1 Motor City Shakedown

by Jonathan Watkins

  The air of self-assured victory Darren had been wearing faded. He leaned forward and snatched up the pile of bills.

  “Keep going,” he mumbled, looking through the pages.

  “Right,” she said. “And the place he has up in Marquette? Crazy high bills. He’s running the ovens up there round the clock from the looks of those bills. Which doesn’t make sense at all. The biggest city in the U.P. is still just a little hamlet compared to Wayne County and Detroit. And he doesn’t have county contracts up there to push the numbers up.”

  Darren continued reading for a minute, then set the papers down and took another bite from his apple.

  “That’s really, really weird,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “What the hell is he doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Theories?’

  “Not even one,” she said, and sat on the edge of the desk. “But that wasn’t our game. I found a really weird thing. Really weird. Despite all probability, I ferreted it out. So.”

  “So?”

  “So, you concede now. I’ll be gracious about my victory. We’ll find a place to have lunch. Then we’ll go back to my office—as I, you know, have an actual office that isn’t a unicorn-infested bar –and we will start writing motions in anticipation of the murder case our client is going to face. Here. In the real world.”

  Darren stood and made an ushering motion for Issabella to sit where he had been.

  “Madam Prosecutor is mistaken is she believes the defense wishes to waive closing arguments,” he said, and the two of them reversed position.

  “Hold on,” he said, walked back around the desk and leaned down next to her. He smelled faintly of cologne and apples. A lock of his hair brushed her nose. “Here we are.”

  He straightened back up. There was a second apple in his hand. He put it in hers.

  “I brought one for you, too.”

  “Thanks,” she chuckled.

  Once he had resumed his spot across the desk, Darren took on a sympathetic appearance.

  “I’m sorry to do this to you,” he said. “Your case was good. Better than I expected, really. But I’m made of magic, Issabella. I am—“

  “Ugh. Get on with it and stop stalling,” she said and bit into the apple.

  “Alright,” he said. “The stunning find I’ve made here today—the find of all finds, really –was, admittedly, in an unlikely place. But, being the thorough and uncannily adept barrister that I am, I nevertheless—“

  “I said stop stalling! I didn’t make you listen to this kind of nonsense.”

  “Point taken. But—“

  Darren’s cell phone started piping out “Sweet Home Alabama” from inside the vest pocket of his jacket.

  “That’s unfortunate timing,” he mumbled as he pulled the cell out.

  “That cell phone is just forestalling the inevitable.”

  Darren answered, “Law office of Darren Fletcher. This is Darren Fletcher. How can I help you today? Yes, that’s right. I am, indeed. Alright, then.”

  All the mirth and playfulness vanished from his face. His posture straightened and he was suddenly very stoic. Issabella stopped mid-chew and stared at him.

  “I see,” he said into the phone. “No, that’s not necessary. I understand. No, not now. But soon, I assure you. Yes, that does sound ominous. I meant it to.”

  He clicked the cell shut and tossed it absently onto the desk. His lips curled downward into an ugly scowl and he crossed his arms in front of him.

  “Darren?”

  He was somewhere else; somewhere that was darkening his expression by the second. Issabella saw in that long moment that within Darren Fletcher there was a capacity for fury. Right now, it was seething and roiling just under the surface.

  “Darren. You need to talk to me.”

  He blinked several times and looked at her, back in the here and now.

  “Vernon Pullins is dead, Izzy.”

  *

  Allen Phelps adjusted the Glock 19 in its waistband holster at the small of his back and said “Whoop whoop.”

  A voice in his ear softly answered “What what.”

  The Huron River was a brown line in front of him. The bank stretching away from the old, weather-worn dock where he stood was choking with cattails and dragonflies. He watched the fat, darting bugs and told himself to be patient. He was good at patience and good at silence. You couldn’t be an army sniper without improbable quantities of both.

  The Huron was flanked on both sides by wooded, rolling state land-- an untouched corner of southern Wayne County known only to the most serious and dedicated of deer hunters.

