Mr. Paradise A Novel (2 page)

Chloe, smoking, nodding, said, “He won’t tell me what it is, but I think it’s a life insurance policy, like one that he’s had for years and recently made me the beneficiary? Otherwise, if he just took it out at his age, they’d turn him down.”

“You think it’s a lot of money.”

“Well sure. He said get a good financial adviser and I could be set for life. I’m thinking it’s for around five mil, if it’s like enough to retire on.”

“He has the policy?”

“He doesn’t want Tony Jr. to know about it. He might’ve been the beneficiary originally—if that’s what it is, insurance. But what else could it be?”

“Where’s the policy?”

“In a bank deposit box.”

“You have the key?”

“The box is in Montez Taylor’s name.”

“The guy,” Kelly said, “who looks like a pimp in a business suit? You trust him?”

“What’s in the box is mine, not his. Tony dies, Montez will see that I get whatever it is. Why’re you making a face? Tony trusts him. He says Montez is like a son to him, even if he is colored. Tony hasn’t caught up yet with being politically
correct. Montez is a cool guy, mid-thirties, nice-looking. He takes Tony everywhere, all the U of M games, ten years he’s been doing it. Tony says he’s leaving Montez the house, since none of his kids want to live in Detroit. It’s in Indian Village off Jefferson, not far from here.”

“Is it worth much?”

“I’m not sure. If it was in Bloomfield Hills it would go for a couple of million, easy.”

“He has servants?”

“Maids come in but they don’t stay. I mentioned the houseman, Lloyd? He’s not as old as Tony but he’s up there. Lloyd looks like a cross between Uncle Ben on the rice box and Redd Foxx. He’ll say goodnight and Tony’ll call to him as he’s leaving the room, ‘I’m gonna get laid tonight, Lloyd.’ And Lloyd goes, ‘Be careful you don’t hurt yourself, Mr. Paradise.’ “

“Do you call him that, Mr. Paradise?”

“When I’m sucking up. Montez and Lloyd’ve been calling him Mr. Paradise forever. The old guy loves it.”

“Can he . . . you know, perform?”

“Once in a while he seems to get off. His specialty is muff diving.” Chloe slipped off her sunglasses as she looked at her friend the catalog model, hope in Chloe’s blue eyes. “I’ve mentioned you to Tony. I mean that you’re fun, you’re smart, you’re interesting—”

“Trustworthy, loyal.”

“Good to your dad.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Kelly said. “If you can put off the cheerleading till tomorrow night, and if I don’t have to do it topless . . .”

T
HEY DROVE OUT 94
toward Detroit Metro, snow swirling in the Jetta’s headlights, Kelly keeping it close to sixty, anxious to get her dad on his flight; her dad enjoying the ride, talkative, a fifth of vodka in his carry-on; her dad wearing a nylon jacket, a straw hat and sunglasses, nine o’clock at night, snowing in April, the dude barber from West Palm who drank and chased women, now wanting to know why he wasn’t introduced to Chloe, and Kelly saying she wasn’t around.

“What’s she do?”

“Takes care of an old man.”

“That don’t pay. How’s she afford to live with you, even going halves?”

Kelly was tired of being the nice daughter who lived with her nice friend.

“It’s hers. She paid four hundred thousand for it, cash.”

“Jesus, her daddy leave her money?”

“She earned it. She was an escort.”

“A what?”

“A call girl. She started at four-fifty an hour, was featured in
Playboy
and her rate jumped to nine hundred.”

“For one hour?”

“Plus tip. Three grand for all night, and she gave it up to entertain the old man.”

“Jesus Christ,” her dad said, with maybe ten bucks in his jeans from the six hundred she’d given him, “and you didn’t introduce me?”

TWO

DELSA GOT THE CALL FROM RICHARD
Harris at home, six in the morning, barely light out, Delsa in his skivvies and a wool sweater, cold in the house, waiting for the coffee to perk. Harris said the firemen had to secure the place before anybody could go inside. Mostly smoke and water damage, windows broken.

Delsa said, “Who’s dead?”

“Three guys in the basement we saw through the window. You go in this pen around back, all mud and dog shit. A pit bull in there’s shaking he’s so scared. A pit bull. There’s a dog treadmill in the living room, a big-screen TV, PlayStation, X-Box, coloring book and crayons, and this rig called a Love Swing, still in the box. You know what I’m talking about?”

“I’ve heard of it,” Delsa said.

“I’ll bring the instructions, show how it works.”

