.

Fortunately, during my questioning with the good police officers of St. Clair Shores this particular memory had yet to surface. Somehow, now that I’d had some time to recover from the initial shock, it had just popped right back up. I’d even been with my sister and still hadn’t remembered it then, either. Coincidence or had some small part of me repressed the idea until I could act on it alone?

Go figure.

But since I had failed to remember this little detail during my official questioning, it didn’t seem like a terribly significant slighting of protocol if I were to look into this Randy angle by myself.

I may not be the best listener in the world, but I am one hell of a rationalizer.

• • •



My first challenge was to find out just who this Randy guy really was and where I might be able to find him.

I pulled up across the street from St. Clair Salvage. I didn’t feel any post-traumatic stress from my near brush with death, but I wasn’t exactly doing cartwheels over being back. And having finished going through Jesse Barre’s workshop and apartment, I wasn’t thrilled at being back at another murder victim’s place of work. Again, I’m not the most sensitive guy in the world, but this case was really starting to get to me.

In the gray light of early morning, with a fog rolling in from the lake, the bright yellow police tape over the front door of St. Clair Salvage made the message pretty clear. Everyone stay away. Especially nosy private investigators.

In the old days, I suppose a ballsy investigator might pick a lock or slip through an old window into Hornsby’s office and check his employee records. But I had a couple problems with this. One, I wasn’t anxious to break any laws. The guys at Jackson State Prison just a half hour away would love my soft white ass. It’d be like chucking a Krispy Kreme donut into an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.

Second of all, and not quite as anally intrusive, I figured Nevada Hornsby’s records were about as neat and organized as a frat house after Rush Week. In fact, I highly doubted that Hornsby kept any employee records at all. No W-2s, no problems from the IRS, right? I pictured him paying cash under the table, along with a few beers and a greasy burger at the café across the street.

The café across the street. It was a Ram’s Horn. I’d eaten once at a Ram’s Horn. Runny eggs, soggy hash browns, weak coffee. It was one big room with no dividers between the tables. The culinary equivalent of a pig’s trough to an uppity Grosse Pointer like myself, but Nirvana perhaps to Hornsby and his crew.

I locked the Taurus, crossed the street and went through the restaurant’s fingerprint covered glass door. A cute, chubby waitress took my order of coffee with a pleasant little smile. She had a dimple and a nametag telling the world her name was Gloria. I sipped my coffee. It was weak, all right. Kind of like coffee-flavored water. When she returned to refill me, I ordered the Hungry Man special, figuring she might be a little more cooperative if a slightly larger tip were at stake. 15% of a fifty-cent coffee wasn’t about to loosen her up.

When Gloria came back in an astonishingly quick five minutes, burdened down like a pack mule with my Hungry Man special, I said, “Hey, I was supposed to meet a guy for breakfast. He worked at the salvage shop across the street. His name is Randy. Do you know him?”

Gloria’s face blanched a little bit. “Did you hear about the accident?” she said.

“What accident?”

“Their boat blew up. The owner and one other guy died.”

“Was it Randy?”

“I don’t know.”

She unloaded her arm full of platters onto the table. It was like a dump truck raising its bed and a ton of gravel sliding down to the pavement. The smell of grease was intense and in a morbid kind of way, somewhat alluring. I made my face good and thoughtful. “I wonder how I could find out if Randy’s okay.”

“Don’t you have his phone number or something?”

I shook my head. “I bumped into him at a bar. I overheard him telling someone he worked for some place that salvaged old lumber. I’m remodeling my kitchen and the better half wants something fancy for the cabinets, so I introduced myself and he said he could hook me up with a good price, but we’d have to make it look like he was buying the cabinets, for the discount, you know? So we agreed to meet here and talk.”

Gloria seemed to buy it. The dimple kind of faded in and out while I talked. I wondered if it was a tell, kind of like full dimple for when she believed me, less dimple for skepticism. If so, I was doing pretty well.

“You should talk to Michelle,” she said. Full dimple. I was golden. “Those guys came in here once in awhile, but they always wanted Michelle to wait on them.”

“Okay. Is she working today?”

“She’s on break. Out back.”

Gloria topped off my coffee and left. I threw money for the Hungry Man down and added a nice hefty tip, then hurried out the door and around the back of the restaurant where I spotted a large tangle of blonde hair and a steady plume of smoke.

“Michelle?” I said.

