Grind City

by Gary Hardwick

  Marshall was trippin’ after I told him about Pam that summer. I found out that with all the girlfriends he had that he was still a virgin. We had both been lying about it but he was happy for me.

  I told him how good it was and how I was learning stuff. He lost his own virginity later that year and since then, we have both been as thick as thieves in that department.

  We went to high school where Marshall played basketball and I played baseball. I was a first baseman and had a batting average of .405, pretty good but I was slow and not good enough to get scouted by the Tigers.

  I kicked around after school doing odd jobs and avoiding the police academy. Then I joined the Marines. I thought my father would lose it but he was jumping for joy.

  What shocked me was when Marshall quit college and joined me. This damned near killed his mother. By then, his dad was dead (a crime that was solved by my father) his sister was on drugs and his brother, Moses was deep into crime. I think that’s why he did it, to get away from all that shit.

  We did our stint and came home. Marshall went back to college and I went into the Police Academy.

  I loved being a cop but I had a bad temper and a penchant for violence. I still hold a record for OIS (Officer Involved Shootings) and I am second only to a man named Nickerson for men put down. I used to be proud of that but these days, I prefer to solve problems with my brain.

  I love my city as only a kid with my background can. We have some bad history but we’re far from over. You may have heard that Detroit went belly up, filed the biggest bankruptcy in the history of life. Now the city was on the mend, but it’s also on the grind.

  Grinding means working every angle, fair and unfair legal and illegal to get ahead. The businessmen are grinding, getting tax breaks and making money off folks. The criminals are always on the grind and they are staking out new scams and deals but enforced the same old way, by violence.

  We even got us a new mayor, a white one. Shit shocked the hell out of me but it makes sense. The last one dragged the collective will of the people into a gutter. I helped to send his ass away, so I shed not one tear for him. I guess folks got tired of black mayors and wanted to give a white guy a try and yes, he’s grinding, too.

  On the street, some still call me Danny Two Gun because I used both weapons in a firefight. The brothers respect a man that kicks ass and so, I have many street contacts who are loyal to me even though cops are getting a bad rep lately.

  A lot of cops like the power but don’t understand that it flows both ways. You can’t be pissed when someone doesn’t respect you and you can’t be afraid to take an ass whipping if it comes to that.

  Don’t really know what else to tell you. My favorite color is green. I like to drink beer and whiskey. I love soul food but I can’t cook worth a shit but I think I can. My favorite Faygo flavor is orange, I love White Castles but they don’t love me and I bleed Tiger orange and blue.

  There is one last thing to know about me. Having lived in the ‘hood for so long under very tense circumstances, I learned to be very observant. You will find this to be a common trait of many innercity types. Knowing when to run and when to avoid danger can be the difference between living and dying.

  So, I notice things, things that sometimes black folks don’t see because they’re black and white folks don’t see because they’re white.

  I am both and neither.

  I see everything.

  2

  GRIEF TEAM

  The Shaw house on Outer Drive was surrounded by the local and national media. All the major networks were represented and their reporters chattered in different areas, trying to act as though they were the only media present.

  Freelance paparazzi roamed like little snakes, trying to get shots of the family. One man had come into the backyard and gotten a rock thrown at him.

  I had called some cop friends to back them off, but they could only be made to stay so far away. Also, we all had to turn off all of our phones as they would not stop ringing or vibrating from friends calling.

  These kinds of police involved murders were national news lately and now the eyes of the world were on Vinny and her family. Another unarmed black person killed at the hands of police raised all of the ugliness of our history and gave people a reason to tap the anger we all held behind our logic and political correctness.

  I heard that my name had come up on MSNBC. They talked about how odd it was to have a cop in the black family who was married to a white cop who was known to be violent.

  Some asshole named Chris Hayes even made a joke about how he wouldn’t want to be at our house on Thanksgiving.

