Grind City

by Gary Hardwick

  Vinny just nodded and handed the baby to me. He yawned and it made me yawn. His little eyes fluttered and I could tell he was starting to go down. That was good, because I had work to do.

  3

  COLD

  I left my house the next day and the first winter wind hit me. It was like a knife across my face. It had been cold since September but this was the first sign winter was coming, that icy, jagged invisible hand that just freezes everything in its path.

  I pulled up my collar and went to my car. The media had my house staked out too, so one of the news crews followed me. It was easy to shake him and soon I was out on my own and on my way to see Mr. El.

  It was a trek across town to the old neighborhood just outside of Hamtramck, which had just made news as the first American city to become majority Muslim. Funny to see women in berkas and hijab walking outside of the old Polish businesses and rustic homes.

  I arrived to find Mr. El’s place surrounded by more of the media. A couple of news vans were outside of his home. I rolled past, parked up the street, then doubled back after calling him to let me in the backdoor ,which he did.

  “Sorry about all this,” I said as I came in. The little house was warm and I felt the chill fade away from by bones.

  “No problem,” said Mr. El. “They’ve been out there for two days now, trying to talk to me. Newspaper’s been calling too, but I’m not interested. They even had Mitch Albom call ‘cause they know he’s my favorite but I had to turn him down.”

  “You don’t mind talking to me do you?” I asked.

  “‘Course not,” said Mr. El.

  And for the first time, I could see he’d been crying.

  “I’m trying to get to the bottom of all this,” I said. “Did you see anything when she came here to see you?”

  “No, she came by, gave me a birthday card, then left and that was it. Next I heard, she was gone. Just like that.”

  “Did she tell you anything that might be important, any secrets about men or cops she was seeing?” I asked.

  “She was always seeing some man or another,” said Mr. El. “Girl just could not say no to a man if he bowed to her power. I told her not to be so free with herself but you know Ivory.”

  “What about her friends?” I asked “We got a list of them but did she ever talk about them?”

  “All the time. Lately, she was liking this boy named Raymond. They call him RaRa. Met him once at the center. He was a nice boy and I could tell he was real taken with Ivory. Followed her around like a puppy. He’s one of them IT guys. Smart as a whip and funny. I told her that’s the kinda boy she needed but I could see Ivory didn’t want him, didn’t respect that kind of love. She could only get excited about dangerous men.”

  “Was she involved with a cop to your knowledge?”

  “No but she did say she wanted to talk to me about something that night. But I had guests and she didn’t feel comfortable telling it in front of them. That could have been it.”

  I said nothing. I was thinking about RaRa. The police had already moved to question him and his crew of friends but so far, I hadn’t heard anything.

  “Ivory had been with a man, a married one, last year,” said Mr. El. “I was mad as hell about it but she told it to me in confidence. It went on for a while and then he dumped her. She was pissed and did some of that crazy woman stuff.”

  “Like phone calls, stalking him?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Mr. El. “I told her that was beneath her but—“

  “I know Ivory,” I finished for him. “Got a name?”

  “Bakersfield,” said Mr. El. “He’s a doctor, got that big east side practice, MidCiti Medical.”

  “I’ve seen the commercials,” I said.

  “I’m tired,” said Mr. El. “This city just eats and eats at you until there’s nothing left. My family’s been asking me to come to Florida for years. Think I’m gonna take them up on it. People are buying up houses now that the city’s making a comeback. I could get a few bucks for this shack and just go.”

  “We’d miss you,” I said. “We need good men here.”

  “I’m old,” said Mr. El. “Everyday I get a little more afraid. It’s especially bad in the winter. You know, in some countries, an old man is revered, here he’s a mark, just waiting for some coward to jump him.”

  I couldn’t disagree with him. My father was getting on and I worried about him each day.

  “Thanks for your time,” I said. “If you think of anything, call me.”

  “I will,” said Mr. El. “When’s the funeral?”

  “I don’t know. The city still has the body. Might be a while.”

  “Too bad she wasn’t Jewish. They have to get their dead buried quick.”

  I thanked the old man again and left by the back entrance. I looked out on the desolate streets and I could feel it, change was coming to the city. This neighborhood would soon be something else, an industrial park, a gentrified residence or a business district. They would move the black folks out and then build something great and ban common folk from using it and the world would just keep spinning.

  More cold air greeted me as I turned a corner. There were many kinds of cold in the North. What was cold to a Texan we’d laugh at in Michigan, but talk to someone from Canada about cold.

  For me, the change of seasons had meaning. There was less crime when it got cold but the things that did happen always seemed to be worse and every spring thaw, we’d find something bad that had been laying all winter.

  I got into my car and headed out further east. Dr. Bakersfield was a lead I bet the cops didn’t have.

  Ivory’s phone wasn’t found on her and she didn’t have a computer or a tablet. Like a lot of young kids without a lot of money, her phone contained her digital life.

  The cops were probably getting all of her online information now but I was betting that they’d find nothing. Ivory was a secretive girl and way too smart to leave a trail of her activities for the public. All they’d find would be a lot harmless crap and selfies of her in provocative outfits.

