Lives Laid Away

by Stephen Mack Jones

  “You put beer in chili?” Lucy said, watching me pour two bottles into the simmering pot.

  “You got a better idea?” I said.

  About forty minutes into cooking chili with Lucy, I got a heavy-breathing call from an “UNKNOWN” number.

  “You’re blind and in the badlands, partner,” the caller said in a hushed, conspiratorial voice. “And you need help. My help. I got info you need.”

  “Why so generous, friend?”

  “Because I’m a nice guy, motherfucker,” he said. “Now, you want what I got or not?”

  “And let me guess,” I said. “You can’t give me this information over the phone?”

  “Go ahead. Be a smartass,” the caller said. “More girls are gonna wash up on the river front wearing Barbie clothes. You want to shut this shit down or not?”

  “I do.”

  “Then I need ten g’s,” the caller said. “You got that kinda bread, right?”

  I told him I did. He gave me an address and meet time.

  Then he disconnected.

  Lucy held out a steaming spoonful of chili to me.

  “Good,” I said after a taste. “Add a bit more smoked paprika.”

  I called Tomás.

  “You’re shitting me,” Tomás said. “Ford Field? You know what security’s like at Ford Field? Even when the Lions aren’t playing?”

  “I do.”

  “And you’re still doing this?”

  “I am. Whoever it is, they’re a serious player and I don’t think they ride Harleys, drink cheap beer, or braid their ear hair. They’ve probably cleared a path for me past Ford Field security. They’re killing me to send a message to anybody else screwing with whatever operation this is.”

  “And what about me?” Tomás said.

  “I doubt there’s a bounty on you, Tomás.”

  “Well, that’s bullshit,” Tomás said. “What am I? A fucking vegan taco?”

  Ford Field pushes nearly two-million square feet of red brick, glass and steel at 2000 Brush Street. When the Detroit Lions aren’t bashing helmets and bruising bones with opposing NFL football teams on the field, you’ll likely see Beyoncé, bull riders or monster trucks. I love Ford Field for the exact opposite reason I also love Lambeau Field in Green Bay: At Ford Field, you’re warm and cozy with a cold beer under the skylights, safe from the ravages of a Michigan winter. At Lambeau Field in Green Bay, you’re outside freezing your ass off while watching the Packers hammer it out like gridiron gods in a blizzard. Just like when I was a kid playing football in a foot of snow.

  But regardless of the stadium or team allegiance, this is an age of foreign terrorists with pressure cooker bombs and homegrown terrorists with AR-15 assault rifles with bump stocks.

  Security at Ford Field was a reflection of the times.

  In a waste can outside of Gate A was a Detroit Lions security pass on a lanyard belonging to a Sephus Goins. I cringed to think what may have happened to Mr. Goins. I flashed the pass in front of the reader. The light turned green and the door clicked open. Tomás quickly followed me in. I told him if anybody was going to put me in the crosshairs it would either be on a diagonal from Section H or from the west facing end zone, Sections M or 01. My bet was on a diagonal from somewhere in Section H since the yardage and elevation from end zone to end zone would require fairly expensive sniper skills.

  Section H was where a discount killer would perch: Shorter range, clearer and faster shot, less ground to cover for an escape.

  Before Tomás left for Section H, he whispered, “How come you don’t got fifty-yard line season tickets?”

  “I need to see two consecutive Black-And-Blue championships under their belt,” I said. “Then I’ll think about it.”

  “Wow,” Tomás said with a grin. “Real hardass.”

  Then he disappeared into the labyrinth that was Ford Field.

  Tomás understood there was nothing I could do for him if he got caught. Likewise, if I got nailed I didn’t want a hint of my stink on him.

  Even with the security pass, navigating to Section 137L demanded more stealth than had been required of me in a long time. There are very few shadowed corners in Ford Field.

  Although none of Ford Field’s security team carried lethal weapons, they were nonetheless lethally trained and smartly deployed. In a post 9/11 world, they couldn’t afford to be anything less.

