“Has anyone ever mentioned you look even more handsome when you’re worried?” Julia said.
Navarro offered Julia his perfect smile and then rapped his knuckles hard against the roof of her SUV.
“Got to go, babe,” he said. He leaned farther into the car, gave her a lingering kiss, and then returned to his Tahoe, all the while keeping his focus on Julia to make sure she arrived safely inside her destination.
* * *
Julia gave two hard knocks on the front door of the building that was owned by one of her best sources, Tyce Jones, a former major drug dealer in Detroit who was now an entrepreneur. Despite his legit transformation, Tyce was still Charlie Hustle, working all the angles to make a mark in the music scene.
A giant man with lustrous ebony skin and a Rasta tam hat opened the door and stared way down at Julia. “What you want?”
“Hello, Rufus. So nice to see you, too. I need to see Tyce, please.”
“He’s sleeping. He had a late night at the club.”
“It’s an emergency. Tyce is expecting me.”
Rufus slammed the door, his usual welcome to Julia.
Navarro, who was still on the lookout, started to get out of his car, but Julia waved her hand, letting him know she was okay.
The door opened up again and Rufus popped his head out.
“You carrying?” he asked.
“As always, no. I don’t own a gun.”
“Just let her in, for Christ’s sake.”
Rufus moved out of the way of his boss, who was making a slow roll toward Julia in his wheelchair. Tyce Jones wore a Detroit Pistons cap that sat backward on his head, a red leather jacket, white pants, and a pair of red lace-up Jimmy Choo sneakers. He pulled off a pair of large gold DITA Grandmaster sunglasses and rubbed his eyes.
“I’ve got a killer hangover. You got anything in your bag?”
“Yes, special delivery from Helen,” Julia said, and pulled out a carefully wrapped brown paper bag with fresh pierogies. “Eat them quick. They’re still warm.”
“They better be, making a man wake up so early. I was out late last night dancing.”
“Dancing?”
“Come on, Gooden. My legs might not work, but I can still move in this chair. Lots of pretty mammas want to sit on my lap when I get moving,” Tyce said, and slapped his hands on the arms of his wheelchair. “If you’re done talking trash about the disabled, follow me.”
Tyce led the way up his wheelchair ramp to his office on the second floor, which was complete with two gaudy red leather couches that matched his sneakers.
The bigger, the louder, the better. Tyce Jones’s style.
Tyce let out a cavernous yawn, showing off his two gold front teeth.
“I didn’t mean to sound like a jerk about the dancing thing.”
“I was just playing with you. I know you, Gooden. We’re cool,” Tyce said. “If you came during business hours, I’d show you the crazy mix-up we’re creating downstairs in my music studio.”
“Last time I was here, you were mixing up speed metal and gospel.”
“You remembered. The heaven-and-hell mix-up. People weren’t ready for that. I wait for people to catch up to me because I’m so far ahead. But now I’m working a slick new sound. I’m going back to my roots, straight-up reggae with a mix, but not rap, too many mainstream guys into that now and watering down that shit. We’re getting down to some homegrown reggae roots with a zydeco backtrack this time. I’m talking a couple of white-ass nerds playing fiddles and accordions in bow ties and square little glasses and my smooth Jamaican brothers bringing it on home.”
“That’s right. Your mom’s from Jamaica,” Julia said.
“She still remembers when you came to visit me in the hospital after I got shot and wound up in this thing. That’s when I knew you were a friend, not a person you’d twist for information. You hung by me, paying your respects, and didn’t ask any questions,” Tyce said, and pressed a button on his intercom system. “Hey, Animal, get your ass up here. Julia Gooden wants to hear you sing.”
“No, I don’t. Really. No offense, but I don’t have time.”
“It’s gonna be worth it.”
Animal, aka Tyce’s cousin, who Julia had recently learned was actually named Rufus, stood on the other side of Tyce’s desk like a mammoth statue that could only be moved by some kind of ultrapowered heavy machinery.
