Let It Burn

by Steve Hamilton

  “Sergeant Grimaldi,” I said. “I would have recognized you anywhere.”

  I was being kind, I guess. He had lost most of his hair, put on a few pounds. He’d spent too much time outside without putting on his sunscreen. But I did truly believe I would have recognized him, even out of context.

  “Alex McKnight,” he said, looking me over. “What the hell, you don’t look any different at all.”

  “That means I wasn’t much to begin with.”

  “No, I’m serious. Do they have the Fountain of Youth up there in Paradise or something?”

  “Okay, enough flattery. Let’s sit down, okay?”

  We grabbed one of the high tables, with the high stools you have to be careful not to fall off of. There was an afternoon baseball game on over one of his shoulders. Not the Tigers. On another screen there was a soccer game. On another screen there was a news show. Just two guys talking with a running closed caption at the bottom if you really felt like sitting there and reading it. I ordered a beer, and the sergeant did likewise. I was already preparing myself for the fact that it would not be brewed and bottled in Canada.

  “I can’t believe you really came all the way down here,” he said, looking at me and shaking his head. “I mean, I know I offered to buy…”

  “I appreciated the call,” I said, “and it’s been a while.”

  “It’s what, a six-hour drive?”

  “Closer to five.”

  “Okay, so there’s another reason you’re here,” he said. “Me, I’d only drive five hours for one of two things. Money, or a woman.”

  “Well, there is somebody I’m going to see later…”

  “Aha. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Who is she?”

  The beers came then. I took a long drink. It tasted good after so many hours on the road, Canadian or no Canadian.

  “She’s an FBI agent,” I said. “I met her when she came up to the UP to investigate a string of murders.”

  “That does sound romantic.”

  I had to laugh at that one. “She’s a good cop,” I said. “Even if she’s a feeb.”

  “God, do you remember how much we used to hate those guys?”

  “I do.”

  “Don’t even get me started,” he said. “The number of times I had to actively go out of my way just to get something done before those clowns came in to mess everything up.”

  I smiled and shook my head. It was a topic every local cop could speak to, all over the country. It would probably never change.

  “But you say she’s one of the good ones,” he said. “So okay, I guess that means you’re not breaking a code or anything. She’s good-looking, too?”

  “Matter of fact, she is.”

  “Okay, then. You may proceed.”

  He took a hit off his beer. Then he reached behind him and pulled out a little notebook from his back pocket. A real cop move, no matter how long he’d been off the force.

  “So, speaking of murder,” he said. “I gotta say, I feel really bad about the way I handled this.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I called you up, out of the blue, and I had everything right there in front of me. Darryl King, getting out on parole, in about a week. I’ve got his address, too. Or his mother’s address, I guess. Over on Ash Street.”

  “The same house where we made the arrest?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I said. “Looks like you’ve got it all covered.”

  “No, I sure as hell don’t, Alex. When I got off the phone with you, it occurred to me that I didn’t say one word about the woman he murdered.”

  “You didn’t have to, Sergeant. I know what he went away for.”

  “I told you, I’m Tony now. You see a badge on me?”

  “No, but—”

  “But nothing. If I was still a good sergeant, I would have remembered the most important thing. Even if you know it and I know it and everybody in the world knows it, the most important thing about Darryl King is the woman he murdered in cold blood.”

  “Elana Paige,” I said. “That was her name.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Elana Paige. You remembered.”

  “Of course. I was the one who…”

  “That’s right. Not something you’re ever going to forget.”

  We both sat there for a while, thinking about it, while the baseball and soccer games went on over our heads.

  “Here’s to Elana Paige,” the sergeant said, raising his glass. We toasted her, and then we both went silent again.

  “The kid who did this,” I finally said. “I know you’ve already told me, but I want to hear it one more time. Maybe it’ll make sense.”

  “He’s getting out. Doesn’t make any more sense, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “I used to know a parole officer,” he said. “Going way back. I remember he once told me, when murderers get out of prison, they’re statistically the least likely to ever get in trouble again.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Sex criminals, child molesters, those guys are almost guaranteed to end up arrested again, but plain old murderers? They usually stay straight.”

  “Does that make you feel any better now?” I said.

  “No, actually not. How ’bout you?”

  I shook my head and took another long drink.

  “It’s funny,” he said. “I called you because theoretically somebody you helped put away for a long time might come after you. But while I’m sitting here thinking about him, walking free like that…”

  “It’s more likely we’d go after him,” I said. “I hear what you’re saying.”

  “Okay, good, so it’s not just me thinking that.”

  “Something you think about. Not something you actually do.”

  “No, I guess not. But if I were her husband? Even after all these years?”

  “He’s probably remarried now. Maybe with a family. You don’t destroy that just to kill the man who killed your first wife.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “It wouldn’t bring her back. I’m just saying…”

  He waved the whole thing away with one hand. Then he looked up at the screens.