  Me and Vinny are not married and they conveniently left out all the times I have saved people’s asses and how I once helped catch the killer of a Supreme Court Justice. Also, I did not like the picture of me they used. They always try to make cops look mean and crazy.

  The Notorious RMC seemed oblivious to all of the grief around him. People were crying, wailing and usually, a baby picks up on that and starts crying too. But not my son. He was not smiling and did not seem particularly happy, but he was not given to grief as we all mourned the passing of Ivory Shaw. Boy is definitely a Cavanaugh.

  Vinny held the baby and tried not to cry as her father gave the clan the bad news about Ivory.

  Vinny was from a family of ten kids. They were in order, Renitta, the oldest, Juan, (pronounced jew-wan) Ivory and Ivanna, the twins, DeWayne, Easter, Teyron, Devinna and Marcus Jr.

  Even Vinny has trouble keeping them all apart in her head sometimes. Now, in the grief-stricken house of her father, I couldn’t tell who was who as they were all crying or in some stage of breakdown or anger. Black folk, like the Irish, do not believe in holding in grief. All of it is let out until there is nothing left but spirit.

  Vinny’s mother kept passing out and so she was in another room and sedated. The men all raged with thoughts of revenge and the women all huddled together just as angry, but trying to keep calm heads.

  For a family their size, it was actually pretty good that only one person had died from violence. This was a testament to good parenting and faith. In most black families this big, at least two of the men would have been dead by now or in prison. In truth, the Shaw family had been quite lucky.

  But now was not the time to bring up some shit like that. White people have a bad habit of saying well-intentioned things like this that come off as ignorant or arrogant. And so I did what I usually did at family gatherings, I shut the fuck up and did what everyone else was doing, in this case, I was grieving.

  I wasn’t worried about Vinny’s family doing violence, except in the case of Juan Shaw. He seemed harmless but I knew better. Juan was just very smart and had hidden all of his extracurricular activities over the years. He’d sold drugs and been involved with a low level gang. He was clever and had gotten out in time.

  He worked for GM in quality control and had a couple of kids by a couple of ladies. Juan was a hard, tough bastard who loved the twins and had practically raised them with Renitta.

  “Let me holla ‘atcha for a second,” I’d said to Juan earlier. I’d made it a point to do this as soon as I came in not wanting to waste any time.

  Juan was angry, still breathing a little hard and his eyes were narrowed slits. You could not fake that look. That’s how a man looked when wanted to do you harm.

  “You know me, Juan,” I’d said. “You know I’m an honest man, a good cop.”

  “We know that, Danny,” said Juan. “We don’t hold nothin’ against you on this. But we know there’s some dirty damned dogs in there with you. Look at what they’re doing to us.”

  “Yeah, we got some rot inside these days. Look, I know you wanna kill this man, whoever he is,” I said. “Believe me, if he was here now, I’d just turn my back, right after I handed you my gun.”

  Juan laughed darkly. “Yeah and it wouldn’t take me long neither.”

  “Me and Vinny are the cops but everybody’s gonna be lookin
g at you and your daddy, you know. I ain’t asking you to calm down or none of that shit. Anger is good right now. Just be smooth about it, measured. We want this dude caught. After that, I don’t care what happens to him.”

  “I feel you on that,” said Juan. “I usually look to daddy but he’s gettin’ old and I know this has hit him hard. He feels like he’s done good, none of us dying or going to jail all these years.”

  “He has,” I said, glad he brought it up.

  “I know I need to step up,” said Juan. “Last thing we need is for this lowlife to get off because of something one of us did.”

  “It’s on you this time.” I said. “If you need me, just ask anything, anytime. You know me and Vinny will get it for you.”

  We hugged and I could feel some of his rage going away as he realized that he had to be a voice of reason. Honestly, I didn’t know if it had worked. I didn’t want him to go back to his old ways and maybe catch a bullet.

