A Tour of the Past
I took the Lincoln and drove around until I found a do-it-yourself carwash. I gave the car a thorough wash and vacuum. I emptied the ashtrays and cleaned them out. I even bought a bunch of the little detailing wipes from the vending machine and used them to treat the leather. When I couldn’t get the car any cleaner, I drove it out across the city.
I looked around downtown and quickly got depressed. Tom was right, the city was a hollowed-out shell. There were hardly any people on the street. No one walking to and from work. No one out for lunch. No sidewalk vendors selling food. Detroit was an air-conditioned ghost town.
I caught a glimpse of the river between the buildings and drove toward it. When I got to the water, I found a place to park and got out into the late morning sunshine. I was hungry. I hadn’t had anything to eat since Tom and I made our predawn halt at a truck stop on the edge of the city. We both showered to clean the long drive from our bodies.
The stalls rented in fifteen-minute intervals. Tom paid for thirty minutes, and I did the same. He always took long showers. His body usually hurt because of all the weight he carried, and the hot water made him feel better. I wanted the extra time to crank out a load and wash it down the shower drain. For erection material, I used the memory of the pounding the Mexican stud gave me when I was in Vegas. My ass still stung from his slaps of retribution after I put his lights out. I gave myself a couple whacks to sharpen the dull ache. The pain helped me get off.
In hindsight, I was glad I’d taken the opportunity to relieve the pressure in my balls. I got the impression from the meeting with Jack that we had a lot of traveling to do and I likely wouldn’t get laid for a while. I put my hands in the back pockets of my jeans while I walked toward the river. The hand over my right ass cheek made the flesh smart. I took my hands out of my pockets because I didn’t want to titillate myself and wind up with a hard-on. Erections were impossible to hide in skinny jeans. Sometimes that was good, like when I was cruising for an overnight companion, but most of the time it was bad.
The waterfront was nice. The city had cleared out a lot of abandoned industry and reclaimed the riverside as a park. A few people milled around in the late morning sunshine. A big group of tourists walked by, like a line of ducklings behind their tour-guide. They snapped photos of each other as they went. I couldn’t imagine why they’d chosen Detroit as their vacation spot, but they seemed happy to be where they were.
I was reasonably content as well. The air was fresh off the river, and I could see clear across to Canada. The city on the other side looked nicer than the one behind me, but that didn’t mean anything. I’d seen a lot of places that looked great on the surface but were rotten underneath. A lot of the people I killed were like that, all of them, really. Tom was right when he said that once you get the file on the mark and see what they’ve done, you look forward to ending them.
I killed terrible people, people who ruined lives and destroyed innocence. I killed degenerates and drug dealers, mob bosses, serial rapists, real sickos. The most recent one was a rich guy with a long history of being a pedo. I followed the twisted fuck all damn day as he crept around school yards and playgrounds to get his kicks watching the little kids play. He’d been caught red-handed molesting children more than once. The unofficial count was more than a dozen little girls and boys, all under the age of twelve. Their lives would never be the same because of this asshole. He always managed to use his wealth to buy silence and avoid prosecution.
The Organization decided that enough was enough and gave me the assignment. I followed him into a secluded public bathroom and popped him while he was taking a piss. I shot him in the back of the head with a .22 with a silencer. I popped him again after he fell to make sure he was dead. I dropped the gun in the urinal and left. I put the ‘out of order’ sign across the door so some kid wouldn’t walk in and find him. I also emptied the cash out of his wallet and left it on the sink for the janitor to put in his pocket the next morning.
I didn’t feel too bad for the janitor. He’d have to deal with finding the body, but the .22 did a neat job and there wasn’t much blood. He’d also get a decent wad of cash for his trouble and one hell of a great story to tell his friends.
I did a lot of that kind of stuff. It paid really well and didn’t bother my conscience at all. I worked as Tom’s apprentice from the time I was eighteen and started doing solo stuff when I turned twenty-one. There were busy times and slow times, but I averaged between ten and twenty jobs a year. The only thing that bothered me was the sheer number of scumbags in the world. Each one I dispatched was a vile, irredeemable degenerate. As far as I could tell, there were plenty more who still needed my attention.
I didn’t know much about the people who provided my instructions and paid for the jobs. I never met any of them. They accepted me as an employee at Tom’s say-so. They provided training at a special paramilitary boot camp in upstate New York. They even gave me an identification like the one Tom carried. He let me see his on the night I shot the junkie. The card identified him as a special investigator with diplomatic credentials. The one I was given said the same thing. I didn’t know who issued it or what country I was supposed to be a diplomatic investigator for, but the card looked official, even though the title on it was vague.