  He drew a long breath in through his nose and felt calm. Standing there in the evening hush, he mentally ran through what had become an increasingly unmanageable checklist of problems that needed swift, complete elimination.

  ‘Pullins is closed out. After we do this mop-up here, we find Darnell’s pet psycho and close that out…then roll up north and finish with that junkie Indian.’

  Even for a man like Allen Phelps, that was a lot of bodies adding up.

  ‘Fuck it, Al. One bite at a time. Take care of this little business and re-evaluate. Always re-evaluate. Adjust. Adapt. One hoodrat nutjob and a pill-popping Indian kid. Take them off the board and there’s nobody left to worry about getting chatty. Close the whole thing down. Then it’s all tits and beer.’

  Before any of the three people approaching behind him were close enough to see him through the trees, he heard their heavy and uneven footfalls. It was the sound of men who had spent the entirety of their lives in a cement and asphalt world, their internal gyroscopes only attuned to flat and measured sidewalks.

  He lit a cigarette and waited until Darnell Gimson and the two looming thugs he’d brought with him appeared at the far end of the dock. Darnell’s silk shirt and slacks were peppered with the burs and briars he’d acquired on the half-mile hike from the I-75 rest-stop parking lot.

  “Motherfucker,” Darnell spat, making a show of brushing at the burs on his pants. “Ain’t no sense in this at all. You feel me, Cap’n? This country shit’s got to go.”

  “It’s remote,” Allen said, his baritone growl carrying easily down the length of the crumbling old dock. “Remote is safe. You like to be safe don’t you, home boy?”

  Darnell came to a stop in the middle of the dock, several feet away from Allen. The men he had brought with him were enormous, glowering and dressed in oversized FUBU jeans and hoodies. From where he stood near the edge of the dock, Allen couldn’t see where either of them were carrying their pistols, but they were sure to be there, somewhere in the sags and rolls of their clothing. They stood just behind and on either side of Darnell, their chins thrust forward, looking down toward Allen from behind heavy, half-lidded eyes.

  ‘I guess fat and bored is what passes for tough on the streets these days,’ he thought.

  “So. We here, man,” Darnell said finally.

  Allen blew smoke out his nostrils.

  “Your super-duper assassin fucked us in the ass, Darnell.”

  “Ain’t no way.”

  “That right?”

  “Yeah. It is,” Darnell sneered. “Man’s a machine. Ain’t no fuck up in him. This why you ask us to drive all the way down here and hike out to hillbilly heaven? If so, then we done and I’m hiking my ass back to civilization.”

  “Your boy went jungle-crazy, Darnell,” Allan said, and saw a dangerous light bloom in Darnell’s eyes. “He was supposed to make it look like a seizure from a coma killed Vernon. Your boy went to town with a bowie knife. Even left it in the room after he ran out. Medical Examiner said Vernon looked like chop suey.”

  Darnell shook his head slowly back and forth, “Ain’t no way in hell what you say is the truth. No way in hell would he do like that. Why’re you lying to me?”

  Allen shrugged and spread his hands out in front of him.

  “You’re going to have to give me his name, Darne
ll.”

  “No.”

  “Yep. Gimmee your psycho’s name and where we find him. Clip the loose end. Then we all get back to making that fat cash. Just like before.”

  Darnell’s patience evaporated and he paced back and forth with his hands glued to his narrow hips. He watched Allen out of the corner of his eye.

  “No way he did that.”

  “Give me the name, Darnell.”

  “No way. No way he did it. No way I ever rat him out to you. Simple as that. We can do business. You know that. But this is not a man you roll on. I warned you who he was.”

  “Nigger, I’m not asking.”

  Darnell froze. The four of them stood rooted. Darnell’s expression drained away, leaving an empty and vacant mask that regarded Allen with a scary calm. Darnell spit on the dock boards between them. He looked at Allen with unveiled contempt.

