Then there was the cake, this iced slab decorated with teensy handcuffs and guns and stacks of paperwork, with Good Riddance, Erma beautifully scripted in pale green frosting.
My knees got weak as I stood looking and smelling and swallowing my saliva. I took a pull from the bottle of Stroh’s I’d picked out of a cold well next to the bar.
I was about to grab a plate and get going on the ham when something struck me between the shoulderblades so hard my head snapped back. An unfamiliar laugh rang out, and I turned to see Lt. Tom Ciesla enjoying the effect his backslap had on me.
Ciesla himself was a familiar sight, of course: his thick shoulders straining his jacket, his large careful hands holding a bottle of Stroh’s, his direct expression, his five o’clock shadow. But I realized that I’d hardly ever heard him laugh. He was a serious cop, and we’d had many a deep conversation, but I couldn’t remember when I’d heard him laugh, and that was a little sad. Cops have to take life more seriously than most people.
But right now he was off duty, he’d eaten well, and he was happy to see me.
“Was the cake your idea?” I said.
“What do you think of it?” His voice was as direct as his expression.
“It’s perfect. If anything could make Erma cry tonight, it’ll be that cake.”
“Well, she saw it.”
“Did she cry?”
He laughed again.
“What else have you guys got in store for her? Is that guy from narcotics going to do Elvis again? Please tell me he’s not going to put on that—”
“Lillian.”
“Yeah, Tom.” I was smiling, but suddenly he wasn’t.
Ciesla said, “You don’t look … good.” He took my upper arm and pinched his fingers into my flesh down to the bone. He held me away from him and looked me down to my Weejuns. “You’re way too skinny. Are you sick?” Here he’d been joking and having a good time, now abruptly he’s worried about this nerdy unemployed writer.
“No, Tom, just hungry.”
“You’re eyeballing that ham like you think it’s going to jump the fence.”
“Yeah, well, I like ham. Where’s Erma? I haven’t had a chance to say hi.”
“Those probation officers have got her cornered over there. I think they’re trying to get her to sign up for bowling again.”
“Can’t the woman get some peace after all these years?”
“Yeah, but she’s a good bowler, and the team’s gonna stink without her. She threw a 290 in the finals last month.”
“Wow.” I couldn’t help keeping an eye on that ham.
“Well,” Ciesla said, “you better eat.”
“Out of my way.”
He watched me pick up a plate and begin piling food on. When I turned from the buffet table, he’d taken off.
This ballroom, the Crystal Grand in the Marriott, was surely the safest place in the city this Friday night. A hundred cops in every flavor—off duty, most carrying a weapon—plus a few badges who’d stopped in for a few minutes between calls, all of them bullshitting and laughing and eating and drinking. The room hummed with the pleasant chaos of it. It was nine o’clock, and the festivities would go on past midnight.
I saw this towering black lady detective who’d cracked a major car-theft ring last month by calling the main crook’s girlfriend and posing as a telephone psychic. She got the girlfriend to tell her everything, which was a lot more than the boyfriend thought she knew. There was a white homicide cop whose face had gotten carved by a prisoner who’d slipped out of his cuffs and reached a razor blade he’d stuck in the edge of his flip-flop. The cop’s face had healed in a half-grin that gave him a crazy look, which reportedly made him a much more effective interrogator. Then there was the Chinese-American vice cop who was addicted to Little Debbie snack cakes; he’d sit down to write a report, and half an hour later you’d have to climb over this barrier of Little Debbie wrappers to talk to him.
Most of the party guests gave me a good feeling. I’m a resolute believer in the basic goodness of cops. Only a few of them creeped me out: ones who’d tampered with evidence (so I’d heard) and never got nailed, the ones who were always on the make somehow, the ones with a quiet rep for using smack or for shaking down stupid people who couldn’t figure out how to stay out of their way. You just hope you never have to deal with cops like them.