“Just the three guys in the house?”

“Yeah, but they don’t live here. It’s an old duplex two
blocks west of Tiger Stadium, an empty building on the corner and then this house. The woman in the other half is Rosella Munson, thirty-four, medium dark, chunky. She says the guy rents the burnt-out flat goes by the name Orlando. Mid-twenties, slim, light shade, wears his hair in rows. Lives here with his girlfriend Tenisha.”

“Kids?”

“No, but Rosella’s got three, none over seven years old. She called the fire department around four
A.M.
and got her kids out. Now she’s back in there packing to move.”

“The guys in the basement,” Delsa said, “what are they?”

“I thought at first they brothers. See, the fire was started down there, so parts of ’em are burnt good, other parts just blistered. You know, like the skin’s peeling? But they got tats on ’em make ’em Mexican, some southwest gang. I asked Rosella did she see them. No, she minds her business, but let me know this Orlando sells weed. Meaning what we could have here’s a busted deal.”

It didn’t sound right. Delsa took time to pour a cup of coffee. “They were shot?”

“Stripped and popped in the back of the head, all three. But one of ’em had a chain saw taken to him, the chain saw still in the basement, scorched but brand-new, the box sitting there. The tech says there’s human tissue in the teeth of the saw. No shit. Cut a man into five pieces, I imagine so. But why didn’t they finish the job, do the other two?”

Delsa said, “Would you want to? You’re covered with the guy’s blood? I think after doing the one somebody said fuck it. But was it Orlando? He’s selling weed, or he’s buying from his
source. There’s a disagreement. He takes the three guys down to the basement—by himself? Makes them strip, shoots them and then sets his own house on fire. What’s wrong with that?”

“I see what you mean,” Harris said.

“Get next to the neighbor,” Delsa said, “Rosella Munson. Get her to tell you about the girlfriend, Tenisha. Maybe they like to have coffee. Maybe Tenisha had the kids over to play video games and color—you say there’s a coloring book. Richard, get us Tenisha quick as you can.”

“Hold on,” Harris said. He was back in less than a minute saying, “Two guys from Six just arrived and Manny Reyes from Violent Crimes.”

“Manny might be able to I.D. the three guys,” Delsa said. “What’ve you got for time of death?”

Harris said, “The three panchos, late last night, they’re in and out of rigor, removal service is on the way. Frank, the M.E. death investigator—was Val Trabucci—took his pictures and then laid the dismembered guy back together. I said, ‘What you doing that for?’ Val goes, ‘Make sure the parts match.’ Hey shit, huh?”

F
RANK
D
ELSA, THIRTY-EIGHT
,
acting lieutenant of Squad Seven, Homicide Section, Detroit Police Department, had been living by himself in this house on the far east side since his wife’s death: now almost a year alone after nine years with Maureen, no children, Maureen herself with the Detroit Police, lieutenant in charge of the Sex Crimes unit. Married nine years when they decided they’d better start a
family if they were going to have one, Maureen, already forty, three years older than Frank, went to see her doctor and was told she had cancer of the uterus. The hardest time for Frank was coming home, walking into the silence of the house.

Last night he’d made a run with Sergeant Jackie Michaels, forty-three, to the Prentiss Hotel on Cass. “Home to hookers, winos and crackheads,” Jackie said. “My neighborhood, Frank, when I was growing up. I might even know the complainant.” In some ways Jackie reminded him of Maureen. They’d been rookies together working out of the Tenth, the black girl and the white girl close friends, both from the street; nothing surprised either one.

The complainant at the Prentiss Hotel was Tammi Marie Mello, W/F/49, lying on the stairway landing between the fifth and sixth floors. Apparent cause of death, the evidence tech said, a single gunshot wound to the back. “Yeah, I remember her from when I was a little girl,” Jackie said. “Tammi Mello, been selling that big ass of hers all her life.” They followed a trail of blood up the stairs and along the hall to 607 where a uniform stood by the open door, Jackie Michaels saying to Delsa, “Do you thank God like I do they’re stupid? Or stoned or lazy or generally fucked up?” The occupant of 607, Leroy Marvin Woody, B/M/63, unemployed bus driver, sitting by himself hunched over, a nearly full half-gallon of Five O’Clock gin next to him, ashtray full of cigarette butts, blood on the front of his white T-shirt, seemed in a nod. He didn’t respond to Jackie saying, “What’d you kill that woman for, Uncle? She make you mad? Say something
mean and you lost your temper? Look at me, Mr. Woody. Tell me what you did with the gun.”