When Tom or I had an assignment, a courier would drop an envelope off at the house. Inside would be all the information I needed, as well as the proposed fee for the job. If I agreed to take it, I would call a number in the folder and let it ring three times. If I wanted to decline, I would call another number and do the same. When the job was done, I would call the first number again. Once the mark was confirmed dead by news reports, my fee would be deposited in my offshore account. Easy peasy.
It was a good life, but it was about to change. My father was going to die, and I would be alone. I wouldn’t have any trouble taking care of myself. Tom explained that I would inherit his house, his car, and all his other property. He had a sizable estate which would come to me as well. I also had plenty of my own money.
What I didn’t seem to have was any social or romantic life. I never had a boyfriend. Most of the sex I had was with the guys I paid to screw me when I finished a job. I knew a few guys around the neighborhood, but I didn’t consider them friends. We kept up with each other and got together for drinks once in a while, but we didn’t seek out each other’s company.
From the time I was fifteen, Tom had been my friend. He and I understood each other. I could talk to him about literally anything. He would even listen to my stories about the rent guys I paid to fuck me. I didn’t go into detail. The discussions weren’t lurid. I just liked to be able to tell someone when I had a good time. Tom liked to hear when I had fun. I wondered who I would tell those things to when he was gone.
I wouldn’t have to worry about a guest list for the funeral. There was not to be one. Tom said it was a waste of money. I suspected he didn’t plan one because he didn’t have any family or friends, at least not that I knew about. He never went anywhere or saw anyone. He worked and he came home. The people in the neighborhood all knew him. They respected him, but they didn’t seek his company, and he didn’t seek theirs.
I wondered why that was. Tom was a nice enough guy. He was rough around the edges, and he dressed like a funeral director, but he could be affable when he wanted to be. Everyone I’d ever seen him interact with liked him well enough. I couldn’t understand why he had no relationships.
My phone chirped as my ponderings reached an impasse. Tom sent a text. ‘Come back, hungry.’ I hurried back.
* * * *
Jack took Tom and me to a pizzeria for some authentic Detroit style pizza. The food was good, but it was definitely a product of the Midwest. It had a thick, bready crust and used mild Wisconsin cheese with a too-sweet pizza sauce and almost no seasoning. It made for a tasty meal, but I would struggle to call it ‘pizza.’ It was more like a bread casserole. The South Philly Italians would laugh themselves silly just at the sight of it. Real pizza is round, with a thin crust, a sharp, tangy sauce, and a blend of cheeses which included at least mozzarella and parmigiana. It also has to have plenty of garlic and oregano. I thanked Jack for the meal to be polite, but I doubted Detroit pizza would become one of my favorites.
I wondered a little about Jack. Tom treated him like the two were old friends. He was as familiar with Jack as if no time had passed since the two last met. Jack seemed to treat Tom with disdain. I didn’t like that. I wondered if I was reading too much into Jack’s negative reactions to Tom’s familiarity. I set the matter aside because I trusted Tom to be a good judge of people. He vouched for Jack and that was enough for me.
After lunch, Tom and I dropped Jack back at his office. Tom took the wheel of the Lincoln and said he was going to give me a real tour of the city. We drove out of the city center on a wide boulevard which sliced across the grid of residential Detroit at a forty-five-degree angle. The street was called Gratiot Avenue. I watched out the open window as one abandoned and overgrown block after another went by. Every structure I saw was in the process of being reclaimed by nature. Even the buildings which were still inhabited looked like derelicts.
Tom was disgusted by the sight. “I haven’t been here since 1972. Not once. I wouldn’t even take a job here when it was offered to me. I didn’t think I’d ever see this place again. I can barely believe it got this bad. It’s like something out of a B-movie; ‘Night of the Living Dead’ or maybe that old Vincent Price horror, ‘Last Man on Earth.’”
I remembered the title of the Price film because I’d recently read about it. “Will Smith just played that role. His new movie, ‘I am Legend,’ is a remake of the Vincent Price film.”
Tom stubbed a cigarette out in the clean ashtray and reached for another. “Smith is a good actor, but no way he plays it better than Price did.”
I didn’t say anything because I didn’t have anything to say. I hadn’t seen either film, I just remembered a magazine article I read when they released the new version. I stared out the window and watched the dead city go by.
Tom left Gratiot Avenue and turned north onto Grand Boulevard. He stopped right in the middle of the road, threw the flashers on and got out. I was concerned that the car would be rear-ended by the other traffic on the street, but there wasn’t any. We were several miles removed from the city center, and I couldn’t remember seeing a single car along the way.
I got out to see why he stopped. He pointed his cigarette to an enclosed walkway which ran above the road. The bridge linked one massive industrial building on one side of the street, to another massive industrial building on the other side. There were big ceramic tiles along the lower third of the walkway, beneath the shattered windows. The tiles bore the name of the business which once inhabited the abandoned and crumbling structure. ‘The Packard Motor Company,’ they said in red letters on a white background.