She turned to me and I got a good look at her. Fine features, hidden beneath some thick makeup. Pretty green eyes. A slight overbite. I had to admit, these Ram’s Horn waitresses were kind of cute.

“Uh-huh,” she said. Her voice was deep with a hint of rasp. It wasn’t the most flattering setting. Michelle stood next to the restaurant’s dumpster. I’m glad I hadn’t touched the Hungry Man. The smell from the giant green bin of death was overpowering. If I had consumed the 10,000 calorie special, I might be hurling it back up right about now. But the back of the restaurant opened up onto an alley and there was nowhere else for a smoker to go.

“I’m trying to track down a guy I met, his name is Randy and he said he worked for the salvage shop across the street.”

“He ain’t workin’ there no more,” she said. Grammatically challenged, I noted, without judgment. Hey, we’ve all got our faults. Mine happens to be a propensity for lying to waitresses.

“Because of the accident?”

She nodded.

“Did you know him?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “He’d only worked there a week or two, right?”

It was my turn to shrug.

“I knew his boss, Nevada,” she said. “He’d been coming here for years.”

“Were you guys friends?”

She raised an eyebrow at me while simultaneously taking a deep drag.

“Are you a cop or something?”

“I’m remodeling my kitchen. Randy was going to hook me up with some cool wood for my cabinets.”

She gave me a quick glance up and down. Yep, I could read her mind, he looks like Mr. Suburban House-Fixer-Upper.

“As good a friends as a waitress and customer can be without ever hooking up outside of here,” she said, her tawny mane nodding toward the back of the Ram’s Horn.

I paused. Not much here, I thought. Then I asked, “Did Nevada ever bring his girlfriend in here?”

She nodded. “Cute girl.”

Okay, not much accomplished.

“Randy cracks me up,” I said. “I can’t believe he still drives around that piece of crap yellow Cadillac. What is it, like, a 1965?”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “I only seen him in that black Nova. I used to drive one just like it in high school. Mine was gold, though. With huge rust spots all over. If I hit a pothole, little chunks would fall off.”

“Did you know Nova in Spanish means ‘It won’t go?’” I said. I was chock full of interesting tidbits like that. It was a big reason waitresses found me so fascinating.

“No shit?” she said. “That’s funny.”

Our bonding over and with a description of Randy’s car, I thanked Michelle, resisted the urge to run my hands through her hair and see if my dog Biffy, who ran away when I was three years old, was hidden in there. He wasn’t. I walked back to my Taurus. Well, I had a description of a car. But little else.

I looked at St. Clair Salvage across the street. I wondered if I could just peek in the window and get a look at Hornsby’s desk. That wouldn’t be a crime, would it? Window shopping? People do it all the time.

They wouldn’t send me to Jackson for that, would they?





Nineteen

The direct approach seemed the best. I crossed the street, went around behind the main building and pressed my face up against the nearest window. Through a thin layer of grime I saw a lot of open space with a bunch of gear on the floor. Clearly not the office, although I figured Nevada Hornsby’s corporate décor wasn’t exactly Architectural Digest caliber. I walked down to the next set of windows. I saw an old desk with a telephone. Okay, now that could possibly pass as an office. Now what? I really didn’t feel like breaking a window and the law at the same time. I tried to get a better look but couldn’t see directly beneath the window. I gave the window a hard nudge but it was locked into place. Probably more from years and years of paint as opposed to an actual lock.

I reconsidered the wisdom of trying to get inside. What were my odds, realistically, of finding a link to the missing employee? I figured the big wooden drawers in Hornsby’s desk would be crammed with loose papers, receipts, important documents imprinted with coffee stains—

“What the f*ck are you doing?” The voice shot out from behind me and I jumped so hard I felt the Ram’s Horn coffee threaten to slosh its way out of my belly.

“Oh, Christ,” I said.

My sister smiled at me. “You have the right to remain silent, although with that giant maw of a mouth you have I’ve never actually heard you be silent—”

“Jesus Christ, you scared me,” I said.

“You were always such a Nervous Nellie,” Ellen said. “What are you doing?” Again, she knew exactly what I was doing. My sister was the Queen of Rhetorical Questions.

“All right, I admit,” I said. “I’m a peeping Tom. It started with your friend Sue Rogers. She had those giant eukanubas and her slumber party you went to—”

“Shut up John.”

“Close my giant maw?”

“Please.”

We stood there in awkward silence for a moment. Then Ellen stepped up to the window through which I’d been looking and took her time looking things over. She turned to me with a raised eyebrow.