I found a seat at an empty table. I wanted to concentrate on eating, on filling my belly with as many solid calories as I could, and I wanted to thoroughly enjoy the experience of eating food that was not only free but good. The smoky-peppery ham was succulent between the firm slabs of bread. It’s easy to find food that’s good and expensive, and relatively simple to find food that’s awful and more or less free, but good and free—that’s the combination for me.
I chewed and swallowed, and a little sunburst of horseradish rose to clear my sinuses. So good. It felt so good to eat well.
I finished my sandwich and pickle, and a busboy came by and took my plate. I set my coordinates for the meatballs. I stopped, though, seeing Det. Erma Porrocks disengage herself from the probation officers and head toward me. I met her for a hug.
“Congratulations, Erma. You made it.”
She smiled widely, showing her even teeth that formed a friendly arcade between her postmenopausally fuzzy pink cheeks. Probably the smallest cop in the department, Porrocks was nevertheless fearlessly herself. She wore her gray hair in a style that made you think of moms on 1960s-era television: a simple smooth style, but styled. She liked cardigan sweaters. There always was a little something soft and retro about Porrocks, which somehow never represented a handicap to her in the testosterone-soaked world of the detective division.
“Man, Erm, twenty-five years. How does it feel?”
“Funny. It feels funny.” She tugged at the waistband of her skirt. “I started on the force late in life, for a cop. I was thirty-two. Now I can’t believe I’m pushing sixty.”
“Just think, you’ll be able to do stakeouts only when you really, really want to. Hey, thanks a lot for inviting me. Fabulous spread—you can tell the department thinks highly of you.”
“Yeah, I got the twenty-five-year spread. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”
“Well, what’re you going to do?”
“I’ll take some time off, you know. Then I might go into private investigation.”
“Yeah? That sounds good. You’ll be a great gumshoe, Erma.”
She started to say something, then bit her lip, and I saw she was feeling emotional. “I—I’m going to miss all these jackasses.”
I touched her arm. “Yeah.”
“Uh, have you had a bite to eat?”
“Mm-hmm, I was about to go get some more.”
“Lillian, can I talk to you?”
“Sure, what about?”
“Why don’t you get some more food and come back here?”
I grabbed two fresh bottles of Stroh’s on the way back with my steaming plate of pasta.
She thanked me and took a sip of beer. “I bought a house a few weeks ago.”
“You’re moving?”
“Just to the waterfront. Wyandotte, actually.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I’ve always wanted a view of the water, and you know there’s nothing like that in the city except for high-rises. Now that I’m retiring, well, I got an opportunity to buy this place—rather suddenly, actually, and it was such a good deal I went for it. It’s a nice house, good bones, like they say in the magazines. But it needs work—quite a bit of work. I think somebody with a temper lived there.”
“Yeah?” I wondered what her point was going to be. In a prompting way I said, “Is it one of those bootlegger places?”
During Prohibition, smugglers ran so much illegal Canadian booze into Detroit and all its shoreline communities you couldn’t spit into the river without hitting some guy in a fast motorboat. And you couldn’t toss a daisy into a police squad room without hitting somebody on
the take. It was a high time all around.
“Oh!” said Porrocks. “Well, I don’t know. It does have a boathouse.”
Smugglers coveted the houses on the waterfront with private docks for obvious reasons. The boss smugglers would buy these places for cash from some prosperous haberdasher or car dealer, then do the modifications in the dead of night. You’d hear about places with secret passageways from the waterline into hidden cellars, then tunnels to the alley or to a neighboring house. I’d always hoped to get a look at a place like that.
Porrocks got a little more intense. “How have you been, Lillian?”
“Well—fine, Erma. Just fine.”
“Really. What are you living on?” Porrocks had a little dry voice, but it carried authority. I haven’t yet mentioned that she was a high-level judo expert, so good at leveraging her modest weight and strength that she taught special classes at the police academy on how to subdue obstreperous suspects without bone-breaking violence. Now and then I’d wondered about her private life.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m—I’m working on some, uh, some ideas for—for all these magazines that are interested in my work, you know. And, uh, I’m into my music.”
