Out of Sight

"Was scag he bought off me. After while kicked it and found his happiness with crack, what I started dealing him when I worked for the Chambers brothers. But, see, the man turned around and got into dealing himself, selling to white people out this way. You with me?"

"This is a long fucking story," Glenn said, looking out the window again at shrubs, stone walls, driveways, trying to be cool, but feeling his control of the situation slipping away as Maurice took over the car and now, it seemed, was taking over the whole fucking deal, the con named Snoopy nowhere in sight.

"Look," Maurice said, "I know you cool, but don't give me no tone of voice, okay? You don't like what I'm saving, you can get out anywhere along here you want."

There it was. Still, Glenn felt he should call him on it. He said, "I think you're forgetting, this is my car. I drove it up here."

Maurice said, "Hey, shit, come on. I say I want this car, man, it's mine. You go get yourself another one. Now you gonna listen to me?"

They weren't having a discussion, Glenn realized for sure now, they were arm wrestling, Maurice showing him who was boss. Glenn, sitting there bundled up in his new wool-lined raincoat, his wool gloves and scarf, acted surprised, for what it was worth, saying, "What's all this fucking hostility about? I thought we had an understanding."

"I said you gonna listen to me or not?"

So much for the understanding.

Glenn took his time, making Maurice wait, before he said, "This guy who used to be your customer is dealing now, selling to white folks. You're thinking of a way to rip him off, knowing he won't call the cops 'cause it's money, as you say, from illegal trade," Glenn getting just a hint of a bored tone in there. He glanced at Maurice in his silk bandanna, sitting there like some fucking African prince.

"What else?"

"You either stupid or you showing me some nerve," Maurice said.

"Okay, we gonna find out how much you actually have."

A young woman named Marcie Nolan, the police beat reporter for the Free Press, spotted Karen Sisco going into 1300 Beaubien, Detroit Police headquarters. Marcie was coming back from lunch at a Greektown restaurant, two blocks away, approaching 1300 when she saw Karen. But by the time Marcie got to the lobby and through the metal detector, Karen was in an elevator on her way up to… Well, she could be seeing one of the brass on the third floor, or someone in the Homicide section on five or Major Crimes on seven. If Karen was picking up a prisoner she'd eventually end up on nine, where the holding cells were located.

Unless her prisoner was across the street, in the Wayne County jail.

Marcie Nolan went up to her office on the second floor, a partitioned room she shared with the News beat reporter, and called an assistant editor at the Free Press.

She said, "Hi, it's Marcie," eager to tell about Karen Sisco, the federal marshal she got to know in Miami when she was at the Herald, but had to answer questions first. No, they still weren't giving out information. All they seemed to have was the witness report of four guys in a blue van. Two of the women were here this morning for show-ups. She said they had to release the suspect they'd brought in.

"But listen, there's a U.S. marshal here from Miami, Karen Sisco… I don't know yet, I have to find her. She's probably picking up some guy they have on a detainer. That's what I'm gonna find out. In the meantime the Herald has a terrific shot of her taken in front of the federal courthouse. No, in Miami It wouldn't matter, it's a really terrific shot. Karen has style, and she's a knockout… You'll see.

It's the land of shot, if what she's doing here isn't a story, you could run it in "Names amp; Faces' instead of whatever Madonna's up to…

It'll have a cut line with it we can revise, add that she's picking up a prisoner, or whatever she's doing here… That's fine with me.

Once you see the picture I know you'll use it."

Karen phoned her dad late Monday afternoon from her room in the Westin.

He asked about her flight, hoping, he said, Northwest wasn't still serving that scrambled egg sandwich with the banana and yogurt, and the bagel if you got the sandwich down and were still hungry. A cold bagel, for Christ sake. He didn't wait to hear what she did have or ask about the weather.

"So what're you doing?"

"Right now?" Karen said, standing at her window.

"I'm looking at Windsor, Ontario. You remember that movie Stranger Than Paradise?"

"No-who was in it?"

"Nobody. It doesn't matter," Karen said.

"I went to see Raymond Cruz."

"The Homicide guy."

"He was. He's crimes against persons and property now, also sex crimes and child abuse."

"Detroit, he must be pretty busy."

"Home invasions are big, sexual assaults… They're after a gang that cruises around in a van raping women, four guys.

They pick up a woman off the street or pull her out of her car, gang-bang her in the van and throw her out. Raymond says they're close to nailing these guys so he's staying on top of it.