Dead of Night (36 page)

Shalhoub, his voice trembling, said, ‘This has nothing to do with me!’

‘No. You’re just his latest police whore.’

‘I’m a fucking straight man . . .’

The sirens stopped and they heard car doors open and close, and then voices.

Sam Goins bit his lip again. ‘Elvis was a selfish little prick. I begged him to stop dealing. I told him he was in danger.
But he just laughed. Meantime, my brother and his wife were falling apart because of the boy. I saw Zeke cry that many times
over Elvis . . . ‘He swallowed back his own tears and then sighed to control his nerves. ‘Miller told me, Inspector İkmen, that
the boy was as good as dead.’ Then he added with a bald simplicity that was so emotionless it was shocking, ‘I figured if
Elvis had to die, it was best that I did it. Quickly. These people with a racist agenda, they can enjoy torturing folk.’

‘Hands up in the air! Weapons where I can see them!’ Orders were barked out by a man in a black helmet, Kevlar-padded and
aiming an automatic weapon. İkmen flung his arms upwards.

‘Inspector!’

He saw Sam Goins begin to raise his arms too, but then he said, ‘All I ask is that my brother never finds out.’ And he stuck
his gun against the side of his own head and pulled the trigger.

It was impossible to know what to say, and so Martha Bell opted for saying nothing. Somehow Samuel Goins had been shot and
killed and Zeke was weeping fit to cry his eyes dry. For want of anything else to do, Martha just kept making more and more
coffee. So far she’d made him three, none of which he’d drunk, and herself four, which she had mindlessly consumed. Her head
was buzzing and she felt vaguely sick.

Becca, Sam’s ex-wife, had called at around two in the morning. Martha had thought it had to be about Marlon. Her heart had
nearly jumped out of her chest as she’d lifted the phone to her ear. She’d been both appalled and relieved when it was Becca
Goins. She was at police headquarters and Sam was dead.

Even when she’d told him first off, Zeke hadn’t said anything. He’d just cried as he was doing now. He wasn’t even smoking.
Martha wondered if he would or could ever stop, or whether he’d just end up crying himself to death.

She’d put the radio on for the local news at six. She rarely if ever listened to that, especially not first thing in the morning.
Sam’s death was reported. They said that in the same incident, two DPD officers had been wounded too. They were both at Detroit
Receiving Hospital and one of them was critical. They weren’t named. The only detail the station gave was that whatever had
happened had occurred out at the old Packard plant on East Grand. Martha wondered what on earth Sam Goins had been doing out
in that godforsaken place.

Keisha had only just got up and was in the bathroom. When she came out, Martha knew she’d have to tell the girl that her friend
Councillor Sam was dead. It was going to upset her. She was just a kid; it wasn’t right that she’d seen so much death in her
little life.

Çetin İkmen was being interviewed by a detective called Bains. A middle-aged African American, he was the antithesis of Ed
Devine. Bains was thin, dry and cold, but he was also sympathetic to İkmen’s rather strange predicament. İkmen told him everything
he knew about Sam Goins, Grant T. Miller and John Shalhoub.

‘Lieutenant Devine got a call from Mr Richard Voss of Voss Funeral Home,’ he said. ‘That was what made him turn the car around
and take us to the Packard plant. Mr Voss told Lieutenant Devine, or it came up in conversation, I don’t know which, that
Lieutenant Shalhoub had not been to see him that afternoon.’

‘Shalhoub led Devine to believe that he had?’

‘Yes. When we arrived at the Packard plant we discovered that instead of going to Voss, Shalhoub had actually gone ahead of
our party to Grant T. Miller’s house to take him away before we arrived. We found a dead body . . .’

‘Artie Bowen, yes,’ Bains said. ‘In Miller’s bed.’

He shuffled through a sheaf of papers. İkmen, in spite of the knowledge that he was in no way a suspect, sweated. He was in
a foreign interview room, speaking in a language that was not his own about his involvement in a terrifying and violent incident.
And he hadn’t slept or had a cigarette.

‘How are Lieutenant Devine and Officer Zevets?’ İkmen asked. That either of them had survived at all was miraculous. But try
as he might to shoot Devine in the heart, old Miller had only succeeded in smashing up his shoulder. Devine had played dead
at first in order to prevent the old man from taking another, more successful shot at him. Then he’d passed out. Zevets had
been badly burned and had
not been breathing when they’d got to him, but he’d still been alive – just.

‘Ed Devine will be fine,’ Bains said. ‘Zevets?’ He shrugged. ‘He’s critical.’

