Say Nice Things About Detroit (9 page)

One thing he knew: it felt good to make his father smile.

He packed a joint in a chewing tobacco can, slipped it into his pocket, and went downstairs to the living room. It was just after school, the time he normally hung in the neighborhood while his mother was still at work.

“Yo, Dad. Come sit with me in the back yard.”

“On the grass?”

“I'll get the folding chairs,” Marlon said.

“Why?”

“Can you just do it?”

Marlon waited, watching his father decide. At first Marlon thought he was deciding if he would go to the back yard; then Marlon realized his father was deciding if he
could
go. “Help me up,” he said. He reached out and Marlon tugged him to his feet. He was still heavy, but unsteady now.

Outside there were royal blue streaks between the clouds. Marlon liked that kind of sky, one that had everything in it. “I'm cold,” his father said.

“Here, sit here.” Marlon helped the old man into the chair, then ran off for a blanket. He returned and covered his father like a man in a barbershop. Then Marlon pulled the other chair close. They were old folding chairs, woven with frayed nylon. “Okay, Dad,” Marlon said. “I got something for you.”

“What is it?” his father asked.

“Gonna make you feel better,” Marlon said.

“You're doing better in school?”

Marlon turned his hand over, showing the can. Then he twisted off the top and there was the joint, speckled with a couple flecks of chew dust.

“What the hell are you doing?” his father said.

“I got this for you, Dad.”

“I forbid you to smoke it.”

“It's for you. It'll be good for you. Zeke Taylor, when he got the cancer, he was just like you, puking his guts out, but then he got some smoke and he was better. Put on some LBs and everything. You seen him. He's better.”

His father stared at the can, then looked at Marlon. Their eyes met, and Marlon realized he hadn't looked his father in the eye for a long time. They were watery, the eyes of a man in pain.

“C'mon, Dad. Try it.”

“I've got lung cancer and you want me to smoke?”

“If you could drink it, I'da brought you a bottle.”

“What I'd really like is a real cigarette,” the old man said.

“Don't be stupid, Dad.”

He took the joint. Marlon handed him a pack of matches, the kind with an advertisement for night school on the inside.

“I don't want you doing this.”

“This ain't about me,” Marlon said.

His father lit up, inhaled, then coughed. Marlon laughed. He couldn't help it—it was funny. Then his father laughed. When had they last laughed together? His father took another hit.

That night they had grilled cheese. Once his father had stopped eating, Marlon's mother had stopped cooking, but on this night the old man ate everything. Marlon watched him shovel it in. At one point his father looked up and winked at Marlon. Marlon smiled, but then looked down. There was only so long he could look his father in the eye.

IV

M
ILES WANTED TO
meet at Nemo's. He'd resurfaced, just as McMahon predicted. Dirk didn't see any harm in Nemo's: lots of people and close to the office, easy to have backup around. And not the kind of place anyone would plan an ambush.

He was driving there when Natalie called him on his real cell phone.

“Thought you might want to know, my dad's in the hospital.”

“Serious?”

“Yes. Something turned. Not the right way, obviously.”

“When did he go in?” Dirk asked.

“Yesterday.”

“Why didn't you call me?”

“What were you going to do?” she asked.

“Go visit him.”

“It's too late tonight. He's in the ICU. They're strict.”

“I can get in,” Dirk told her.

“I saw the will today. You're in it. Thought you should know.”

“Wow,” Dirk said. “That's nice of him.”

“You're equal with Carolyn and me.”

It seemed impossible that this could be right. Carolyn and Natalie were Arthur's daughters, his flesh and blood. Dirk wasn't supposed to be an heir.

“Why would he do that?”

“For Mom,” Natalie said. “And he said it was time someone did you a favor. You're going to get about a half-million bucks.”

He almost drifted off the road. It was an impossible number. He'd worked long enough that he could already get a pension. And with this he could stop working altogether. He pulled the car over on Michigan Avenue.

“You going to say anything?” Natalie asked.

“I've pulled over now, but I still don't know what to say.”

“There will be more when Mom dies, if she doesn't spend it all.”

“Man, Natalie.”

“You don't sound happy.”

