“Why is it men make the absolute worse patients?” Elena had said. “Little whiny babies, every one of you! Tough guys who would faint from a hangnail!”

I thought it best not to remind Elena that two slugs in the back was not a “hangnail.”

After dropping off the chili, Tatina and I decided it was a pajama day. One of the ways for people around the world to learn American English is to watch American movies, and it’s no different for Tatina. Feeling she had a way to go to speaking English more naturally and fluently, she barely convinced me to forego watching Michigan State basketball to watch His Gal Friday with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

“You do, of course, realize the movie contains the racial slur ‘pickaninny,’” I said as we carried bowls of my father’s hearty chili and a plate of obscenely buttered corn bread (with chopped jalapeños baked inside) to the coffee table in front of the TV.

“Yes,” she said brightly. “I’m not naïve. Racism has always been America’s biggest export. Still, it’s Cary Grant.”

“Still,” I said, “it’s Cary Grant.”

Ten minutes into the movie, I got a call from Detective Captain Leo Cowling requesting my presence at the Jefferson Avenue water treatment plant’s third clarifying tank near Brennan Street.

Actually, his request was of the fire-breathing persuasion.

“Shall I go with you?” Tatina said.

“No,” I said, giving her a light kiss. “Enjoy the movie and the chili. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Is it going to be like this with us?”

“I’d like it not to be,” I said. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to think you trust me enough for me to be at your side when need be.”

“Not quite the answer I expected,” I said. “Thank you.”

The weather the day before had been a shock to the system: subzero and colorless with mounds of snow that had had that Styrofoam crunch when you stepped on it. Now it was forty-four with sunshine and rivers of cold water rushing against the curbs. Welcome to another bipolar-vortex Michigan winter. Appropriately enough, I was wearing well-worn Peter Millar jeans, tan Cole Haan chukka boots, a pilling navy-blue wool crewneck sweater that was about twenty years old and my father’s beat-to-hell grey motorcycle jacket.

Three DPD cruisers with flashers spinning, one dirty navy-blue undercover Ford and the Wayne County Coroner’s tech van were already there when I rolled to a stop at the huge municipal clarifying tank complex.

A tall, slim, fresh-faced DPD patrolman stopped me.

“I’m Detective Captain Leo Cowling’s prom date,” I said, holding out my driver’s license for the young cop to see. The cop—a stoic Black kid with high cheekbones and alert eyes—spoke into his shoulder-mounted walkie-talkie.

“Send that mothafucka up here,” Cowling’s voice said, crackling through the walkie-talkie.

The young cop pointed the way.