When I wake up, the rain still hasn’t turned to snow. Now, though, it’s coming down in sheets, making the lights of the city streets of Detroit blurry through the window. I can see an old cemetery coming up on the right, illuminated by floodlights that threaten to wake the dead. They must be worried about vandals. Tree-lined paths meander through the tombstones that range from Gothic overkill to Victorian creepy. A lower corner of the cemetery has flooded in the rain, and the gravestones are partially submerged. The tops of the stone markers rise up out of the water like the tips of grey fingers.
“Where are we?” I ask Deep after we’ve left the cemetery behind.
“Indian Village,” he says.
I look out the window for a good Tandoori or maybe some place I can get samosas as awesome as Majd’s. I haven’t eaten since I had that strawberry protein shake at Deep’s place. But all I see are residential streets with big old houses on them. Some look like they were built by the same stonemasons who did the cemetery. When we reach a more commercial strip, there are none of the sari shops and sweet paan joints I’m used to seeing in Little India back home. I ask Deep what kind of self-respecting Indian Village wouldn’t have a decent kebab house. He points at a street sign as we pass it. Seminole. And the next one. Iroquois Avenue.
“Wrong kind of Indian,” he says, checking his blind spot before changing lanes. His raglan-sleeve T-shirt exposes his strong forearms, held firmly at ten and two o’clock.
That’s when I realize he’d taken his coat off and draped it over me when I was sleeping. No matter what village you find yourself in, that makes him the right kind of man.
CHAPTER 9
WE PULL INTO A MOTEL ON THE EDGE of Chandler Park in the East Village. A nice enough neighbourhood, but the place is a bit of a dive. Deep and Janet had wanted to stay at a 3-star not far away, but I need a place with direct access to the street from the rooms. If you get caught out in a hotel hallway, you might as well be at the wrong end of a shooting range with a bullseye stuck to your chest.
“You in town for the beatification?” the small Asian lady behind the check-in desk asks. She’s from South Korea she’d told us, before, when Deep showed her his passport and she realized he, too, was born overseas. Although East London is a far cry from Seoul. South Korea is the good Korea, she said, just in case we might be confused and think Kim Jong-un was her uncle or something.
“What beatification?” Janet asks, taking her glasses off to rub at one tired looking eye. She’s held up fairly well on this trip, but the whole thing with Angela missing must be taking its toll on her. I know it has on me.
“For Father Murphy,” the little lady says, beaming. “It will be at the cathedral on Sunday afternoon. Only rich people get seats in the church, but they will have a big TV outside for the crowd to watch. After Father Murphy is venerated, they will make him a saint. First one in the United States!”
“I thought there were already some American saints,” Deep says. “There was that nun.”
“And the Mohawk chick,” I add, remembering Indian Village.
“St. Tekakwitha!” Janet says. “I read about her. She was being forced to marry some warrior she didn’t like, and she ran away and became a Catholic instead.”
“Aren’t they all being forced to marry some warrior they didn’t like in those legends?” I say. “It’s like every story about a Native American princess involves jumping off a waterfall to avoid a shotgun wedding.”
“Except this one jumped into a baptismal font,” Deep says, chuckling.
“This is not the same!” the South Korean lady shouts, interrupting our banter. That’s okay. I’m not big on debating the damsel motif. If you don’t want to marry a guy, then chuck him in the goddamn waterfall yourself.
“Father Murphy is a man,” she continues. “Those other saints. All women. This could be first man saint. From right here in Detroit.”
This is somehow different for the lady behind the counter. I want to point out that even if this Father Murphy makes it into the Catholic canon big time, it’s still three-to-one for the ladies in the saint department here in the U.S. Maybe there’s a reason men don’t get remembered for their miracles, while women sing with the angels. But what do I know? I had my wings clipped a long time ago.
Deep pays for two rooms with his credit card. I feel bad about that. I don’t like handouts, but I don’t have the scratch for this place. After all, it wasn’t my decision to bring these two with me. If I were on my own, I’d have found an abandoned building to sleep in and left it at that. Detroit’s got more of those than it has motels since the downturn.