“Happy that Arthur is dying?”

“Happy that he's treating you like a son.”

Dirk thought of the times he'd been places where people were rich and white together, how easy it all felt. It made sense now. He imagined what he'd tell Shelly when he got home tonight. He'd wake her and tell her, and she would cry. He knew this. He felt he could almost cry himself.

“I don't deserve it,” he told Natalie.

“Don't be an idiot,” she said.

• • •

N
EMO'S WAS A
white-guy place, a sports bar founded in 1965 and still on Michigan Avenue, just down from Tiger Stadium. There were photos on the walls of old sports heroes of Detroit's past. Bobby Layne, Gordie Howe, Al Kaline. Dirk found Miles in the bar watching a college football preview show on ESPN, the sound off.

“You must have played,” Dirk said, his way of saying hello. Dirk had played in high school and could usually recognize old members of the football brotherhood.

“Never much liked it, so I quit. High school coach was all over me, but it wasn't me.” He looked over at Dirk. “Getting beat up for no good reason.”

“Pros make a few bucks.”

“Short careers,” Miles said.

An interesting observation from a drug dealer. Dirk pulled out a kilo of heroin, wrapped up like a present. There was even a little blue ribbon.

“Happy birthday,” he said to Miles.

An envelope was suddenly resting on Dirk's thigh. He took it and slid it into the breast pocket of his jacket, sure that it would get caught on tape.

“Easy there,” Miles said. “Let's not broadcast it.”

They sat for a moment in silence. Miles was to test the kilo. If all went well, next week he'd say he wanted five. Actually, he'd be followed and arrested before he could even cut it.

The money in Dirk's pocket had to be lighter than the heroin had been, but it felt like a hundred pounds. “You ever wanted to take it for yourself?” Everett once asked him. “Just once?”

“No,” Dirk had lied, but it wasn't a special lie. At some point, he realized, he'd lied to everyone.

Miles rattled the ice cubes in his glass. The business was complete, caught on camera and on audiotape.

“I'm not hungry,” Dirk said. “How 'bout you?”

“Naw, let's bounce.”

They walked out to the awning. It was a fall evening, but Dirk thought he could pick up the scent of winter. With weather he liked extremes: the dense air of summer, humid and almost tropical, and the dry crackling cold of a winter cold snap, when the snow squeaked when you walked on it and you'd run your tongue around the inside of your mouth to warm your face. That weather was coming. By the time it got warm again he'd be wearing a suit to work and checking the balance of his pension plan. It made him a little sad, letting the undercover work go, but he just wasn't young anymore.

As he turned to say goodbye to Miles he spotted the listening van and so didn't really notice the black car till it was quite close. It was an old Lincoln, lumbering slowly on the bricks of the street, tinted glass windows, the driver's-­side rear window slowly sliding down. That's when he knew. He was about two feet from Miles. He dove the other way and hid behind a parked car, his hand braced on its cold metal side panel.

Later, he told Shelly he might have been able to save Miles, that if he had just reached out and given him a shove he would have been a moving target rather than a large, stationary one. “He trafficked in heroin,” she said, and this was true, but he was a man, and rather intelligent. Dirk thought someday he might have been something. “You were going to put him in jail,” Shelly reminded him, and this time he stayed silent, unable to explain himself. It was an oddity of the job, how he sometimes cared for the people he put away.

The gun was vintage, something Dirk hadn't seen since his first days at the Bureau: a .44 Auto Mag. Four shots hit Miles and, miraculously, no one else. One of those shots, the only one that counted, barely nicked Miles's aorta. Dirk crouched over him and called for an ambulance, identifying himself as an FBI agent. Other agents came running, from inside the restaurant, from the van, from the street. Miles realized he had a crowd.

“Shit,” he whispered. “You a cop.”

“FBI,” Dirk said.

“You lied to me, Barry.”

“I won't anymore,” he said. In another minute the EMT guys arrived. They worked furiously at first, then started taking their time, and soon stopped trying at all. In all the years he'd been on the job, Dirk had only ever been shot at once before, and it wasn't nearly this close.