  Marcus Jr. was young and could be a bit of a hothead too, but the family had very high hopes for him. He was a big, good-looking kid who was a star athlete and so no one was going to let him do anything stupid. I let that one slide.

  Ivory Shaw never liked me much. I never knew why. I guess it was the white thing.

  When Vinny and I had a big fight a year ago, Ivory was right in the middle of it, volunteering to take Vinny in as she walked out on me. I’d never forgotten the look on Ivory’s face back then. She might as well had written fuck you on her forehead.

  Ivory kept her distance from me even as her twin and I became close. Ivanna had held my hand so tight, that I thought she would hurt me.

  It was odd for everyone seeing Ivanna who looked so much like her dead sister. And for Ivanna, she’d lost part of herself and it was never coming back.

  I was very sad about it all. I’d seen my share of death but no girl that young and beautiful deserved to die and by the hand of a cop. But I knew Ivory had a mouth on her and did not walk away from confrontations.

  I was already planning to talk to Mr. El and her friends to see what they knew. I knew the normal path would be to look at the police but that would get me nothing until I could pull some leverage from her life.

  See, I was way ahead of the people looking into this murder. I knew the victim and I knew she was probably into some unsavory, if not illegal shit and that would lead me right back to the cop that did this.

  Her car had not been found and we were looking for it. I had a feeling that we’d never find it. A cop knows how to get rid of evidence and so that car was probably long gone.

  The police were not trying to say Ivory had killed herself. That would have been ridiculous as no one could strangle themselves. But there was no record of Ivory having been brought in or processed.

  Internal Affairs was on the case as well as the U.S. Attorney and the FBI. The Black Lives Matter people were already in town and on the news. Vinny’s family had told them that they would not be making any statements with them.

  This was Marcus Shaw Sr.’s doing. He was an old school cat and he did not like grandstanding in the face of tragedy. He was more concerned with a proper funeral, his church and Ivory’s immortal soul.

  Renitta, Vinny’s oldest sister and the one who disliked me the most, made it a point to pull us both aside and share her thoughts and grief. I didn’t care for her much but I could see she was really hurting.

  Ivory was one of Renitta’s favorites and she had shepherded Ivory through a lot of trouble and was the one who had introduced her to Mr. El. For Renitta, who had no kids of her own and one adopted cousin, this was like losing a daughter.

  “You gotta find out who did this,” said Renitta wiping away the tears. “He can’t get away with this. Fucking dirty ass cops.”

  “We'll do what we can,” said Vinny, “but when it's cops, it's handled by IAD and the Feds.”

  “Then we should get a P.I., a good one," said Renitta. "I don't trust cops of any kind now.”

  Vinny looked at me with that wife look when she does not want you to say something to make a bad situation worse. Our hands were tied but Renitta and probably the rest of the family, didn't want to hear that. They had two cops in the family and they wanted results.

  “We will find out who did it,” I said. “We’ll bring them in to stand trial.”

  Renitta finally stopped crying. Vinny was giving me that look again but I was cool.

  “Good,” said Renitta. “Daddy!” she called to Marcus Sr. who came over. She told him what I had just said and the old man looked at me with wide eyes.

  “You think you can do that?” he asked his voice full of hope. “I don’t want nobody to get hurt. We’ve suffered enough.”

  “He’s just trying to be nice,” said Vinny. “We will keep the family abreast of everything we know.”

  “I meant it, Vinny,” I said. “You know how the fellas are. They’re going to close ranks, even though Ivory is related to a cop. You and me will be pushed out but we both have friends who can help us.”

  “When can we have her body?” asked Marcus Sr. “We need to get her buried.”

  “I don’t know sir,” I said. “Forensics has her and I know Fiona is doing the duty. I need to get to her ASAP to find out what she knows. And as soon as I do, you will know. But the family has to control information. If people find out me and Vinny are working this, we’re all finished.”

  “Don't worry," said Marcus Sr. “We got it.”