“Next year it will have been shut for fifty years. In all that time, no one managed to come up with a use for it. I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of square feet were under roof here, but I know it was a lot. It’s a tough old building. The fact that it’s still standing after all this time proves it. The winters here are miserable. As cold as a witch’s titty in a cast iron bra. Snow up to your asshole and higher. Even after forty-nine winters abandoned, here it stands like Stone Henge or the Acropolis or something like that. A monument to man’s ingenuity and a gravestone for when that ingenuity succumbs to stupidity.”
I kept my eye on Tom and waited to see if he had anything to add to his dissertation. He punctuated his speech by dropping his cigarette on the street and crushing it under his heel. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” He said as he squeezed himself back into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut.
I barely had time to get myself in the car before he had it moving again. He throttled the engine and hauled the big sedan around into a tire-screeching U-turn. He stayed hard on the gas once we faced the opposite direction. We flew down Grand Boulevard away from the plant and toward I knew not what. Tom counted each cross street we streaked past. When he reached the number he wanted, he trod hard on the brakes and tossed the Town Car into a sharp left-hand turn.
My ass broke friction with the freshly treated leather seat. My body slid into the door panel and stayed there until Tom straightened us out. I almost complained about his driving but decided against it. He was clearly upset about something. Typically, he had a long fuse when it came to getting angry, but once he was angry, he tended to stay that way for a while. I didn’t want to add to his upset by bitching that he was driving too fast.
He brought the car to a halt in front of the charred shell of a Catholic Cathedral. The structure was huge, though obviously not as big as the Packard Plant. The cathedral was built of white brick and constructed in the traditional cross shape. It must have been an impressive sight when it was whole. The main entrance of the roofless building yawned before us. A giant round window gaped, glassless and scorched from a long-ago fire.
“This was Our Lady of Perpetual Hope. I was confirmed here. I attended Catechism here. I was an altar boy in this cathedral. Could you imagine me as an altar boy? I even sang in the choir. Before my balls dropped, I had a voice like a cherub. Even after I got my big boy hairs, I still sang, just an octave lower. Father Trevose was the monsignor in charge of the whole works. He had two assistant priests under him, and a whole host of deacons, church wardens, and other sycophants. The congregation numbered more than eighteen hundred. On holidays and feasts and holy days of obligation, the numbers would be over two-thousand. Where the hell are they now? All dead, I guess. Dead and rotted, just like the church.”
Tom jerked the car into gear and drove us around the corner. A two-story institutional building sprawled away from the cathedral and ran the length of an oversized block. The roof was still on the building, but the windows were broken, and the inside was dark. All manner of graffiti adorned the walls both inside and out. A spiked, wrought-iron fence clung to decayed brick pillars and separated the overgrown property from the sidewalk. Tom stopped the car again at a break in the fence which opened for the main entrance to the building. The wooden doors were chained together and locked, but the walls of decorative glass brick on either side were shattered to give access to the inside.
“I went to school here. I graduated from here. I left this high school with a three-point-nine grade point average and an easy path straight to an elite university. I could have been anything, done anything; doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Any path was open to me. My father wanted me to attend Northwestern University like he did. I spit in his eye and joined the Marine Corps. All the old man could do was gnash his teeth.”
Tom put the car in gear more gently this time and drove us deeper into the residential blocks which were laid out to the east of Grand Boulevard. The homes in the area, the ones which still stood, were nicer than the ones closer to Grand. All of them were individual homes instead of twins or rows. All were built from brick. The best of the best had big bay windows and turrets. Tom stopped in front of a particularly attractive abandoned structure.
The house was bigger than any of the others we’d seen. An eight-sided turret stood tall in the center of the frontage. Deep bay windows flanked it on both sides and on both floors. A wood-framed porch ran around three sides of the structure. The property was protected by a spiked, wrought-iron fence supported by red brick pillars. The fence was similar to the one around the school, but this one was more ornate with curlicues and other charms formed into the iron.
Tom rolled the windows up, shut the car off, and got out. He stamped his cigarette out on the street and lit a fresh one. “You carryin?” He asked to see if I had my gun on me.
“Of course, I am. You told me to. Why? Aren’t you carrying?”
“No. I don’t think I’ll be carrying anymore. At least, not until we’re on the job. Maybe not even then.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Tom wore a gun like it was part of his clothes. I’d never known him to be without one. My shock bled into my reaction. “What the hell are you talking about?”
He tapped his forehead with the index finger of his left hand. “Something changed. I don’t know what, but I think I’m getting worse. I didn’t want to say anything because I don’t want to worry you more than you already are, but you should know that I can’t be counted on anymore. From now on, this is your job. I’m just along for the ride.”