“Jimmy Cliff’s ‘Many Rivers to Cross.’ Hit it, cuz. I want you to blow her mind until there’s nothing left in that big reporter’s brain of hers,” Tyce said. He leaned back in his chair, with his laced hands resting on the back of his head.
“Come on, Tyce,” Julia started, but Rufus closed the door tight and planted his massive, and probably gun-packing, frame a foot away from Julia.
Rufus closed his eyes, tilted his giant head toward the heavens, and began singing the first few strains of the reggae song in a perfect, heartbreaking pitch.
“That’s beautiful. Honestly,” Julia interrupted. “But a woman is about to get killed if I don’t help her.”
“Another day in the ’hood,” Tyce said. “All right. You heard the lady. Haul your ass out of here, Animal. Makes me want to cry every time I hear your voice, though.”
Julia waited until the door closed and then dove in.
“Who do you know that does black magic or voodoo in the city? Probably someone on the fringe.”
“Damn, girl, you always come to me with some crazy shit. This about the stories I seen about those women being killed in the churches?”
“That’s right. The killer called me last night. He told me he’d give me a clue about the next victim. He said I needed to look for dark magic in the city.”
“Mmmm. You think ’cause I’m a black man I should be some kind of authority on this subject? First you knock the disabled and now you’re trying to take down a brother.”
“I’d never do that. You know what’s happening on the street more than anyone I know, even most of the cops.”
“All right, Gooden. I’m just yanking your chain. You’re so damn serious all the time,” Tyce said. “I got the pulse of the streets better than the cops, huh? Flattery will get you in a little bit, sugar. Sure, I know something about that. We got black magic in Jamaica, you know. We call it Obeah. It’s closer to Haitian voodoo. It’s serious stuff where my mom comes from. I’ve been there before, middle of nowhere in the hills of St. Mary in Jamaica. You can still get your ass whipped by the cops or sent to jail if you get caught messing with it. Granted, the people who practice Obeah these days live in the sticks. Bunch of uneducated dudes with two teeth, if they’re lucky, running around in the country, believing in that crazy business.”
“You know people who practice black magic in Detroit?”
Tyce leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands together behind the back of his neck, and looked up at the ceiling.
“There’s a sister, she got a place down on Broadway. She has a business, on the down low. It’s not because she’s doing anything bad. This lady, she’s shrewd. She just doesn’t want to pay no taxes. She’s from Haiti. Her name is Roseline Alcy. She knows my mamma.”
“She’s got a shop?”
“Nah, it’s a home business. Roseline does readings and blessings. She sells stuff, too, cemetery dust, herbs, oils, shit people use for potions. She’ll make one up special for you or she’ll sell you the goods to do it yourself. She also got gris-gris, you know, voodoo dolls and mojo bags. She has a full-service shop. For the right price, she’ll serve up a blessing or a curse, depending on your individual needs. I thought about using her once when I first got in this chair, but you wound up taking care of that for me with your stories.”
“How do you know about gris-gris and voodoo?”
“Like I said, my mamma taught me about it. What I’ve found, through the years, a lot of that hocus-pocus stuff gets tangled up together. Obeah, witchcraft, black magic, voodoo—people just looking for something to make their lives
better, just like when they go to church in their Sunday best to take Communion. Gris-gris is like a rabbit’s foot or a four-leaf clover, if you ask me. I don’t know if the Roseline chick believes in that kind of stuff or if she’s just doing it to make bank. From what I hear, she does a good business in town.”
“You got an address for this Roseline?”
“I got an address for everyone, whether I’ve met them or not. I am the unofficial badass prince of Detroit.”
Tyce busied himself on his phone until he found what he was looking for. “She’s on Broadway. 1306. She lives in an apartment complex. Eight-G.”
“The 1300 block of Broadway,” Julia repeated. “That’s a decent area of the city.”
“You sound surprised. What, you expect her to be living in the projects? Girl is a money-making entrepreneur. Got to love that. If my reggae-zydeco mix-up doesn’t get me to the Billboard Music Awards, maybe I’ll look her up. A scrappy businessman like myself, I’m always looking for a new angle.”
