Left Field Page 7

  “Yeah.” She smiled faintly. “We were best friends to start with, and we were best friends to…the end.”

  “I’m sure you miss her terribly.”

  Jackie welled up but got hold of herself. I pushed the napkin dispenser over to her. She blew her nose then took a deep breath and said, “OK, you know she worked for DeMedHo.”

  Detroit Medical Home Services was a program designed for people who needed more help than Medicare, Medicaid, or the county programs could give. About a year ago, there had been a huge big deal about its launch, involving the mayor and half of city hall. God knows where the mayor got the money for it. Grants, maybe.

  “Right,” I said. “Caseworker, right?”

  Jackie palmed her eyes for a moment, as if to drive away the redness and the last of her tears. “Yeah. She rarely talked about her work. I guess it was sort of depressing, dealing with all those poor, sick people all the time.” She uncovered her eyes and looked up at me.

  “Uh-huh. So you didn’t work together? What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a commercial property inspector.”

  “Oh! You work for a company or—”

  “I work for myself, freelance.”

  “Hey, that’s great. So, like, before a transaction, somebody hires you to do an inspection, just like with houses?”

  “Right.”

  “I bet you know the city pretty well.”

  The cowboy song ended. An elderly couple got up and went to the jukebox, holding hands. We watched them select a few songs. He clanked in the quarters, and they went back to their table as Elvis ripped into “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” They took their seats, smiling at each other.

  You see something like that, and it makes your heart happy.

  “I guess I do know the city pretty well,” Jackie said, smiling residually about the old people, as I was. “Well, anyway, a few months ago Abby started acting nervous. Really nervous and preoccupied. I asked her a couple of times what was wrong. All she said was, ‘Things are not what they appear.’ I was like, ‘Well, what?’ She wouldn’t say, but it seemed clear it was something at work. Finally she said, ‘I’m looking into something, and it’s getting very strange.’ And I said, ‘You’ve got to talk to somebody.’ But she said she wasn’t sure enough yet.”

  “Scared.”

  “Very.” As if to battle the tension of this conversation, Jackie stretched and draped her arms along the back of the booth. She had quite the wingspan. I imagined her being recruited by Daedalus to try on some feathered airfoils and join his jailbreak.

  “Do you know if she got threats?”

  “No, I don’t know. I don’t think so, because I got the feeling nobody knew what she was doing.”

  “What did Lieutenant Sorrel say about this?” I asked her.

  “I didn’t tell him.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “For one thing, because I have nothing specific to tell him. If he goes and asks some general questions at her work, and if something is going on, what are they gonna say? ‘Oh, yeah, Lieutenant, we’ve got quite the scary murderous problem going on here.’”

  “But—”

  “Just wait. I’m getting to the point.”

  Our food came, and Jackie paused to anoint her burger with mustard. “I’m starving. Give me a minute.” She opened that lovely mouth, and for a moment, I sure wished I were that burger.

  I anxiously busied myself with napkins and my salad. It was tasty.

  Jackie swallowed and said, “Abby said this: ‘If anything happens to me, look in the pantry of the camper.’”

  I put down my fork. “Yeah? A camper?”

  “Yeah, she bought an old Airstream trailer about a year ago, and she’d been fixing it up. Thought she’d bomb around out West someday. It’s a cool little thing.”

  “Where is it? Did you go look?”

  “It’s in a storage yard in Warren. I can find the place, because I helped her a few times. I don’t have the keys, so no, I haven’t gone to look. I lost the key to her apartment last month when I got mugged after practice, or I’d have gone in there and looked for them.”

  “Somebody mugged you?” Her shoulders were broader than my mechanic’s. “I’d have picked an easier target.”

  She half laughed. “Yeah, I was pretty surprised.” Her laugh was pitched thrillingly low. I found myself trying to think of ways to make her laugh some more. I think she read my mind, because she kept smiling. I got hold of myself and focused on business.

  “Did Abby say what was in the pantry?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t tell the police?”

  “No!” She was getting irritated.

  “Jesus, Jackie, this is a huge fact they need to know! The woman thought she was in danger, and she left a cache of evidence!”

  “Look. Abby said her boss had a ‘special relationship’ with a cop. I don’t know who. Everybody knows there’s corruption around the city. For all I know, the police are involved in whatever Abby was looking into.”

  Unfortunately she had a point. The mayor had famously used some crooked cops to intimidate people, and you heard about even worse stuff on the street. I said, “Well, Lieutenant Sorrel seems like a standup guy.”

  “Or he could be in on it.”

  “I get what you’re saying, but that sounds exceptionally paranoid even to me. Who else have you told about this?”

  “Nobody. Not even Mercedes.”

  “What about Abby’s family? I mean, I saw in the obit that she had no surviving parents, and just the brother, right? Mercedes said something about cousins.”

  “She has some cousins back in Indiana,” Jackie said. “Her dad died just this year.”

  “Where did he live?”

  “Palmer Woods.”

  Another thunderclap. “Palmer Woods! Well, did he live in the house where she was found?”

  “No, he had one of the littler ones at the edge of the neighborhood.”

