Detroit: Winter Green-4th book-not done

The most direct way to go to Hamtramck, if you look at a map, is actually a mess of conflicting one-way streets. Having tried to travel that way in past years, I’ve concluded that it’s just as fast, if less direct, to drive up Telegraph Road to Eight Mile and then continue east. And we were only a couple of blocks west of Dequindre, one of the major streets into Hamtramck, when my cell ’phone chimed and, having both hands full of steering wheel, I plucked it from my belt and handed it to Brit. He uttered a completely non-committal “’Lo.”

         He then listened for a moment and said, “Well, where shall we come then?” He listened again, making the sort of noises that encourage more information to come forth. Then he said, “OK, we’ll see you there.” He flipped the ’phone shut.

         “That was Tawnee          . She’s concluded that whatever she wants to tell us about is creating some degree of problem for her. She doesn’t want to be seen in public in Hamtramck. She’s at a friend’s  crib and would like to have us go there. From what she says, it’s a row house on Peterboro west of Second Avenue.”

         I therefore flipped around on Baseline, (the other name for Eight Mile Road) and went back west to US 75 and then south to Mack Avenue and west to the neighborhood we were seeking. As is typical of the sort of layout to be found in Detroit, the location we were heading for is only a few blocks from The Masonic Temple where The Rolling Stones play when they come to town, and in the other direction a like diTstance from Orchestra Hall, the home of The Detroit Symphony. And yet it’s not a place I’d casually go if unarmed. That’s just being practical. ‘Better safe than sorry’. Don’t go places without a ‘Little Friend’! Metro Detroit is the most violent big city area in the country.

         Since it hadn’t snowed to any extent for several days, the mess on the streets was the universal gray to be found ubiquitously in wintertime in Rust Belt cities. There were only a few drifting flakes to be seen in the air at the moment. And because snow removal, and even salting, is very hit-and-miss here in Detroit, we were operating, on the side streets, in a mixture of slush and industrial dirt with an underlayment of ice. Temp 35 f. Hooray For Winter, in the industrialized, impoverished North.

         And also typical of Detroit is the number of cars along the kerbs that have ceased to run due to the cold and their junkyard condition. I found a place to park that was about three buildings to the east of the address we’d been given, and pulled in, thankful for the combination of all-wheel drive and the cleat-y, studded tires the Bronco was wearing. I always install a hundred pounds of lead ballast on each corner of the frame in winter to help the going.

         Brit spoke, “She said to go to the back.” So suiting actions to words, we went down the sloppy sidewalk along the west side of the building. It didn’t look as if there’d been much traffic, because one could still see the mix of individual foot prints of those who’d gone before us. And several bushes that bordered the cracked concrete overhung the way, with undisturbed, dripping ice in their branches that crackled and fell as we brushed past.

         At the back corner, the red-brick construction became ship-lapped, once-upon-a-time white-painted wood, badly in need of some attention. The door there was obviously not used because the snowy mess on the steps was undisturbed. We circled all the way to the back and found another portal that did have signs of traffic. Brit knocked; without thinking he stood to one side so that he’d not directly confront anyone who answered while bearing ill intent.

         The slurred “who’s dere” sounded like Tawnee’s voice and I returned, “It’s the Whitey and Brit”, earning me a small glancing grin from my companion. There was the sound of a number of locks being cycled, and the scruffy postern opened slightly with one bright eye showing. Then Tawnee swung the panel completely open, briefly offering an eye-full of her astounding sweatered double bowsprit before she moved back out of view. Brit stepped in and I followed.

         The area we entered was a kitchen as if from a farmhouse, and Tawnee dropped onto a ladder-back chair at the table in the center of the big, old room. I sat across from her, and in an easy voice, I said, “What’s the matter? You didn’t seem to have any problems when I spoke with you yesterday, but now you’re pretty agitated. Talk to me!”

         She replied, “Ah cum back heah a coupla munt’s ago. Janice ‘n’ me’d had sum stuff goin’ an’ Ah knows ’bout t’angs dat nobuddy else duz. Ah wuz gonna pick ‘em back up!”

         I said, “So what was it you wanted to tell us? And what’s happened since yesterday that has you so nervous? We’re here, so talk!”

         She replied, “Ah knows da gurls dat Janice used fo’ da boat. An’ Ah figgered to try ta git a boat ta use in da summah, an’ a motah home ta use in da wintah. But when Ah git heah, everythin’s turned aroun’. Buncha da pimps’s gone, an’ dey’s new ohnahs in a lotta da massage joints.”

