And to remember what happened there.
CHAPTER FOUR
We rolled out onto Woodward Avenue. It was a Thursday, the first day of June, which meant a school day. That’s the first box you check when you’re on the morning shift, because a school day means there’s officially no good reason for kids to be out hanging around on the streets at eight thirty in the morning.
Of course, if you do see kids hanging around on the streets of Detroit, at any time of day, there’s a good chance they’re not playing kick the can, or rolling a hoop down the sidewalk with a stick. It’s just a cold hard reality that the frontline soldiers in this city’s drug trade are almost all children. A horribly effective way to run a drug business, when you think about it, because if you ring up a thirteen-year-old for selling, what are you gonna do, put him away for ten years? Even if you did, there’d be another thirteen-year-old to take his place the very next day. The men who are making all the real money, you never touch them.
If they didn’t invent the practice here in Detroit, they sure as hell perfected it. Young Boys Incorporated, or YBI, was formed by three teenagers on a playground. A few years later, they controlled most of the heroin trade in Detroit. They were bringing in close to two million dollars a week. In the wintertime, you could spot their runners from a block away, because they all wore the same kind of coat. That’s how brazen they were, all of them. Like go ahead, pick off a few of the kids. See how far that gets you.
We finally brought down the gang in 1982. I say we, meaning the Detroit cops, the FBI, and the DEA, actually working together for once. One of the three founding members had already been killed, but the other two were put away for good, along with forty-one of their lieutenants. The kids, they all scattered to the wind, but nobody around here was naive enough to believe that new gangs wouldn’t form overnight to take the place of YBI.
Then, on top of everything else this city had to deal with, some genius somewhere figured out how to make a cheap form of freebase cocaine using baking soda. Crack, rock, whatever the hell you want to call it. It hit Detroit just as hard as every other city in America. Maybe a little harder. We still didn’t have enough cops in this town, and now with a new, highly addictive form of coke that could get you high for five or ten bucks? It was starting to feel like a losing battle most days.
Franklin and I got about a block down Woodward Avenue before we saw a half-dozen kids walking slowly down the sidewalk. We came up behind them, and Franklin blipped the siren. He was driving that day. As soon as we came to a stop, I got out and rousted the kids, asked them why they weren’t in school, dismissing with prejudice their claim that summer vacation had already started. Eventually I just sent them on their way, with me holding only their empty promises to wander over to school.
Franklin was finally getting out of the car to come help me. I waved him back inside as the kids walked away.
“Don’t tell me,” he said as he got back behind the wheel. “They were on their way to choir practice.”
“Not quite. But no big deal. Just a bunch of knuckleheads skipping school on a nice summer day.”
“How exactly do you know they weren’t up to something else? Did you take one ID from those kids?”
“Did you see me take an ID? You were sitting right here.”
“It was a leading question, Alex. Just like in the courtroom.”
“I asked them what they were up to,” I said. “They answered me, I asked again, and then the second time I believe they told me the truth. So let’s go find some real problems to solve, all right?”
“Oh, that’s right, I’ve got the all-seeing swami in the car with me. I keep forgetting that.”
“It’s not even nine o’clock,” I said. “How many times are we going to do this today?”
“That’s entirely up to you, Swami. Although I’m surprised you haven’t already divined the number in advance.”
This is how it went with us. All day long. I had this unshakable belief back then, that I could ask a person a question and I could look in their eyes while they answered me and I could tell if they were lying to me. With absolute certainty. No doubt whatsoever. In the years since, I’ve found out that some people are gifted liars, and that my supposedly one hundred percent accurate lie detector can be fooled completely.
Of course, if you think I’ve learned not to put such trust in my own instincts anymore, then you have no idea just how stubborn I am. Or maybe how stupid.
“I need more coffee,” I said.
He drove us down through the Wayne State campus, past the great stone edifices of the art museum on one side of the street and of the library on the other. There was a little coffee shop next to the hospital. I went in and got one with cream for myself, one black for Franklin, waiting for the inevitable joke about how he likes his coffee like he likes his women. He was happily married, but some jokes are still mandatory, I guess. And yes, we both had a doughnut. Two cops with two doughnuts.
“What else can we do to fulfill the stereotype today?” he said as the powdered sugar dusted his nice clean uniform. “Too bad neither of us has a badass mustache.”
“We could both get out and try to chase down some kid. Climb over a fence and throw him into some garbage cans. Then complain about how we’re too old for this stuff.”
“The day is young, Alex. I’ll let you do that one, though, if you don’t mind.”
“You really can’t run anymore, huh?”
I could see him flexing his left knee, just at the thought of it. “If a bear was chasing me, maybe. But then I’m sure I’d end up in the hospital.”
“So I take it you’re not going to play basketball.”
He was taking a drink of coffee then and just about spit it out. “Are you kidding me? With Detective Jackass as the coach?”
“Coach and star player. Don’t forget.”
“Star player, my ass. I would have destroyed that boy, back in the day. In fact, if I hadn’t been a little better at football… I’m just saying. You might have seen me on the hardwood instead of the gridiron.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it.”
“Now, if I had played baseball…”
“Oh, don’t even start,” I said. One of our other favorite arguments.
“I won’t. My only point is that every sport has its necessary set of physical skills.”
“Okay. You’re right.”
“And then there’s baseball.”
I shook my head and looked out my side window. There was a line of apartments on my side of the street. By lunchtime there’d be people sitting out on their balconies, watching the traffic. Not exactly the best view in the world, but there were far worse places to live. Across the street was another apartment building, much older and taller. A place we knew well, from repeated visits. Thankfully there were no calls to send us there that day. We wouldn’t even set foot in that building for another month.
The downtown buildings were looming in front of us, getting bigger with every block. We passed over the highway, then by the Fox Theater into the canyon formed by the first of the tall buildings. We were downtown now, and there were working people walking around like it was any other city in the world. This one just happened to be built on one thing. The automobile. So as that business went, so went the city. On this particular day, it looked to be holding its own.
That took us past the Opera House and right into Grand Circus Park, with all of the statues and fountains and flowers, and God damn if it didn’t all look beautiful in the morning sunlight. Another few blocks and the road curved around another little gem of a park called Campus Martius. It’s a big jumble as five roads all converge there, a great place for fender benders, and sure enough, we made the turn just in time to see one happen. One car swinging hard to the outside of the circle, another car in its blind spot. The dull hollow sound of a passenger’s-side door being pushed in, then a terrifying moment as the two cars seemed to join together and form a single metal monster that could go just about anywhere, take out other cars or even the people on the sidewalk.