Haig was filling in tonight for McMahon. Haig would have been one of the guys pissed off by Dirk's promotion, but he had little to worry about now. Dirk told him he wanted to go home. Haig allowed it. There was plenty of paperwork to do, but they both knew it could wait. From now on Dirk was going to have ample time in the office.

Dirk found his car and sat in it for a moment. He needed a chance to breathe. Then he pulled out on Michigan Avenue and headed west toward Henry Ford Hospital. Maybe he could do something for Arthur. If nothing else, they might get a few words. Dirk could thank him, not just for the money but for what it symbolized: Arthur was telling him that he belonged, that he really was somebody's son. The very idea choked him up.

He ran into traffic and didn't want to wait, so he put the flashing light on his roof and hit the gas. He had Marvin Gaye on the stereo, the window defrost running, and a clear destination. It was late, well past visiting hours, but he had a badge, and with that they'd always let you in.

 

2006

I

D
avid visited his mother once a month, though she no longer knew he was there. All her attention was focused on her new male companion.

David found her at the TV. She had been a proud woman. Now there was a quarter inch of gray hair at her scalp. There were food stains on her blouse. She didn't seem to care, or even know.

“Hey, Mom,” he said. She didn't turn, didn't look up. One of her hands started to shake. She was in a wooden chair with a cushion that had a plastic cover. He knelt on one knee beside her. “Mom,” he said again.

Slowly she turned her head. He smiled, but she did not.

“Mom?”

“Hello,” she said.

He gave it another fifteen minutes and was never sure if she knew him. He asked questions that she didn't answer and gave her news from the outside world, news that he thought might cheer her (the Democrats took control of Congress), but there was never a response. Even when he told her he was leaving she said nothing. When he stood, though, she stood. Maybe it was habit, some old connection in her head still working, and this simple act set him back. He hugged her, and took in an unpleasant smell of staleness before he said his goodbye. He turned to find a Jamaican woman to let him out, but instead there was his mother's friend, the big galumph, as his father called the man. He shuffled over to David's mother, and, still standing, she helped him to sit in her chair.

He felt an internal kick then, and damn if it didn't jab like jealousy. His father, he thought, might not be so crazy after all. He looked at his mother and her friend, but there was really nothing to be done. He turned and left.

• • •

H
E DROVE SOUTH
on Orchard Lake, passing one small strip mall after another. It was snowing. At Maple he headed east. He'd promised his father he'd have dinner with him. A visit to Mom at the home, dinner with Dad. This was what now constituted his Saturdays.

The snow made him think of Cory. He should never have let him go on that ski trip. Had David refused, it would have saved the boy's life. But the truth was that David had been on shaky ground; the kid had wanted to get away from him, and Julie had thought it a good idea. He couldn't blame her. There had been a time when he might have blamed her for just about everything, but never that.

He'd been working like a madman, trying to prove himself worthy of partnership, and so had brought home a stack of papers and spread them all over the ping-pong table in the basement, the only place with enough area to handle the whole case so he wouldn't have to move it at mealtime. He liked to make changes and edits by hand in blue pen, typing them later or—if he managed to be neat in his notation—giving them to his secretary. The basement was unfinished—a poured concrete floor with a drain, washing machine and dryer, a couple bare light bulbs hanging from short cords. It reminded him of places where he'd studied in college (law school had been nicer) and so in this way had some connection to his youth.

He was a workhorse, but what did he have to show for all those years of work? He was still barely able to keep ahead of the bills, his retirement account had taken a dive in the tech bust and never come back, he was working a job that was really about cheating the government out of money, which hardly seemed a worthy life calling. He wanted to get somewhere in the world, but it was obvious he had already traveled as far as he was likely to go.

He spent the better part of Saturday in the basement, then emerged in the dusky afternoon to head off to the dry cleaners and then the gym, but the dry cleaners had closed at noon (he'd thought four) and at the gym he'd barely had the energy to complete what he'd always thought of as half a workout. He'd never been a great athlete, but he'd had stamina, and took pride in it. He could be beaten on skill but never, ever outlasted.

