Detroit: Autumn Red---Second Excerpt

    Annie left for school the next morning after a quick round of tea and toast. That’s not a proper breakfast, and I was mulling over what more to fix when the ’phone rang. 

    Brit's voice said, “Let’s go get pancakes. I’ll be there in ten; I’ve got news.”

    “OK, I’ll meet you out front.”

    After changing clothes and an automatic press-check of the load in my little custom Kimber .45, I grabbed my double magazine carrier and an over-shirt for armament concealment and went down the stairs and, after opening the big roll-up door, pulled Orca out to the sidewalk. During the two or three minutes I waited, I admired the red geraniums growing in little pots in the hollows on top of my dragon’s-teeth. (These semi-pyramidal chest-high concrete structures circle the building---with a catenary of hefty chain joining each one to the next to make an attack, by crashing a vehicle through my walls, less likely to succeed. I think the bright geraniums on top of each one a nice touch. A garden service tends them for me.)   

    Brit rolled in past me and came over to my passenger door; he was once again driving his immaculate XK-E. He said a ‘Hello’ as we went through the procedure of closing the big door and driving at an angle to the turn-around in the boulevard; thus reversing to go east to the restaurant. He didn’t make any reference to his ‘news’ until we’d been seated and ordered and had coffee in front of us. (Coffee goes with pancakes.)

    Then he started, “Charles is dead---quite messily dead. He was found early this morning. He’d been beaten to a pulp over quite some period of time first; he was unrecognizable. The guy who called me knew it was him because of finding the body in Charles’ crib and the body was still wearing what Charles’d had on last night. That may not be scientific ID but it’s good enough for me. After they finished him off with a shot behind the ear, they used something---probably a machete, I’m told, from the looks of the cut---to chop off his right foot and jam it in his mouth. I think we can assume that he was made to talk and the foot was a way of saying he shouldn’t have told us anything. We can probably expect a visit sometime soon.”

    I grabbed my cell-phone and immediately called Annie. When she answered (I knew she’d gone in for a prep session---classes weren’t due to start yet), I said, “Do you have your ‘little friend’ with you?”

    “Yes. I never leave it at home anymore.”

    “Keep it handy, and stay with as many people as you can manage for right now. This deal Brit and I have been working on has just got quite iffy. I’ll call you back as soon as I know more---stay very alert for any approaching strangers!” I hung up, telling myself that everything would be alright.

    The breakfast orders came just as I flupped the ’phone shut. As was usual on one of these pancake expeditions, Brit was having buttermilk ‘ulcer patches’ with a different sort of syrup on each one. I indulged myself with an order of crepes with a marmalade topping and a double side-order of bacon. With the food in front of us, we took a brief time-out to tuck in and for several minutes all conversation was suspended. When the feeding frenzy had abated at least somewhat, I said, “Since they were dumb enough to act so overtly, I think we should go and grab some one of the top echelon of the Coney Onlys and persuade him to tell us what-all’s going on. The best defense is to be as offensive as possible!”

    “I think you’re right. The sooner we retaliate, the crazier they’ll get. Crazy only works against you if you’re susceptible to fright. Are you feeling scared?”

    “Yeah. I’m scared I’ll get so pissed-off at these jerks that we’ll kill a whole bunch of them. Then it’ll cease to look like a between-gangs drug war and get too much attention. I didn’t get the impression that Charles was a friend of yours, exactly, but you obviously had some small degree of regard for him.”

    Brit thought for a moment before responding, “Regard may be too strong a word for it. It’s sometimes too easy to step over the line into being a bleeding-heart; on the other hand, if you do as we do, some concern for non-combatants must be present or you become a barbarian. I had the notion, way back when I first met him, that Charles had a little bit of good stuff in him. Not much; but his situation did dovetail with my distaste for the guy that was giving him a bad time. I’m not going to lose any sleep over his passing but he ‘got it’ when helping me and I believe the message has to go out that messing with me or mine will bring retribution.”

    “At the very least that’s a practical attitude. I’m with you---do you have any idea about how to get next to this brother of Junior’s? Do you even know his name?”

    “No, but I know how to find out about him. Do you remember Twan? (See ‘Detroit: Spring Gold’- ed.) I know of another guy like Twan who keeps up with what’s going on, and’s willing to sell it. Let’s go see if we can find him.” The reckoning was laying on the table where the waitress had put it after seeing that the coffee thermal-pitcher was full one last time and asking if we wanted anything else. I looked at it and mentally added a sufficiency for the care we’d received; leaving the whole works next to my plate.

    It was just past half nine when we came out the door and turned left toward the back side of the building; the restaurant is built on an out-lot of a fair-sized-but-partially-closed strip mall. I registered a dull-mustard-coloured Dodge van coming at an angle across the open parking area and started to comment to Brit, who was walking slightly in front of me.