  “White boy, you watch yourself when you get back to the streets,” he said. “Don’t matter who you are in the straight world, you just watch your back.”

  Allen smiled. “We’re not friends anymore, Darnell?”

  “Fuck you, cop. We’re gone.”

  “We?”

  Darnell frowned and said “What?”

  Allen flicked his cigarette into the river. It landed soundlessly on the water’s surface. A gunshot clapped and echoed around the woods surrounding them. One of Darnell’s bodyguards jerked backwards, spun, and crashed down into the cottontails.

  Darnell stared saucer-eyed at the spot where his man had stood a second before. His mouth moved like he wanted to say something. He shot a look at the other man behind him. A second gunshot erupted from somewhere in the woods. The remaining bodyguard’s head snapped backwards. Dead, his body sagged down onto its knees, then back and into the weeds.

  Darnell pivoted around. Allen Phelps had crossed the distance between them. The Glock 19 was leveled at Darnell’s nose.

  Allen’s face was contorted with manic glee as he sighted down into Darnell’s eyes.

  “Whoop whoop,” he said.

  EIGHT

  Eugene Pullins didn’t break down or crumple with grief when Issabella leaned forward in her chair beside him, put her hand on his knee and told him that his brother had died that morning.

  Instead, he folded his hands together in his lap and nodded his head faintly. He was small in stature, unlike his enormous brother, and looked significantly older than the man Issabella had only briefly seen in the hospital bed. Eugene’s hair was white and cropped very short, his face lined with deep wrinkles. He wore corduroy jeans and a flannel shirt that looked to have been washed and worn so many times that Issabella guessed it was probably his “comfortable” shirt—the one you couldn’t throw away even though it was faded and threadbare and ready to disintegrate.

  “I see,” he said, very softly.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Pullins. And I’m so sorry you have to hear it from me like this. The hospital never recorded an emergency contact for him, or lost it if they did.”

  “I see.”

  “They…” she started, then stopped. ‘Keep going. Just keep talking.’ She continued, “They, the hospital I mean, say that he never regained consciousness. There wasn’t any pain. I know that doesn’t make it better, but…”

  “No, it does. It makes it a little better. It’s good to know he wasn’t suffering. I’d hate to think that.”

  They were both quiet for a minute. Issabella wanted to be eloquent, wanted to be the sort of lawyer—the sort of person –who could handle this kind of conversation with real, professional aplomb. Law school was full of professors who would talk about being “good on your feet”. They’d hammered it home over three years: a good lawyer is fluid and adapts in a split second. A good lawyer has a briefcase full of different faces, and knows exactly when to pull the right one out.

  Sitting there, watching the slight and unassuming man digest the news of his brother’s sudden death, Issabella felt like a fraud. She was supposed to be doing something, wasn’t she?

  Eugene stirred and looked at her with eyes that were bright with unshed tears.

  “I was always scared I’d go before him,” he said. “Vern was such a big kid. He never had much sense about things. Even with the business and him doing alright with money. He’d get himself all turned around. Believing in things too much. Feeling too much, I guess. I just…I was scared what trouble he’d get into if I wasn’t around to talk him down, keep his feet on the ground. I guess I was wrong about that. I couldn’t stop…whatever happened to him.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Pullins.”

  ‘That’s been established, hasn’t it? Maybe if you say it a few more times he’ll cheer right up and skip on out of here. Ugh. This is horrible.’

  “That kid. I know you didn’t have time to know him, ma’am, but that boy had a heart as big as the world. Too trustin’. Too many ‘friends’. Too many people wanting to take advantage of how much he needed to belong to something, I guess…

  I don’t know. I had my job. Thirty-seven years, I put in at Fords. And all those guys on the line, all those years, I don’t talk to a one of them since I took my pension. Didn’t need ‘em. But he wasn’t like that. Vern needed to belong to something.”

  He lapsed back into silence and a deep sigh rustled up out of his slight frame.

