by Orca Various
“What’s going on, Rennie? You aren’t in any trouble, are you? Maybe you’d better let me speak to Mr. Mitron.”
“He’s not here, Grandma. I mean, I’m not there. I’m not in Uruguay. I’m in Detroit.”
“Detroit? What on earth are you doing there?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Uncomplicate it, Rennie.” She sounds flinty now. She’s nearly seventy, retired but far from inactive, and no one’s idea of a grandmother. At least, she isn’t my idea of one. She’s fit and dresses like a million dollars, and no one pushes her around. She’s one of the few people I know who can hold her own with the Major.
I glance at the mirror and wonder if Carver is behind it. Or if anyone else is. I know why I’ve been allowed to make this call, but I can’t help asking something else before I get to the point.
“Grandma, did David McLean ever say anything to you about Argentina?”
“Argentina? I thought you said you were in Uruguay—before Detroit, I mean.”
“I was. But I need to know about Argentina.”
“I don’t think I can help you, Rennie. I want you to come home. Now.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. Did he ever seem strange to you, Grandma? Or act strange? Or disappear sometimes?”
“Who?”
“David McLean.”
“I don’t like these questions, Rennie. Tell me where you are. I’ll arrange a flight home for you and call you with the information.”
Okay, there’s no avoiding it now.
“The thing is, Grandma, I’m at a police station.”
“Police station?” She does not like the sound of that.
“It’s okay.” At least, I sincerely hope it is. “There was a mix-up.”
“What kind of a mix-up?”
“Someone got killed.”
“Killed?”
I hear Ari in the background, asking what this is all about and who got killed.
“Rennie, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Grandma. There’s just been a mix-up, that’s all.” I’m on my feet and walking to the door of the interrogation room. I can’t wait to hand the phone to Carver. “There’s a detective here who wants to talk to you, Grandma.”
“Detective? What detective?”
“His name is Carver. He’s a homicide detective.”
Carver is waiting in the hall, still working on his coffee. When he hears his name, he comes away from the filing cabinet he was leaning against and starts for me. I hand him the phone.
“It’s my grandmother.”
“Name?”
“Melanie Cole.”
Carver takes the phone. “Mrs. Cole? Detective Dan Carver, Detroit Police.”
Then Carver is talking to her. His voice is calm. He tells her that I’ve witnessed something and that because I’m a foreign national and a minor, he’d appreciate if she could come down here and do some paperwork, because they might need me to return sometime in the future as the case progresses and he wants to make sure that’s not going to be a problem. He spends a lot of time with her, and he stays calm and seems to answer most of her questions—although, of course, some of the answers are, “I’m afraid I can’t go into that, ma’am. It’s an ongoing investigation.” But he does assure her that I’m okay.
I guess they work things out, because he turns to me and says, “She plays hardball, your grandma.” He doesn’t explain. He just hands the phone back to me, and the next thing I know, my grandma is giving me a lecture on getting my butt back to my hotel room and staying there until she gets there. “Don’t you even think about not being there when I arrive, Rennie, because I will call your father if I have to.” Translation: She’s angry and—if you want my opinion—a little scared, and she will not hesitate to bring in the big guns (the Major) if I give her even an iota of trouble.
I tell her no problem. I tell her I don’t want trouble any more than she does. That part is true. Trouble is the last thing I want. The part about staying put—well, I came here for a reason, and there’s no way I’m going to let Eric stop me from making a last attempt to get what I want.
Carver makes me hand over my passport and my driver’s license.
“So you don’t get the urge to leave me flat,” he says. “And so you’ll plant yourself in your hotel room and stay there until your granny gets there.”
I sign a receipt for my ID. I sign some other papers. Carver gives me his card, and I agree to check in with him. I give him my cell number so that he can check in with me. I listen to his lecture about doing what my grandma said. Then he lets me walk free.
ELEVEN
By now I’ve been wearing the same clothes for days. When I leave the police station, I think about heading over to Jacques’s diner to pick up my duffel bag. But then I pass a discount store. It’s right there, a couple of blocks from where I’m staying. So I deke inside and pick up new underwear, socks and a T-shirt. I also buy a pair of gloves. I’m tired of my hands freezing all the time. I start back to the hotel, dreaming the whole way about a long hot shower followed by something to eat.
I see the Holiday Inn. I turn to go in the front door. Someone says, “Spare some change?”
I look down. There’s a guy about my age sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk. He’s bareheaded. He has a cap—a baseball-type cap, not a warm hat—but it’s on the cement in front of him instead of on his head. There’s a handful of coins in it. He looks up at me.
“Spare some change for a hot meal?” he says.
I look him over. Usually I’m not in much of a position to hand out cash. But it’s freezing cold, it’s New Year’s Eve, there aren’t many people on the street, and this guy looks like he could use something to eat even more than I could. But before I can dip into my pocket, a guy in a suit with a hotel name tag pinned to it—a Thomas Hadley clone—rushes out the door and tells us both to get lost.