    As the van drew almost abreast and about twenty feet away, the side door started to open. We must have both seen the muzzle of the M1 .30 carbine at the same time. Since Brit was in front, his first shot smashed the trigger hand of the would-be shooter as I moved left-forward sideways to clear my field-of-fire. In my turn I splattered the driver’s brains over the windshield as I put the red dot of my laser sight on the back of his head and shot him through the hair showing above the back of his seat. The slowing vehicle came to rest against a light pole which canted over slightly as the van stalled.

    Using the approved technique, Brit and I separated in such a way that I could see the front interior and he the rear part as we advanced on the crashed truck. There was only the dead driver within my span of vision. As I switched my viewing angle toward the rear, I said, “Front’s clear!” Brit acknowledged, his attention fixed on the injured shooter. We both moved to the side doorway.

    It was immediately obvious that there was no more threat from the shooter within, a very dark-skinned, somewhat scruffily-dressed gang-banger. Brit’s bullet had obliquely hit the knuckle area of his trigger hand---tearing off the first two fingers. It continued on, destroying the trigger and guard of what on closer examination was likely to be a fully-automatic M2 .30 carbine, from the looks of the rifle, with its left-side selector lever and thirty-shot magazine. It was laying on the floor. There was no one else present; the shooter holding the wrist of his injured hand was going into shock, judging by his rapid breathing and the grayish tone to be seen under his brown skin. He stared in a frozen way at the damaged area. Brit and I both exchanged magazines for fresh from our belt carriers, to be completely ready for whatever, and then I tucked my gun-hand inside my open shirt-front as I stepped back to get a more comprehensive view of the surroundings. It’s my observation that a few pistol shots  in the open air are somewhat unlikely to provoke investigation because they really don’t sound like what people hear on TV. The usual fragmentation hand-grenade doesn’t create a ball of fire and explosion that’ll envelop a three-story building either---but you often see it in a movie or television story. Certainly is impressive even if massively inaccurate!

    Since it looked as if our activity hadn’t evoked any outside interest, I first retrieved the two shell casings from the pavement and re-holstered the little Kimber. Then I turned my attention back to what was going on within the van. The shooter was very clearly in shock because he was simply sagging limply, sweating and lethargic. Brit had torn the sleeve off the shooter’s shirt and was industriously binding it tightly around the wrist of the damaged hand. It looked to have stopped the blood flow; I saw that Brit had first tied a knot in the middle of the sleeve to create a pressure-producing lump against the arteries in the wrist involved.

    Since everything was clearly under control, I simply said, “I’ll go get Orca.” I strolled casually across to where my white E-150 was parked and drove over to the scene of our activity in such a way as to both make any attention-attracting unlikely and to keep the license plate pointed in such a way as to be visible only from the furthest-away point possible.

    I pulled up so as to block visibility into the attacker’s vehicle. We flipped back the carpet to expose the plate-steel floor and loaded the now almost catatonic shooter into the back after wrapping his injury area in Saran Wrap from inside the aluminium-box second seat. That keeps the mess off the inside of Orca and makes any possible forensic study less likely to find anything of interest. I’d put on a pair of the always available blue surgical gloves first to avoid any tattle-tales. Brit pushed him over to lie on his back and then shut the side doors of both vehicles.

    We rode in silence to the most distant corner of the several acre parking space and then I pulled up once more. I observed wryly, “You simply think of a way of obtaining information and a source for it drops into our laps. We now have a ready origin for some degree of ‘gen’ to match whatever we get from this ‘Twan-substitute’ when we get to him.” While talking, I removed both pistol magazines from my right-side belt carrier and put one cartridge, as a replacement, from the second spare into the usually-in-the-pistol ‘clip’. Then I re-exchanged that one for the spare actually in the handgun, which, as a full GI length, sticks out of the butt of my ‘chopped’ side-arm. Now, with everything tucked away, I was back to the original set-up.

    Brit replied, “I think we should go over to the bridge area and find a likely spot to ask this jerk a few questions. Whatever’s left of him can remain wherever we find the spot. Then I’ll pass the word to the right people

so that the result of coming after The Brit gets noised around. Somebody very dumb ordered this; I don’t want to have to go around looking behind myself.”

    I pulled out of the car-park and after going east a short way, headed south on Telegraph. From there I zigzagged my way to the portion of Jefferson a short distance west of the Ambassador Bridge approach. Because I own property in the general neighborhood, (See ‘Detroit: Summer Blue’-ed.) I have a fairly intimate knowledge of the locality. Many of the buildings in this old industrial area are uninhabited and in a state of serious disrepair.

    From a place where the buildings on both sides of the street are wrecks, and when there was no traffic for several blocks to be observant, I turned into an alley that I know runs back between the high brick walls into what was at one time a receiving-unloading area. Several buildings have ramps there and of the several, at least three are in such a state of decay that the only impediment to driving in is the possibility of running into a pile of trash or having the roof fall onto your head.

    I chose one that had the most open look to it; one where the roof had already given way---collapsing in such a fashion as to leave a somewhat clear space on the concrete floor and an opening overhead. I pulled in and turned right immediately so that Orca wasn’t visible from outside. We climbed out and went in different directions to see what there might be lurking in the wreckage. I was gone about ten minutes and when I came back, having found nothing, Brit had pulled the shooter out of the vehicle and far enough away to have allowed space to turn around and drive out without disturbing what we left behind.