“I thought I told you to stay away from this case.”

“I am. I just had my daily Ram’s Horn breakfast and was walking off the biscuits and sausages…”

“Shut up.”

I shrugged my shoulders, deciding to obey her command to keep quiet. I could be a good doggie. Who’s a good boy?

“So let me guess,” she said. “You were trying to be good and not find a way to sneak in and snoop around the deceased’s office. Which, of course, would be a severe violation of the law. You’d probably told yourself you’d just peek, deep down knowing it wouldn’t satisfy you and that you would have to figure out a clever way to get inside. Spontaneity would take over and you’d find yourself inside, rummaging around. You might find something, you might not. And then you’d leave and feel terribly guilty, go home, and forget about it the minute you walked through the door and the girls descended on you and made you feel like your coming home was rivaled only by the return of Moses from the mountaintop.”

I both admired her and hated her.

I decided to quit being defensive and take the sisterly bull by the horns.

“So I guess you decided to come out here on your own,” I said. “Without the assistance of your new friends from St. Clair Shores law enforcement because you wanted to take a good look around yourself, form your own judgments and keep any discoveries that might impact your case to yourself. And when you saw me, you were secretly relieved because you realized you’d benefit from both my keen insight and my warm companionability.”

“It’s warm all right,” she said. “Like a steaming pile of bullsh—”

“Thank you, I get the idea.”

I thought I saw the beginning of a smile play across her face so I said, “Come on, you know what we need to do.”

“No,” she said. “Run along, go get a piece of coconut crème pie across the street.”

She turned her back on me and walked to the back door of St. Clair Salvage, produced a key and unlocked the door. She stepped inside, started to close the door on me, but I caught it just before it shut and pushed it back open.

“Come on, don’t shut me out,” I said. “This is your little brother talking.”

She snorted and turned around, ignoring me.

I followed Ellen inside and shut the door behind me.

• • •



“Reminds me of your room,” Ellen said, surveying the piles of junk, empty beer cans and dartboard hanging askew on the wall. It was funny how even as adults, childhood is never far behind.

I inhaled deeply and said, “Smells like your closet.”

The office, if you could call it that, was divided into three rooms. The doorway led into the biggest room where traditionally, the receptionist would sit. Instead of filling the space with a chubby middle-aged woman with a telephone headset, Nevada Hornsby had chosen instead to furnish the area with a giant rusty anchor. Complete with dried seaweed.

“Very corporate-y,” Ellen said.

“Shabby chic, taken to a whole new level,” I said.

There were two more rooms, one of them Hornsby’s office, the other empty save for a wastebasket stuck in the corner.

Not surprisingly, the rest of the space was filled with giant logs, blocks and oddly shaped pieces of wood. Most of the wood had at least one side of it finished, in the sense that it had been sanded and varnished. Hornsby’s display samples, I assumed.

The wood was beautiful.

“Look at this,” I said to Ellen. We both looked at a block of wood that was a dark honey color with some of the most intense grain I’d ever seen before. In fact, it was more than grain. It was swirly almost. It was absolutely beautiful.

All the pieces were unique. Some were dark, almost black. Others were blonde. There were huge grain patterns, others small and incredibly complex.

“Amazing,” Ellen said. “This stuff sat on the bottom of the lake for hundreds of years.”

“I wonder if mob informants look this good.”

“Why, you wanna make a desk out of one?” Ellen said.

She had stopped just outside the door to Hornsby’s office. I could see a few black-and-white photographs hung on the wall. I stepped up next to her and looked. They were archival type photos of early loggers on Lake St. Clair. They showed burly looking guys in dark wool pants and plaid shirts walking on top of logs with big black boots.

I left Ellen there and went into Hornsby’s office. The place had been thoroughly gone over by a forensics team. His desk was old and ready to fall apart. The chair was old with a smoothly polished seat, made so by years and years of butt cheeks sliding on and off. I sat down and looked around. There was no computer or anything. Just a phone and piles of folders, invoices and coffee cups, soda cans and beer bottles.

It was weird to be sitting in a dead guy’s chair, not that Hornsby was the kind of guy who spent a lot of time here. I pictured him on the boat or in the shop.

I used my handkerchief to pull open the drawers. As I suspected, they were chock full of paperwork. I spied a date on one. 1993. If Jessie Barre loved Hornsby, it probably wasn’t because of his filing ability.