It was an oddity that the health club occupied a space in a strip mall next to a tavern. David left the club having just showered, hair wet against the rapidly chilling air. As he walked to his car he watched a bar patron get into the car next to his, turn the engine over, and then back out while turning the wheel, so the front end of that ancient Subaru raked the entire passenger side of David's Audi, briefly lifting the right side of the car into the air.

The sound was sickening—nails on a chalkboard. David ran the last few steps to inspect his ruined car. The driver staggered to his feet shaking his head, reeking of beer.

“Dude,” he said, “I'm so sorry. Really. That's the stupidest thing ever.”

It was hard to argue.

The police came, made a report. “Word to the wise,” the cop said. “Park at the other end of the lot. This happens more often than you would think.”

He got home an hour late and Julie ripped into him, how he absented himself from the family even when he was there, and how he was literally absenting himself, working till nine at night, all day Saturday, then going out and coming back late without even having the decency to call.

He took her out to the garage. “Oh, just great,” she said, as if the car were his fault. She went back inside to start the dinner.

He debated helping her, but instead went to the living room, turned on the TV, and dozed off on the couch. Cory shook him awake. Cory's friend Adam Burkley stood next to him. “Dinnertime,” his son said.

The four of them ate in relative silence. Afterward the boys laid siege to the TV and Julie worked to clean the kitchen. David offered to help. “I got this,” she said. There was nothing left to do but head back to the basement and try to finish the work.

Later, he realized that the ping-pong table had probably looked as chaotic to the boys as it did to him now. Papers scattered everywhere, most filled with scratches of blue ink. Worse was that not only were the papers not in any order—and reorganizing them would have taken several hours—but now many of them were wet, the notes blurred and unreadable. Pages had melted into each other. He'd started this revision after the meeting on Wednesday. He had thousands of dollars of billable hours into it.

Had it just been that—money—he probably would have exploded anyway. He had always had an ample reservoir of anger. It wasn't just the ruined work that would have to be replaced, but also the car in the garage that would need to spend two weeks in the shop; the paltry reservoir of cash at the bank and the meager long-term savings in the brokerage account, his wife, who could only find fault with him, his son, who was so careless and ungrateful. He marched into the living room and interrupted the boys watching TV.

“What happened to my papers?” he yelled.

Cory sat up. “There was an accident.”

“They're ruined!”

“We put them back,” Cory said.

“Do you have any idea how long I've been working on that project?” He moved closer. That's when he noticed the puzzle on the coffee table; from the box he could see it was of the famous Escher sketch of hands drawing each other. The puzzles were Julie's idea, something she and Cory could do together. Cory loved piecing together the picture, often begging his mother to join him. David moved forward and pushed the puzzle slightly, so that a small portion of the exterior—they'd fitted all the straight-edge pieces together—spilled onto the carpet.

“Dad!” Cory yelled.

“You like that? You've been working on that and then someone just wrecks it?”

Cory moved to the puzzle, but David pushed him back on the couch, surprised after it happened at just how easily the boy had been propelled backward.

“Dad, don't.” Cory charged again and David reared back and hit him with a roundhouse right.

He'd used an open hand, thank God, but the blow still sent the boy flying back to the couch and brought Julie running from the kitchen. Cory was crying. Through the tears he managed to yell, “What are you doing?” Julie jumped in with the same question. David let loose a tirade. He stopped talking midsentence. He watched his wife comforting his son, and then he heard a noise. He'd forgotten about Adam, who was cowering in the reading chair. When David saw the frightened boy, he also saw himself: an angry and bitter man incapable of enjoying the gifts before him.

This was the last week of his son's life, and David realized later that he would spend all the rest of his days wishing that he could change what had happened. That night David apologized to Cory, said that he wished he could take it back, and the boy just shrugged, as he did the rest of the week, avoiding his father whenever possible, not speaking to him. In fact, the last thing David remembered Cory saying was what he'd said that night on the couch:

“God, Dad, you're a jerk.”

II

C
AROLYN SAT IN
her office and studied the pamphlet. “Risk Factors for Older Mothers.” A man must have picked that title. Having a baby at any age was risk enough. She was probably fourteen weeks pregnant.