         I spoke up. “Let’s see. Is Lawrence still in that place on Woodward?”

         She replied, “Nah, he’s gone. An’ dose places on Eight Mile is all closed.”

         “Is ‘Stilts’ still running that ‘Station’ place on Livernois? Is Dell still around? What about Jack’s Joint? Is T&A still open in Inkster?”

         “Ah doan’no’.”

         And at that point, Brit took over and asked several questions showing his comprehensive knowledge of the activities and connections of the lower strata of the Detroit netherworld. I was glad to let him go ahead with the query, because I’d about run through my limited expertise on the subject anyway.

         As is often the case, Tawnee actually knew more than she thought she did. And under questioning by Brit, some of the information was exposed.

         Those activities, in Detroit, that are the focus of the Detroit Police ‘Morality Unit’ have for years been somewhat fragmented and in disarray. Before my time, so I’m told, such operations were the purview of the Jacques Brothers. But as seems to often be the case, the second generation of the family were positively clown-like in their machinations, and before long there was very little organization to which any allegiance was even possible. Thus occurred the small individual fiefdoms of recent times. Now, it seemed possible to infer that someone, or–ones, had made a beginning toward a remanufactured cohesiveness.

         “You say gone, but do you mean that bodies have turned up, or just that there seems to be new management or that places seem to be closed?” I asked.

         “Ah don’ ’no’ ‘bout no bodies. But dey’s a lotta new folks aroun’ try’na run thangs,” she answered. “An’ when Ah made sum cawls ’bout gittin’ gurls tageddah, Ah got tol’ ta faggedit. ’Ur ah’d git hurt. Den dey cum aroun’ ’smoanin’. An’so Ah cum heah!”

         Brit put into the conversation, “I haven’t been paying much attention recently, because I was gone for a while, myself. But I don’t know of any bodies turning up other than the usual dope stuff---and that’s mostly gang related.”

         I scratched my chin. “Well, let’s see if we can gather things together. There’s been a shake-up of the hooker activity---at least some of the hooker activity---in the Metro area, and there seems to be a number of new faces to be seen. And whoever’s in charge doesn’t seem to like any incursion into the area they seem to have staked out. That leaves a number of  questions. Is that right so far?”

         Tawnee said, Yeah, ’s right.”

         Brit replied, “Sounds good so far.”

         I leaned back in the chair, and raised brows as I mentally ran over the gen. “Well, that leaves several things to be explored. First of all, (looking in Tawnee’s direction) exactly what was said this morning? Were you actually threatened? And what did these people look like?”

         “Dey wuz uh cuppl’a Ay-rabs.”

         “And what makes you think so?”

         “Well, ’at’s whut dey looked lak. An’ sounded lak, too!”

         Brit jumped in, “Explain that a little bit. Looked, how? And sounded, how? What did they say?”

         “Dey sed ta fa-get about doin’ any thang on mah own. Ah cud wuk fo dem oh git outta town.”

         “And did they make a suggestion about how you’d work for them?”

         “No, jus’ sed wuk fo’ ’em. I’se sposda deecide.”

         “Were there actually threats involved? Or was the threat just sorta implied?”

         “Dey sed wuk, leave, oh be sorry!”

         “Well, I guess that’s clear enough. Did they give you a deadline?”

         “Dey sed acoupla days.”

         Still lounging, I switched to looking at Brit. “They certainly seem sure of themselves. They appear to’ve said, in effect, ‘Go on and decide soon. We don’t have to keep track of you, because we’re so all-powerful that we can reach out and touch you any time we please. Therefore, we can ignore you until we deign to cast another eye your way.’”

         Brit took up the narrative, “And that degree of hubris is probably the key to their undoing, if it actually makes sense to meddle with this. Do you see a clear way for us to profit?”

         “You know that the profitability of an enterprise, if you don’t care about laws, is highest if you have a product that creates a demand for itself. If it’s dope, it’s expensive based on the amount you get for a given amount of money. And it certainly does create a continuing demand for itself. But the demand for an orgasm, by your typical ‘john’, is almost as strong as the demand for a fix by a junkie, and you don’t have nearly the necessity for import because you can use the same girl over and over. Under such circumstances, it makes sense, from a business standpoint, to more-or-less take care of the girls. But even if you operate in such a way that  the girls are being worn out, ‘manufacture’ or importation is easier in a lot of ways. If you are trying to bring in a powder or a liquid, the raised eyebrow must be a given. It doesn’t take a very smart guard at the border to question a suitcase of ‘stuff’. On the other hand, the activity necessary to bring in a few human beings may be nothing more than a nice day of running a boat back-and-forth in the water around here.