  “That’s a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Jackie went on to tell me that Abby’s brother was in the Navy, a captain who was supposed to make it back for the funeral. One of the cousins had come up to make the arrangements.

  “Who else knows about the existence of the camper?” I’d been keyed up for hours, but now my senses were really alerted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “And as far as you know, you’re the only person Abby told about the pantry?”

  “Yes, as far as I know.”

  The Elvis songs ended and I went over with some quarters, wanting more music to cover our conversation. My Chuck Taylors squeaked on the clean floor. I punched in a set of Supremes singles. “Stop in the Name of Love” kicked off. Such stylish, assertive music. That’s one thing about living in Detroit: most jukeboxes have at least a few classic Motown songs. I returned to my seat.

  We talked it all through. The police may well have inspected Abby’s apartment for clues as to her murder. Did they know about the camper? Did the cousin or brother know about it? Even if the police or family had found whatever evidence Abby had stashed—maybe paperwork from the DeMedHo office—who knows that they’d even know what they were looking at?

  “You say she was restoring that Airstream? And she got it, what, about a year ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “She hadn’t taken a trip with it yet?”

  “No.”

  “Then it might not have a current registration and plate. Thus nobody might know where this thing is except you.”

  Jackie looked at me, her mouth a little crooked, as if the idea excited her—against her better judgment. “Yeah.” She leaned forward over her half-eaten burger and rested her elbows lightly on the table. Most people look like oafs when they put their elbows on the table, but somehow she made the gesture seem graceful.

  “Did Abby have a computer?” I asked.

  “At work, of course, and I gave her a new
little tablet at Christmas. I don’t know where it is, probably her apartment. She had an old laptop, but I think she scrubbed it and donated it somewhere.”

  “Who’s supposed to take care of all her stuff?”

  “I guess Novak is. That’s her brother. I’m sure he’ll be glad to talk to you whenever he gets in.”

  “Well, who ID’d the body?” I asked. “Who’s handling the funeral? The cousin from back home?”

  “Yeah. I offered to help, but she said no thanks.”

  “Would she know about the RV?”

  “I doubt it. Abby wasn’t close to them.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, you know, her family was small-town and quite traditional. I’m sure anybody gay just grew up and got out without looking back.”

  “OK.” I twiddled my straw in my iced tea and looked out the window. The street life you’d have expected at this hour on Campau back when Detroit was normal would have been Polish shift workers on their way to or from the auto plants, plus a few nuns in full habit hurrying back to the sister house after a late novena. This evening, however, the street was dirty and deserted except for two amazingly dressed hookers who looked like the love children of 1986 Elton John and a zebra.

  I said, “Well, you know, all this points to only one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’ve got to get into that trailer.”

  Jackie looked at me, her blue eyes sparkling. “Mercedes was right about you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. She said you’re bat-shit crazy.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “But in a good way.”

  11

  The RV lot, up on Mound Road, was a simple affair—a fence around a couple of acres of ground. Too small, I judged, to have a guard dog. I cut my lights as we got near; in case there were any video cameras, it’d be harder for them to catch my license plate. The place was poorly lit in any event.

  “Stay in the car,” I told Jackie. We peered at the yard. It was about half full of RVs, boats on trailers, and a couple of those bus-type motor homes. They loomed in the dark like beached whales.

  “There it is,” said Jackie excitedly. “That’s Abby’s trailer, I can see the end of it from here. It’s in the middle, sort of.”

  I moved the Crown Vic down the quiet side street a little ways. I liked driving it. Given the Ford Crown Victoria’s ubiquity as a police car (marked and unmarked, as my Chevrolet Caprice had been), people subliminally tended to register its silhouette as a vehicle of authority—something most of us would just as soon avoid.

  A light breeze stirred the warm sky—always a favorable thing, as even the rustling of trees in the wind helps cover burglary sounds. The temperature was dropping a bit as well, the better to keep the breeze going.

  We had stopped at my place, where I ran in for a few tools and my dark-gray hoodie, plus another black one somebody had left after a long-ago party. I handed my companion the black one. “Put this on. I’m gonna do a little recon and be right back with the plan.” Jackie gave me one of those exploding-flower smiles.

  The perimeter was eight-foot-high chain link fencing with barbed wire slanting out from the top. Contrary to what you might think, it’s easy to scale such a fence—provided you go over one of the corners. In almost every case, the barbed wire meets the corners straight up, not slanted out, because it’s a fussy job to attach the little slant pieces to a corner pole, and most installers don’t bother. Take a look sometime and you’ll see. It’s kind of incredible. Trouble with corners, though, is that they’re usually the most exposed parts of the perimeter.

  A chain and heavy lock secured the gate. A sign said, purdy rv boat storage inquire at purdy body. I glimpsed the Airstream near the center of the lot. A fortuitous position, lots of cover from the other RVs in the yard. This was decidedly Winnebago land. Why spend more on fine, cool, compact design when for the same money you can get something way bigger that has a unique, swirling, mauve-and-black graphic on the side that looks like the slime track of a space alien?

  Purdy Body Shop was next door, a tough place surrounded by bashed-up cars awaiting beautification.