I started to repeat my earlier question, but Tom held his hand up to stop me. “This morning at the truck stop, I couldn’t figure out how to brush my teeth. I had my toothbrush in my hand like I have every morning for my whole life, and I just stared at it. I couldn’t work out for the life of me what it was for. I set it aside until after my shower. By the time I was clean and squared-away, I remembered what to do with the brush. When we went back to the car, I put my gun in its case.”
I tried to rationalize the episode as a commonplace thing that happens. I used my father’s own words about getting older to try to pretend he was OK. “You just had an ‘adult moment.’ You tell me about them all the time. It doesn’t mean anything. Like when you walk into a room and can’t remember what you went in there for.”
“MARVIN!” Tom barked. He drew on his cigarette and blew the smoke into the sky. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Marvin, I’m afraid of myself. I’m scared about what I might do. As God as my witness, I held that toothbrush in my hand and couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It was like I walked into the bathroom with a wood chisel to clean my teeth. No matter how hard I looked at it or how much I thought about it, I didn’t know what to do with the thing. If I was smart, I’d leave you here to do the job, and I’d go home.” Tom shook his head and breathed some more smoke from his cigarette. “If I was smart, I would have blown my useless brains out in that shower stall instead of telling you to babysit me.”
I interrupted my father’s self-loathing monologue. “This guard duty job is a fuckin’ cakewalk. This isn’t even a real job. The stakes are high, but the risk is nothing. Let’s treat it like a working vacation. We’ll pal around while the others do all the work. Don’t go home. Stay here with me.”
He lowered his eyes to meet mine. His eyes were pleased. He was obviously glad I’d asked him to stay. I was glad I made him happy. He cocked his head toward the sagging gate and overgrown front walk of the house before us. “Let’s go in. Make sure you have your gun loose. Never know what you might run into.”
I checked to make sure my shirt hadn’t bunched up around my gun. As an extra precaution, I tucked my shirttail into my pants and left the gun on the outside, that way there would be nothing between it and my hand if I needed it.
Tom approved of my preparations. He pointed his cigarette at the holster on my belt. “You still carrying a .38 Special? Why not get something modern? They’re doing a lot with nine-millimeter stuff these days.”
I rested my hand on the plain checked grip of the gun as I gave my answer. “My dad carries a .38 Special.”
Tom smiled in appreciation for the loyalty I had to the weapon he always chose. He issued one word of caution. “Don’t get too caught up in tradition. I already told you that my father always drove Packards. There will come a time when something better comes along. Don’t ignore it when it does. I appreciate the sentiment, but a gun is a tool, not a tribute. There may come a moment when your carry piece is all that stands between you and death. Make sure you’ve got the best tool to protect yourself. Make sure it’s the best because it’s the best, not because it reminds you of me.”
I defended my gun choice based on its merits instead of my sentimentality. “I like how reliable these are. They don’t jam, the rounds are cheap, and they’re loud enough to wake the dead. They’re also small enough to carry comfortably.”
Tom drew on his cigarette and dropped the half-smoked butt to the street. He stamped it out and held a hand up to tell me that I’d said enough. “You don’t have to convince me. As of right now, they’re still a great choice. It’s a very old design though. That gun was old when I started carrying it. Just don’t marry yourself to it if something better comes along.”
I promised and fell in behind Tom as he led the way toward the house. The first obstacle was the front gate. It was overgrown with vines and attached to the brick pillar only by its bottom hinge. He grabbed two of the upper spikes in his huge hands and wrenched the gate back like it was nothing. He dusted his hands off and waded through the greenery which was trying to reclaim the frost-heaved sidewalk.
The front steps up to the porch were a different kind of obstacle. They were rotten, like the entire porch was rotten. I might have been able to scamper across the failing wood with little worry, but much of it was too far gone to support Tom’s bulk. He put his hand on the railing to test it. The weathered wood gave way with almost no effort. He released the rail and let it fall to the ground. He shuffled to the side and tried to put his feet directly over where the stair treads were fastened to the structure underneath. The wood creaked in protest, but it held.
We crossed the front porch and stood before the wide front door. It was locked and bolted, but all the big, first floor windows were broken. Their sashes were extra low, so even Tom with his lumbering gait could have easily climbed through. He shook his head when I made the suggestion. He took a long step and slammed his right shoulder into the door. The great panel of weathered oak tore from its hinges and thundered to the floor inside the house. Tom stepped in on top of it and shouted a teasing line from a long-forgotten television show. “HONEY, I’M HOME!”
I didn’t understand what was going on. “Why did you do that?”
“It’s my house. I can do what I like with it.”
“You’re house?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
I shook my head.
“This is where I grew up.”
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