  MidCiti Medical was one of those Detroit success stories you never read about. Some kids got out of medical school and started an inner city practice, catering to the failing health of the underclass. That led to the state backing them with money for wellness programs and then the big one, Obamacare.

  The exchanges blew up their business and soon the four friends had a big facility near a hospital and a partnership with Wayne Medical, one of the country’s best medical schools.

  Dr. Paul Bakersfield was a graduate of WSU and one of its most illustrious alumni. It didn’t take me long to spot him in the facility as I had seen him on his TV spots. Also, he towered over his staff at six foot seven. He’d been a lousy basketball player but it had helped pay the school bills for his real talent.

  He was a handsome man, definitely Ivory’s type, forties, salt and pepper hair, good build and a very snappy dresser. I was no fashion expert, but I knew a good pair of shoes when I saw them and the ones he sported were at least three hundred.

  I waited until the crowd around him thinned, then I flashed my badge and asked to speak to him in private.

  “What’s this about?” asked Bakersfield.

  “A murder case,” I said flatly and before he said anything, I saw the familiar look at the sound of my voice then a flash of fear. He was my man.

  “Not anyone I know I hope,” said Bakersfield, trying to cover his anxiety.

  “I’m afraid it is,” I said. “Which is why I wanted to speak in private.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bakersfield. “I have lots of lawyers. You can talk to them.” He turned to leave.

  “If you want,” I said. “But my next stop is your wife. We can talk about Ivory Shaw.”

  This got his attention. He stopped and for a moment, stood with his back to me. No one around us suspected anything and they just kept working, walking by Bakersfield and saying hello. He stood there at a crossroads
in his life. Then, he turned back to me.

  “Let’s speak in my office,” he said.

  He walked me to the other side of the place, where the partners had their offices in each corner.

  Bakersfield’s office faced downtown. I came in and took a seat in a leather chair that faced his desk.

  “Make yourself at home,” said Bakersfield. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Scotch and water, hold the scotch,” I said.

  Bakersfield grabbed two bottles of water from his bar on the other side of the room.

  “I heard about that girl,” said Bakersfield.

  “Ivory Shaw,” I said. “You can deny you know her,” I said, “but that will just lead me back to your wife and then the police and the newspapers. So far, no one in the investigation knows that you knew her.”

  I could see him contemplating what to do. If he lied, then all hell would break loose but if he came clean to me, then another person knew and I could be looking to blackmail him for what I knew. And then there was the matter of proof. Did I have any and if so, what was it, how damning?

  “I heard what happened to her,” said Bakersfield. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “I don’t know that,” I said. “You were fucking her, leading her on and she took revenge on you. Maybe you got mad or maybe your wife found out.”

  “The police killed her. It’s on the news and Ivory and I hadn’t seen each other for months.”

  “I need the story, all of it,” I said,“ or I take what I know and the pictures to your wife.”

  I had no pictures but young girls love to take them and I knew Ivory had to have at least one pic of this asshole on her phone.

  He told me how he’d met Ivory at the youth center giving a seminar on health care. He’d flirted and she flirted right back and it wasn’t long before they were meeting in hotels. He was giving her money and telling her that he wanted to leave his wife for her.

  Ivory took the bait, probably desperate to believe him but then, his wife got pregnant and he broke it off.

  “Ivory was angry and stalked me for months,” said Bakersfield. “She even came here once. She had a hard side to her. I’m not embarrassed to say I was scared of what she might do.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “Nothing. Ivory just went away, stopped calling. But she did send me a text one day. I don’t even know how she got my new cell number.”

  “What did her text say?” I asked.

  “All it said was ‘You’ve been replaced.’”

  I didn’t like this guy. Not only was he a bastard and generally dishonest, he was arrogant. I wanted to call his wife and bust him out and watch her slit his throat but that’s not how it goes in the real world. Men still had a code. And besides, I reasoned, these guys always got theirs in the end.

  “Is there anything else you can think of that might help me?” I said this with as much sincerity as I could muster.

  Before he answered, I knew he was lying because this guy, while slippery, was an amateur. He had tells all over him. He looked down then quickly back up at me.

  “No,” he said.

  I took in a deep breath. Now, I was angry and I didn’t mind showing it. I’d been reading some of the most clever assholes in the city from the politicians, to the dirtbag dealers to the best liars of all, the drug addicts and I never appreciated it when an amateur liar tried to put one over on me.

  “There’s a lot of really bad shit I could say right now,” I said, “but it’s been a hard day for me already and I don’t have the strength. So, just tell me what it is because I know you just lied to me.”

  “It’s kinda personal,” said Bakersfield.

  “You got no privacy rights here,” I said. “Tell it.”

  “Ivory liked it rough when we did it,” he said a little embarrassed. “She liked to be choked and pushed, hair pulled you know, and she liked rough talk too, liked me to say I was gonna hurt her, things like that. I wasn’t really into that and she’d make fun of me about it. The girl had a dark side. That’s all I’m saying.”

  I was cool but I have to say that shocked me some. Ivory was vain and mean but never did I think she was a freak.