  After five minutes I made it to Section 137L and looked around.

  Four men in the opposite end zone were huddled around a large patch of Astro Turf that had been ripped up. Two of the men took turns stepping into the bald spot and bouncing on it. They didn’t notice me. If they had, I doubted very much they would have cared. They had more important business. Like fixing a bald spot in the end zone of a $500 million football stadium.

  I figured if I was going to get shot, I might as well get comfortable. I took a seat and imagined myself suited up in a snappy Lions “Honolulu Blue” uniform, taking the hand-off at the twenty-five-yard line, cutting right through the hole, juking left and finding daylight—the thirty . . . thirty-five and first . . . forty . . .

  “Hey—”

  My football fantasy was interrupted by the echo of a security guard at the fifty-yard line, fifteen rows up in the shadows of the upper level. He was approaching what appeared to be a maintenance man.

  “Where’s Mica?” the security guard said. “I thought he—”

  “Yeah,” the maintenance man laughed. “Day off. Guess I’m the lucky sonuvabitch, eh?”

  “Yeah,” the security guard laughed. “Hey, listen. Mica ever fix that scanner on the promenade?”

  “Yeah,” the maintenance man said. “Yeah, he got it.”

  “Wasn’t no scanner needed fixing,” the security guard said before speaking into his headset. “Bronze One, this is—”

  That’s as far as the security guard got before the maintenance man shot him twice.

  With my Glock out, I leaped down the staircase, two, three steps at a time.

  Another shot.

  This time from Tomás.

  He’d caught the shooter in the hip. The shooter had no choice but to jump onto the field. Tomás squeezed off two more rounds.

  Misses.

  More Astro Turf would have to be replaced.

  Tomás spotted me on the field.

  “Go!” he shouted, kneeling by the wounded security guard. “Get that fucker!”

  The shooter was at least thirty-yards away. Even with a bullet in his hip, he was widening the gap. The four men that had been huddled over the bald spot either hit the deck or ran.

  I knew I couldn’t catch the shooter.

  But a 9mm bullet traveling at over 800 mph could.

  I took a stance, anticipated timing, calculated deceleration, angle of descent . . .

  . . . then fired three times.

  He dropped.

  “Oh, my God!” Tomás bellowed from the stands. “Ladies and gentlemen, he is down at the ten-yard line! And what a hit from the kid out of Wayne State University!”

  By the time I got to the shooter he was trying to crawl his way to freedom. He’d caught one of my bullets in his lower back.

  “You—fucker,” he growled. “I can’t—feel my legs!”

  “And I can’t feel pity,” I said. “Who sent you?”

  He lost consciousness just as a swarm of Ford Field security descended onto the field, yelling for me and Tomás to drop our weapons.

  Thirty-two

  “Isn’t this the part where you yell at me, then I have a witty retort, then you yell at me some more?” I said. Shaking a fist in the air, I did an intentionally bad impression of Detective Captain Leo Cowling. “Snow, you cretinous Philistine! You scurrilous vagabond!”

  Cowling just sat behind his desk staring dispassionately at me, tap
ping his fingertips methodically. I was in one of his visitor chairs, free of handcuffs or leg shackles. In fact, I was enjoying a nice cup of iced chai tea from one of the 14th Precinct’s new upscale vending machines.

  Finally, he smiled at me and said, “Ya know, I finally figured you out, Snow.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said, taking a sip.

  “Yeah,” Cowling said. “See, you this baboon-sized asshole ’cause you actually a manic depressive. You need a continuous adrenaline rush to feel both alive and worthy of folks’ affection. Without that turbo-charged, psycho-chemical rush, you’d crash and burn. You’d realize how little you’re worth to yourself or anybody else.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s actually pretty good.”

  “I ain’t as dumb as you look, mothafucka,” Cowling said. Then after a moment of silence he said, “Ford Field? Fo’ real?”

  “Where is my associate?”

  “Coolin’ out in an eight-by-ten downstairs,” Cowling said. “Thinkin’ about naming a couple holding cells after you and Pancho. The Imbecile Suites.”

