by Dan Ames
There were no leads on who shot up the car.
So I made my way over, past the little shopping area with the Aldi store and a Foot Locker, into the desolated neighborhood behind it. There was a phrase local Detroiters use for people from the suburbs or out-of-towners who love to drive around and see what’s happened to a once-great city. It’s called “ruin porn.” And as I drove around this area just across from Grosse Pointe, I could honestly understand the attraction. It’s a fascinating, albeit sad and depressing, experience.
On the way to where I believed Wayborn Street was located, I passed an old school. Made of brick, it was a beautiful building. But when you looked a little more closely, all the windows were gone, the doors were padlocked even though all of the lower level windows were gone and anyone who heaved themselves up about three feet could get inside. The building was a stunning work of architecture, almost Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style. I had the urge to go inside and look around but knew there were most likely squatters and drug users inside who would be armed in some sense.
In other words, I wasn’t that curious.
I found Wayborn one street over from the abandoned school.
Now, trap houses weren’t exactly my specialty. In fact, being able to tell the difference between a house that sells drugs and one that hosts dog fights and one that has junkies hiding from cops and imaginary demons isn’t all that easy.
The only way, really, is foot traffic.
And car traffic.
On cue, a big pickup truck with a scrawny white guy drove past me, giving me a death glare. He made a point of not moving over so I had to veer toward my side of the street to not get run over. I could see tattoos on the driver’s arms and the expression on his face made him look like he wanted to kill me or rape me. Maybe both.
A white guy looking like that was most definitely looking for drugs, probably not illegal dumping.
The truck drove on and I caught the stench of heavy exhaust.
I continued on and saw a house that instantly met all of my criteria. Boarded up windows but a really stout door. A couple black guys were standing out front like they had just witnessed some kind of commotion. They were looking down the street where the truck had just passed me by.
They went back inside and I waited a few minutes then pulled up in front of the house.
There was no good way to do this.
I parked and went up to the door, knocked on it.
Even standing outside I could detect the stench of marijuana.
After a pause, someone spoke from inside.
“’Fuck you want?”
“Is AJ around?”
There was a little slot in the door and I shoved a twenty dollar bill through it. “I want to ask AJ about a girl he knows, Kierra. Goes by the name of Jade.”
I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see a white girl, way too thin, with a pretty face and a noticeable gap in her front teeth.
“You’re going to get shot,” she said. She had on skin-tight jeans, stiletto heels and a flimsy top.
On cue, a gun came out from the slot in the door. “Get the fuck out of here bro’.”
I raised my hands and backed up. The girl took my spot at the door and I walked back to my car. I noticed a guy in the front window with what looked like an Uzi pointed at me.
I got back in my car and started it up. It seemed like a good idea to wait, to make sure the girl was okay even though on some level I knew that I was ill-equipped to protect her if anything went wrong.
But she made her purchase, turned around, and walked down the sidewalk, past my car with a bag in her hand.
As she walked past, she slid a business card through my window without breaking stride, and without anyone from the house being able to see the move.
I pulled away from the curb once I saw her get into her car and when I was out of view of the guys in the house with the guns, I glanced down at the paper.
It read:
Lace.
And a phone number.
10
She couldn’t move.
A gauzy white haze hung over her eyes. A deep, thrumming vibration washed over her and for a moment she wondered if she was near an airport or a train station but then she quickly realized the sound was coming from inside her. From deep within her chest.
It was a cry, a shriek of terror that came out as nothing more than a low, soft moan.
Her hands were tied.
Her feet were tied.
She didn’t know where she was.
And she only had a vague idea of who she was.
Lost. That’s what she was. Lost in every sense of the word with no hope of ever getting back.
Back to what?
Back to where?
Home? What she used to be? Who she used to be?
An onslaught of images and memories crashed into her mind, fought for space and clarity.
Nothing made sense anymore.
All she wanted to do was cry.
But she had forgotten how.
11
The next stop was my office. Crossing Alter and being back in Grosse Pointe was always an interesting feeling. Truth be told, I was never actually fearful in Detroit, but a heightened sense of alertness always made sense. However, it was a state of tension and afterward called for some relaxation strategies.
So once back in my office, I decided to lower my alert level via an ice cold beer. Inside my office fridge, I popped a top to a cold Dirty Blonde, brewed just down the street at Atwater Brewery and took a nice long drink. Nothing better than being alone in your office with a dirty blonde.
Thinking about the case made me want to organize some things on paper. So I brought out my notebook, flipped to a new page and jotted down everything that had happened so far, along with a to-do list. Number one on that list was getting ahold of Kierra’s cell phone records. I had a few ideas on that one. Once I had my thoughts roughly organized, I pulled out the card with the girl’s name and number from the trap house. Since she had been buying drugs at the time, I assumed, it occurred to me that it might be better to wait so I wouldn’t catch her in the middle of a high. But then again I didn’t really know her drug use schedule, so what the hell. No better time than the present.