  “I never did get the whole soccer thing,” he said. “Did you?”

  “I’ve got a friend from Scotland,” I said. “He’ll talk about it like it’s life or death sometimes.”

  “You’ve been up there ever since you left the force?”

  “Took me about a year. Then I finally wandered up there.”

  “I know that must have been rough. And you do realize…”

  He hesitated, looking me in the eye.

  “I’ll just say it, Alex. You do realize that nobody blamed you for what happened to your partner.”

  I waited a few beats before answering.

  “I did. I blamed myself.”

  He shook his head. There wasn’t much else to say, and he was smart enough not to try.

  “So when’s the last time you got back down here?” he finally said.

  “It was a few years ago. I saw the new stadium, but I don’t remember if I drove by the old one.”

  “You would have remembered, believe me. If you saw Tiger Stadium half torn down … That was just the worst. Of course, now it’s just a field, and the old flagpole.”

  “I do remember going by the old precinct,” I said. “The building didn’t look much different, at least.”

  “You realize that the First and Thirteenth are combined now.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yep. The old rival precincts are now the Central District. They’ve got six districts now, instead of thirteen precincts.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “The city’s lost half its people, Alex. I mean, literally half the people are gone now. The population is back at around what it was in 1900. A couple of those precincts, they became like outposts in the desert. No houses around them. Hardly any peopl
e. They’ve even got bears living in some of the old buildings now.”

  “Bears? Are you serious?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. They’ve got companies that go around tearing down houses as fast as they can. Whole blocks, just disappearing. When you were down here before, did you drive though any of the neighborhoods?”

  “A little bit through Corktown, but not much else.”

  “What about the train station? Did you see that?”

  “From a distance. I never got too close.”

  “Well, you have to go see it, then. The whole city, Alex. Just take some time today and drive around. You have to go see what’s happened to our old Motown.”

  *

  So that’s what I did. After I thanked him for the beer and saw him back to his car, I got in my truck and started driving around. FBI Agent Janet Long was still at work, after all, and I had a few hours to kill before meeting her for dinner.

  You have to understand, Detroit is a huge city. Not in terms of population—not anymore, at least—but it’s 140 square miles in area. You could fit Boston and San Francisco inside the city borders, and still have room left over for Manhattan. I drove straight east, through Redford, where I lived as a young married cop, just across the border. Then a minute later I was in the city itself. This place I was sworn to serve and protect.

  It’s so easy to stay on the freeway and to zoom right through it all. As I crossed over the River Rouge I made myself get off and start driving down those residential streets. I had to see it for myself.

  I crossed through the northern reaches of the city, turning down one street after another. I saw the abandoned houses. I saw the garbage and the graffiti and the high weeds. I saw the charred remains of houses that had burned down. This is something Detroit had always been known for, of course. Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween, when people would come from literally all over the world to watch the city burn. Every fireman on the job would be out that night, and just about every cop, too. It always felt like a losing battle, but now …

  Now it was like the whole city just said, all together … Let it burn.

  An hour later, I was still driving. I finally had to stop for a while. I sat there in my truck and looked at an entire row of empty houses. They would be torn down eventually. The demolition companies just hadn’t gotten to them yet.

  Having worked my way through the west side, it was hard to imagine that the east side could be any worse. But I was wrong. By that time I was getting a little numb, but still I’d see something like a beautiful old church turned into a half-collapsed wreck and it would hit me all over again. A park where children once played. A school with every window covered over with plywood.

  As I finally worked my way back to the heart of the city, I came down East Grand Boulevard and passed through the old Packard plant. It had already been abandoned when I was a cop here, but at least then it stood out from everything around it. Now it was just one more forty-acre postapocalyptic wasteland in a city filled with them, with yet more decayed buildings, more graffiti, more garbage, more weeds. This plant where they once made the most beautiful automobiles in the world. It was easy to see how much this one wrecked-out old plant could stand for the whole city, the way it was back in the glory days, and the way it was now.

  I hit Woodward Avenue, the center of town, the dividing line between east and west. The old Thirteenth Precinct building, with the indoor gym they were so proud of, was closed now. They had put up a fence with razor wire around the whole complex.

  I drove south, feeling a tightness in my chest as I got close to that corner. Even though I knew the building was gone now, that apartment building with the broken elevator and those stairs that Franklin had to climb, complaining with every step. Until we finally got to the top and knocked on that door.

  It was gone now, replaced with a Burger King. But it didn’t make me feel any better to see it gone, because Franklin was just as much gone himself.

  I drove downtown, past the First Precinct building, still open, at least for the moment. Past the new ballpark where the Tigers played now, to Grand Circus Park, where the streets fanned out like spokes on a wheel. It was a weekday. A working day. There were people walking around the place, enjoying the nice day. It was good to see that much. It was good to see that the whole city hadn’t been abandoned yet.

