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Back Dead of Winter Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
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“I fail to see the distinction.” Lucy folded her arms across her chest as she made her way to my kitchen. “Was your tongue in her mouth?”

“Listen.” I drew in a slow, calming breath. “I’m not going to debate with you. Before you ducked behind a snowbank, what did you want?”

“The name of your lawyer,” Lucy said. She was checking out my fridge. The mac and cheese with pulled barbeque pork didn’t interest her. The leftover paella did. “The girls want to revise their wills or some creepy shit.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll give you the name of my lawyer if you do something for me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Lucy said, spooning the cold paella into her mouth. “And what would that be, Mr. Gigolo Snow?”

I handed her an American Express charge card.

The name on the card was Jacqueline E. Ochoa.

7

7

City Councilwoman Nadine Rosado, District Six, southwest Detroit/Mexicantown representative, had been lobbying the city for a DPD substation anywhere along the Vernor Highway business corridor. Nothing that left a policía Estatal jackboot footprint, since a great number of her constituents were personally familiar with what pathetically passed for law enforcement in Mexico, Nicaragua and Colombia. What she wanted was more like a twenty-four-hour rotation of four to six cops (at least one Spanish speaking) and the commitment of one patrol car. Flowers in the lobby, suckers for the kids and maybe a bright sign in the window that read, aquí para ayudar, todos los días! (Here to help, every day!) She’d even secured a small, empty storefront that the owner would gladly lease to the city for five years at half of its fair market lease value.

The chief of police was on board.

The police commissioner loved the idea.

City Council President Lincoln Quinn had one very public and one very private problem with the proposal: Publicly, he was bombastically vocal about the costs of establishing and maintaining such a substation. He argued that if there were going to be more neighborhood DPD substations, a nonpartisan study should be commissioned to establish which Detroit neighborhoods most needed them (in ranking order by number of residents, per-capita crime stats and types of crime).

Privately, Quinn knew Mexicantown was where I lived.

Several years earlier, he had argued vehemently against my $12 million wrongful dismissal award. When the TV news lights were shining and the newspaper ink flowed like the Detroit River he had spared no amount of vitriol in denouncing me as a “parasite,” a “moneygrubbing media whore” and an “enemy of the poorest amongst us.”

My attorney, David G. Baker, had urged me to sue Quinn for defamation.

“Somebody needs to shove a used jockstrap down that asshole’s throat,” G had said.