I
N THE MORNING, AFTER
the call from Harris at the scene of the triple, Delsa had his coffee and got ready for work.

The car they gave him to use was a dark blue Chevy Lumina with 115,000 miles on it and a
Service Engine Soon
light that was always on. He parked on Gratiot, a block from 1300 Beaubien, Detroit Police Headquarters for the past eighty years, the worn-out nine-story building hemmed in by high-rise wings of the Wayne County jail, the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice and, a few blocks south against the sky, the Greektown Casino.

Most of Homicide was on five.

Delsa walked past Seven’s squad room to the end of the hall and the office of his boss, Homicide Inspector Wendell Robinson, a cool guy, twenty-eight years with the Detroit Police. Wendell was up on the triple, he’d stopped by the scene on his way in.

“Frank, it’s over by Tiger Stadium, that famous old ballpark of no use to anybody.” Wendell had hung up his trench coat and now stood by his desk, still wearing his Kangol cap, this one beige. Wendell had been wearing those soft Kangols as long as he’d been here, longer than Samuel L. Jackson had been wearing his backwards. He said, “Right across a parking lot’s a White Castle. You can smell those beautiful sliders with the onions fried on ’em, seven in the morning. How we doing?”

Delsa wanted to remind Wendell that he needed people. With Seven’s regular lieutenant in Iraq working for army intelligence, two on furlough, one home with her new baby, his executive sergeant, Vinnie, gone to Memphis to question a witness, Squad Seven was down to three: Delsa, Richard Harris and Jackie Michaels.

But Wendell wanted to hear about the shooting out on East Eight Mile at Yakity Yak’s two nights ago.

“Where are we, Frank?”

“I’ve got a guy housed at the Seventh,” Delsa said, “Jerome Juwan Jackson, also known as Three-J. He’s twenty, a weedman on and off, went down a few times in his youth, wears Tommy Hilfiger colors with his cargo pants hanging off his ass.”

“I know him,” Wendell said, “without ever having seen him.”

“Yeah, but Jerome aspires to be ghetto fabulous and I’m helping him make it.”

“He give up anybody?”

“Let me tell it,” Delsa said. “Jerome and his half-brother Curtis they call Squeak? They’re at Yakity’s to see the bouncer. They want to hire a couple of strippers for a party they’re having and the bouncer can arrange it.”

“Get ’em some white chicks,” Wendell said. He took off his Kangol, sailed it like a Frisbee at the coat tree and missed.

“Jerome calls them titty bitches. He said he had to be honest with me, he was smoking blunts and sipping Rémy all day, so that evening wasn’t clear in his mind what happened.”

“You ask him did he want to be a witness to this gig or a defendant?”

“I did,” Delsa said. “See, Harris’d already had Squeak in the
pink room. Squeak claims he didn’t know the shooter, but Jerome did, and now Jerome’s looking over his shoulder.”

Wendell said, “Tell me who he gave up.”

“Tyrell Lewis, T-Dogg. Deals weed and blow, set up his girlfriend in a hair salon with crack money. That night at Yakity Yak’s he’s giving her a hard time about something. They’re in the parking lot and he’s got her against a blue Neon, yelling at her, getting rough. A guy comes out of the bar, five-five, one-fifty, has his dreads in a ponytail. The guy’s all hair and he’s stoned. Comes to the lot and says to Tyrell, ‘Get your bitch off the car.’ “

“It’s his car,” Wendell said.

“No, we had that wrong. Tyrell stops abusing his girlfriend and pulls a nine out of his jacket. The little guy with the dreads pulls his nine, levels down on Tyrell and says, ‘I got one too, motherfucker.’ “

Wendell said, “And got killed for showing off.”

“You want to let me tell it?” Delsa said. “Another guy comes out of the club and starts yelling at the two gunfighters, calling ’em punks. ‘You nothing but punks playing with guns.’ Tyrell says, ‘You think this is a game, huh,’ and shoots the guy five times. Jerome says, ‘Yeah, ’cause he punked him out in front of his baby’s mama.’ “

“Another one popped for nothing,” Wendell said. “You pick up the little fella with the hair?”

“Nobody knows him or ever saw him before.”

“Gets a man killed and takes off. You say it wasn’t even his car, this blue Neon.”

Delsa said, “You know whose it is?”

“You may as well tell me.”

“My witness, Jerome.”