“Yes, I’ve seen you playing on the streets.” She was looking at me so steadily that I got a little nervous. “Lillian, why don’t you get a job?”
“Oh, God, Erm.” A hot blotch of shame crept up my neck. “Look, I just have to go my own way. You know. I’m trying to—I have some things going.” How fucking embarrassing. I hadn’t thought my circumstances showed that much.
“Your clothes are shabby.” She was looking at the cuffs of my jeans.
“But clean. A lot of people wear frayed clothes. It’s the style.”
“Come on. Even your shoes are frayed.”
It was true, my Bass Weejun penny loafers had been resoled three times now, and yes, the tongues lay soft as mushroom gills. But they were clean.
In fact, I’d tried. My freelance writing just wasn’t bringing in enough money, so I’d applied to several management training programs, one at Comerica Bank, one at J.C. Penney, and one at Midas Mufflers. The tests revealed that I had good verbal skills (news flash there), was lousy with numbers (ditto), and dismal on management skills, however the hell they quantify those things.
Somehow I couldn’t hook into anything solid. I considered trucker school; I considered bartender school; I even considered cosmetology.
Cops excel at letting you dig a hole for yourself.
“I’m doing fine, Erma. Really.” I sank my cutlery into a meatball and lifted a steaming morsel to my mouth, my saliva almost spurting out to meet it. I wolfed the thing down. “I mean, I’m paying my rent and keeping Todd in bunny chow.” I didn’t mention that my landlords had reduced my rent so I could afford to stay there, and that I was foraging in people’s backyards for leaves for my old sick rabbit. “It’s not that I think I’m too good to flip hamburgers or pull weeds, OK? It’s just that I’m, I’m just, I’m—oh, hell.”
“No, you’re not fine.”
“Well, what, then? Have you been opening my bank statements or something?”
“Look, Lillian, I can’t believe you’ve let yourself get into such dire straits. You’re actually going hungry.”
“I’m a fussy eater.”
“You’re not getting enough to eat. Are you depressed?”
“Jesus, what is this? No, I’m not depressed. I’m happy as a goddamn lark.” I kept eating. I hadn’t gotten to the point of borrowing money from anyone. I just kept thinking things would turn around. Something would come up. I kept expecting myself to think of a new thing to do: a business to start, or some fabulous idea for a book everyone would need to buy. Something.
As I sat there talking to Porrocks, what I really wanted to do was burst into tears and wail, “I’ve wasted my life! A newspaper job I blew, a few crummy freelance bylines, a couple of half-assed warehouse jobs where they didn’t even let me drive the forklift, a couple of dollars a night busking on the streets with my mandolin—that’s been it! That’s been fuckin’ it!”
[End of chapter 1 of Easy Street. Get yours here and now.]
About Elizabeth
Elizabeth Sims is the author of the Rita Farmer Mysteries, the Lambda and GCLS Goldie Award-winning Lillian Byrd Crime Series, and other fiction, including the standalone novel Crimes in a Second Language, which won the Florida Book Awards silver medal. Her work has been published by a major press (Macmillan) as well as several smaller houses, and she’s written short works for numerous collections and magazines. She publishes independently under her personal imprint, Spruce Park Press.
In addition, Elizabeth is an internationally recognized authority on writing. She’s written dozens of feature articles on the craft of writing for Writer’s Digest magazine, where she’s a contributing editor. Her instructional title, You’ve Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams (Writer’s Digest Books) has been specially recognized by National Novel Writing Month and hundreds of other web sites and bloggers. When time permits, she teaches creative writing at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, and when time permits, she teaches at conferences and workshops around the United States.