I punched in the numbers and listened to it ring. Just when I thought it was going to voicemail a voice answered.
“’lo?”
“Hi,” I said. “Is this Lace?”
There was a long pause and I thought I could hear music in the background and maybe soft breathing.
Should have listened to my instincts. If I’d ever heard someone whose breathing sounded really high, this was it.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Meet me at Bush Gardens,” she said, in a voice just above a whisper. “I’ll be there in a few hours.” All the words sounded slurred together when she said them, but once I concentrated, I could make out what she was saying.
I was about to ask another question when the line disconnected.
For the kids at home, Bush Gardens is a strip club on 8 Mile Road in Detroit, not to be confused with the place in Florida where you can pet exotic species. Then again, having said that, I do realize there might be some similarities.
The Dirty Blonde hit empty, and I decided against another.
My computer was slow booting up but eventually I found my way to Google and did some more searching for Kierra, including using some special websites and databases known only to law enforcement. My sister Ellen had grudgingly allowed me access to the sites for my own personal endeavors and I put them to good use occasionally.
The good news was Kierra’s name didn’t come up in any of them. So she hadn’t been arrested, incarcerated, or tagged in a morgue. The bad news was there was no record of her anywhere.
The clock said I was getting near dinnertime and I decided maybe the best idea would be to head home and grab a bite to eat before I made my way out to the strip club.
Telling Anna that my case was
taking me out to 8 Mile wasn’t a big deal. She knew that half the time I was going after criminals and let’s face it, there was more than a fair share of criminals at strip clubs.
Still, sometimes it was a little weird to sit down to a delicious home-cooked meal and then head to a place full of naked women.
When I got home, everyone was already eating so I grabbed a plate, hugged everyone and sat down.
My two girls are naturally the apples of my eye. They couldn’t be more different. Isabel, the oldest, was a highly verbal, first-born assertive leader at seven years old. Nina was a laid-back prankster at five years old. Life with the two of them and their feisty mother was a non-stop cavalcade of entertainment to me. They all cracked me up constantly. Of course, Anna sometimes got mad at me for taking great delight in whatever the girls did, good or bad. Maybe because I had seen death up close and personal that I tended to embrace the moment more than just about anyone I knew. It was very clear to me how quickly things could be taken away.
12
After dinner, I made sure all of the homework was either done or well on its way to being done, gave hugs and kisses all around and hopped back into the car.
Since there was no huge rush, I decided to take Lakeshore Drive on my way up to Vernier, which is what 8 Mile Road basically became once it passed over the freeway heading east toward Lake St. Clair. The lake was calm, with a beautiful silver sheen that set off the distant strip of horizon that was Canada. In this distance I could just make out the silhouette of a tanker heading north.
I turned left at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club, then took Vernier into Detroit proper and made my way along 8 Mile Road. The street after which the famous movie (or infamous if you pay too much attention to the dialogue: ‘I hear you’re a real dope rapper…’ was named doesn’t have a lot to look at. A few strip malls, tiny bars, huge empty parking lots and strip clubs. Yes strip clubs. Quite a few of them, in fact. But you would never confuse them with say, strip clubs in Las Vegas. These were dark, dilapidated clubs that looked like someone had taken an abandoned dollar store and hired the clerks to dance.
Bush Gardens was a strange looking structure that looked like it been put together by someone who had salvaged new building supplies of all kinds and succeeded in using every one of them. There was a brick frame around the front façade, pale stucco panels, aluminum trim and even some bizarre copper cladding. There were some fake palm trees out front, the only nod to Florida’s Busch Gardens that I could see.
I had to valet my car at the cost of eight dollars, even though there were a dozen empty parking spots within ten feet of the front door.
Inside, the thump of the giant subwoofers went right through me. I smelled a strange mixture of perfume slightly tinged with cigarette smoke.
“Need a booth?” a bouncer asked me. He had on a ridiculously tight polo shirt that revealed huge arms with bulging veins. His face was red and I thought if his body exploded, I wondered how much damage steroids and protein powder could do in an enclosed space.
“No thanks,” I said.
There was a runway that went down the middle of the space, with tables right along the edge. On two slightly raised platforms on each side of the tables were booths. There were a couple of fat guys seated at different tables, and there was a black guy in one of the booths with about five strippers seated around him.
He either had money, drugs, or was just very, very lucky with the ladies.
At the bar, I ordered a light beer and turned to the stage. A woman way too old to be a stripper was on her knees doing something with her ass that looked more like an exercise to relieve hip pain than anything sexual.
I didn’t see any other dancers in the stage area so I glanced over at the booth where all the action seemed to be taking place. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but I was pretty sure that Lace was sitting two girls away from the black guy.