Ellen had walked into the office and was looking out the small window, which gave a view of the lake. Next to the phone was a pile of yellow Post-it notes, which was interesting because I knew Post-it notes were invented sometime in the 1980s and it surprised me that Hornsby had purchased office supplies that recently. In any event, there were a few Post-its and I gently pulled them toward me. I peeled off the first one, which was nearly indecipherable. The second was a string of dimensions. The third had a scrawled name and a phone number.

The name was Randy.

I slipped the note into my pocket just as Ellen turned toward me.

“Anything interesting?” she said.

My heart was beating a little quicker than usual. Like I said, I don’t like deceiving my big sister, but sometimes I have to.

“Not to me. Maybe to the Society of Mold and Fungus Collectors.”

I wanted to follow up the Randy lead by myself because I figured that it was probably nothing. And even if it were something, I didn’t want to put Ellen in harm’s way because of some half-cocked idea of mine. Even though she was probably better equipped to handle it. I remember one time I spilled a bunch of milk at the dinner table and she waited outside for me afterward and kicked my ass. And that was Thanksgiving. Last year.

Ellen took my spot in the desk chair while I looked out the window. The lake was cold and gray, like it so often is at this time of year. I wondered if Nevada Hornsby had ever stood here and contemplated the water. Probably not. He didn’t seem like the philosophical type.

I wandered back out into the main room and looked at the different pieces of wood. They were truly spectacular. I’d heard Bill Gates had used this stuff to make the kitchen cabinets in his 40 million dollar house. I knew that only a guy like Gates could afford the wood.

“All done?” Ellen said when she emerged from Hornsby’s office. “Satiated your insufferable curiosity?”

“I guess,” I said.

We left and Ellen locked the door behind us.

“What are you up to now?” she asked. “Going to try to sweet talk a few more waitresses?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Why do I get the feeling that you know more than you’re telling me?” she said.

“Why do I get the same feeling about you?” I said. “In fact, it seems terribly coincidental that you would just happen to drop by a the same time as me. Are you sure you weren’t following me?”

By now we were at her cruiser and I could see my Taurus across the street.

She climbed behind the wheel and rolled down the window.

“Maybe the next time you thoroughly charm a waitress, you should make sure she doesn’t see you cross the street and snoop around a place where a guy worked that you were asking questions about. She might call the cops.”

Ellen smiled at me, rolled up the window and drove off.

I couldn’t believe it. Michelle hadn’t believed my story. She hadn’t trusted me.

I was slipping.

Big time.





Twenty

To a resourceful private investigator, and after a few cups of strong coffee I had no problem putting myself into that category, there are many ways to take a phone number and match an address to it. If you have a computer handy, there’s the Department of Motor Vehicle database, there’s the Nexus database, there’s even the good old phone directory database. Now, if you’re not at a computer, there are still ways to do it. For instance, you call the operator and say you’re looking for Randy Can’t Remember-His-Last-Name, but you’ve only got his phone number and you know he used to live on Whatever Street. Most operators will call up the number and say Randy Jones? You say, yep, that’s him. And she’ll say, oh, he’s not on Whatever Street now, the address listed to that number is 334 Bourbon Street. You say, great, thanks and hang up.

The problem is, it doesn’t work every time. Some operators are more cynical than others. In fact, they seem to be getting more and more leery. So when I’m in a pinch and I’ve got a phone number but no real name or address, I go to the quickest, most dependable resource I have.

“Nate, I need an address.” I could hear the usual hubbub of the Grosse Pointe News office in the background. People talking. A copier banging out sheets of stories on the school board, and my overweight friend’s heavy breathing.

“How soon and what’s it worth?” he said.

“Let me put it this way, I’ll wait for it.”

He snickered, the sound of a fisherman who’s just sunk his treble hook into the lips of a trophy. “It’s worth that much?”

I paused. He knew he had me.

“Dinner at the Rattlesnake Club,” he said. “With drinks, appetizers and dessert.”

“Oh, come on, that’ll cost more than I’ll make on this whole case,” I protested.

“Okay,” he said, putting on his best bartering voice. “I’ll limit dessert strictly to sherbet.”

“Nuh-uh. Instead of dinner, how about lunch at the Rattlesnake Club? One drink. No appetizers. No dessert.”

“Dinner,” he said. “One bottle of medium-priced wine, one appetizer, one entrée and no dessert.”

“Lunch,” I said. “One glass of wine, one appetizer we split, one entrée each and no dessert.”