  “Are you sure I can’t get you some coffee?” she said. “Or a glass of water?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I guess maybe a cup of coffee would be fine, thank you.”

  She stood and walked out of her office, into the adjoining room that was disguised to look like a reception area. There were client chairs, a wooden rack stuffed with magazines, some pamphlets with very general information on different legal topics with titles like What Everyone Needs to Know about Wills, Bankruptcy is Not the End and Your Rights: a Review.

  There was also a desk and chair for the non-existent receptionist, a computer that looked fine but really didn’t work, a desk calendar, scattered office tools and a bowl of Tootsie-Rolls. And on a small coffee table, a coffee-maker and stacks of Styrofoam cups.

  She tore open a little vacuum-sealed bag of ground coffee, poured it into the coffee-maker, and hit the green button on the front. She took a long breath in through her nose, and turned around.

  “I don’t suppose you feel up to coming in there and helping to console this man?” she said sharply.

  Darren was poured into the receptionist chair like a boneless heap, his long legs splayed out with the heels of his shoes perched on the edge of the desk. His expression had not changed noticeably since their car ride back from the crematorium—distant, soured and brooding. His fingers were folded together like a tent, propping up his chin.

  He didn’t look up at her or move when he said “We’re not done.”

  “You’re right. Our client’s brother is in the other room, Darren. We’re not done. I mean, we are done with the fun part, which I’m starting to guess is the only part you were interested in. The not-fun part? Where we have to console this poor old man? That’s still underway.”

  The coffee started to drip down into the pot, and Issabella realized she hadn’t asked Eugene how he took his coffee. She took two cups from the stack. One, she set to the side for the coffee and the other she filled with packets of sugar, sweetener and creamer.

  “Vernon was murdered,” Darren said. “And he was our client. We’re not done.”

  She stalked over in front of him so he was forced to look at her.

  “This isn’t some movie, Darren,” she said, struggling to keep her voice low enough that Eugene wouldn’t hear her. “Our client had complications from being in a coma. He died. And the only responsible thing you or I can do is go back in there and sit with his brother and give back the retainer checks.”

  ‘He’s not listening. I’m talking to a wall.’

  “Well?” she said.

  Darren stirred and swung his feet off the desk. He stood, reached into his jacket and pulled out his folde
d retainer check. He set the check on the desk and stepped past her toward the door that led outside, pausing there without turning around.

  “In this game you never stop asking questions. That’s rule number one.”

  She shrugged and held her hands out in the air.

  “What questions, Darren? What questions could you still have that would make any difference to that man in there?”

  Darren put one hand on the door and pushed it open. He looked back over his shoulder and there was a disquieting grin on his face.

  “You never did ask me what I found in that crematorium, Izzy.”

  He slipped out into the gathering gloom of evening.

  *

  Issabella had completed her bath several minutes ago, but that wasn’t important. She let some of the soapy water drain out of the tub in the bathroom of her childhood home, then added back hot water from the spout. She poured in a dollop of bubble bath to replace what went down the drain, sloshed the water around enough to get the bubbles going, and leaned back in a state of warm, steam-enveloped abandon.

  Outside the bathroom door, she heard her mother’s footfalls, and it was oddly comforting. Like any child, she knew the sounds of a parent moving about the house, had unconsciously memorized the exact creak of each individual floorboard as it responded to the weight of her mother. It was like a melody from her youth, a reminder of nights when she lay in her bed, in that in-between land where she wasn’t asleep but wasn’t really awake, drifting away with her mother’s movements around the house reminding her that she was not alone.

  “Ready to talk now?” Her mother called out from the other side of the door.

  “No.”

  “I can wait.”

  “I know you can, mom.”

  She sucked in a big mouthful of air, slipped down and submerged herself in the water. She started counting in her head. Her mother said something else, but it was just incoherent vibrations to Issabella. She counted to one-hundred and thirteen before she had to slide back up into a sitting position and get more air.