We went inside the door that led to the active part of the building and took a quick look around. There were a few customers waiting on wooden benches, but nobody had seen our suspect. So we went outside again.
We were heading to our car, but then on a whim I walked back down the tracks. There were high-arched windows all along this abandoned section of the station. I couldn’t see anything inside except darkness.
“What are you doing down there?” Franklin said.
“He could have been doing something over here,” I said. “He might have been coming out right around the time we saw him.”
“Why in hell would he do that? It’s deserted back here.”
A good question. The ground between the tracks and the building was nothing but weeds and trash and old train schedules. I walked toward the windows, keeping an eye out for snakes or God knows what.
Then I saw it.
“There’s a door over here!” I said.
“Is it open?”
“One way to find out.”
There was a rough path through the thick brush, leading to the door. I tried the handle. It didn’t turn, but I could see that the door was ajar. Taking one deep breath, I pulled it open and looked inside.
CHAPTER FIVE
All these years later, to see what this place had become. I parked as close I could, got out, and started walking down the sidewalk. Roosevelt Park was devoid of any life, save for a flock of birds roosting in one of the trees. The birds shuffled and murmured but did not fly away as I walked past.
Michigan Central Station loomed in the sky ahead of me. MCS. The MC Depot. Whatever you wanted to call it. It was half empty back in the day, back when it was part of my beat. Now it was gutted. It was violated. It was torn apart from the inside out. Every window was broken. I mean, eighteen stories high, hundreds of windows. Every single one broken.
There was a high Cyclone fence around the building. Through it I could see the graffiti and the litter, and in some places I could even see the sunlight from the other side of the building. It was the first time I had stood this close to the building since that other summer, all those years ago.
“What the hell,” I said out loud. I was looking at the shell of what was once a monument. A palace. And I was thinking of everything else I had seen that day. “How can a whole city come to this?”
There was something more, too. Besides what had happened to this place, this city. Something about the day itself. It was a low-level hum just starting in my head.
I walked down past the station, toward the river. The tracks still looked usable. I was sure the trains still came this way, emerging from under the river and roaring right past the old station. There would be no reason to stop here now. Or even to slow down.
I kept going on the other side of the razor-wire fence, past the big post office building with all the trucks lined up in the parking lot. A sign of life, at least. Some real business still being conducted. I ended up on Rosa Parks Boulevard, looking at yet one more long wreck of a building, a full block of shuttered windows and an old loading dock that hadn’t seen a truck in months or maybe years. The street side of the building was tagged with more graffiti. Already today I had seen so many combinations of spray-painted letters. There was a bridge with a battered rusty wreck of a fence on either side, and then the road curved east as it came up against the Detroit River. I kept walking.
I saw the five great towers of the Renaissance Center up ahead as I walked along the river. I could remember back when they built those towers, and of course I knew what the word “renaissance” meant to this city. If we could have looked forward to right now, would the whole idea have felt like a lie? Or was there still hope?
I looked at my watch. The sun was high, but it was pushing five o’clock. Time to get back to my truck. Maybe I’d have the chance to think about the big questions later, but right now it was time to have dinner with Agent Janet Long.
I met her at the FBI offices on Michigan Avenue. They owned one floor in McNamara Federal Building, along with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Secret Service. The DEA was right across the street.
I waited in the lobby for her. The elevator doors opened, and she came out chatting with another agent. It was her partner, Agent Fleury. I’d met them both at the same time, when they’d come up to my part of the state. Agent Fleury and I had gotten off to a rough start with each other, although I supposed we’d made our peace in the end. Still, there was probably little chance of me inviting him to join Janet and me for dinner.
She saw me and waved to me. She was wearing a dark blue skirt and jacket, with a white blouse. The standard uniform of a female FBI agent. As she came over to me, we both had this moment of sudden bewilderment. Like why are we both standing here as if we’re supposed to have anything to do with each other? She broke the spell by giving me a quick hug.
“You remember my partner,” she said. “Agent Fleury.”
“Nice to see you again,” he said, shaking my hand. He was younger than us. His suit was tailored. His hair was perfect. He reminded me a little of Detective Bateman, back in his prime.
He didn’t stick around for small talk. He wished us both a good evening, and then he left.
“You look good,” she said as soon as he was gone. “But you must be tired. It’s a long way from Paradise to Detroit.”
“In more ways than one.”
“I remember how you drive,” she said. “Still using that ex-cop with a bullet angle, huh?”
“It would be a shame not to.”
“So I thought we’d have dinner in Greektown. Does that sound all right?”
“That sounds perfect. You want me to drive?”
“This is downtown,” she said. “We’ll take the People Mover.”
We walked a block to the station on Cass Avenue. For fifty cents you can get on this raised monorail that makes a three-mile loop around downtown, stopping at Joe Louis Arena, the Renaissance Center, Greektown, a few other destinations. It’s slow as hell, but it gets the job done, and you don’t have to drive your car. Maybe even more importantly, you don’t have to park somewhere you might not feel that good about.
We hopped on the tram and stood there looking down as the streets passed below us. Everybody was getting off work in the financial district, and in the GM headquarters. Men with suits and briefcases were walking down the street, many of them joining us in the People Mover.
“It’s good to see all these people downtown,” I said. “You’d almost think the old city was doing okay.”
“It can feel that way some days,” she said. “Especially in the summer. Especially down here by the river.”
When we finally made it to the eastern side of the loop, we got out at Greektown and walked to the restaurant. We passed right by the Greektown Casino, one of the three casinos in the city now. Hard to even imagine back when I was on the police force, going the Atlantic City route and inviting everything else that comes with the gambling money. Yet here they were. I’m sure they were all doing decent business, but I couldn’t help thinking they were really just huge monuments to the city’s desperation. Once the greatest manufacturing center in the world. Now just a place where you can go to play the slot machines.
“This one was owned by your neighbors,” Janet said as she looked up at the bright lights on the Greektown Casino.
“It was,” I said, shaking my head. After the Bay Mills tribe started the ball rolling with the first Indian-run blackjack casino in the country, the Sault tribe over in Sault Ste. Marie jumped in with both feet, building the huge Kewadin Casino, and then eventually expanding their operations down here when Detroit passed the new gaming law. Not a year later, the Gaming Board took the casino away from them and gave it to a new group of investors. You can still guarantee yourself an interesting conversation by walking into any bar or restaurant in Sault Ste. Marie, finding a Sault member, and asking him what he thinks of the tribal leaders who let that happen.