August Snow

by Stephen Mack Jones

  This was the conundrum Tomás wrestled with now.

  “What you say stays between us, Tomás,” I told him in Spanish.

  “What’s your interest in all this, Octavio?” Tomás prepped his second tequila shot. “I mean, why do you care?”

  I told him why I cared.

  Tomás laughed. “Even a kindness from the devil must be repaid.” He shrugged. “So you think somebody killed her? Jesus, Octavio, let the Anglos get her justice if there’s any owed. She was one of theirs.”

  “I want to,” I said. “But I can’t.”

  “Your father’s voice again?” he said. He knew the answer. We tossed back our shots.

  Martiza brought out beef chorizo tacos, perfectly seasoned refried beans and saffron rice with peas, carrots and jalapeños. She took the bottle of tequila from us and replaced it with freshly made limeade. There were slices of apples, oranges and fresh raspberries floating brightly in the pitcher.

  Between the food and sips of limeade, Tomás told me that two days after Eleanor Paget had been found dead in her study, all of the dayworkers were given notice of their dismissal. This included house staff as well as all security. They were given two weeks’ severance—thirteen hundred for Tomás, considerably less for others—and a letter thanking them for their service, signed by a Michael Rothman, Eleanor Paget’s personal attorney.

  Tomás poured himself another tall glass of limeade, then ate two tacos in quick succession. I followed his lead.

  The young lions that had been moved from the booth had finished their lunch. They praised Martiza and the food. A blonde girl with a silver nose stud, jute bracelets and tie-dyed blouse tried out her Spanish on Martiza. The girl briefly regaled Martiza with stories of her travels in Mexico and how wonderful the Mexican people and culture were.

  Martiza smiled amiably and nodded. At the end of the girl’s story, Martiza said in English, “Mexico is a shithole. It’s where dreams go to die. Next time you come here, tell me nice things about your travels in America. This is where hope flourishes.”

  The young girl flushed red, grinned and said si, she would do exactly that.

  Satisfied that neither Tomás nor I were drunk, Martiza brought the tequila back out. She took out a black Sharpie pen and made a hash mark on the bottle.

  “Drink only to here,” she said. “Then you go home, got it?”

  “Si, señora.”

  After a shot each, I made the big leap and asked Tomás who he thought might have wanted to kill Eleanor Paget.

  “Detroit,” he said without so much as a sarcastic smile.

  “Can you narrow that down a bit?” I said.

  “East Detroit?”

  I asked Tomás who besides him had all-access gate passes to the house. There was Rose Mayfield, the black woman I’d spoken with at the memorial service. Aside from having once been Paget’s personal secretary, Mayfield was the closest thing Paget had had to a girlfriend over the last thirty years. There was Aaron Spiegelman, Titan’s chief financial officer, who had known Paget for nearly as long.

  “He’ll talk tough to guys like you and me. The help,” Tomás said, “But all I ever heard out of his mouth was, ‘Yes, Eleanor,’ and, ‘I’ll get right on it, Ellie.’ A little birdie perched on her finger whistling at her command. Occasionally he’d bring her a bottle of champagne which they’d never have together.”

  There was her personal attorney, who lived in Chicago and only came in once every couple months. There were a few others—people from the Detroit Institute of Arts and Children’s Hospital. But they were occasional guests who still had to clear a meeting with her in advance.

  And there was Eleanor Paget’s daughter, Vivian.

  “Yeah, she had a pass, but she almost never visited,” Tomás said. “Not even Christmas. Can’t say as I blame her.”

  I finally asked him if there had been any official visits, specifically from the FBI or bank regulators.

  “The FBI?” Tomás was genuinely surprised. “Really?”

  “Just spitballin’ here, Tomás.”

  Tomás grinned. “Bullshit. What’s going on, Octavio?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, licking the back of my thumb and dousing it with salt.

  “No,” Tomás said. “No visits from the FBI or bank regulators.”

  He fell silent, casting his eyes down at the table and playing with his empty shot glass.

  “If she was murdered,” I asked tentatively, “who would you lay odds on?”

