“This organization,” he said, “they’re threatening a child?”

“Yes.”

“There are lines one simply does not cross,” he said. “That is one of them.”

“I’m not asking you to put anyone down,” I said for clarification. “Just nonlethal protection.”

“I understand,” he said. “However, you must agree—there are those in this world who should be culled from the herd.”

“I’d rather leave the culling to God.”

“My friend,” he said, “God is on holiday, and He has left the likes of you and me in charge of pruning His garden.”

“I don’t even know your name,” I heard myself say.

“Try Dieter—August.”

“I’ll text you the details,” I said.

He disconnected.

I doubted very much his name was Dieter.

20

20

It’s rare that I have cause to visit District Six Council Member Nadine Rosado’s two-story Colonial in Mexicantown. Jimmy and Carlos had done some work on her house maybe six weeks before, installing a state-of-the-art security system. A job that came from a request through Elena, not me. The last time I was there personally was eight months ago, when I accompanied Elena to a meeting on “energizing community policing and cultural engagement.” During that visit, I simply sat by Council Member Rosado’s eighty-year-old family heirloom: a Detroit-made Grinnell spinet piano crowned with silver-and-glass-framed family photos going back a hundred years on this side of the southern border.

After that meeting I asked Elena why exactly I had been invited, since I had contributed close to nothing.

“Eye candy,” she said, issuing a hearty laugh. Elena told me that the women—prominent business owners and community influencers—had heard about me: My family roots in the community. The fact that I was a decorated marine (perhaps a bit more decorated in Elena’s telling). What I’d done to revitalize Markham Street and the personal and professional cost this revitalization had had for me. And even though I was no longer a cop, it was thought in this group that I still had a modicum of “influence” with the DPD.

Then there were the robusto blends of truth and fiction that also made the rounds, whispered legends fluttering on Spanish-speaking tongues: I was both Batman and Chupacabra. Superman and Satan. A half-breed angel with blood-soaked wings in search of cultural and holy redemption.

Today my intentions were to ask Rosado if she’d heard any subsonic Detroit City Council rumblings concerning property developments or land acquisitions that weren’t exactly kosher.

A shiny black Ford Expedition SUV with blacked-out windows was parked in front of Rosado’s house on Vinewood. As I was about to park behind it, her front door opened, and a tall, lean Black man wearing a navy-blue wool car coat and matching fedora exited. Rosado, who had seen him to the door, looked pale, as if she’d just been visited by the ghost of a long-dead deviant uncle.