“I’m sick of you people hanging around out here bothering our guests,” he says. “I’ve called security. They’re on their way to clear you off.”
The guy on the sidewalk laughs at that. “Right,” he says. “Like a panhandler is going to make the top of their list.”
The suit glowers at him. He turns and snaps his fingers, and two burly guys in security-guard uniforms come at us. One grabs me. The other hauls the panhandler to his feet.
“Get out of here now,” the suit says. “Get a job.”
The panhandler draws himself up straight. “I have a job.” He looks at the guard whose hand is clamped like a vise around my arm. “You know it, too. You bought a car at Honest John’s. You’ve seen me there.”
The guard’s face changes slowly from growling animal to surprised recognition. “Yeah, right. You’re the kid who sweeps up. You wash cars, too, when it’s warmer.”
The panhandler nods. “Yeah. And I do security at night sometimes, so we’re practically colleagues.”
The suit snorts, like, right! “If you had a job, you wouldn’t be harassing my guests,” he says.
“It’s not my fault the job doesn’t pay enough,” the kid says. “A guy’s got to make ends meet.”
“Well, make them meet somewhere else,” the suit says. To the guards, he says, “Get them out of here.”
The two burly guards start to manhandle us down the street.
“Hey! I’m staying here,” I say.
Nobody listens to me. The two guards muscle us until we’re all the way down the block. Then they march back into the lobby.
I look at the panhandler. I pull out my wallet and hand him a couple of twenties. Then I pull the tuque off my head and give that to him too.
“Keep your head warm, and it’ll keep the rest of you warmer,” I tell him.
He puts on the tuque and pulls it down over his forehead, smiling.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
I march back to the hotel, push my way into the lob
by and am halfway to the elevators when the suit shows up again.
“I thought I told you—”
I flash him my room card. He insists I follow him to the front desk, where he checks the room number in the computer. He demands to see identification. I fight the urge to deck him and reach for my passport. But I don’t have it. Detective Carver does. I show him my credit card again. He snorts.
“How do I know it’s not stolen?”
“Thomas Hadley checked me in. He saw my ID.”
The guard shakes his head. His eyes dart somewhere over my shoulder.
“Mr. Hadley!”
I turn and there he is.
“This…person says you know him,” the suit says.
Hadley looks me over. “He’s a guest.”
“He doesn’t have ID.”
“I said he’s a guest, Lionel.”
Lionel must be an underling, because he backs down. I’m free to make my way to the elevators. I pass Thomas Hadley on the way.
“Just out of curiosity,” he says, “what happened to your ID?”
“You sure you want to know?”
He considers the question. “Have a pleasant stay.” He continues on through the lobby.
I go up to my room, where I strip, shower and change into the clean things I just bought. I think about breakfast. I look at the bed.
When I wake up, it’s late afternoon. There’s a message on my phone. It’s my grandmother, telling me that she’ll arrive sometime tonight and warning me, again, to stay put. It sounds like the sensible thing to do, but I have unfinished business. Besides, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt me.
I walk from the hotel to the old man’s place. It’s colder out than it was earlier in the day, and now I don’t have a hat. Stupid-looking as it was, it kept my head warm. And what I told the panhandler is true—when your head is warm, so is the rest of you. I stop along the way to buy another tuque. The selection at the place where I stop is as bad as it was at the airport. Don’t you know it, I end up with another red-and-white-striped hat, this one even goofier than the last one.
But it’s warm, and it’s not like I’m trying to impress anyone.
When I get to the house, Eric is outside, tossing handfuls of salt onto the front walk.
“Hey,” he says when he sees me. “You okay? Last time I saw you, you were shaking like a wet dog.”
“Where were you?” I ask. “Didn’t they question you?”
“The cops? Yeah. But I was gassing up. I missed all the action. What happened?”
I look at him, this time with a bunch of questions bumping up against each other in my head. For example: This murder the cops are looking at him for—is that why Katya is so determined to get him out of town? Is that what she wants him to put behind him? If it is, then it sounds like she thinks the cops have it all wrong, like she doesn’t believe her little brother Ricky could hurt anyone, let alone beat them and shoot them.
For example: Despite what Katya might think, did Eric do it? Is Carver right, and am I looking at the guy who not only decided to kill two black college kids, but who actually went through with it? Carver says he’s pretty sure there were a couple of guys with him. He didn’t say what role he thought they played. What he said was that Eric was a person of interest. Just Eric. He didn’t mention anyone else by name.
For example: Does Eric know that Duane was a cop? Does that have anything to do with what happened last night? Or was last night’s shooting just some crazy, random thing that happens in a run-down city where no one has a decent job and anyone who can afford to leave has already hightailed it out of town?
“What do you mean, what happened?” I say.
“I mean, how did it go?”
“I’m standing here, aren’t I?”
He looks at me through slit-narrow eyes and nods. “Were you able to help them out?”
I give him one of the Major’s patented looks, like I don’t know what he means and if he wants an answer, he’s going to have to explain.
“You never told me what happened in that alley,” he says.