  “If I was you, mister-not-a-cop-anymore, I’d ask me if I killed her,” Tomás said. “And the answer would be no fuckin’ way. Did I want to kill her—especially after the incident? Hell yes. She’d say things like ‘What would I do without you, Thomas?’ and ‘You’re invaluable, Thomas’—then she would count the fucking silverware or Febreze the furniture the kitchen staff sat on to eat their lunch. That I sat on. Puta.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s say you’re down on the suspects list. Who’s at the top?”

  Tomás smiled. But it wasn’t a smile of amusement. It was the smile of barely masked contempt. He looked at me for a long time then said, “Two months ago, I was working late. Cleaning up after a little dinner affair she’d had for some mucky-mucks at her bank. Spiegelman was there. So was the new guy, Atchison. Couple others I hadn’t seen at the house before. Raised voices. Cussing toward the end. Mostly Paget going nuclear. Don’t know what it was about. Don’t care. ’Bout an hour after everybody left, I’m in the kitchen. Atchison walks in bare-assed naked. Grabs a bottle of champagne from the fridge. Looks at me. Laughs and says, ‘Bitch fucks like a Vegas pro.’ Takes the champagne and heads back upstairs.” Tomás paused, keeping me in the cross hairs of his eyes. “He had an all-access pass in more ways than one, Octavio. I like him for poppin’ a cap in her. But then you have to ask yourself, why would he kill the goose that laid him a golden egg?”

  “Bigger goose,” I said. “Bigger golden egg.”

  Fourteen

  After thirty-two years running her empire, Eleanor Paget had decided to step down. In the past five years, the bank had stagnated under her leadership and the 2008 collapse of the world economy demanded new leadership and fresh ideas. Joseph Dylan “Kip” Atchison was crowned with the task of reinvigorating the bank and future proofing the Paget family legacy.

  Atchison was thirty-four—the same age as me. And, not unlike myself, he was tall and good-looking, though his looks were more along the lines of New England private school head-of-the-lacrosse-team while mine were more along the lines of mestizo conquistador with a healthy dash of Mississippi Delta blues. According to Google and LinkedIn, Atchison had graduated with honors from Princeton University with a degree in finance. He went on to get his MBA from Harvard. After a short stint at the now defunct Lehman Brothers in New York, Atchison came to Detroit as the obscenely paid CEO of Titan.

  This was another difference between the pedigreed Atchison and me: I got a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Wayne State University, which empowered me to pursue lucrative careers in food service, retail or police work.

  Atchison was married to Elise deGeorgette Dawe of Cumberland, Maine. Dawe came from pharmaceutical money and met her husband while a student at Princeton, where she got a heretofore unused degree in biochemistry. They had three young children and lived in Grosse Pointe Farms.

  After I’d spent thirty minutes researching Kip Atchison on Elena’s laptop, their five-year old granddaughter, Juanita—or June, as she was known—forced her head between me and Elena’s laptop screen. It was June’s parents’ Mommy-and-Daddy night out. “Are you done yet?” she said. I had promised June when I arrived that I’d play Candyland with her. “That looks boring.”

  Tomás had demanded I stay at his Mexicantown house for the evening since they were closer and we’d drunk our fill of tequila.

  “It is, honey.” I said. “Boring and stupid.”

  June turned to me, scowled and wagged a finger. “We never say the word
‘stupid.’ You ready?”

  “Why, yes I am, honey,” I said, closing the lid of Elena’s laptop. “You got the game?”

  June grinned and held the game over her head for me to see.

  “You gonna let me win?” I said.

  June laughed. “No!”

  Elena made Tomás and me the blackest of Mexican coffees and served cinnamon and sugar churros. She may have been a bit put off by our drinking, but she was more than glad to know Tomás was home safe.

  I struggled against sleep—or passing out—but managed to play three mind-numbing games of Candyland. Then June, Elena and I watched a Blu-Ray collection of SpongeBob SquarePants episodes, made all the more hilarious by virtue of the blue agave state I was in. Reeling from overindulgence and weighed down by the uncertainty of his family’s future, Tomás had collapsed in bed thirty minutes earlier.

  After the second SpongeBob episode, little June was a limp ragdoll huddled in her grandma’s arms. I carried June upstairs and Elena tucked her in bed.

