Dead of Night (35 page)

Süleyman looked up again at the window he knew was her bedroom and saw that the light was still off. He put the key in the
car’s ignition and turned it. In the morning he would, he promised himself, have Ayşe into his office and make it all right
with her once again. What he’d said before had not been kind and it hadn’t been fair. As usual, it had been mostly about him.

Mark Zevets had known that there was some sort of tunnel system underneath the Packard plant, but he’d never been down into
it before. The entrance that he and Shalhoub had used had been accessed via a scrubby slope that led to a break in one of
the tunnel walls. Moving carefully with their flashlights held out in front of them, both officers wore plastic gloves to
protect them against any stray hypodermic needles that might be down there. Junkies were keen on dark places to shoot up.

Zevets went to the right while Shalhoub went left from the break in the wall. ‘You’re younger than me,’ Shalhoub said as he
pointed Zevets towards the more rubble- and junk-filled arm of the tunnel.

‘Yeah, right.’

Where Shalhoub was going, Zevets noticed, if not exactly clean, was a darn sight more wholesome-looking than what he himself
was facing. It was only when he’d climbed up on to a great pile of wood,
stones and plastic flex that it occurred to him that if he was having a problem getting around in this environment, how would
it be for a man of over eighty? Unless the tunnel led somewhere much more accessible, there was no way that Miller was in
there. Using the spaces where mortar had fallen away between the bricks on the tunnel roof, he pulled himself forward until
he came to a void, and then, at last, he lowered himself on to the floor. Moving his flashlight around, he could see that
he was in fact at a dead end. He called out to Shalhoub: ‘Lieutenant, there’s nothing here!’

But Shalhoub did not reply.

‘Lieutenant?’

Liquid was coming in from somewhere. At first he thought it might be dripping down from the roof. To begin with, he thought
it was water. He was wrong on both counts. The liquid was actually coming from the woodpile he’d just scrambled over, and
it wasn’t water either. Mark Zevets bent down and put his fingers into a pool of gasoline.

‘Lieutenant!’

He hurled himself forward on to the woodpile and his escape route just as the whole thing burst into flames.

‘What’s that?’ Çetin İkmen pointed to a flare of light that came from the part of the plant that was across Grand East Boulevard.

Ed Devine ran back and shone his flashlight in the direction İkmen was indicating. ‘Could be almost anything,’ he said. ‘Acetylene
torch; some of the addicts that hang here sometimes light fires in the winter.’

‘Should we look?’

Devine sighed. ‘I guess,’ he said. ‘But if it’s a whole heap of junkies, I’m just gonna let them go. We have, as the saying
goes, bigger fish to land.’

They walked across Grand East and underneath an archway that led through into a vast masonry- and vegetation-choked lot. Built
to a design by arguably Detroit’s greatest architect, Albert Kahn, in
1903, even in ruins what remained of the building still looked modernistic to İkmen. Mr Kahn had been clearly a man well ahead
of his time. But Ed Devine wasn’t looking at the building, rather at a fire that had apparently started down one of the slopes
that led to the tunnel running underneath the whole plant.

‘Fucking junkies!’ he muttered as he switched on his flashlight and removed his gun from his jacket once again.

Çetin İkmen saw two figures emerge from the slope, both of them shrouded in smoke.

‘Police!’ Devine shouted. ‘Freeze!’

There was some movement in the smoke.

‘I said, freeze!’ Devine reiterated.

A voice yelled back: ‘That you, Ed?’

Devine, his gun still in his hand, moved in front of İkmen and said, ‘Yeah. Who’s that?’

‘Shalhoub!’

It sounded like his voice, but Devine still didn’t put away his weapon. ‘You got a junkie fire down there, John?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Zevets with you?’

‘We’re trying to put it out,’ Shalhoub said. ‘Can you come and give us a hand?’

‘Yeah, we can do that,’ Devine said. He turned to İkmen and whispered, ‘I got a bad feeling here.’

‘About Shalhoub?’

‘Çetin, John Shalhoub never went out to Voss Funeral Home earlier today,’ Devine said. ‘I don’t know where he went, but he
was off the rader. Stay behind me. Hear?’

İkmen nodded.

‘Ed? You coming?’ Shalhoub yelled.

‘I am.’

Devine and İkmen moved down the slope and into the smoke. But then suddenly Devine’s body just slumped down in front of the
Turk,
and he found himself looking through a thick ball of black and grey smoke at John Shalhoub and Grant T. Miller, both carrying
guns. From what appeared to be a fire on his right, he could hear what sounded like someone screaming.