  “Out of curiosity,” I said, “why haven’t I been burned upon the faggot yet?”

  “We don’t use the word ‘faggot’ ’round here no more,” Cowling said. I decided not to regale him with my knowledge of 16th-century British execution techniques. “Besides, you’d love that martyr shit, wouldn’t you? Far as I can tell, Mayor Pro Tem got a call, then he called a couple district representatives, who blindsided the commissioner, who has an emergency conference call with Ford Field management, who end up talking to my commander, who tells me to buy you a fucking cup of coffee while everybody’s community relations departments run around sniffin’ each other’s asses. I get to babysit you until somebody makes a decision.”

  “Shit truly does run downhill to where, I imagine, your mouth is right now?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’ve got a few friends at the FBI,” I said. “Maybe—”

  “Word is, your only FBI contact—that little blonde heifer—done been kicked to the curb,” Cowling said. “I know what plausible deniability smells like, Tex-Mex. Somebody somewhere with a black-on-black pay grade got everybody spooked on this latest Snow shitstorm.”

  Cowling’s administrative assistant poked her head in his office and said, “Sir? I have Commissioner Renard on line one for you.”

  “And the Snow Shitshow begins,” Cowling sighed. He picked up his desk phone, hit “1” and said, “Yessir. Good afternoon.”

  Cowling listened for a moment, only contributing the occasional “yessir” or “I understand, sir,” finally closing out the one-sided conversation by saying, “Thank you for your call, Commissioner.”

  Cowling slowly, gently laid the receiver back in its cradle.

  Then he reached into a desk drawer, pulled out a roll of TUMS antacid tablets and popped two in his mouth.

  After crunching and swallowing, Cowling looked at me and said, “You’re free to go.”

  “And my friend?”

  “Signing for his belongings at the booking desk.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” Cowling said, making no effort to hide his disgust. “Wow.”

  “Well,” I said standing. “Thanks for the chai. You wouldn’t know the brand—”

  “Get the fuck outta my office.”

  I was half way out of his office when I stopped, turned, and said, “Hey, listen; do I get my parking validated here or—”

  “Motha—” Cowling shouted. Suddenly jumping out of his chair, he grabbed his gun out of its shoulder rig and slammed it on his desk. “—fucka!”

  I took the hint and left.

  Tomás was standing at the booking desk, slipping his belt—a thick, hand-tooled leather affair with images of the Stations of the Cross—through his pants belt loops.

  “Jesus,” the booking sergeant said, holding up Tomás’s HK Mark 23 Caliber .45. “That’s a beautiful piece.”

  “Ain’t it, though?” Tomás extracted his wallet from the oversized plastic bag and slipped it into his back pocket.

  “First pistol ever made specifically for US Special Operations Command,” the booking sergeant said as he turned the weapon lovingly over in his hands.

  “Field tested, battle proven,” Tomás said, grabbing his cell phone from the bag.

  “How much this beauty run you?” the booking sergeant asked.

  Tomás told him what he paid for the weapon.

  “Get the fuck outta here!” the sergeant said. “Seriously? Who’s your guy?”

  Tomás told him who his guy was and that if the sergeant decided to buy from his guy he should use Tomás’s name to get a better deal. Then he took his gun and slipped it under his shirt and into the small of his back.

  I got my stuff.

  The booking sergeant had nothing to say about any of my belongings.

  As soon as we got outside of the 14th, my phone rang.

  “What’s this all about, August?” O’Donnell said.

  “What’s what all about?”

  “Did you send me a text telling me to meet you at the Painted Lady?”

  “I didn’t leave you any text. I don’t text. I call. Or play Candy Crush.”

  “Well, I’m here,” she said. “What the hell’s—”

  “Are you strapped?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Twenty minutes,” I said. “And stay sharp.”

  Once Tomás drove me back to Mexicantown in his recently acquired classic Ford truck, I told him I had to split in another direction.

  He asked what was going on and I told him frankly I didn’t know.