  I went down to Michigan Avenue, headed west past where the old Tiger Stadium once stood like a huge gray battleship. It was just a field now, like the sergeant said, with only the old center-field flagpole still standing.

  I wasn’t far from Roosevelt Park and the old Michigan Central Station. I looked at my watch. I still had an hour. Plenty of time to go see the station up close, to see what it looked like now. To see that empty parking lot, those tracks, that desecrated building.

  And to remember what happened there.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We rolled out onto Woodward Avenue. It was a Thursday, the first day of June, which meant a school day. That’s the first box you check when you’re on the morning shift, because a school day means there’s officially no good reason for kids to be out hanging around on the streets at eight thirty in the morning.

  Of course, if you do see kids hanging around on the streets of Detroit, at any time of day, there’s a good chance they’re not playing kick the can, or rolling a hoop down the sidewalk with a stick. It’s just a cold hard reality that the frontline soldiers in this city’s drug trade are almost all children. A horribly effective way to run a drug business, when you think about it, because if you ring up a thirteen-year-old for selling, what are you gonna do, put him away for ten years? Even if you did, there’d be another thirteen-year-old to take his place the very next day. The men who are making all the real money, you never touch them.

  If they didn’t invent the practice here in Detroit, they sure as hell perfected it. Young Boys Incorporated, or YBI, was formed by three teenagers on a playground. A few years later, they controlled most of the heroin trade in Detroit. They were bringing in close to two million dollars a week. In the wintertime, you could spot their runners from a block away, because they all wore the same kind of coat. That’s how brazen they were, all of them. Like go ahead, pick off a few of the kids. See how far that gets you.

  We finally brought down the gang in 1982. I say we, meaning the Detroit cops, the FBI, and the DEA, actually working together for once. One of the three founding members had already been killed, but the other two were put away for good, along with forty-one of their lieutenants. The kids, they all scattered to the wind, but nobody around here was naive enough to believe that new gangs wouldn’t form overnight to take the place of YBI.

  Then, on top of everything else this city had to deal with, some genius somewhere figured out how to make a cheap form of freebase cocaine using baking soda. Crack, rock, whatever the hell you want to call it. It hit Detroit just as hard as every other city in America. Maybe a little harder. We still didn’t have enough cops in this town, and now with a new, highly addictive form of coke that could get you high for five or ten bucks? It was starting to feel like a losing battle most days.

  Franklin and I got about a block down Woodward Avenue before we saw a half-dozen kids walking slowly down the sidewalk. We came up behind them, and Franklin blipped the siren. He was driving that day. As soon as we came to a stop, I got out and rousted the kids, asked them why they weren’t in school, dismissing with prejudice their claim that summer vacation had already started. Eventually I just sent them on their way, with me holding only their empty promises to wander over to school.

  Franklin was finally getting out of the car to come help me. I waved him back inside as the kids walked away.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said as he got back behind the wheel. “They were on their way to choir practice.”

  “Not quite. But no big deal. Just a bunch of knuckleheads skipping school on a nice summer day.”

  “How exactly do you know they weren’t up to someth
ing else? Did you take one ID from those kids?”

  “Did you see me take an ID? You were sitting right here.”

  “It was a leading question, Alex. Just like in the courtroom.”

  “I asked them what they were up to,” I said. “They answered me, I asked again, and then the second time I believe they told me the truth. So let’s go find some real problems to solve, all right?”

  “Oh, that’s right, I’ve got the all-seeing swami in the car with me. I keep forgetting that.”

  “It’s not even nine o’clock,” I said. “How many times are we going to do this today?”

  “That’s entirely up to you, Swami. Although I’m surprised you haven’t already divined the number in advance.”

  This is how it went with us. All day long. I had this unshakable belief back then, that I could ask a person a question and I could look in their eyes while they answered me and I could tell if they were lying to me. With absolute certainty. No doubt whatsoever. In the years since, I’ve found out that some people are gifted liars, and that my supposedly one hundred percent accurate lie detector can be fooled completely.

  Of course, if you think I’ve learned not to put such trust in my own instincts anymore, then you have no idea just how stubborn I am. Or maybe how stupid.

  “I need more coffee,” I said.

  He drove us down through the Wayne State campus, past the great stone edifices of the art museum on one side of the street and of the library on the other. There was a little coffee shop next to the hospital. I went in and got one with cream for myself, one black for Franklin, waiting for the inevitable joke about how he likes his coffee like he likes his women. He was happily married, but some jokes are still mandatory, I guess. And yes, we both had a doughnut. Two cops with two doughnuts.

  “What else can we do to fulfill the stereotype today?” he said as the powdered sugar dusted his nice clean uniform. “Too bad neither of us has a badass mustache.”

  “We could both get out and try to chase down some kid. Climb over a fence and throw him into some garbage cans. Then complain about how we’re too old for this stuff.”