It’s true. The whole time we were waiting for the ambulance back there at the mouth of that alley, I didn’t open my mouth. I think—I can’t remember exactly—that Eric might have said something. Maybe he asked me a question. Maybe he asked me a hundred of them. But I didn’t answer. I kept seeing Spider Face and the gun in his hand. Then Duane, not moving. I kept remembering how I squatted down and my hand that touched the ground came away all sticky, and I couldn’t see what it was, even though I knew it was blood. I didn’t see it clearly until I came out of that alley, until the paramedics had me in the back of their truck and were checking me out. That’s when I got a clear look at my hands and at the whole front of myself. That’s when I saw all that blood.
“There’s not much to tell,” I say. “We went back to get that fridge, like you said. Some guys showed up. One of them shot Duane.” I start shaking again just remembering it. “If you’d pulled the truck around like you said you would, if you’d shone some light back there, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”
“What?” He’s staring at me like I just grew a second head. “You’re blaming me for Duane getting shot?”
“It was your fridge. We were doing you a favor. Why didn’t you do what you said you were going to do?”
“I told you. I was getting gas. You didn’t want to have to carry that fridge back here on your back, did you?”
Like I would have done that!
“Look,” he says, lowering his voice. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened. Duane was a good guy, and I hope the cops get whoever did this. That’s why I asked you if you were able to help them out.”
Eric is about the same height as me, but stockier. He’s got no hair under that cap on his head, but if he had, it would probably be black like his eyebrows, which are thick and almost meet over the bridge of his nose. His eyes are as dark as his eyebrows, and they’re filled with emotion now. The thing is, I can’t tell whether the emotion I’m seeing is the real deal or if he’s faking it.
He leans in to me. “What did you tell them?”
“What do you think? I told them exactly what happened.”
“The guys who did it, did you see them?”
“I saw the main guy.”
“So you described him to the cops?” He’s all eager, like, good for me, maybe I’ve given them what they need to crack this case.
“The guy had a massive tattoo on his face.”
“A tattoo?”
“A spider. It covered practically his whole face. There can’t be that many guys around who look like that.”
“What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you recognize him?”
“No!” Why would I? I don’t know anyone in town. Besides, all I remember—all I could tell Carver—was that tattoo. There wasn’t time for anything else.
“This guy. Did he see you, Rennie?”
“I guess so. I mean, he must have seen me as well as I saw him.”
Eric’s expression is somber. “Then you’d better be careful.”
“Me? What for?”
“You saw a guy shoot and kill someone right in front of you. That’s what happened, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And he saw you. Geez, think about it, Rennie. You’re an eyewitness to a murder.”
“Right.” A pretty useless eyewitness, if you ask me. I glance up at the house. “I’m going home tonight,” I tell him. “Back to Canada until the cops here need me. I just wanted to say goodbye to your grandfather. Is he home?”
“Yeah. He’s in his room. Go on in, if you want. The door’s open.”
The door to the house is open. The door to the old man’s room isn’t. When I knock, he wants to know who it is. When I say it’s me, there’s only silence. When I knock again, he says, “Keep your shirt on!” It’s another minute before he unlocks the door, opens it a couple of inches and squints out a
t me.
“What do you want?”
He sounds angry. Looks angry too. At first, I think he doesn’t remember me.
“You’re here to quiz me about Nazis, aren’t you?” he demands.
“You said you were going to see if you could find out anything about a guy named Franken,” I remind him. “The man I think Mirella was married to.”
“And you said you would tell me why you wanted to know. But you didn’t. You haven’t told me a damn thing.”
I don’t know for sure what flew up his nose, but he’s angry, all right. Good and angry. He’s standing in the sliver of space between the door and the frame, blocking it with his walker and scowling at me like I’m an Amway salesman.
“If you don’t want to talk to me, just say so,” I say. “I’ll leave.” Actually, I have no intention of leaving until I find out if he knows anything. But I’m hoping he’ll calm down.
His sour expression stays firmly in place, but he backs up his walker a pace and throws open the door so I can come in. But he doesn’t sit down and doesn’t invite me to take a seat either. He says, “Why are you so interested in this fellow Franken?”
I already told Detective Carver what I was doing here, so the secret’s out. I can’t do any more harm by telling Curtis. I pull out my wallet and take out the two pictures from Adam. I hand him the one from the newspaper.
“My cousin sent me this,” I say.
Curtis squints at the picture. He makes his way to a cluttered table, sits down and switches on a lamp so he can take a better look. Then he says, “Glasses. Table beside the bed.” I go over to the bedside table but don’t see any glasses. “Drawer,” he says. I open the drawer and find a massive glasses case. It holds one of those giant pairs of glasses that old men seem to like—don’t ask me why. They cover more face than eye. He slips them on and takes another look. I can’t tell if he recognizes the face or not.
“It’s the one that’s circled,” I say.
“I get that,” he grumps at me. “That’s an SS uniform. This man was in the SS.” He puts the picture down. “And this is supposed to be Franken?”