Our rooms are adjoining. After we’ve ordered a party-sized pizza, Janet goes for a shower. I’ve been listening to the steady stream of water for ages now, flopped out on one of the two twin beds. Five more minutes and she’ll have used up all the hot water in the motel, and if the pizza hasn’t come by then, it’ll be free. I knock on the flimsy door shared between Deep’s room and ours. There’s a bit of shuffling inside before he opens it.
“Sorry,” he says. “I was just sorting out some of my equipment.”
Some equipment appears to be almost the entire set-up from his living room back home. He hasn’t brought all the disemboweled hard drives that he mines for spare parts, but just about everything else sits on the dresser opposite the two double beds. He’s moved the motel-issued widescreen TV onto an armchair in the corner to make room for it all. Two extra laptops are stacked on the floor.
“How are you going to do anything with this?” I ask. “The motel doesn’t even have Wi-Fi.”
“There’s no guest Wi-Fi. But I noticed the lady at reception had a password protected one. She was using it to play online Boggle when we came in.”
“How did you figure out the password,” I ask. “Some fancy hacker algorithm?”
“More than twenty-three million users have the password 123456, Candace. A few more million actually use the word password. People aren’t too hard to figure out.”
“What was her password?” I ask.
“Murphy,” he says. “The almost-saint. I cracked it on the third try.” He leans over to connect a cable behind the monitor that replaced the TV. He’s wearing a pair of faded jeans rather than the chinos he had on when we met, but they still fit in all the right places. A person can see why I agreed to go home with him the night of the Murder Ink presentation. Even after a few drinks, I can recognize a superior cut of beefcake when I see it.
“What’s the plan?” he asks once the cable is reattached. He’s sitting on the bed opposite me now, using a tiny screwdriver on a motherboard.
“I figure we’ll eat the pizza and get some shut-eye,” I say. “I’m fucking beat.” The nap in the car was not enough to make up for my ravine sleep under the stars last night.
“I meant tomorrow,” Deep says. “How do you plan on looking for Angela?”
“Well, I suppose I have to start where she was last seen. Chez fucking Scarpello.”
Deep puts down the screwdriver but leaves the motherboard on his lap.
“What are you going to do, waltz right in there and ask for her?”
“I haven’t figured that part out yet.”
“Wouldn’t that be just a little bloody suicidal?”
“Not if you do it right,” I say. “You’ve heard that thing about keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer?”
“Sure, but wasn’t that phrase coined by a bloke who eventually got his head blown off by an enemy?”
“Very funny,” I say. “But if I start digging around elsewhere, it’ll get back to them. And that wouldn’t be considered going through the proper channels. The Mob is all about respect.”
“The Mob is all about putting people into concrete galoshes and dumping them in the river,” Deep says.
“You watched all the Godfather movies, didn’t you?” I say.
Deep nods and puts the motherboard down on the bed. “Even the third one.”
“I
just have to find an in,” I say, thinking how that third Corleone flick really was a disappointment. “A way to introduce myself.”
“How are you going to manage that?”
“Like I said, I’m still thinking about it.”
Deep returns to fixing the motherboard. “What about the Catholic thing?” he asks after a little while.
“The Catholic thing?”
“You heard the lady at the front desk telling us about the beatification. Catholics will be turning out in droves for that. Alex’s mother, Anya Scarpello, is known for being very devout. She attends almost every Mass they have at St. Clare’s Catholic Church.”
“You really are serious about your research, aren’t you?”
“I am when daft people like Murder Ink are footing the bill.”
“Still, I can’t believe you know the church my great-aunt goes to.”
“Everybody knows that church, Candace. It’s been serving Sicilians in Detroit for over a hundred years.”
“Anya’s Russian.”
