Detroit Deathwatch

'What?' She put a foot on the brake and turned to him with a hard, searching gaze.

'You heard me,' he said quietly.

'You're not dropping me and — !'

'Not you. Me.'

'What?'

'Toby. Take me to Central. I have business there.'

'You're insane!'

'Maybe so, but take me anyway.'

'Captain Crazy,' she muttered, dazed and still not sure how she should respond to the insane command.

'Take your foot off the brake, Toby. Give the wheel a small spin left, gradually depress the accelerator and — '

'Oh, shut up!'

He was grinning at her, adding fuel to the flames.

She moved on into the flow of traffic and edged left for the swing onto Woodward. Her eyes were popping sparks in all directions, and the atmosphere inside the car fairly quivered with suppressed tensions by the time they arrived at the destination and she pulled into the area reserved for police vehicles.

'Whatever you have to do here, let me do it,' she said, in a voice just barely under control.

'Go back to the apartment,' he commanded firmly. 'Wait for my call. I'm going to need you, Toby. Both of us will.'

'Both of who?' she asked, the control slipping and her voice breaking.

'The Canuck and I,' he said, and kissed her quickly, and got out of there.

He walked straight into the official entrance, and she watched him disappear into that ominous interior.

Then she wheeled the car around and sped away from there, half-blinded by a sudden gush of tears.

'Damn you,' she whispered. 'Just damn you all the way back to me in one piece.'

It was a prayer, couched in reverse English — and, it seemed at that moment, a terribly forlorn one.

13 Struck

A tall guy with an open watch book in hand was moving gracefully about the strike room, talking in earnest with members of the task force, studying the postings and making notes as the hard, detail work of police methodology continued along its grinding course.

The guy walked past John Holzer, locked eyes momentarily, smiled, and went on for a closer look at the contingency postings.

Holzer asked one of his people, 'Who is that guy?'

'Hell, I don't know,' the cop replied. 'We got cops here from everywhere, places I never knew existed until this morning.'

'I know him from somewhere.'

'Ask him.'

'I will.'

But the guy had moved on. Holzer followed with his gaze and saw him walk into the federal area, shake hands with a strike force fed, then move into the stake-outs section.

Holzer ambled over and asked the fed, 'Who is that guy?'

'Which guy?'

'You just shook his hand. He went into the tac room.'

'Oh. That's Stryker. Spell it with a y.'

'One of your people, eh.'

'I think so.'

'You think so.'

'That's what I said,' the fed replied, a bit testily.

'Well, what is that, a code name or something?' the lieutenant from Grosse Pointe persisted. 'I mean, strike force? Stryker?'

'I don't know what you're getting at,' the fed said, definitely testy now. 'Go play games with someone else. I'm busy.'

The guy was reading the morning paper. Holzer said, 'Yeah, you look busy,' and passed on to the tac room.

The tall guy was talking to a vice squad lieutenant, pointing out something on one of the big city grid maps that choked the walls of the place. The vice man was shaking his head and stabbing a finger into another area of the chart. They were having a pretty good argument when the tall guy gazed over the other man's head and directly into Holzer's eyes. Something sparked there, and he raised a hand and crooked a finger. It could not have been meant for anyone else; Holzer pursed his lips and stepped forward.

The tall guy said, 'Let's see, it's John Holzer, isn't it? Grosse Pointe?'

Holzer nodded. 'And you're — '

'Do you know Lieutenant Kelso here? DPD Vice.'

The two lieutenants locked eyes and nodded. 'We've met,' Kelso said with evident irritation.

'Policeman's Ball, maybe,' Holzer said sarcastically.

'You got vice up there, Holzer,' Kelso growled. 'You got half the goddamn mob up there.'

'Three-fourths,' Holzer replied amiably. He wished he could place the tall dude in his mind.

But the tall dude was placing something else in John Holzer's mind. 'Kelso says the Eight Mile triangle between East Detroit and Harper Woods has been cleaned out, neutralized.'

'You mean that area up there opposite the high school complex,' Holzer said, glancing at the wall chart.

'Exactly,' Kelso growled. 'They got three high schools side by side there — they got Notre Dame, Regina, and Lutheran East.'

'But they're in Harper Woods,' the tall man said.

'So what? They were screaming like hell because of — and that's why I'm saying it's clean as a hound's tooth, the whole Detroit triangle from Kelley to Hayes and up to Eight Mile. We sweep that area once a week, and I'm telling you, it's clean.'

'That's close to your area, Holzer,' the tall dude said quietly. 'Do you agree with that?'

'Not exactly,' Holzer said.

'Aw, bull,' the Vice lieutenant exploded. 'You name one joint that we missed, just one!'

Holzer stretched to tap the chart. 'How about Linda's Salon? She was operating full blast last time I passed there. Couple days ago.'

Kelso was glaring at the grid map. 'What's that again now?'

'Linda just happens to be Palooka Joe Venedetti's sister-in-law. You know what Palooka Joe deals in, Kelso?'

'Where is that? Show me where that is!'

The lieutenant from Grosse Pointe busied himself at the chart for a moment. He was aware that the tall guy had squeezed past his shoulder, but he did not miss the guy until he looked up from the brief task — and the guy was gone again.

Kelso had snatched up a plastic overlay sheet and was posting the stake-out board with the new intelligence. 'Okay,' he growled to Holzer. 'It goes on, at least 'til I can check it out. You better — what's the matter, Holzer? You look like you just saw a ghost or something.'

'Who is that guy, Kelso?'