‘That’s terrible. I’m sorry.’

‘You did your best.’ Bains gathered his paperwork together in a pile. ‘Shalhoub wants to cut a deal,’ he said. ‘Should be
illuminating.’ He stood up. ‘The Chief wondered if you’d like to join him in the observation room.’

‘Yes.’ İkmen rose wearily to his feet. In spite of his tiredness, he wanted to know what Shalhoub was going to say. Miller
had so far refused to so much as open his mouth.

Bains pulled a tight little smile and said, ‘I’ll take you through.’

‘I’d only heard about Grant T. Miller when John Sosobowski first spoke to me about him,’ Shalhoub said. ‘I’d never met him.’

His interrogators, Lieutenant Joe Fortune and Detective Dianne Scott, looked across the table at Shalhoub without a shred
of sympathy in their eyes. A bad cop, a corrupt officer, was a pariah and an embarrassment, and Çetin İkmen could relate to
their hatred all too easily.

‘What did Sosobowski say?’ Scott asked.

‘John knew I was having money problems,’ Shalhoub said. ‘Alimony and . . . He was retiring. He said that I could make good money
for doing very little.’

‘For Grant Titus Miller?’

‘Yes.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Looking out for him mainly,’ Shalhoub said. He looked, İkmen felt, remarkably fresh for a man who’d been up all night watching
men get shot, burned and threatened. ‘Miller has a predilection for rent boys. Sometimes they wanted to take advantage of
his position in society.’

‘To demand more money.’

‘Yes, or maybe threaten to blackmail him. John had been taking care of that business for Miller for years. A friendly cop
who’d scare punks away, basically. That was how it was put to me. It wasn’t until later that I realised it wasn’t as simple
as that.’

‘Why not?’ Fortune asked. He was a pale, thin Italian American in his forties. He had eyes that had seen and been affected
by a lot. İkmen knew such eyes well. Mehmet Süleyman had them too.

Shalhoub, for the first time, began to show signs of faltering. ‘Well, er . . .’ He put his head down and scratched his cheek.
He seemed paler than he had a few moments before. ‘John Sosobowski first got involved with Miller back in 1978,’ he said.
‘He and Gerald Diaz were called out to Miller’s house because Ezekiel Goins was attacking him. He was accusing Miller of killing
his son.’ He took a deep breath in and then let it out on a sigh. ‘Diaz pulled Goins away from Miller and took him outside
the house to cool down. He had some sympathy with Goins because the guy was bereaved, you know, and so he didn’t cuff him,
just made him promise not to move. Meantime, Sosobowski did what he could for Miller’s wound. When Diaz came back in again,
he found Sosobowski and Miller talking about what an animal Goins was and how Miller was going to enjoy putting him behind
bars. John had Black Legion leanings, you know. Anyway, Diaz said that Goins’ accusations against Miller would have to be
investigated. And that was when Miller said that he knew that in fact another Goins family member had killed Elvis, and that
he had the evidence to prove it.’

‘Did he?’

‘So he said.’

‘What was that evidence?’

‘A gun,’ Shalhoub said. ‘A Glock. He said the family member had given it to him for disposal, but he’d hung on to it.’

‘Did Miller tell Sosobowski or Diaz who that family member was?’ Scott asked.

‘Not then,’ Shalhoub replied. ‘But of course later, when Councillor Goins did some serious work for Mr Miller, they got it.’

‘Serious work? What do you mean, serious work?’ Fortune asked.

‘Councillor Goins made sure that a company set up by Grant T. Miller and his mother Rose could purchase all the land around
their property in north Brush Park.’

‘Why did Miller want to purchase that real estate?’

‘Because he didn’t want it to go like south Brush Park.’

‘South Brush Park is developing.’

‘Exactly,’ Shalhoub said. ‘He didn’t want to live next door to anyone, least of all the kind of people who live in project
housing.’

‘Black people?’

İkmen looked over at the Chief of Police, whose face was entirely impassive. Inside, he felt, he had to be reeling. His own
officers, involved with a creature like Miller!

‘Anyone,’ Shalhoub replied. ‘Miller likes to be on his own, with the exception of an occasional rent boy. Councillor Goins
made sure that he got that land, firstly because Miller was primed to blackmail him, and second because Miller agreed to leave
the property to the city of Detroit on his death.’

‘He has no heirs? As far as you know?’