“She’s still a Scarpello. And probably the most innocuous one for you to try and chat up for information about Angela.” Deep puts the motherboard down again and stands up from the bed. He types at the keyboard in front of the monitor, moves the mouse around. The website for St. Clare’s Roman Catholic Church flashes up on the screen.
“It says here there’s a Mass at seven thirty a.m. tomorrow,” Deep says.
“Shit, is God even awake at that time?” I go over to the mini bar and grab a few mini bottles to replenish my flask. This fleabag may not have toilets with lids on them, but it has enough booze in tiny plastic bottles to stock The Goon at happy hour.
“It would be a smart way to get access to Anya Scarpello and make it look casual,” Deep says. “Maybe she can tell you where Angela is, and you’ll never even have to deal with the rest of the Scarpellos.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I say, thinking it will probably not be that easy. But Deep is right. The mother of the current Don would probably be the least lethal member of the family I could connect with initially. The mini bottle of Jack Daniel’s I’m trying to pour into my flask starts to spill down the sides. I could really use a funnel. I wonder if Deep has one in his bag of tricks.
“We are looking for Angela here, aren’t we, Candace? Not just trying to find her son so you can somehow gain from it?” So, he’s figured out that angle the same as me.
“Do those two things have to be mutually fucking exclusive?”
“They might be for that thirteen-year-old girl in the other room. She looks up to you, Candace, you do realize that?”
“If you’re telling me to be a good example, I think that bird has flown,” I say, licking the spilled Jack Daniel’s off my fingers.
“It’s never too late, Candace. To do things a new way.”
“You get that from a fortune cookie or something?”
“Pinterest.”
“Hmm,” I say. But I’ve had enough of this discussion. I get up and make my way toward the adjoining door with my refilled flask.
“Well, if you’re finished spouting social media wisdom, why don’t you set your alarm to wake me at six thirty so I can go check out this Mass or whatever.”
Deep smiles. “You like my idea.”
“It’s half decent.”
“I think I should go with you.”
“No way, Deep.”
“Do you know anything about how to conduct yourself at a Catholic Mass, Candace?”
I stop and think. There’s only one time I was inside a church, and that was to scout out a preacher who thought heroin was one of the sacraments.
“I studied world religions as an elective at university. Just let me come and show you the ropes. So you don’t make a balls of it in front of Anya.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“I’m concerned about you, Candace. I know the Scarpellos are your family, but …” Deep walks over to me, so close I can smell his aftershave. Paco Rabanne, if I’m not mistaken. He must have just shaved. I tilt my head and one long spiral of hair falls across my face. Deep reaches out to brush it out of the way, but I step away quickly before he can.
“Fine, you can come to the church, to help me with this Catholic stuff. But after that, I’m the lone wolf, you understand?” I look out the window, see the pizza delivery guy pull up in the rain. I turn to Deep. “Besides, I need you to look into this birth registry thing. See if you can find out anything about my twin brother.”
“That information might have gotten your mother killed,” Deep says. “What makes you think you won’t end up the same?”
“Jesus, Deep, I’m not exactly a newbie when it comes to handling myself.” This concern for my well-being is getting old. Worrying about me in a dangerous situation is like worrying a saltwater crocodile is going to cut itself on its own teeth. “The Scarpellos know there’s no love lost between Angela and me. That we haven’t had contact in years. As far as they’re concerned, I don’t know anything about her having a son. I can play a convincing dumb when I have to.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
I open the outer door to the pizza man before the skinny guy shivering in the rain has a chance to knock.
“Nineteen dollars and fifty-three cents,” he says.
“It’s been over thirty minutes,” I say. I grab the pizza and brown bag of canned soda out of his hands. “It’s free.”
After I slam the door, the delivery guy knocks a few more times. Deep tries to pay, but I won’t let him. “Thirty minutes or free,” I tell him, blocking the door. “I may not know much about religion but that’s like one of the ten commandments of take-out delivery.”
Deep shakes his head and goes to the bathroom to wash his hands before dinner.