Carpenter stuck his head in the office. “We gotta make a move,” he said. There was a meeting downtown. He was a beefy guy in his thirties, newly married, first kid on the way. She pitied him.

“Ready in a sec,” she said. “Meet me in the lobby.”

She knew she'd keep the baby: the thought of ending the pregnancy was worse than the thought of ending her marriage. Marty wasn't going to raise another man's child; he barely raised his own. In any case, she didn't want him involved. They'd already agreed to two weeks of keeping up appearances for Kevin and then deciding on a course of action. She was interested to know how Marty would decide, but deep down she knew she was already gone. She'd find a way to make it up to Kevin, and maybe one day he'd understand.

She pictured Carpenter pacing downstairs in the lobby, hands locked behind his back. She picked up the phone and called David.

“I'm in agony without you,” he said when he picked up. Just like that, off the cuff. He was good. It was easy to see what her sister had liked about him. “Come back,” he said.

“I've got a meeting,” she told him.

“Carolyn, you won't take my calls, won't talk to me, then you call up to say you've got a meeting?”

“I'll call back,” she promised. “But I can't really talk now.”

• • •

S
HE FELT THAT
if she had to stop her car on the freeway she'd spontaneously combust. The 405 looked paralyzed, so she drove north on Sepulveda. Sepulveda wasn't much better, but at least it gave the illusion of progress. Marty had a dinner, so she would spend the night with her son. Once she was sure Kevin was asleep, she'd call David from her cell phone.

Her gas gauge was tipping far left by the time she got to Sunset, so she kept going up to the Chevron at Moraga. The station was filled with cars, and except for an Escalade, not one of them was American. It was as if American wasn't cool. She waited for an open spot at the pump with her windows down, the late afternoon sky bright, the air warm. It was November. She said this to herself aloud. “November.”

Finally a spot opened up. She was sticking the accordion nozzle into her car when somebody called her name. It was Jonathan, Marty's best friend, a tall guy who was fastidious to the point of crazy—hair always just so, shoes always shined, nothing but belts and tucked-in shirts. He drove a black Mercedes.

“I'm sorry to hear that you and Marty are having trouble,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said.

“If there's anything I can do,” he said.

“What, Jonathan? What could you possibly do?”

He looked as if his feelings were hurt. He was forty-seven years old and had never married. He dated. He was apparently straight. He ran a real estate company. Women desperate for male company went on dates with him and refused to see him again. Those who gave him a second chance always retreated. He was the most boring man Carolyn had ever met, this guy, her husband's best friend. Sometimes, in retrospect, it shocked her how little attention she had paid to the major decisions of her life.

“I'm just saying,” Jonathan said.

“Believe me, Jonathan. There is nothing you can do.”

His face hardened. “What did Marty ever do to you?”

“Exactly,” she said, and turned away.

Soon she was fighting her way east on Sunset. It was a good question. What had Marty ever done to her? Nothing. She'd done it to him. It was all her fault. She saw it clearly, not that it mattered. It was like a car wreck: everyone paid.

• • •

“
H
AVE YOU EVER
thought,” she asked Kevin when she got home, “about what it would be like to live somewhere else?”

“Like where?”

It had been a quiet evening—pizza for dinner, an hour and a half of TV—and now it was late and she was sitting on the side of his bed. “Move over,” she told him. “Let me lie down.”

She lay next to him, on top of the covers, which was how it was now. “Like somewhere other than Los Angeles,” she said.

“Why would we do that?”

“I grew up somewhere else.”

“Yeah.”

“It wasn't so bad. You might like growing up back there, where Grandma lives.”

“It's all right, but I live here. My friends are here.”

“You wouldn't even consider it?” she asked.

“Mom, what is going on? Have you and Dad decided we're moving?”

“No.”

“Good,” he said. “ 'Cause I like it here.”

She wanted it to be easy, and it wasn't going to be easy. She felt exhausted just thinking about it.

“Mind if I lie here a minute?” she asked. When he was little, she would lie with him and they would fall asleep together.

“I guess, Mom, but I have a hard time falling asleep with you in the bed.”

“You do?”

“You take up too much room,” he said.

• • •