Elizabeth earned degrees in English from Michigan State University and Wayne State University, where she won the Tompkins Award for graduate fiction. She’s worked as a reporter, photographer, technical writer, bookseller, street busker, ranch hand, corporate executive, certified lifeguard, and symphonic percussionist. Elizabeth belongs to several literary societies as well as American Mensa.
Books by Elizabeth Sims
Have you read them all?
Nonfiction
You’ve Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams
Writing a book is easy and fun—yes, EASY AND FUN—but it may not always feel that way. How do you find the time to write? How do you keep momentum? How do you deal with the horror of showing anyone a single sentence of your work-in-progress? The answers remain fun and easy, and author Elizabeth Sims will take your hand, dispel your worries, and show you how it’s done in this stress-free guide to accomplishing your dream of writing your book.
Buy it HERE.
Fiction
It’s not necessary to read either series in order.
The Lillian Byrd Crime Series
Holy Hell [#1]
Lillian Byrd is a small-time reporter with a flair for making big-time mistakes—like getting fired for fending off the boss’s son with an X-Acto knife and breaking up with her girlfriend for no good reason—so her investigation into the disappearances of women in the Detroit area might not be the best idea. But when one of the missing women turns up dead and Lillian recognizes the bizarrely mutilated corpse, she’s in too deep to get out. Of course, it doesn’t help that she’s still fighting off the boss’s son and ducking the intensely aggressive amorous overtures of the roughest dyke in town. Now, after simultaneously blowing the case for the police and revealing herself to the off-kilter killers, she’s completely on her own. Can she catch the murderers before they catch up with her?
Buy it HERE.
Damn Straight [#2]
- Lambda Literary Award Winner -
After her narrow brush with death in Holy Hell, you’d think Lillian Byrd would have learned to keep her head down, but when a friend in crisis calls from California, Lillian jumps on a plane and wings her way from Detroit to Palm Springs—and danger. It’s the weekend of the Dinah Shore golf tournament, the wildest women’s sporting event in the world, when thousands of lesbians descend on the desert community and take over.
At a pre-championship party, Lillian leaps into a slippery romance with a top LPGA star. But her superstar athlete has a secret: Someone is quietly terrorizing her. Lillian, eager to help, goes undercover as a high-profile reporter, an unhinged nun, and a professional caddie while uncovering layer after disturbing layer of the golfer’s past. Finally,
with violence erupting at every turn, Lillian discovers her lover’s ultimate horrifying secret—and it is not at all what she had guessed. Damn Straight sizzles and zings and will have you laughing through your shivers.
Buy it HERE.
Lucky Stiff [#3]
Once again Lillian Byrd is down on her luck, strumming her mandolin for spare quarters alongside Blind Lonnie, Detroit’s resident blues guitarist. But a chance encounter with her childhood friend Duane is about to completely turn her life upside-down. One summer night when Lillian was twelve, flames ripped through the Polka Dot, her parents’ beloved tavern. Three bodies were found in the ashes: those of her mother, her father, and the barmaid, Trix Hawley. Or so Lillian has always thought. But when Lillian and Duane put their stories together, the past erupts into a wild enigma.
As the two friends travel—accompanied by the tenacious crime writer Minerva LeBlanc—to the underbelly of Las Vegas to find the truth about their parents, Lillian must face the demons of the past in ways she never dreamed possible.
Buy it HERE.
Easy Street [#4]
Lillian Byrd’s battered Caprice is convulsing through the last of its death throes; her pet rabbit, Todd, ails; and as usual she’s single—and flat broke. For a few extra bucks she signs on to help an old friend, retired police detective Erma Porrocks, renovate her house, but of course nothing ever goes smoothly in the life of Lillian Byrd. The end of her first day on the job yields a partially demolished wall, a mysterious stash of cash, and a fresh corpse. And Lillian’s attentions are diverted by the appearance of a drop-dead gorgeous neighbor.
The Lillian Byrd Crime Series Page 64
