I put that photograph in my back pocket, along with the description of Mrs. King’s sister’s car, and I went out into the fading light. Another strange twist on an already strange journey, that now I was driving down these same streets, looking for the same person. Only now I knew his name, and I had a photograph to show people.
But I wasn’t wearing a badge.
I tried to think where I would go if I were in Darryl King’s shoes and I’d just seen a swarm of police cars around my house. He was driving his aunt’s car, and if he had a brain in his head he’d have to assume they’d found out and broadcast the description and plate number. So every minute on the road would be dangerous. He’d want to get away from the house, but off the road as soon as possible.
This was all assuming, of course, that I believed him and that he didn’t drive up to Houghton Lake. Which would mean he was set up, and that raised a whole new set of questions.
But one thing at a time.
I started out at the end of the street. It was long and straight, so you’d be able to see the police cars from a few blocks away. Arguably a misplay by my alma mater officers, but I wasn’t about to fault them for it. He was right here at this corner, I thought, starting down on Wabash. He’s about to turn, he sees the cops, he panics, he keeps driving.
Why did he panic, by the way? If he’s just coming back from a night driving around looking for company, why not just come home and face the music?
Because he’s been out of the joint for less than twenty-four hours. He knows he’s not supposed to be out unaccounted for, well after dark, and on top of that driving without a license. He sees himself sitting in front of the parole officer’s desk, sees himself getting taken right back to prison. True or not, it’s an understandable reaction on the spur of the moment.
Okay, so assume he’s coming north, coming from downtown and everything that downtown has to offer. He bails out, he keeps going north to MLK. Does he turn? No, not if he has any sense. He stays off the main road, works over to where, Rosa Parks? Grand River?
This is hopeless, I thought. If you gave me one city in the country to hide out in, this would be the one. Too much area, not enough cops. A thousand streets. So many abandoned buildings.
“The pay phone,” I said out loud to myself. “Look for the pay phone, then go from there.”
I thought back to the conversation with Darryl King, tried to remember if I had heard any kind of specific noise in the background. It would have been much more considerate of the man to call from a bowling alley, say, because then I would have heard the rattling of the pins and I’d be heading over to the old Garden Bowl on Woodward. But no, I couldn’t remember anything that distinctive, so every bar, restaurant, liquor store, or anywhere that might still have an old pay phone hanging on the wall was fair game.
I started with the first bar I could find, up by Adams Field, where all of the sports teams from Wayne State came up to play. There was a pay phone by the front door, so I went to the bartender and pulled out the photograph. Here’s where that old badge of mine would have come in real handy, because a random white guy off the street is not automatically going to get every ounce of cooperation. I’d find that out as I left the bar empty-handed, then went down Warren Avenue and hit the pizza place and the next bar and then the next restaurant, and so on. If I found a pay phone, I asked whoever was working there if they had seen a man looking like the man in the photograph. I’d get a little resistance, or a lot of resistance. Or occasionally I’d be stonewalled completely. “If you’re not a cop, then why do I have to say anything to you?” I was asked some variation of that question a few times, and I never had a good answer. Because I’m looking for him. Because I’m a human being and you’re a human being and we don’t have to play this game.
In the end, it didn’t matter. With or without cooperation, I didn’t find anyone who had seen Darryl King that night.
After a few hours of this, I called Mrs. King to let her know I had come up empty. I promised her I’d try again the next day.
“You must have been thinking about this,” I said. “Is there anywhere in this city where you think he might have gone? Somewhere he’d know he was safe?”
“He hasn’t lived in this city for a long time,” she said. “Everything he once knew is gone now.”
“Oh, one more thing,” I said. “I almost forgot. There was a green minivan parked at the end of the street today. Do you know who that might have been?”
“No, I don’t know nobody with a green minivan.”
“Just keep an eye out. Let me know if you see it around.”
“Okay, if you say so…”
One more thing for her to worry about. I was sorry I brought it up.
“Good night,” I said. “Try to get some sleep.”
Then I drove over to my favorite little cheap motel on Michigan Avenue.
“Hold on to something, Leon, because this is going to be the craziest thing you’ve ever heard.”
That was my first line when Leon picked up the phone. I was sitting in that same motel room, not just the same motel across from the Tiger Stadium site, but the very same room I had stayed in the last time I spent the night in Detroit. The night air was cooler now, but it didn’t feel like fall yet. Not like back home in Paradise.
When I told him who had hired me that day, and why, he took a moment to process it.
“Okay, so you’re following your gut,” Leon finally said. “Like you always do. I wish I was down there to help you.”
“Yeah, well, consider us both hired. Remind me to give you your half of the retainer.”
“She actually hired you to find her son.”
“Her son who, on paper, wants to kill me, yes.”
“But then you talked to him, you said. Did you believe what he told you?”
“If I’m really following my gut, like you say, then yes. I believed him.”
“For what it’s worth, I talked to Vinnie and Jackie today. Neither of them have seen a stranger around.”
“See, that’s the part that never added up,” I said. “If he was going to take his revenge on both of us, he should have come right up to my place after he killed the detective. It’s only three more hours.”
“Maybe you just missed him. Or maybe he was only going after the detective who put him away. It would have been easy to find him, you realize that. With the Internet, you can find anybody. And he had years to do it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe the detective was killed for another reason entirely. Maybe having Darryl King around for a likely scapegoat was just a happy accident.”
“If it was someone else, you mean.”
“Someone who had reason to believe that Arnie Bateman might be on his trail now.”
“You’ve got to be careful, Alex. Whether it’s Darryl or somebody else… He’s obviously capable of anything at this point.”
“I always wondered if following my gut would get me killed one day.”
He took a moment to think that one over.
“Tell me again why you’re doing this, Alex. Instead of just coming home.”
“Because I was there at the beginning,” I said. “I helped put all of this in motion. I just want to understand what really happened. Besides, I really, really like Mrs. King.”
He gave me a little laugh on that one. I thanked him and ended the call. I knew I should try to sleep a few hours. I’d been running on reserve power for way too long.
As I lay there, listening to the traffic rumbling by on Michigan Avenue, I took out the photograph of Darryl King and looked at it one more time.
“I still have no idea what’s going on here,” I said to that face, “but I do know one thing. Wherever you are, no matter what you really did or didn’t do… I’m going to find you.”