Putting my legendary investigative reporting skills to work, I googled the main number for the Detroit Police Department and told Cher to dial it. When Sergeant Someone answered, I asked in my best good-old-pal voice, “Hey, hi. Marty Shaw around?”

“Hold on,” the obviously distracted sergeant said.

A few rings later, in a voice that resonated command presence: “Lieutenant Shaw.”

“Lieutenant Shaw, this is Rollie Stone. I’m an editor at The Promethean. I just—”

“I know who you are,” he responded evenly. “I’ve seen you on TV. Look, I’m sorry, Mr. Stone, but I can’t talk to you. This is a legal matter and the lawyers—”

He was talking to me. I just had to keep him talking. “If you want,” I interrupted, “we can make this completely off the record. I’ve been writing a series…”

Shaw chuckled. “Oh, c’mon. Do you know a single cop who hasn’t been burned by that line? I’ve read a couple of your stories, I’d like—”

I mirrored his friendly tone. “Well, sometimes it works.” I was three-plus sentences in and he hadn’t hung up. A good sign. Rather than asking questions he wasn’t going to answer, I looked for common ground. A high percentage of law enforcement officers have military backgrounds. I took a shot. “Can you at least fill in a couple of blanks for me, Lieutenant? I think I read that you were army?”

“Marty,” he corrected; I knew I had him when he told me he had been in the desert. He had commanded an MP platoon attached to an Urban Affairs unit. Over there, that wasn’t just directing traffic or collecting Saturday-night drunks. The MPs provided security for the do-gooders, going into the villages and cities with them, sometimes while the fires were still burning. Marty Shaw had ridden the danger trail. I didn’t offer much about my experience, allowing him to drag it out of me. Special Ops, advance scouting, and mission targeting. In addition to providing boots-on-the-ground intelligence, painting targets for laser-guided weapons.

Shaw had been there after me but knew about our work. Having seen Mighty Chair on TV, he asked how it happened. This isn’t a story I tell often or easily, but this was guy to guy, soldier to soldier, journalist to source. “We had intel that several tribal chiefs were meeting to collect payment for planting IEDs.” As I told the story, I was there. I could see the glare of the day. “The going rate back then was $50 for each successfully planted device.”

“That didn’t change much when I was there.”

I took a deep breath and just kept going. “We ID’ed the building. My job was to drop sensors, then stand back. Problem was that about three minutes before bingo the chiefs left the building. Maybe they got a warning, who knows, but I watched them scramble. They got into their vehicles and out of Dodge. Thing was, soon as they were gone, a bunch of kids ran into the building to see if they’d left anything behind.”