  “Okay doc,” I said. “I’m leaving my card. If you think of anything else, contact me and do not tell the press or anyone we talked.”

  “Believe me, I won’t,” said Bakersfield.

  “And if in the course of my investigation, I find you lied to me about anything, I will break the man code and rain holy shit down on your whole life. Have a good one.”

  Bakersfield nodded and took my card. I got up, walked to the door but there was one other thing I needed to know.

  “Your baby when was it born?”

  “Earlier this year,” said Bakersfield.

  “What did you have?”

  “A boy. Name’s Eli.”

  “I got a boy, too, almost a year old. I ain’t one to lecture, but you may want to start thinking about the shit you do. It all passes on to our kids, you know.”

  I left the medical center and I had a bad feeling in my gut about Ivory and her hidden life.

  Winter was indeed coming.

  4

  BLUE WATER

  I arrived downtown some time later and I was dreading it. My first stop before IAD was my new boss and old partner, Erik Brown, now Captain of the Special Crimes Unit, or the Sewer as we called it.

  We were still housed downtown at Police Headquarters on 1300 Beaubien. It was a shit hole that I called home and the only place I ever wanted to work.

  It was a bitch getting in as the Black Lives Matter people had staged a pretty big protest rally outside the precinct. I avoided them. I don’t think I’m the kind of guy who would be their favorite son.

  When I got to The Sewer, all of the guys there expressed their condolences to me and I appreciated that. I could not ask any of them for help because when it came to cops, even dirty ones, we were all blue water, silent and deep. In my heart, I wanted them all to be with me and if any of them knew anything, I trusted they’d find a way to let me know.

  On TV, cops work in these offices that look all shiny and new. I only wish we had digs like that. Our place was filled with ancient furniture and even worse equipment. The bankruptcy had tightened our already tight belts and even a special unit like ours was not exempt.

  Captain Erik Brown was a great cop and had been promoted for his years of service. He’d shocked me when he revealed that he had hit his wife which led to a divorce after many years.

  He seemed much happier these days as he had been dating a lot and was not secretive about how much he was enjoying it.

  Erik was a dark-skinned, unassuming man who now sported a mustache and was dressing noticeably better. I didn’t dare mention this as Erik was a little sensitive about the money he now had to share with his ex. I was on a mission to gain his favor right now.

  “Knew I’d be seeing you,” said Erik. “Come on in, partner.”

  I walked in his office and closed the door. Calling me partner made me know he was on my side even before he said:

  “I can’t do it and you know I can’t.”

  “Just needed to ask,” I said. “You can imagine what I’m up against at home.”

  “You are an active duty cop, Danny. If you want a temporary transfer to IAD, that will take at least a month and will probably be refused.”

  “I know. I don’t want that. I need you to let the guys and the department know that I asked but was turned down.”

  Erik looked a little confused and then his brow furrowed and he took on a look I’d seen many times, the bullshit detection look.

  “Okay, what the fuck are you up to, Danny?” asked Erik. “Not like you to give up without a fight.”

  “I got a new case, the murder of a drug dealer. I’m gonna work that case. It might take a while.”

  Erik smiled a little. “Yes, you do that, in fact, I insist that you get your ass back to work, you may even h
ave to do weekends. I’ll sign off on the overtime. You won’t get it, but I’ll sign.”

  This is why I loved Erik. He was not the kind of guy who got power and then forgot that he had been a cop. He wanted me on Ivory’s murder and if I was working a case, it would allow me to be absent and as long as I sent in progress reports, I‘d be fine. I had refused to take a partner after he was promoted and so I was good to go.

  “The FBI is grandstanding but they ain’t gonna do shit,” said Erik. “They don’t want no parts of this case. You saw that circus outside.”

  “Yes, I did. Thanks again, boss.”

  “Cut that boss shit,” said Erik. “Hey, I met a new one, kinda young but promising. She’s in grad school and fine as hell.”

  He whipped out his cell phone and showed me a picture of a young black girl with the biggest ass I’d see in a while.

  “Damn,” I said not exaggerating. “That real?”

  “Damned shame you have to ask that these days. Yes, that’s all au naturale. What are they feeding these girls?”

  “Don’t know,” I said taking another look.

  “How’s the boy?” asked Erik.

  “He’s great. Don’t know what’s going on. He’s lucky.”

  “And Vinny?”

  “Taking it pretty hard.”

  “I know you and her are going to be poking around,” said Erik. “Rumors are flying about who’s gonna be a suspect. I don’t have to tell you that whoever did this shit is desperate and will kill again if they have to.”

  “Not if I get them first,” I said.

  “No cowboy shit,” said Erik. “You’re somebody’s father now.”

  “You don’t have to remind me,” I said. “It’s taken some of my edge but I’m still good.”

  “Hey, I saw the picture of the victim,” said Erik. “She was a real stunner. You know what that means, right?”

  I did. Erik was still a good partner and he couldn’t help but to go back into that mode with me. He was always good for reminding me of the angles. Good looking women always went for a certain type of man.

  “There are already a few men that fit the bill, “ I said. “Talked to one this morning.”