John Shalhoub took Ed Devine’s gun out of his hand and frowned at Çetin İkmen.

‘Not your day, Turk,’ he said as he and Miller moved out of the smoke and began to walk towards him.

‘Where is Officer Zevets?’ İkmen asked. He was scared, and yet at the same time he couldn’t ignore those screams. ‘Is he in
the fire?’

Shalhoub shrugged. ‘Shame I couldn’t get to him when a load of crazed junkies decided to set him alight,’ he said. ‘There
were just too many of them.’

İkmen said, ‘Get him out of there! He will burn to death!’

Shalhoub said nothing, but Miller, a ghastly vision in pyjamas and work boots, said, ‘John, we need to go now. We need to
meet—’

‘You are a police officer!’ İkmen yelled at Shalhoub. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m earning some real money,’ Shalhoub replied. ‘I’m taking care of business. You try living with my debts. Try being an
Arab in this fucking country! Don’t judge me!’

Down on the ground, Ed Devine began to come around from the blow that Miller had dealt to his head with his weapon. In the
tunnel, Zevets could be heard pleading for someone to end his misery and shoot him. But no one possessed of a gun was willing
to do that, and no one unarmed was able. A ghastly smell of cooking meat filled the air, and İkmen knew that it was far too
late already for the young officer. He also knew that it was probably too late for himself and Devine too. Suddenly and unexpectedly
calm, he dispassionately wondered how long it would take the US authorities to repatriate his body back to İstanbul.

‘So you were removing Mr Miller to a safer location when you were supposed to be over at the Voss Funeral Home,’ İkmen said.

‘Oh, Ricky Voss been in touch, has he?’ Shalhoub smiled. ‘I wondered how and why Devine came to be here and not at the border.’
To Miller he said, ‘You’ll have to chastise your old friend Stefan. His great-nephew contacting the police. What’s that all
about?’

‘You killed a man called Artie Bowen,’ İkmen said to Miller.

‘A rent boy. A greedy rent boy.’

‘A person you could not risk the lieutenant and Dr Weiss and myself discovering,’ İkmen said. ‘How many other people have
you killed, Mr Miller? Were they all just inconvenient, or . . .’

‘We have to go,’ Grant T. Miller said to John Shalhoub. He lowered his gun and aimed it at the once again recumbent body of
Ed Devine, shooting him without a word and without any small flicker of emotion. Çetin İkmen reeled at the barbarity of it.
Miller had behaved as if he were putting down a rat.

‘John? Oh, I wouldn’t be too ready to leave yet,’ İkmen heard another voice say. Although still gasping for breath after the
shock of Devine’s shooting, he managed to look up and see that on the top of the grass-covered tunnel lay a man with a gun
aimed at Grant T. Miller’s head.

‘This all stops tonight,’ Samuel Goins said. ‘No arguments, no bribes, no excuses.’

Nobody spoke. From inside the burning tunnel there was no more noise, and the flames were now beginning to abate. Çetin İkmen
hoped that Mark Zevets had been overcome by fumes. He hoped that he was dead. He hoped that Ed Devine, however, somehow remained
alive.

‘Inspector İkmen? That your name, right? Get up here, will you?’ Sam Goins said.

For just a moment, İkmen hesitated. Who was this man?

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘You don’t go anywhere!’ Shalhoub barked as he raised his gun level with İkmen’s head. Then he said, ‘What are you doing here,
Sam Goins?’

Sam Goins? Zeke Goins’ brother? İkmen both heard and saw Goins take his safety catch off and then push his weapon in closer
still towards Grant T. Miller’s head. ‘I’ll kill him without a thought!’ he growled. ‘Inspector İkmen, get over here!’

Without taking his eyes off Shalhoub, or Miller for that matter, İkmen made his way slowly up the slope. As he drew near,
Sam Goins said, ‘There’s a gun in the pocket of my coat. Take it!’ Then, to Miller and Shalhoub, ‘Put your weapons on the
ground! I’m not bluffing. I’ll kill you.’

Confused as he was, İkmen had to assume that Samuel Goins was a good guy. He also had to, if shakily, take that gun and look
as if he meant business with it. Devine, he thought briefly, would have been horrified.

‘Now let’s have your weapons, boys,’ Goins said. ‘On the ground. Steady now.’

Slowly, Miller and Shalhoub bent down to put their guns by their feet. İkmen staggered down the slope and picked them up.
He stuck them both in his pockets. He felt, he thought, a little like the Terminator.

‘What brought this on then, Sam?’ Miller asked.