I heard him sigh, then say, “Fine. Shoot.”

I gave him the number. He accessed a mysterious software program he had on his computer then came back on the line.

“1114 Sheffield. In the village of Grosse Pointe.”

“What’s the name?” I said, scratching the address down on the back of a receipt from La Shish restaurant. I think that had been with Nate too. I believed he’d devoured an entire plate of hummus and pita bread before our waitress had returned with our drinks.

“It’s registered to a Melissa Stark,” he said.

The name meant nothing to me.

“Anything interesting going on, John?” he said. Despite all the shenanigans, Nate was still a reporter and he actually did work from time to time.

“I’ll let you know.”

• • •



1114 Sheffield turned out to be a small apartment building two blocks from the village of Grosse Pointe. It was one of the few low-income areas of Grosse Pointe. Most people here were renters. A ‘transitional neighborhood’ is how realtors and city councilmen would most likely describe it. There weren’t many apartment buildings in the village as it tended to conflict with the image Grosse Pointers try to project. Quaint houses are more the order of the day. But a few apartments managed to infiltrate the market and the mysterious Randy had apparently set up shop at one.

I parked the Taurus and went to the main door which had a little grid with four buttons and four plexiglassed spaces on which three names were written. The fourth was blank.

I pressed the first button on the list. There was no answer. I tried the second button. According to the nametag, it belonged to an A. Tanikas. A moment later, a voice rattled through the tin speaker.

“Yeah?” A man’s voice. Older.

“I’m lookin’ for my buddy Randy.”

“So?”

“Yeah, he lives here but there’s no answer and his nametag is gone. Don’t tell me he moved out – he owes me ten bucks.”

“Talk to the manager.”

“Where?”

“See that blue house across the street?”

I turned. Sure enough, there was a little blue bungalow crammed between two apartment buildings.

“Thanks,” I said to the speaker, but Mr. Tanikas had already returned to his present activities. I pictured a retired guy doing a crossword puzzle. But who knew, he could have been a senior engineer at Ford, working on a top-secret engine that would revolutionize the auto industry. You had to be careful with assumptions.

I crossed the street and knocked on the blue bungalow’s front door. Nice spot if you’re a manager of an apartment building. You don’t have to live in the building and listen to the constant squabbles. But you’re close enough to keep an eye on things.

The door opened and I came face to face with the man who possibly held the answers to my questions. He was a small, fine-featured older man wearing khakis and a cardigan. Imagine Ward Cleaver in his early seventies.

I said, “I’m looking for my buddy Randy – he used to live in one of those apartments over there.” I jerked my head toward his apartment building.

“Randy Watkins?” the old man said and I nearly hugged him. I finally had a last name.

“Yep, that’s him,” I said.

“Whaddaya mean he doesn’t live there anymore? He owes me a month’s rent!”

“Well,” I said. “I just assumed, what with his nametag gone.”

“Aw, f*ck,” he said and there went my Ward Cleaver image. “He never wanted his name there. Said he never got any mail anyway. I put one up once, but the stupid bastard just took it down. Waste of ink and paper from my Label Maker.”

Mr. Cleaver narrowed his eyes at me. “Thought you said you were friends.”

“Well, he owes me some money—”

I saw the Friendly Cardigan Man’s eyes slide off my face and look over my shoulder.

I turned around.

A black Nova.

I got a quick look at the driver and he got a quick look at me, and then he slammed the car into gear and roared around the corner.

Mr. Cleaver said something I couldn’t make out and then I was running for the Taurus. I fired it up, slammed it into gear and took off after the Nova.





Twenty-one

He had a head start, but it was a small one. Plus, I’m no expert on cars, but the old Novas weren’t necessarily the fastest cars on the road. And the Taurus, despite its rep as a classically boring middle-of-the-road suburban white guy car, had a V-6 with 230 horsepower. Which I was confident could outgun the old Nova in a test of brute strength.

I gambled that he would head toward Detroit. It made sense. There’s a tangible sense of lawlessness in the city. Not enough cops, really, really bad criminals all over the place. If you’re in a car chase, and if you’re a criminal yourself, the best place to go is Detroit. There’s much less chance you’ll ever be found than if you hightail it out to the suburbs.

So I took a chance and headed straight from the village toward I-94, right up Cadieux. I caught up to my friend in the Nova on the entrance ramp. I got on his bumper and I could make out his head and shoulders. He was a big guy, and judging from the quick glimpse I’d gotten at the apartment building, I was pretty sure I’d never seen him before.