  My only real concern was surveillance cameras. I know today’s cameras can be tiny and easily hidden, but to withstand Detroit’s winter weather, a camera would need a bit of shelter. In any event, we were not talking about a high-end situation here. I checked out every reasonable vantage point—utility pole, tree, fence post, neighboring roof—and saw nothing. The streetlights provided enough light for this.

  I zeroed in on a vulnerable spot: the darkest side, down the side street, farthest from Purdy Body and closest to a small insurance office, which was, like Purdy Body, closed and dark. The fence there was hidden by a bunch of overgrown shrubbery behind the office. Perfect.

  I know wearing a hoodie doesn’t make you a criminal, but if you don’t want to be recognized at night, a hoodie pulled up tight around your face is the ticket. You can pull the hood off as soon as your job is done; I’m just hey, walking down the street here.

  The thing to realize about breaking the law is this: most people who do it don’t get caught. It’s easy to get caught if you’re a lunkhead, but the police will never admit that if you use a modicum of good sense, you can pretty much commit crime after crime and not get caught. We see this demonstrated by white-collar criminals all the time. When they get busted, it usually stems from carelessness arising from complacency. They blab about it and get ratted out.

  Street criminals would be so much more successful if they used a little common sense: don’t carry a weapon, don’t get high first, choose your accomplices wisely, and abort the operation at the first sign of trouble. And never blab about it.

  One more word about timing: when you go creeping around in public at three a.m., you’re unlikely to be seen by many people, but the people who do see you (like police) might remember you. That’s a risk you have to take sometimes. But if you perpetrate your crime of choice a little before bedtime, during the time slot of Who Can Find Gold in This Ice Hole?—or whatever the hell top TV show is that everybody must watch in order to feel part of the tribe—then you’ve got a better situation. If you’re spotted, it’s a lot less suspicious to be on the street at ten than at three. Just saying.

  I returned to the Crown Vic. “You’re sure you want to do this?” I asked Jackie.

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll be breaking the law.”

  “I know.”

  “We could get caught.”

  “I know.”

  “But we’re not going to.”

  She just smiled. I really liked that. No overthinking, no overdiscussing. One’s adrenaline certainly does surge when one is creeping around, trespassing, but really, what’s life for?

  In addition to the bolt cutters, I carried a roll of duct tape, a hotel key card I’d saved from somewhere, a medium-slot screwdriver, and my trusty old penlight, the lens of which I’d masked with a circle cut from a red plastic bag, secured by a rubber band.

  “Phones on mute,” I said.

  “Oh, God, yeah.” We fished them out and did so.

  We were fabulously ready.

  We set out walking up the side street then veered into the side parking lot of the insurance office then to the alley. Back at the fence line it was dark, then darker still as we pushed our way into the shrubbery, which stank of urine from the local dogs or bums.

  I was right—the RV lot had no guard dog, who would have sensed us and barked like hell by now.

  “Hoods up.” I switched on the flashlight, the small red glow from which would hardly be noticeable, and handed it to Jackie. She held it as I snipped a flap in the fence with the bolt cutters. We crouched there, thigh to thigh.

  “Is your heart pounding?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “Mine too. I feel so alive!”

  “That’s what breaking and entering will do for you.”

  She laughed, and I wante
d to inhale her laugh and keep it deep inside me.

  After one last snip, we made it through on our hands and knees. I bent back the fencing and held it for Jackie, the better, I confess, to get a full shot of her firm li’l butt going through.

  There was the kind of debris lying around that you’d expect, the kind of crap that probably made up the garbage gyre you read about—you know that place in the Pacific Ocean? That swarm that represents the downside of our addiction to disposable plastic shit? It occurred to me that maybe another kind of gyre was brewing in Detroit, a whirlpool of trouble.

  As if cued by my thoughts, a gunshot sounded in the distance, then after a couple of seconds, another. Then silence. Jackie and I looked at each other and shrugged.

  It’s hard for people from out of town to grasp, but if you’re an experienced Detroiter and you hear a random gunshot or two in the distance, you don’t even think about it. The only time I’d gotten down on the floor of my apartment was one New Year’s Eve when I heard full-automatic fire that sounded close.

  Jackie’s and my sneakers barely crunched on the gravel. A little light wandered in from the streetlights, some sixty feet away, and from a liquor store across the street.

  The Airstream, its aluminum skin shining dully, lounged near the center of the yard like a queen larva amid its more angular subjects. It was about twenty feet long.

  Jackie and I kept our voices low. “Is this it for sure?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I recognize that gingham curtain—Abby made it.”

  I checked the rear, and as I suspected, the license tag had expired. I did a quick walk around; the trailer was intact, no broken windows or anything.

  The door was locked, and I saw no jimmy marks. This side of the trailer was in deep shadow, perfect for us. Jackie held the light while I tried to slip the lock with my plastic card. Have you ever tried this? On most pull-behind-you-to-lock doors, it’s shockingly easy to slip a thin, flexible piece of plastic between the jamb and the bolt and just pop that bolt out of the way.

  Random memories came back from other nighttime break-ins I’d done, of lunging German shepherds, rusty hinges, and unexpected blood. I sighed with satisfaction.