  “Watch your ass, compadre,” Tomás said.

  “I will,” I said. “Stay locked and loaded, mi amigo.”

  Nothing like riding a Harley on a hot day past the million orange safety cones and white-boy road crews working in futile, multi-million-dollar efforts to fix winter-ravaged roads before the coming winter wreaked havoc on them again.

  Weaving in and out of traffic that was slowed or stalled by road construction, I made it from Mexicantown to Hamtramck, aka Poletown, in less than twenty minutes.

  The Painted Lady Lounge, off of Joseph Campau Avenue on Jacob Street in Hamtramck, has been around since—well—no one quite knows. The ancient Victorian house, dressed in peeling pink and turquoise, unapologetically makes Detroit’s “Top 10 Best Dive Bars” list every year. It’s refreshingly antithetical to craft beers, tapas, edamame salads and sushi. In its time, The Painted Lady has poured hundreds of thousands of whiskey, vodka, schnapps and bourbon shots and snapped the caps off of millions of bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz and Stroh’s. The place has served without reservation or hesitation Detroit’s collision of cultures: Polish and Italian immigrants and blacks in search of respite, a cold beer and a working jukebox. These days, you might see a Sikh US postal worker eating a sandwich at the bar or young Muslims on the sneak sharing a beer and basket of fries with Chaldean friends. And always an abundance of college kids.

  “What the hell’s going on?” I said, standing over the booth where the recently relieved-of-duty FBI agent Megan O’Donnell sat.

  Sitting across from her was the ICE agent I’d come to know as Henshaw.

  “August,” O’Donnell began, “this is—”

  “I know who the fuck he is,” I said before grabbing a fist full of his shirt collar and dragging him out of the booth.

  “Hold on, partner!” Henshaw said. “I come in peace!”

  I drew back a heat-seeking fist and was about to let fly when something cold and blunt press into my cheek: the hickory of a Louisville Slugger baseball bat.

  “Shit like this don’t start until around seven thirty or eight,” the short redheaded bartender said as she pressed the bat into my cheek. “You’re about three hours early,
sport.”

  “Sorry, Duchess,” O’Donnell said to the bartender.

  “No problem,” the bartender named Duchess said. Slowly, she retracted the baseball bat from my cheek. “How ’bout something cold to cool you out, big guy?”

  I let go of Henshaw and said, “You got martinis here?”

  “We got gin in a glass and vodka in a glass,” she said, grinning. “’Bout the only choice you got is ice or no ice. Don’t much feel like looking for a jar of olives—and I wouldn’t count on finding one anyway.”

  “Vodka,” I said. “Ice.”

  “Cool,” Duchess said. “Now sit down and make nice.”

  I sat next to O’Donnell.

  “I thought you were in Quantico visiting Frank,” I said to O’Donnell, locking my eyes on Henshaw.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Three days. Long enough to get my tank topped off.” O’Donnell caught me staring at her. “What?” she said. “Guys can say shit like that but I can’t?”

  “So, who called us here?” I said.

  “I did,” Henshaw said. “Through my ops director.”

  Thirty-three

  His real name is Ryan Lassiter.

  He works for the DEA and for the past two years he’s been deep cover as “Harlon Henshaw” with Immigration & Customs Enforcement. According to O’Donnell, Lassiter was the one who alerted his DEA bosses to the possibility of rogue ICE units involved in kidnapping and trafficking, operating originally out of California, New Mexico and Arizona.

  No one believed Lassiter until a coyote was caught with eight drugged and nearly suffocated young women stowed in a hot, false-box cargo van outside of El Paso. The man claimed to have inmunidad—immunity. He said men with the DEA and ICE told him he could avoid arrest and prosecution if he helped them execute “black-box deportations” of the illegals.

  “Where’s this guy now?” I said.

  “In the ground,” Lassiter said. “Shanked thirty times at Lewis in Buckeye, Arizona. And nobody gets shanked thirty times at Lewis. At least not without the kind of precise planning and tactical execution that your average max rat is nowhere near capable of.”