         “And actually getting a local girl, or a boy, into ‘the life’ is quite easy, any time you have a large population of lower-economic-class folk to pull from.”

         Brit continued, “I’ve heard tell that back before the riot in ‘67, you could hardly see the sidewalk for the line of girls standing along the kerb on certain sections of John R and Brush. There’d be a hundred or more within a couple of blocks, any evening after dark. At present, you can easily find both girls and boys up above McNichols around the south-east corner of the park. But there wouldn’t be anywhere near a hundred, altogether.

          “To a certain degree, it’s due to greater sophistication. Streetwalkers have always been the lowest end of the totem pole, but they’re really the lowest of the low now, because of the possibility of making a call or dropping in where a sign says ‘Massage’. I suppose that there may be a few legitimate therapeutic places around, but there must be fifty that are really sex shops for every one that’s on the up-and-up. And the really high end activities are to be found in the toniest bars where business folk go after work, or by approaching the operations involving what have been known as call girls.” Brit focused on Tawnee, “I’m sure I haven’t said much of anything that’s unknown to you. Did you get any idea at all as to what part of the ‘ho’ trade these guys were talking about?”

         Tawnee’d been looking back and forth from one of us to the other as we’d pontificated. And it was obvious that the somewhat rapid back and forth between Brit and Me had by now served to confuse her to a certain extent.

         She said, “Ah dunno ’bout whut yah jus’ sed. Dey wanna-d me tuh du da wuk foh ’em, an’ den dey’d take mosta duh monee. Ah ain’ nevah wuked fo’ no pimp. An’ Ah ain’ gonna staht now!”

         Brit concluded, “I think you’ve given us quite a bit to puzzle over. And we should certainly get together again very soon to talk more about this. But one question still needs to be answered right now, if possible. That’s, ‘Since you must have had something in mind in order to call us, what do you want from us?’ You must be aware that we tend to get involved in order to get close to loose money, not just because somebody needs help. What will we get out of this deal?” Then he glanced at me, knowing that I was really very prone to give help any time it’s asked for---profit or not. Truly, our take already this past year was more than is made by many good-sized corporations in a like time, so there didn’t have to be any profit available at all. But Brit is actually far less motivated than I by an individual’s suffering. On the other hand, he isn’t very likely to leave a crying kid standing alone on a sidewalk in a snowstorm.

         I capped things off by saying, “You have my ’phone number. Give us time to nose around a little bit, and we’ll be in touch. And you can be thinking about what’s been said. Are you planning on staying here for any length of time? Do you feel that it’s safe enough for you here?

         “Yeah, dis’s mah sistah’s place. She be’s coo’ wiv it.” She went to the counter by the sink, and came back with a slip of paper on which she’d written the ’phone number, and I quickly put it into the voice-dial section of my electronic gizmo. Then I handed the slip to Brit.

         I said, “I’ll be looking into things over the next couple of days. You need to decide what you want to come out of all this, and what you’d want us to do for you. Then we’ll see if we can arrange that it gets accomplished so as to best suit everybody.” And on that note, Brit and I went back to the Bronco, and headed for Chung’s.



         Chung’s Restaurant has been an anchor point in the Cass Corridor for fifty years or more. While everything else for several blocks has regressed to basic slum, Chung’s somehow continues to keep going. I can actually take you to several places of the same sort around the Metro area---if the place is good enough to stay open, in other words to make a profit, it’s very likely a good place to eat. In Chung’s case, they seem to do it while keeping prices very much on the moderate side. Since a mid-afternoon snack of  a bowl of won-ton soup and a pair of  Chung’s egg-rolls is enough of an attraction to have pulled me in from the suburbs on many occasions, it made no sense to leave the area without indulging. (Chung’s is the only place I’ve ever found that somehow makes the outer covering for an egg roll without using the thin  ‘wrapper’ approach. It looks as if they hand-form some amorphous doughy material around the inside ingredients. And their egg-rolls so formed are distinctly superior to any other way of doing things.)

         When we were seated, with a pot of tea in front of us and the soup-egg  roll order in the kitchen, Brit said, “What do you think about all that?”

