Detroit Noir

by E. J. Olsen

  "I thought you wanted to be a cop," Stoner said.

  "What? "

  "Didn't you want to be a cop? I thought I remember you say—"

  "When?"

  "I don't know—high school?"

  "Oh hell, that's possible."

  They drove in silence.

  "No, wait. Kill a cop. I said I wanted to kill a cop," Hawkins said, deadpan, then laughed at his own joke.

  Stoner didn't join him.

  The laughter broke into a cough. Hawkins cleared his throat. "Bunch of short-sighted motherfuckers. This is what I keep running into. I'm looking for a partner—not even a real partner. You're my real partner. I need a cop to liaison with the cops. I need a cop like a car dealership needs a washed-up Lions receiver. These idiots would rather take their pissant pensions and drink themselves to death in the La-Z-Boy. They'd rather play their little games, take their penny-ante scores. Like there's anything special in pushing people around with your uniform. You wanna see how special it makes you feel? We could get out at the next intersection."

  Stoner had a bad feeling: He knew exactly what Hawkins was getting at.

  "I'm serious. You look like a cop to me."

  "That's just the uniforms, in the dark."

  "That's what I'm saying." Hawkins dragged on his smoke. "I think we oughta take a little walk around, see what we can do."

  "Man, what are you talking about?"

  "We wouldn't have to be good cops, dude," he said, grinning now. "That's what I'm talking about."

  Hawkins had turned the wrong way leaving downtown. He looked lost, but seemed too angry to care. Stoner was looking for the freeway, any freeway, spotting a section of one now and then, like a man in a desert might see water. The onramp was nowhere in sight.

  They were driving west on Rosa Parks Boulevard, a two-lane artery through some bleak residential neighborhoods. Hawkins looked left and right, and spotted a boarded-up corner party store up ahead, covered in tags. It was the only thing they'd seen that passed for a landmark. Hawkins turned up the street, pulled to the curb, and killed the headlights. "Come on," he said, shutting off the engine and taking the key out of the ignition. He picked his uniform cap off the dashboard, stepped out of the car, and closed the door.

  Stoner got out of the car. Standing up, he felt shaky, and realized how crazy the scene with Red and McSmith had made him feel; sitting in the car since then had only made it worse.

  Hawkins was pulling on rain gear: a poncho, a bonnet for his cap, both gray. The gear covered up the security company insignia on the uniform, and left his holster and badge to the imagination.

  Stoner was amazed: At that moment, Hawkins looked just like a cop.

  He followed him up the center of the dark street.

  "Just keep talking," Hawkins said. "Normal voice. Have a conversation, like you're not afraid of anything, and you won't be."

  Stoner looked in the broken front window of the first house on his right as they walked past. Moonlight shone right through from a window in the rear. He told himself they were all empty—it was a carnival attraction, the haunted street— and that he was calm and ready.

  It wasn't working.

  Hawkins asked him how the Tigers had done the night before, knowing Stoner read the sports section during his lunch break.

  Stoner laughed. The fact that Hawkins cared nothing about sports made his prompt to start talking seem even more ridiculous. But he launched into what he could remember of the newspaper account of Jeremy Bonderman's fourth-inning meltdown on the mound, and Hawkins feigned interest, and soon Stoner noticed his pulse had stopped racing.

  He was beginning to feel pretty good when a figure came from the shadows and slanted across the street up ahead of them.

  "PO-LICE," Hawkins yelled. "HOLD UP!"

  The man stopped and looked back, then turned away from the sight of Hawkins barreling toward him and took a couple of loping steps, without gaining any ground, before Hawkins crashed into his back and sprawled him over the hood of a Lincoln Zephyr.

  "Hold up, hold up," the man sputtered. He was lifting his arms straight above his head, like a diver. Hawkins was doubled over on top of him, catching his breath.

  "Hands on the hood," Stoner said. "Please."

  He looked around. The shouts, the whistle of Hawkins's uniform as his thighs collided during the sprint, the tackle into the car had all sounded to Stoner like gunfire in the quiet. But no lights had come on anywhere in the block. When he glanced back, Hawkins was holding a small, wet-looking wad of money in front of the man's hollow eyes.

  "Where you headed with this, huh?" Hawkins said, panting. When he'd gotten his wind back, he pushed off the hood of the car, then grabbed the man's arm and spun him around. "Go on."

  "My aunt's. My aunt's house." The man stood there, hugging himself. Stoner could see he was waiting, halfheartedly, for his money back.

  "Go on now," Hawkins said, making a shooing motion.

  The man stood a second longer, his lips working like he might cry, then he turned and walked up the street.

  "Jesus Christ," Stoner said.

  "Did you see his hands?" Hawkins asked, holding up his own to look at them. "His fingertips were black, like, down to the second knuckle. Must be he's one of them cutting the copper wire out of the streetlights and shit."

  "Fuck you!" the man shouted back at them.

  Stoner jumped. The man had stopped at the end of the block, but once he'd gotten their attention, he turned away and continued walking.