  He took Renitta by the shoulder and started talking to her as he led her away. Vinny was still staring at me and I knew we’d have words but then Marshall and his wife hit the door.

  Chemin Jackson was red-eyed and Marshall didn’t look much better as they entered and began hugging everyone.

  Chemin was just the kind of woman you’d expect to be married to a man who was going to be a legend one day. She was gorgeous, smart and as tough as they came.

  After saying hello to everyone, Marshall and Chemin made a beeline to me and Vinny.

  “The FBI is watching this but they haven’t decided how deep they want to get into it,” said Marshall not bothering with niceties.

  “Usually, they just want total credit,” I said.

  “Can I hold the baby?” asked Chemin, still sniffling a little. Vinny smiled and handed him over.

  “We didn’t want to bring the kids,” said Marshall.

  “Tell them about the mayor,” said Chemin.

  “He’s got a special taskforce working on the cops,” said Marshall. “Chief Hill is heading it up. Not going to be good for the men in the eleventh.”

  “They’ll break them all up,” said Vinny. “That’s what they did when they had that problem in the fifth. Chopped up the whole bunch and spread them all over. Fired some, too.”

  “Are you guys going to make a statement?” asked Chemin, wrestling with the baby. “Everyone’s waiting on it.”

  “It’s up to daddy,” said Vinny. “Personally, I don’t care.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Marshall. “The killer’s still out there, and you know he’s watching everything. We don’t want to do anything that might make him more careful.”

  “What’s the county’s take on all this?” I asked.

  “They want blood, of course,” said Marshall. “And before you ask, I would never defend anyone in a case like this.”

  When the old mayor was arrested because I found evidence on him, he had hired Marshall and put us on opposite sides of the case. I didn’t want to go through that again and apparently neither did Marshall.

  “Somebody’s gotta know who did it,” said Chemin. “I mean, they’re cops and there are only so many. They wouldn’t cover for a killer, would they?”

  “Yes,” said Vinny and I agreed with her.

  “I know it sounds harsh,” said Marshall, “but it’s a thing with them, just like lawyers know who’s guilty and never tell.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” said Chemin giving Vinny the baby back. “I coul
dn’t live with myself.”

  “I’m gonna go and talk with your father, Vinny,” said Marshall. “I know it’s early, but all of you need to start thinking about the lawsuit. Ivory was technically in police custody and so the city’s on the hook. And now, with the publicity, they will not want a lawsuit.”

  Marshall walked off and Chemin followed after kissing RMC on the forehead. As soon as they were gone, I could feel eyes on me again.

  “Go on and say it,” I said.

  “Danny, why would you promise to get the killer? You know how hard it's going to be,” said Vinny shifting the baby.

  “I know who's gonna get the case in IAD and she will give me some latitude,” I said.

  “Gomez?” said Vinny after a moment of thought.

  Vinny was not prone to jealousy, but DeAngela Gomez in IAD got to her. DeAngela was a lead investigator for the rat squad and had once been on my case. She had also let it be known that she had a crush on me back in the day. I was not interested but that made no difference to Vinny who had seen a picture of DeAngela in the news and taken an instant dislike to her.

  “Yes, it’s DeAngela,” I said.

  Vinny said nothing but brooded. I didn’t push it because that was our way. She was mad and sifting through her insecurities, which had grown some since the baby. If we were a normal couple, I would have pointed out how she went into work wearing them tight ass dresses all the time and said it was for work when I knew damned well she got off on showing men her body.

  Vinny knew how unfaithful most cops were and though we had proven to be the exception, that made no difference. A baby changed everything and not all of it was good. Once a woman had a child, she felt a little less attractive somehow and no matter how much her man tries to play up that she’s still got it, the woman always feels that something is lacking.

  “I’ll work the political side," said Vinny after a while. ”The firm’s partners are well connected.”

  “It’s going to be tricky for me. My boss has to be down with it but I’m good to go.”