  “You can sleep in Manolita’s old room, Octavio,” Elena said to me. She collected a fresh towel and washcloth from the hallway linen closet and handed them to me.

  I thanked Elena for her hospitality and apologized for the condition Tomás and I were in.

  She shrugged. “Men are often just little boys in bigger clothes.” She paused, looked around the upstairs. “This color. It’s so dark. Don’t you think, Octavio?”

  I had no opinion either way on the hallway color, but I said, “It could be brightened. Maybe Tomás and I can paint it.”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding thoughtfully. “New paint.”

  As Elena made up the bed for me in her daughter’s old room, we talked. She was curious where I had disappeared to for a year. She told me there were rumors that I’d bought a house outside of Cancun and drunk myself to death, which had made her almost unbearably sad. Another rumor had me living like the long ago legend of New York police detective Frank Serpico in a secluded cabin somewhere in the Swiss Alps. As to India, somehow a rumor began (I’m betting Skittles) that I’d converted to Hinduism and lived on a barge aimlessly floating the Brahmaputra River. My favorite rumor was that I’d come out of the closet and was selling real estate in San Francisco.

  I told her there were bits of truth to all the rumors save for my sexuality: I’d nearly drunk myself to death in Paris, but that was considered an acceptable—even laudable—way to go, if it involved good wine. I backpacked in Switzerland, but found the Swiss uninteresting and the chocolate better in Belgium. I told her I didn’t quite know what to make of India aside from its astounding poverty, unbelievable wealth, pervasive caste system and an odd-tasting liquor called feni. And although I’m not gay, I had considered moving to California, but the thought of being so far away from my parents’ graves was, at least for the time being, unacceptable.

  I gave her a few highlights from Norway, hoping to conceal anything about the woman I’d met. Unfortunately, I was overwhelmed by Elena’s empathic powers.

  “You met someone there, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you like her?” Elena said.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Tatina.”

  “Oh, that’s beautiful!” Elena said.

  “Tatina Stadtmueller.”

  “Okay, the last name, not so beautiful. Still …” She was silent for a moment before saying, “Why did you leave her to come back here?”

  “I … didn’t want to leave my parents alone.”

  Elena placed her hands on mine, smiled and said, “They’re gone, Octavio. And what happened to Maureen in the store—she’d want you to move on. I know you, Octavio. Known you since you were small. I know little scares you. Except maybe love and how it can be lost. That’s why you’re back, si? Not to be here, but to be away from the one thing that scares you.”

  I wanted to say something.

  Anything.

  But there was little for me to say except for “Yes.”

  “Go back to this Tatina, Octavio.” Elena sighed. Gave my hand a gentle pat. “It’s a fool’s sin not to embrace love.”

  I nodded that I would.

  Someday.

  Elena asked me about my house and the neighborhood. She hadn’t been down Markham Street in years, finding its deterioration a sadness she couldn’t bear. She remembered the names of old neighbors, the sounds of their voices, the color of their eyes, the state of their gardens. She remembered my parents, what a wonderful painter my mother was. She spoke of helping my mother in our kitchen preparing food for parties, celebrations and holidays.

  “Tomás says you’re bringing the old neighborhood back,” she said.

  “Maybe a little. Couple houses so far. Not much.”

  Finally she got out what she’d wanted to tell me. “I’m worried about Tomás.”

  I asked her not to worry. I said everything would be all right. I would make sure of it.

  What else was I supposed to do with twelve million dollars?

  At 2:30 in the morning I awoke with a start, instantly reaching for my gun.

  It was quiet save for my breathing, but a bad feeling crawled over my chest.

  I pulled the edge of a curtain aside and looked out at the street. A black Mercedes was parked near Tomás’s house.

  I got dressed and checked the clip of my gun. No sooner had I slapped it back into the grip than the door to my room opened. I brought my weapon up.

  It was Tomás, leveling a sawed-off Remington .30-guage rifle at me.

  “One’s out back,” he whispered. “I have my granddaughter here, Octavio.”

  “Not gonna happen,” I said.