    Brit glanced at me and said, “This is mine. They very probably don’t even know you exist---this was intended either to get me or at least to get in my face. I won’t allow that.” His voice had the same empty, indifferent-to- humanity coldness that his eyes sometimes held. Just a hint of the look is enough to have people avoid him by a large margin---the voice a combination of matter-of-factness and the sort of sound you’d expect to hear coming from a damp grave. It was immediately recognizable as the sound of death.

    He turned to the figure on the concrete and gently nudged him with a toe. The shooter must have been in fully-developed agony from the loss of half his hand; there was really no need for any of the techniques of interrogation we’d both learned years before. Brit told him in a quiet, reasonable tone that he was going to die---his life was forfeit because he’d had the temerity to try an attack. This was the inevitable result.

    It was calmly explained, with that reasonable tone of voice somehow making it much more terrible, that the only choices were ‘going’ easy or going very hard. Brit’s words were, “I have as many hours as it takes to get the answers I’m after. You can be painless within the next few minutes or die little by little---with pieces of you scattered all over the floor here. I’ll make sure that you stay able to feel everything for as long as this takes. So it’s your choice.” Probably the indifference in his words was the persuader.

    Brit bent close and spoke a little more in a voice so low that I couldn’t hear what he said. The figure on the floor gasped a few words. Brit spoke again and again got the halting reply. The sequence was repeated one more time and then Brit stood and gestured me back a few more feet from where I was standing, not far from the shooter’s head. Stooping slightly, he put the muzzle of his pistol in line with the shooter’s under-chin area and fired a shot that blew away the top of his head and splattered bloody brain-matter for several yards. He’d held the gun enough feet from the body that nothing would fly back to contaminate the gun or his hand and clothes. After a short pause to locate it, he walked over and retrieved the cartridge case. Then, without even a back-glance he opened the passenger door to Orca. I climbed in and we went out the same way we’d come in. Once more I paused at the street to see if there was anyone within viewing distance---there wasn’t---before pulling back out into Jefferson Avenue.

    My mind was occupied with the procedures necessary to sanitize the interior of the van and our clothing. Brit interrupted my thoughts, saying, “I was right. They didn’t know anything about you---they were heading to that joint in Plymouth where I often have breakfast and saw me go past. They followed me to your place. That’s one against me. The two of them were sent by Tyrell---that’s Junior’s younger brother---because somebody thought Charles was nosy about things he didn’t have any part of. They decided to ask him about it and you know what happened. These two guys were summoned to the place we were at last night. The interaction they observed between Tyrell, who, from the talk, had just arrived when they got there, and a ‘fancy-dressed camel-jockey’ made it clear that the two leaders are involved together. Of course, this guy had no idea of the details.”     

    I responded, “Well, here’s what I think we should do. First go back to the shop and make sure there’s nothing in a forensic line to connect us with what just happened. Re-do the pistols and burn the clothes and shoes: scrub up with Betadine. Let’s wait another day or two to poke a stick at this Tyrell; it’s supposed to rain tonight and that should contaminate the site back in the parking lot enough to remove that as a cause for concern. Somebody is likely to go look at that van before very long and that guy’s face is all over the inside of the windshield. Probably nobody has any ideas about what happened there---there were two vans for a little bit and now there’s only one. It’s highly unlikely that they can get much off the tarmac of the car park. If he said they knew nothing about me, that probably lets out any likelihood of problems for Annie. I’d better call her.” I did so, holding down on the ‘mushy-stuff’ so as not to embarrass Brit. I told her, of course, that I love her---but Brit already knows that.



    When we got back to the shop, after circumspectly picking-up Brit’s ride, we both pulled off our outer clothes and shoes and burned them in the little gas-fired trash destroyer I’d salvaged from an old house. After re-dressing---Brit keeps some clothes in one of my spare closets ---it was time to go through the firearms; a comprehensive scrubbing of  the barrels with an abrasive paste slightly alters the rifling characteristics so that it’s impossible to prove that a particular bullet had previously passed through it. One can do this several times before it’s necessary to replace the barrel. Since we’d been careful to pick up the cartridge cases, it was only necessary to use a cutting torch to reduce them to blobs of otherwise unrecognizable brass. Loading of magazines is done in the first place with gloved hands; then the gloves are destroyed. All the rest of the ammunition from that particular box of cartridges---we’d loaded from the same box---was put into the magazine of a MAC-10 and fired in the range next to the gunsmithing area. Contact with the armour-plating at the far end of the range finishes making any matching an impossibility. Don’t give overzealousness a toe-hold.

    Then Brit took off and I sat down to wait for Annie to come home. She’s said something about a Faculty ‘Do’ at Lexington College that night, so I had an idea about what my evening would hold. My good friend Dr Thomas Moore would undoubtedly be there so I’d have someone to talk to while Annie did the majority of the socializing.