“Charlie Hustle. That’s you.”
“Damn straight. So you say the killer called you personally? Sounds like he’s a cat and wants you to be the mouse he can bat around. Watch yourself. The cat, he always wins, and the mouse gets eaten.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be the one who catches the cat first.”
“That’s you. Small, but deadly. You go then, you crazy mother.”
“One last favor. Call this Roseline and let her know I’m on my way to see her.”
“It’s always one last favor with you. Fine. But if you need anything else, don’t call me until the sun goes down. Thank Helen for the eats. I’m hauling my ass back to bed.”
CHAPTER 10
Navarro pulled his Chevy Tahoe into a trailer park on the outskirts of Highland Park and stopped across from the address Jeb Wilson’s probation officer had given him.
Navarro knew he needed to stay focused on the case of the two murdered runners, and the recently released convict inside the trailer, who had brutally raped a nineteen-year-old woman. Navarro had read Wilson’s file over and over until he memorized it. He was never a skimmer on the details.
The scene of how Wilson had abducted his victim played in Navarro’s head. Wilson had ambushed the girl in the back lot of the Dunkin’ Donuts where she worked. The victim had a routine and took out the trash in the back of the store at exactly three PM, the end of her shift, the time Wilson had snatched her up.
Like the Magic Man Killer, Wilson planned to precision.
A slow burn grew inside Navarro as he realized the teen who Wilson tortured and raped would never be the same.
Clean and simple: Jeb Wilson was a bad man. Navarro woke up every morning with the same sense of purpose. He needed to make sure he kept the bad men like Jeb Wilson away from the innocents, and especially away from the people he loved.
At thirty-seven, Navarro was still relatively young, but a veteran on the force with fifteen years on the job. In that time, he’d learned some valuable lessons, including that a cop should always keep their personal business at home and as far away from the job as possible. You let your emotions slip or you allow your mind to drift to your own problems when you were working a case, it was a real possibility that you would wind up dead. Or worse, your partner would be killed because you lacked discipline, and their death would be your fault.
But the Magic Man Killer was different. The woman Navarro loved more than anything he ever had was in trouble.
Nothing new for Julia Gooden.
Still, Navarro had a bad feeling about this one. His abuela, his grandma Christina, had given him a piece of advice he thought was just an old wives’ tale, yet one he never forgot. One Sunday as they walked hand in hand back home from church, his grandma had told him the little voice inside a person’s head, instinct, your gut, whatever you wanted to call it, was a warning from God. That worry that wouldn’t let go was a voice from heaven to look out for the mal de ojo.
The evil eye.
Navarro’s father was from Spain, and his mother had been second-generation Mexican American. In his maternal grandmother’s Mexican culture, the evil eye was a big deal. If someone possessed a malignant internal power that was strong enough, they could drain or completely flick out another person’s soul. If you believed in that sort of thing.
Navarro didn’t think the evil eye was necessarily real, but he did believe in God. His early faith had cemented that, from his First Communion to his years as an altar boy. He even still went to services every once in a while, especially when he was working a tough case. Navarro had seen true evil in men during his time on the force, but he believed in the idea that angels always beat demons. Light continued to shine in the darkness. And good guys always won in the end. In Navarro’s world, they had to.
Or at least the good guys had to put up a hell of a fight.
Navarro studied Wilson’s place and thought about his grandma, who had raised him after his father went to serve a life sentence for killing his mother when Navarro was eleven. Navarro had watched on helplessly, hidden underneath the family’s kitchen table, while he cried silent tears as his drunken dad choked his mother to death.
He looked through Wilson’s trailer and saw a childhood memory. His mamma, so lovely with her dark hair and always ready smile for her “beautiful boy,” danced with him in their tiny apartment’s kitchen before she went to work as a hotel maid, the two of them laughing as salsa music played on a small radio.