‘Sickness,’ Sam Goins responded.

‘Sickness?’

‘Sickness with you, Miller,’ he said. ‘With what you do, what you’ve done, what you are. Sickness at seeing my own brother
still tearing his heart out thirty years after his only son’s death.’

‘And whose fault is that?’ the old man said. No answer came, and so he continued: ‘Sam, you know where I’m going and you know
full well that there’ll be a big fat cheque at the end of it for you and your hillbillies. What’s it gonna benefit you if
you shoot me? Let’s revert to the original plan, shall we?’

‘I don’t want to shoot you, Grant,’ Sam Goins said. İkmen could see that he had tears in his eyes. Still with his gun pointed
at Miller’s head, Goins stood up. ‘I going to turn you in,’ he said.

‘To the police? I already have an officer right here.’ Grant T. Miller smiled.

‘I’ve called 911,’ Goins said.

‘Why don’t you come to Zurich with me, Sam,’ the old man said. ‘We can buy chocolate and cuckoo clocks and I can introduce
you to my banker.’

‘I thought you were taking Shalhoub with you.’

‘Jealous?’ Grant T. Miller smiled. ‘I’d rather you came than him.’ He looked over at Shalhoub with disgust. ‘Shabby little
Semite!’

Çetin İkmen saw John Shalhoub wrestle with his fury; even through the fire-tinged darkness, he could see the Arab American’s
features flooding with blood. What were the relationships between these three, and how did they work? All he knew was that
whatever the situation was, Miller was, or had been, in control.

‘Sam . . .’

The sound of distant sirens cut Miller off.

Samuel Goins looked quickly over his shoulder, and then said, ‘There isn’t long.’

‘They’ve burned a man in that tunnel,’ İkmen said as he flicked his head towards the now dying wood fire. ‘We have to see
if he’s still alive!’

‘The cops’ll be here soon.’

‘And Lieutenant Devine . . .’

‘They’ll be here!’

‘To arrest you as well as myself and Shalhoub,’ Miller said. He was so calm, so idly, mildly amused. İkmen aimed at his head
and hoped he’d try to make a break for freedom. Not that such a thing, given Miller’s age, was realistically possible.

‘Things need to be said,’ Samuel Goins continued. ‘Inspector, you’re all I have. You gotta listen now.’

The wail of the sirens was getting louder.

Sam Goins bit his bottom lip nervously. Then he said, ‘Miller didn’t kill my nephew Elvis; I did.’

İkmen was speechless. Why?

‘The boy was a punk,’ Miller said.

‘Shut the fuck up, Miller!’ Sam Goins rammed the pistol hard against the top of the old man’s head. Miller held his arms up
in a gesture of submission and duly held his tongue.

Goins looked again at İkmen. ‘It takes a lot of money to become a politician in this country,’ he said. ‘Back in the day,
I worked the line at Ford, my daddy was an unemployed drunk, and all those who’d left the mountains with us remained as stupid
and as poor as they had ever been. I wanted to change that.’

Grant T. Miller looked as if he was about to speak, but then appeared to change his mind.

‘I knew I could be a good politician,’ Goins said. ‘I believed in myself that I could change things. Maybe I have, maybe I
haven’t. But I needed money, I needed someone to sponsor me. I knew that Mayor Young was in the market for helping minorities
like us, but I couldn’t get to him.’

İkmen, in spite of the fire, began to feel cold.

Sam Goins glanced down at Miller. ‘You’d always wanted me, hadn’t you, Grant?’ He looked back at İkmen again. ‘In exchange
for sums of money that were nothing to him but something to me, I became his bitch.’ He curled his lip in disgust. ‘Twice
a week, usually in some rat-infested, ruined house. Couldn’t go to his place, couldn’t have his southern belle ma knowing
that Grant was a faggot. I hated him and I hated myself!’

The old man laughed. Sam Goins ignored him. ‘But then all of a sudden, I hit the big time,’ he said. ‘I was offered a deal
by the devil and I took it. That was my mistake.’

‘Mistake? I thought it had all been worth it in terms of your “people”,’ Miller said.

Goins ignored him. ‘It was the 1970s, the heroin years in Detroit,’ he said. ‘Some of Grant’s white-rights buddies were getting
in on the action big-time. Competition was fierce. White gangs against black
gangs against Hispanics . . . And then there was my stupid junkie nephew Elvis and his crew. A small player by anybody’s measure,
but he managed to piss off one of your old southern white yacht-club associates, didn’t he, Grant?’

Miller did not reply.