I fetch some ice from the motel lobby and check my phone. Charlotte hasn’t returned my call. She must be out on the water with her fisherman husband. She tells me they can’t get a signal out in the bay. I don’t want to leave another message or she’ll completely panic. I fill the plastic bucket under the distrustful eyes of the lady at reception. I don’t think she’s forgiven me for suggesting that American women were winning in the saint department. After dodging cold rain as I run through the parking lot, I join Deep and Janet back in the motel room. Deep has been busy filling my sister in on our plans for the next day.
“I want to come, too,” Janet says, grabbing another piece of greasy pizza from the box. She peels a couple of slices of ham off the lid, where they were stuck, and adds them on top before taking a bite. “She’s Mom’s aunt. I want to meet her.”
“This isn’t a family picnic, Janet,” I say, grabbing a piece of pizza for myself from the half without pineapple. Janet had insisted on this tropical fruit topping that really has no damn business being on a pizza. She says everyone in Canada eats it this way. They call it a Hawaiian, which I figure must be the farthest thing from Canada a person could possibly think of.
“Deep’s going, so I’m going, too,” she says, taking a fierce bite out of her slice. “You can’t stop me.” I realize that I probably can’t, but I can lay some ground rules.
“Fine,” I say. “But you’ve got to let me handle things.” I give a warning look to both her and Deep. “If I make contact with Anya Scarpello, the two of you have to back off.”
“Why?” Janet asks. “She’s my family, too.”
“This isn’t up for fucking debate, Janet. Either keep to the background, or I’ll handcuff you to the motel mini bar.” This wouldn’t be a bad idea, I think, but unfortunately I didn’t bring handcuffs.
“Fine,” she says, furiously detonating her can of Coke. The brown fizz spews down the sides, and she has to run to the bathroom to keep it from going all over the already stained rug.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Deep says, sipping on his ginger ale.
“I do,” I say. “Just make sure you keep the kid out of my way.”
“I’ll do my best,�
� he says. “But she tends to have a mind of her own.” He closes the box of pizza, trying to keep it warm. “She reminds me of someone that way.”
After the pizza and a few rerun episodes of predictable sitcoms on TV, we all hit the sack in anticipation of the early wakeup call for Mass. Janet and I lie under the covers of our respective twin beds with the lights off. A large billboard advertising the Detroit Pistons blazes from between the cheap venetian blinds. It gives the room a murky glow that you can pretend is moonlight if you ignore the fact that it’s electric blue. Like a kid from The Waltons, Janet calls out to me from the other bed.
“Candace, are you awake?”
“You realize that’s a dumb question, right? If I wasn’t awake, I really wouldn’t be able to tell you.”
She’s quiet for a while after that, but I can hear her restlessly shifting under the stiff sheets.
“You are going to find Mom, right, Candace?”
“I’ll do what I can,” I say.
“I mean, it’s not just about finding out about our brother, right? You’re not just here to try and, you know, take advantage of that?”
“No,” I say, although I’d like to point out to her that this is probably what Angela came to Detroit to do in the first place.
“Because I really appreciate you saving me from Social Services and everything. And I know she wasn’t that great to you, our mother.” Her voice waivers a little, becomes all of the thirteen-year-old girl that she is. “But I really need my mom.”
“I know,” I say, thinking about what Linda had said, about how sometimes having someone who isn’t perfect is better than having nobody at all. I am about as not-perfect as they come. But right now, I’m all Janet’s got when it comes to finding Angela. Deep is right. She is looking to me for guidance or salvation or I don’t know what else. I roll over in the bed and try not to think about it. The weight of a thirteen-year-old’s trust is not something I’m used to carrying.
Because I am looking to take advantage of what a brother might net me in the Scarpello fold, as much as I hope to find Angela for my little sister in the process. I am what I am. A woman used to finding the angles, out for my own gain. It’s hard to change those kinds of well-worn stripes. If Deep says I need to set an example for Janet, well then maybe that’s it. That everyone’s got their own agenda. My little sister might as well learn that now. I sure as hell learned it from a young age.
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