  Hawkins laughed.

  "Let's get out of here," Stoner said.

  "Yeah," Hawkins replied. "Come on, let's get a beer."

  Back in the car, Stoner drank a beer in two swallows while Hawkins started the engine and drove away. He grabbed another beer, and Hawkins pulled a pint of whiskey from beneath the driver's seat. Hawkins took a swallow and handed it to Stoner, then flipped the wad of cash at him. "Looks like about twenty bucks. Count it."

  It was a five and thirteen ones. "Eighteen."

  "Is that all?"

  The elusive on-ramp appeared suddenly on their right, and Hawkins aimed the car down it.

  Stoner peered over at him. Disheveled, still winded, he looked near collapse, like he'd been up for days, yet he still seemed angry, full of determination.

  For his part, Stoner felt like he'd been in a fight that ended before he was able to throw a punch.

  "The problem," Hawkins said, "is that these people don't have a lot of money, because they spend whatever they can get on drugs."

  They exited the freeway and drove through Greektown, finding their way to Jefferson Avenue. Soon they were heading alongside the Detroit River, a mile east of the Renaissance Center; on their right, gated communities with their own shopping centers; across Jefferson, empty lots and liquor stores, hand-painted sandwichboards advertising bait.

  "Did you see the artist's drawings in the paper, the plans?" Hawkins got a cigarette going. "This is all gonna be part of the new riverfront, and here there's gonna be office and retail and residential all together, like retail on the ground floor, offices and condos upstairs. This is where we need to put the office. I'm telling you, man, we've got to act now. The Super Bowl. The All-Star Game. Terrorists coming over from Canada. There's big money to be made."

  Stoner looked out over the river. He had to admit it was a nice view. "What's the plan?" he asked.

  The crack house sat in weeds and gravel on a street off Grand River and the Jeffries. Wet trash lined the curb between the parked cars. Several newer cars and SUVs were standing, engines idling, and silhouettes moved through the dark between the vehicles. Voices, low and harsh, carried through the night air. Then someone turned up the walk to the front door of the house.

  Hawkins stepped away from the window. "Here comes another," he called.

  Not so loud, thought Stoner, standing in the kitchen. He looked down at the man in the chair, haphazardly bound with bungee cords and duct tape, and caught the guy readin
g the irritation on his face. He'll try to play us against each other. Stoner took a step toward the chair.

  "You ain't police," the man said, just before Stoner forced the gag back into his mouth.

  Now Stoner was truly exasperated.

  "You think?"

  He backed up against the wall and waited. The weight of his Maglite was dragging it slowly down out of his fist. When there was no sound from the front room for too long, he edged around the corner and stage whispered, "What's up?"

  Hawkins was back at the window, his hair standing on end. Stoner glanced around the room: Hawkins's uniform cap lay upside down on an arm of the ratty sofa.

  "I think he saw me."

  "He see the cap?"

  "I think so. He turned back."

  "Ah, fuck."

  "Easy," Hawkins said. "They may've just remembered they never saw the other dude come out."

  "Let's go now."

  "And do what?"

  They'd searched the house, but found only forty dollars, and no drugs at all. The man in the kitchen wasn't talking.

  "You're right," Stoner said. "Let's stick to the plan. If we knock out all the runners, maybe the rich white suburbanites will hop out of their SUVs and come to the door themselves to get robbed."

  "Chill the fuck out."

  Stoner left Hawkins at the front door and went to the bedroom to check on the first guy who'd knocked on the door, the one Hawkins had hit on the head repeatedly with his Maglite. He found the man on the bed where they'd left him. He was sitting up, alert enough to mutter something about swelling, and to call Stoner a fucking cracker. He was a kid, really. He didn't look good. His eyes kept trying to close.

  "Shut up," Stoner told him.

  "Gimme back my money, you prick." The kid sounded disgusted; then, suddenly, he slumped back against the wall and his chin dropped to his chest.

  Stoner moved closer, but couldn't bring himself to reach in and check for a pulse. He stood over the kid until he was satisfied that the kid's chest was actually rising and falling in the dark, that he wasn't just willing himself to see it happen.

  Hawkins called his name from the front of the house, again too loudly.

  He was moving toward Hawkins's voice when something started banging against the outside of the front door.

  Hawkins stood at the peephole with his palms flat against the door. Stoner put his hand on Hawkins's shoulder, and Hawkins took one step sideways, not moving his palms, as if he were bracing the door.

  "Just pulled up," Hawkins said.

  Stoner ducked between Hawkins's arms and put his eye to the peephole, just as the man on the porch began to speak. He ducked again, instinctively, at the sound of the guy's voice, then slowly lined his eye up with the peephole and looked out.

  The man stood with his hands clasped behind his neck and his feet apart, in the stance of someone about to be handcuffed, but he was alone. The black cat between his feet, once Stoner's eyes adjusted, became an oily-looking gym bag.

  "What the point havin' a cell you don't answer it?" the man said.

  "Fuck's he talking about?" Hawkins hissed into Stoner's ear.