In the dark, when he was alone some nights, Navarro felt the familiar hammering ache of shame that he should’ve done more to help his mother, that he should’ve saved her from his dad’s beatings that led up to her death. It didn’t matter that he was just a kid. You protect the ones you love and do the right thing, no matter the circumstance. And if you don’t, you’re nothing more than a coward.
There were moments before his mother’s murder, flickers of memories of his physically imposing father, Alejandro, who had earned the nickname el Toro, or the Bull, a salute to his Spanish birthplace, but more so from his large, imposing frame and epic, almost-urban-legend takedowns of his opponents in his neighborhood boxing ring. What Navarro had left of his father was his inherited build, the handwritten letters from jail that kept coming for the past twenty-five years that Navarro threw into the garbage unopened, and a few tiny strands of undead, tender memories that came to Navarro sometimes just before waking. The one that surfaced the most was when he was six and experiencing a moment of pure joy on top of his father’s mighty shoulders while father and son spent the afternoon in the neighborhood park.
“Just hold on to the kite. Don’t worry, mi hijo, I’ve got you,” Navarro’s father said to his little boy.
Navarro looked up at cloudless blue sky and to the main event, the orange-and-brown tiger kite, with its long tail flicking in the wind. Navarro held the string tightly between his small fingers and closed his eyes, feeling his father’s strong hands on his little legs, and knew this was the best, most wonderful day of his life.
This time, he didn’t need to crave. His father was paying attention to him.
“I’m sorry about what happened at the house before. I made a promise to your mom, I’ll never raise my voice again, little Ray.”
Navarro had since learned that real men always kept their promises.
And right now, Navarro knew he had to pull out all the stops to save Julia.
He had failed his mother. He couldn’t fail Julia, too.
“Hey, earth to Navarro,” Russell said and gave his partner a light punch on the shoulder. “Big surprise. Wilson’s place is a dump. How do you want to play this?”
“We go in and push him hard. If he’s not our guy, I’m betting he knows something.”
“I can read you, Ray. I know you’re worried about Julia, but she’s tough. And smart. Don’t do anything stupid here or lose your cool. You get thrown off the case for letting your emotions get the best of you, you’re not going to be able to he
lp Julia if you get shoved to the sidelines.”
“I’d never let that happen. I’m worried about Julia, but I’ll make sure she’s safe.”
Navarro looked toward the trailer as the front door opened and a man came out. “Let’s go.”
Navarro did a quick assessment of Jeb Wilson. Even from a distance, Wilson looked far more ragged than his original mug shot picture, since the usual grind of prison had obviously worn him down. Wilson was skinny, with paper-white skin that looked even paler against his jet-black, spiked hair. He had a long, braided black beard that hung halfway down his stomach and a tattoo of a pentacle, a star enclosed inside a circle, etched on the side of his left temple.
“He looks cheerful,” Russell muttered as he exited the car.
Wilson was busy locking the door to his trailer, but turned around abruptly when he caught Navarro and Russell heading up his path.
“You Jeb Wilson?” Navarro asked.
“Who are you?” Wilson said. “I don’t like your energy, man. It’s hostile.”
Navarro pulled out his badge. “Detective Raymond Navarro, Detroit PD.”
“Shit. You two come here to jam me up? I’ve done nothing wrong. I got a job, and if I’m late, I’ll get sacked. I can’t violate my probation. If I lose this job, I’m screwed.”
“I know all about it. Your probation officer is a buddy of mine,” Navarro answered. “My partner, Russell, and I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Sure, whatever you say,” Wilson said. He made a move like he was going back inside his place, but then pivoted at the last second and took off, skimming past the right side of his trailer and the back of his property.
“Runner!” Navarro yelled to his partner, and bolted in Wilson’s direction, while Russell took the opposite route in case the suspect tried to escape by circling around to the other side of his property.
Navarro surfaced to the rear of the lot and spotted Wilson trying to scramble up a chain-link fence that had a stretch of I-75 on the other side. He caught up to Wilson before the suspect was even a quarter of the way up the fence, grabbed him roughly by the shoulders, and threw him down to the ground.
You Fit the Pattern Page 10