‘No. But I also know that recently he’s gone off the idea of leaving the land to the city.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Life’s a game to Mr Miller. He changes with the wind. But I do know that Councillor Goins took it seriously,
and that he had been working hard to try and get him to change his mind.’

‘OK.’ Fortune turned to Scott, and for a few seconds the two of them whispered between themselves.

İkmen turned to the Chief of Police. ‘Sir, if I remember correctly, a Glock pistol was found at Mr Miller’s house, was it
not?’

The Chief looked at him. ‘Yes, Inspector, it was,’ he said. ‘You know, I am so . . . I can’t tell you how I feel . . . Like all my
nightmares about this department have come to pass!’ İkmen saw him shudder briefly, but then he smiled. ‘I have to thank you,
in part, for
this, Inspector. If you hadn’t been so anxious to help Mr Ezekiel Goins . . .’

‘John . . .’

Both İkmen and the Chief looked back into the interview room as Scott began to speak once again.

‘John,’ she said, ‘we’ll come back to just how Sosobowski became involved with Miller in a little while. For the moment, though,
we need to focus on four separate deaths. What can you tell me about the deaths of Lieutenant Gerald Diaz, about an auto wrecker
called Kyle Redmond, a small-time player called Clifford Kercheval and a rent boy with a crack addiction called Artie Bowen?’

İkmen’s mouth fell open. Were they really going after Shalhoub and possibly Miller for all those deaths? Even through the
one-way glass, he saw John Shalhoub’s face turn white.

Sam Goins’ death still didn’t feel quite real. To kill himself like that had been excessive! He had to know that he had only
been teasing about not leaving the Rosebud land to the city. Grant T. chuckled to himself. Stupid half-breed! Sam had taken
power in the city back in the 1980s and still his people were plug-ugly and pig-ignorant! It was a shame; as a young boy,
Sam had been a looker.

Grant T. Miller surveyed his cell, which mercifully he had all to himself. If things had gone to plan, he would have been
either in Canada or on his way to Zurich by this time, about to visit his Swiss bank account. But for all his flaws Miller
was a realist, and he knew that everything that had happened had done so because of his own actions. Or rather one action,
that had set everything else in train. If only he’d not seen that kid messing around in the old Royden Holmes place! A nigger,
on Rosebud land! Of course they came and went in cars down the road just like anyone else, but they never stayed, there was
nothing for them! Not that kid, though.

Aaron Spencer had been in a world of his own, talking to himself
in some sort of fantasy game, when Miller had first seen him wandering past the Windmill. Fearful that the kid might try to
break in, he took his Beretta and went to make sure that he left. He followed him as far as the old Royden Holmes place, and
then watched in horror as the kid went in. He’d been about to follow him when the kid came out again and saw him, gun in hand.
There’d been something else too, something hanging limply outside of Grant T.’s pyjama bottoms. The boy had pointed and said
something like ‘Old pervert!’ or some such, and it was then that Miller had fired. Given that people seemed to take the word
of stupid kids so seriously in the modern age, he’d had no choice. Aaron Spencer, a child he’d never seen before in his life,
could have finished him. Gerald Diaz, still bent on revenge thirty years after Elvis Goins’ death, would have made sure that
Spencer was listened to just as surely as he had been in the process of burying him with the evidence from the Beretta. Shooting
at the foreigners with the same gun he’d used on the kid had been a mistake too. Grant T. was getting old, losing his touch.
He began to feel a little depressed. But then a few minutes later his attorney, one of the best in the state of Michigan,
arrived, and he regained his bonhomie.

‘I haven’t killed anyone,’ John Shalhoub said. ‘Kercheval killed Diaz! He was working for Miller! He and Bowen beat up Rita
Addison!’

‘Meaning to kill Officer Addison too?’

Shalhoub put a hand up to his head. ‘I don’t know! You’d have to ask Miller, you’d have to ask Kercheval and—’

‘They’re dead,’ Fortune said baldly. ‘Can’t ask them anything. What we do know, in spite of your “evidence”, is that Kercheval
didn’t kill himself. He was murdered.’

Shalhoub’s face creased in what could have been pain. ‘No!’

‘Yes,’ Scott said. ‘He was asleep when he was shot. Neat trick to kill yourself in your sleep, but completely impossible too.’
She leaned forward on the table and looked him in the eyes. ‘John, if
you want to cut any sort of deal, you have to tell us the whole truth. Now I’m going to ask you again: what can you tell us
about the deaths of Gerald Diaz, Kyle Redmond, Clifford Kercheval and Artie Bowen?’