         I replied, “It’s sinking in that Tawnee is angling toward wanting us to provide pimp services.” (Big grin!) “I mean that she seems to want protection for her planned enterprise, and quite likely some sort of background executive service as well, and may be willing to pay us to provide this back-up for her. But in addition, I  don’t think she has thought it through to such an extent that she would be able to articulate her idea. At least right now. I wouldn’t doubt that a couple of days from now she’ll have consciously hit on the idea of asking us to do something of the sort.”

         Brit rejoined, “Well, do you think providing protection to a hooker service means that we’ve come up in the world, or is it a step down?” (Said with a wicked glint in his eye and a little smile playing around his mouth.)

         “Gee, I don’t know. Do you suppose we ought to try it, and just see how well it fits into our spare time?”

         “I can see several benefits. We could let Tawnee do all the direct money collection, and just have her come and bring it to us. And she may know some more broads that are built just like she is---a hundred pounds of girl and about sixty pounds is boobs. Maybe there’d be enough money in it so I could get one of those hats with a big gold chain for a hat-band, and some feathers. Maybe a green hat or an orange one!”

         “Yeah, and you could get one of those color-matching outfits that has ostrich-skin shoes with pointy toes and an Italian-knit sweater-shirt.”

          And then the waiter, Kim, came with the egg-rolls, and we stopped the badinage and applied ourselves to the provender. By the time the first course was finished, and we were, in more measured fashion, dipping into the soup, Brit came back to the subject. He said, “I don’t believe Tawnee has carefully thought through this whole mess in such a way that she’s going to offer a concrete project plan. What we just saw is primarily a reaction to being threatened earlier this morning. From our conversation, I believe that the impulse to have some protection has obscured her willingness to give us some other sort of gen about the situation. Her previous experience with us was that she answered some questions and she was given a handful of hundreds and some good advice. I think that was the motivation for her call yesterday. But she didn’t sit down and think it through.”

         I joined in, “And when we next talk to her, part of what she’ll have to say will be the facts she intended to give us in the first place. They’ll have something to do with this situation she discovered when she got back to town. But it’s probably some sort of an offshoot of what we’ve already heard.”

         And by the time that the conversation hit that point, the soup was finished and we put money on the table and left.



Annie and I spent the evening snogging.







CHAPTER THREE



         Next morning, after tea and toast with Annie, I spent about thirty seconds trying to figure out where I’d put my ’phone.  Then it dawned on me that when things had heated up the night before,  I’d dropped my trousers over by the corner of the settee, and the gizmo had fallen to the floor and slid underneath. And, predictably, this time when I’d forgotten it entirely, was the time when it really needed to be re-charged. That’s not too big a deal, because the re-charging cradle actually holds a spare battery so there’s always one ready to go. But the ’phone had turned itself off overnight, and when I put in the spare battery and powered-up, I discovered that along with the junk calls trying to sell me something, there was a call from Tawnee. The message she left sounded frightened and wanted me to come back to her sister’s place as soon as possible. The little screen told me that the call had come at 2:30 AM. I called Brit, got his voicemail, and left a message that related the story, and that I was heading for Peterboro, and to give me a bell soonest. Then I did a press-check on my little Kimber .45 carry-gun, got in ‘Orca’, my severely common, white, short wheelbase E-150 and headed out. Orca’s been monkeyed with. It now has all-wheel drive and a supercharged NASCAR-style engine that puts out 1200 horsepower if you include the spray.

         When I got to the place on Peterboro, this time I knew enough about the layout to drive into the alley behind the buildings so as to park in one of the spaces available there. As I stopped, I noticed that the door we’d entered the day before was standing somewhat open; this was not the season, or the kind of neighborhood, for that matter, to have your entrance standing ajar. It is the kind of locality to have at least three locks, and all of them securely fastened. I disembarked, walked quickly to the next porch over, and then, close to the building, stepped off the one concrete slab and onto the one that I was really heading for. And, next, with little Kimber in hand, I leaned to push the access fully open while looking to see past the edge of the frame and into the room. There seemed to be nobody home; all the lights were on. I went through the opening at an angle so as not to be silhouetted against the daylight and moved around the table and across the room to the doorway into the front of the house. 

         Pausing to listen, I could hear stentorian breathing; made most notable by  irregularity. Since the blinds were drawn and there were no lights on in this room, this front room was much shadowed. I rolled around the jamb and once more paused. Nothing but the irregular breathing. I unclipped my little SureFire light from the edge of my trouser pocket and used it, in my right hand, to locate the source of the sound. And then to see if anyone was hiding.