We played cat-and-mouse on the freeway. Randy Watkins had apparently seen every Sylvester Stallone movie ever made because he tried every trick on the book. Using a semi-truck as camouflage. Speeding up, braking down hard. Veering toward an exit ramp, then veering back at the last minute. I tried to get up and get a better look at him, but he always swung back or got behind me. Nevertheless, I did get a few more glimpses, enough to put together my own little ‘artist’s rendering’ in my mind. His hair was light brown, almost blonde. Thick features. A strong jaw. Kind of a pug nose. Big hands on the Nova’s steering wheel.

We dodged each other for a few more minutes until finally, Randy made his big move and jumped the shoulder onto an exit ramp. I’d anticipated his move and was already in the exit ramp. So after his poor man’s Evel Knievel routine, he ended up right in front of me.

Randy led the way into Detroit proper. I soon found myself in not-so-pleasant neighborhoods. Streets with the requisite cars up on blocks, garbage lying around the street. Lots of Detroit citizens standing around on the sidewalks, hands in their oversized shorts. Looking around, waiting for something to happen. Anything to happen.

I started to worry about what Mr. Watkins’s plans might be. It was certainly easier to kill someone in Detroit than it was in Grosse Pointe. And if his behavior was telling me anything, it was telling me that Randy had played a part in the murder of Nevada Hornsby and his deckhand. This was not good news. He may have killed before, which meant he may kill again. And here I was cornering him like a rat in a cage.

As if reading my thoughts, the Nova pinwheeled into a narrow alley, yours truly a second or two behind him. I flew down the narrow passageway. I could see a big truck maneuvering a garbage dumpster into place.

But no Nova.

I started to brake just as I passed a small opening on my left. I quickly realized I’d made a bad tactical mistake as the rear end of the Nova shot out of the narrow alley I’d just passed. The Nova clipped my rear end and the Taurus careened into the brick wall. All I heard was screeching metal and the sound of glass breaking. The car rocked to a stop and I tried to get my bearings. The Taurus had slid around and I was now facing the way I’d come.

And there, in the middle of the road, was Randy Watkins. Lifting a gun and pointing it at the most obvious direction possible.

I dove for the floor just as the sound of shots ripped through the alley. The shots came fast, one right after another. More glass broke. I heard a ricochet that sounded exactly like it does in the movies. I scrambled along the floor, trying to get to the passenger door. If Randy was coming, I didn’t want to get trapped in the car. I found the passenger side door handle and pulled, but nothing happened. I reached up but it was unlocked. I pulled the release and threw my weight against the door. Nothing. It wouldn’t budge. I panicked, hurling myself against it, over and over again, ignoring the searing pain in my shoulder, my mind screaming at the idea of any moment seeing the pug face of Randy at my window shooting me like a fish in a barrel. I kept pounding uselessly at the door, felt it give and then I tumbled out onto the pavement.

At the same time, I heard the most beautiful sound of all. Tires squealed and I nearly wept with joy. I saw the Nova roar out the end of the alley and around the corner.

My heart was racing and I suddenly wanted to be sick. I staggered around the car, my legs weak, my shoulder sagging as if I’d knocked it out of alignment.

Steam poured out from underneath the Taurus’s hood and the engine made a bunch of strange popping sounds that could only be the automotive equivalent of a death rattle.

Lights had come on in the alley and only after a moment or two did I realize they were colored lights. Blue and red. A Detroit cop car nosed its way into the mouth of the alley.

Now I knew why Randy had taken off instead of staying around to finish the job. He’d been able to hear sirens. I hadn’t.

I couldn’t stand anymore. My legs kind of gave out and I sat down on the pavement. Another Detroit cop car slid to a stop behind the first one. The driver’s door of the first squad car opened and a big guy got out. He held his gun up and pointed at me. Boy, that was the second gun pointed at me in a matter of minutes and I sure didn’t like it.

He slowly walked up to me. Not worried, but not entirely casual, either. I imagined he could see the bullet holes in the rear window.

He waited a long moment, almost studying me with a bemused expression. I figured he would tell me to put my hands up, or to get on my stomach on the ground while he frisked me or took a whack at me with a nightstick.

He did neither.

Instead, he spoke to me. And when he did, his voice sounded beyond casual. He sounded bored.

“License and registration,” he said.