There were quite a few things in the world I certainly didn’t know about. Britney Spears’ bra size. Donald Trump’s toupee manufacturer. Or how to field dress a wildebeest, for instance.
I did know, however, that in strip clubs money talked and bullshit walked.
So I flagged down a girl carting drinks around, slipped her two twenties, and told her to keep one and give the other to Lace and I raised my chin toward the booth.
When my messenger completed her task, everyone in the booth turned to look at me and then turned back and several of them started laughing.
The black guy was the only one who didn’t even smile.
Lace got up and walked toward me. She looked stoned out of her mind and I wondered what the odds were that she would even remember me. She had on a tiny red dress that barely covered her lower parts and showed most of her upper parts. In addition to the dress she wore a pair of ridiculous shoes that were made of clear plastic and added about six inches to her height. But her skin was practically translucent and she was shivering. Zero percent body fat will do that to you.
She came up, slipped both arms around me and whispered in my ear.
“Let’s go in the back.”
Lace took me by the hand and we walked past the booth, past the old stripper on stage to the back rooms that were enclosed by red curtains. Another bouncer came out.
“It’s ten for a booth,” he said. I fished out a ten, handed it to him, and Lace maneuvered her way to a corner booth, wobbling slightly, at the back of the enclosed space.
I sat down on the little leather bench and Lace pulled the curtain closed behind her. She started taking off her dress.
“Whoa!” I said. “No need to disrobe.”
“It’s still twenty-five,” she said and then promptly sat on my lap.
“Do I know you?” she asked.
“Yeah, you gave me your card. I think you heard me asking about Kierra.”
Her eyes were at half-mast but at the sound of Kierra’s name they widened enough to look almost normal.
“Why were you asking about Kierra?” she said.
“I’m trying to find her. Do you know anything about her?”
She leaned back and looked at me.
“Dances are thirty bucks,” she said.
I almost said something about her earlier quoted price being twenty-five, but decided against it. She weighed next to nothing and the gap in her teeth looked bigger.
I gave her forty.
“She used to dance here,” she said, jamming the bills somewhere down below. “Went by the name of Jade. We were friends and I’m trying to find her, too. I wouldn’t have said anything to you but you look like a nice guy,” she said.
I had pretty much guessed that Lace was going to tell me Kierra had worked here, but was still surprised at how thoroughly Kierra had hidden her secret job from her parents and her social media accounts. I hadn’t seen a single picture or reference to the club.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
Lace shrugged her paper-thin shoulders. “A week or two ago? I don’t know. I have trouble keeping track of time.”
“Did Kierra use drugs, too?” I said.
It would have been laughable if she had denied it and I saw her almost start to, then realize there was no point. “Yeah, she did, too. I felt kind of responsible because I was supposed to be a little bit of a mentor to her when she started dancing.”
She laughed.
“Me? Taking care of someone else?” she laughed again and for a brief moment I saw a sweet, pretty girl behind the obvious signs of drug abuse.
“Did she say anything to you the last time you saw her? Say where she was going? Who she was going with?” I pressed.
“No,” Lace said. “She mentioned her grandfather a couple of times, though. They must have been close.”
Grandfather? That was strange. Why hadn’t Marvin said anything to me about the fact that his daughter was so close to her grandfather? Strange detail to leave out.
“That guy in the booth?” I asked. “Is he your dealer?”
S
he giggled and the music stopped briefly.
“You have to pay me again if you want to keep talking.”
Two more twenties went into her hand and then disappeared.
She looked at me, and started grinding a little bit to the music. Probably already anticipating the high she was going to get with the money I’d given her.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “That guy out there, is he your dealer?” I repeated.
“No. You make it sound so formal,” she laughed again. “I buy when I can and from who I can. No real strategy.”
“What about Kierra? Did she buy drugs from that guy?”
“I don’t think so. Jade bought from a guy called….I don’t remember. Initials. KJ, maybe?”
“Or AJ?”
She shrugged again.
“I liked Jade,” she said. “She was my friend. I miss her.”
I pulled one of my business cards out and gave it to her. “I know someone who could help you,” I said. “If you want to get out of this life.”
Lace’s eyes flashed. “If you want to give me a tip, make it cash. Otherwise fuck off.”
Another twenty went into her hand and I got to my feet.
“Call me if you think of anything else.”
13
About halfway to the warehouse the black punk started to wake up so Clay waited until he was free of traffic, pulled out the sap, and pounded the asshole’s head until his eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped back into the foot space.
“Nighty night,” Clay said.
If you were a person who had an occasional need for an abandoned property, especially a warehouse, there was no better city in the world than Detroit. For starters, the auto industry collapsed years ago and all the jobs went to Mexico or China. Clay knew this because his own kind had all lost their jobs and either fled up to northern Michigan to crank out meth, or back home to Kentucky and Alabama to resume their redneck ways.