  "This some unnecessary bullshit," the man continued, his head back, addressing the night sky.

  Stoner could just make out a dark SUV behind him at the curb. "See if anybody's in that truck," he whispered to Hawkins.

  Crouched by the window, Hawkins shook his head.

  Stoner reached for the deadbolt with his left hand, grasped the doorknob with his right.

  Hawkins scrambled around to the other side of the doorway, hefted his Maglite over his head.

  "Tell him to bring it in," Stoner said.

  "BRING IT IN!"

  Stoner yanked the door open.

  The man on the porch did not step inside.

  When three seconds had passed, Stoner and Hawkins collided in the doorway.

  "Oh, hell no," the man on the porch said. His hands were dropping from behind his neck. He seemed to be caught between kicking the bag and reaching to grab it when Stoner swung the Maglite into the side of his head.

  * * *

  They met at the Ford plant bar the next afternoon. Hawkins was talking to the pretty bartender as she worked a rag over the top of the bar.

  "Hey, Stoner, tell Kiley what part of Detroit you work in."

  "The Central Business District."

  The bartender laughed convulsively, held the back of her wrist to her mouth, trying to stop.

  "See? What I tell ya?" When she moved away to draw a beer for Stoner, Hawkins leaned toward him and said, "We gotta go back."

  "Where?"

  "What? Come on. Thanks, Kiley." Hawkins picked up both of their glasses and started walking toward a booth.

  "Eddie, did you see the newspaper?" Stoner's own voice sounded crazy to him, almost as crazy as Hawkins did.

  "Yeah, I saw it. One of those crackheads had the decency to call an ambulance like you told them."

  "And?"

  Hawkins sat down. "And—everybody's in Detroit Receiving with a headache?"

  "And the fucking FBI is in town investigating the police department."

  "That just means the dickheads the bagman was looking for are gonna be laying low." Hawkins drummed the tabletop, grinning widely. "Fucking three grand, dude!"

  Stoner sat down, shaking his head. "Think about it, man. Even the cops who're total jackoffs have got to be thinking about finding the guys who took down that house, before Internal Affairs tries to pin it on them."

  Hawkins nodded. "They're closing ranks. But that's what always happens when some shit hits the news. I've been doing this for three years, remember."

  "Doing what for three years?"

  "Been a security man three years."

  "They gotta be looking at the patrolmen," Stoner said, thinking aloud, "because who else is gonna go to the trouble for a few hundred bucks?"

  "We did better than that."

  "They don't know how much we got. We took three thousand off the guys they're looking for. And those guys have got to be looking for us."

  He waved the folded Detroit News he was still carrying.

  "And now the FBI is watching everybody," Stoner added.

  "They're looking for dirty cops, not for us."

  "They're looking for dickhead cops. They have no idea that they're looking for cops as dirty as the cops we ripped off."

  "Still—they're looking for dirty cops, so the dirty cops will lay low."

  "Yeah, well, that's also pretty good incentive for the good cops to find us, don't you think?"

  "That's why we have to act fast. We have time for one more score, while they're still all bumpin' dicks."

  "Man, what are you talking about? You want to shake down another house?"

  "I want another gym bag."

  Stoner looked into his cousin's crazy eyes and laughed. "Dumb luck, man."

  "We need two months' rent. Stationery and business cards. I'm telling you, dude, we've got to act now. The Super Bowl. The AllStar Game. Terrorists coming over from Canada. There's big money to be made."

  Stoner thought about the money again.

  He'd already set aside a grand from the bag—a third of the take, less than a full share. That was money enough to fix his truck, or make a down payment on another used car. His cousin could keep the rest, and five hundred of Stoner's share, and put it toward the business. He'd help him tonight, because he could see there was no way Hawkins wasn't going, but that would be the end of it.

  "There's no way we can know about another house that's paying off those cops. What do you want to do, stake out the entire fucking supermarket?"

  "No, dude. We don't have time. We gotta do the same house."

  They went that night.

  They turned off Grand River Avenue onto Fullerton and moved in a grid, staying at least two blocks away from the street the house was on. Hawkins drove slowly, with the headlights off and the windows rolled down. They both sat leaning forward, watching an
d listening.

  Stoner thought it was a good strategy, but it was hard to see much: The houses were set too close together, the spaces between filled with overgrown shrubs and bedsprings.

  Finally he saw yellow police tape poking through the backyards. "Stop," he told Hawkins, pointing.

  Hawkins put the car in park and killed the engine, right in the middle of the street. "That's not the house," he said finally.

  "It's not, is it?"

  "Nope," Hawkins said. "Wrong side of the street. Too far down."

  "Think something else happened?"

  "What do you think?"

  "I think they moved them to this house, here, then called the cops."

  "There must've been something in that house. I mean, we didn't find shit. But there was some shit in there they did not want to give up, or there was too much of it to move."

  "I think they're still in business, at the other house."

  "Man, those guys didn't seem together enough for this." Hawkins sounded scared.