  We made our way downstairs. I signaled for Tomás to make his stand by the front door. I would take the back. He nodded and we moved in our opposite directions. Tomás may have gone to bed drunk, but a former accomplished thief’s sixth sense, fueled by adrenaline, sobered him up quickly.

  I got to the back door and glanced out of the window over the kitchen sink: a thickly built man in black slacks and black leather jacket was about thirty feet from making his crouched way to the house.

  Like a number of houses in this part of town, Tomás and Elena had a small vegetable garden—lettuce, kale, carrots, peppers, tomatoes. And like other houses around here, the garden had a number of homemade security measures, mostly meant for rabbits, feral dogs and the occasional inner-city coywolf: Empty cans strung together and suspended slightly above ground. Boards painted brown with jagged bottle glass glued to them. Maybe the occasional Home Depot motion sensor light.

  It was late in the growing season. Most of the vegetables had been harvested and the earth turned over. But the security measures remained.

  The intruder made his way clumsily through the rows of turned-over dirt. He caught a foot in one of the trip wires setting a line of empty cans clanking. Under his breath he cursed.

  In his right hand was a nickel-plated handgun.

  I carefully unlatched the back door and waited. After a few adrenaline-soaked seconds, the door handle slowly turned. I let it turn and watched the door creak open.

  Crouching low by the refrigerator, I let the man get the door all the way open.

  When he was two steps in, I made my move.

  I brought the butt of my gun down on his face. The bridge of his nose crunched. Without stopping, I brought my knee up once into his balls then again into his head. He grunted and started to go down. Before he dropped I grabbed his gun hand and twisted the gun from it. He was shaken, but not out. I put him in a chokehold and, after a few seconds of him slapping at my forearm and face, felt his body go limp. Quickly grabbing his thumbs in my fists, I jerked them hard and fast back toward his wrists, listening to the bone pop away from the joint. Hard to handle a gun with dislocated thumbs.

  I closed and locked the back door and made my way to the front of the house. Tomás was by the bank of living room windows. He looked at me and I nod
ded.

  Quietly he unlocked the front door and, after a three-count, we went through with our guns leveled at the man standing and smoking by the black Mercedes.

  The man—lanky with blond-streaked hair and a droopy, dark mustache—saw us, ditched his cigarette, jumped in the car and burned rubber into the cold, black night.

  “Get a good look at him?” I said to Tomás. Tomás nodded.

  “Abuelito?”

  The voice of a little girl behind us. June was standing in her pajamas on the front porch holding a stuffed bunny.

  “Can I have a drink of water?” she said.

  “Sure, baby girl,” Tomás said, holding his rifle behind him, out of her view. “In a minute. Go back inside. I’ll bring you some water real soon.”

  She yawned, turned and toddled back inside the house.

  I tied the unconscious man’s hands behind his back with one of Tomás’s leather belts, wrapped a second one twice around the goon’s mouth and neck and a length of clothesline around his ankles. I dragged him outside to the garden. Once outside I asked Tomás to get me a glass of tequila. He did.

  I tossed the tequila in the unconscious man’s face. Might have seemed a waste of good tequila, but the alcohol seared into his split nose and eyes and brought him jerking and grunting to life. I pressed my thumb on his Adam’s apple and brought a forefinger to my lips. When he stopped struggling, I released pressure on his Adam’s apple and he gulped in air as best as he could.

  I looked at Tomás and whispered, “You know him?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry,” I said to Tomás.

  “So am I,” Tomás said.

  Tomás and I hauled the intruder to my rental car and threw him in the trunk. Then we shook hands and I drove off.

  Fifteen

  While the core of Detroit—even through the city’s bankruptcy—may have been experiencing a much-needed and dramatic upswing in multimillion dollar businesses, new restaurants, Portland-style mass transit and dynamic entertainment offerings, including Comerica Park, Ford Field and the Fox Theater, there were still hunched and decaying corpses along the riverfront that had been waiting decades for final burial. Abandoned buildings, half demolished buildings, factories where even the chain link fences had oxidized into oblivion. Some buildings had collapsed under their own water-soaked weight into mountains of stone and steel rubble. Others were soon to be mercifully plowed under as Detroit struggled to reinvent itself.