         The noisemaker was Tawnee, lying in a large irregular bloody patch on the couch. And she had been beaten so badly that I was guessing it was her, from her general size and body contours. You certainly couldn’t tell from her face. Both eyes were swollen shut and her nose was just a bloody spot, smashed flat. One ear was all but torn off. And the mess in her hair was far-gone toward dry; she must have had visitors soon after calling me.

         I checked her pulse by touching the area just by the lobe on her undamaged ear. Rhythmic but somewhat thready. Probably not about to die, but not in very good shape either. Then I stood quite still, moving my head slowly, letting the ‘feel’ of the place soak in as I made my eyes go from item to item in the disordered room.

         A couple more steps to the front and a single hand could be seen extending just past the end of the couch furthest from the door. I took another two steps and enough of the rest of the body was disclosed to tell me that a second young woman was lying there, seemingly undamaged except for the thread of blood running from her left ear down across her cheek to the corner of her mouth. But the angle her head made to her upper shoulder was un-natural enough to suggest that the lack of movement of her torso was indicative of a lack of breathing. A light touch on her throat revealed a coolness that was unlikely to come from a living person.

         As I squatted there by the body, I heard a slight sound from the door hinges in the kitchen. I rotated my position by the end of the settee and, ducking my head, placed my left hand and the Kimber on the padded arm. I could see past the door frame with my port-side eye and as I watched, the outer door swung slightly wider and a .45 longslide in a light brown hand was followed by Brit’s face.

         I said, “It’s Ben” so he wouldn’t shoot, and then stood from my crouched position. He let the pistol drop to the ready position momentarily, and then gave me a tight grin as he continued into the room while re-inserting his firearm into the leather behind his right hip.

         Without any further comment, he knelt by Tawnee’s body as I reached for a dish towel and then the ’phone setting on the counter closest by the refrigerator door. I punched 911 and, ignoring the burst of questions that came from the red plastic ear piece, simply said the address and then, “Girl’s badly beaten but she’s alive. Get someone here fast.” We left the door slightly open and, walking back out to the cars, drove out the other end of the alley.

         I let Brit lead, and several blocks to the south and east, we both parked on a side street and walked a hundred feet or so and into the steamy warmth of a ‘greasy spoon’ that looked to have been in the same place there on Woodward for seventy or eighty years. We got a table toward the back. Realizing that my entire morning’s ingestion was a cup of tea and two pieces of toast, I proceeded to order the whole ‘thing’, from three over-medium eggs, to hash-browns, and a double order of bacon. Since I’d had toast, I changed the program and had a toasted bagel. With cream cheese and several of the little foil-covered packages of strawberry jam. Brit surprised me, a little, by having an order of grits with cheese. We both had coffee. After commonplaces as we ate, I brought the conversation back to the present.

         “You saw as much as I did back there. And I probably had been there for five or six minutes when you arrived. Here’s what she said.” I flipped open the ’phone, and finding the short message, handed the gadget to Brit. He listened to it, and handed it back.

         I continued, “The question now is whether we should simply wait to see how soon she can talk to us, or go looking on our own. In either case, we are very likely to be tripping over cops, since the other girl is going to go on the records as the first or, more likely, second or third homicide for today.” (Metro Detroit holds the distinction of being the most violent big city area in the country. Over the past several years, there have been almost four hundred violent deaths within the city limits each year. And when you add in the area including Pontiac to the north and some of the downriver suburbs to the south, the total rises quickly.)

         Brit replied, “We have no idea how soon, or even if, Tawnee will wake up. And even if she does awaken, she may very well have little to tell us. I think that the only result of today’s happenings is that now we don’t have to try to decide how much of her pimp business we want to run.” The very slight grin that accompanied his pronouncement was the only sign that he wasn’t completely serious.

         “Let me do a little nosing around. I think we ought to look into this as if Tawnee doesn’t exist. It’s simply been brought to our attention that there seems to be a difference in at least some of the strata of the ‘sex-for-sale’ business. If we start looking under rocks, we can probably get some gen entirely independently of Tawnee’s input.

         I replied, “Yeah, but for a place to start, let’s go to the place she mentioned in Hamtramck, and go through whatever she has left there. She said she was ‘staying with her friend, Kizzie.’ Do you suppose you could suss out this Kizzie’s whereabouts? A quick look at whatever Tawnee’s been carrying around with her might give us some sort of steer to where to go next. Or, of course, it may be a waste of time. I wanted to get medical help there as soon as possible, so it didn’t make sense to search the place before calling. But we should go back there and go through things as soon as the cops’re done.”