The Greeks of Beaubien Street (12 page)

They worked out a schedule that suited them. His place was tiny and in a bad neighborhood so she rarely stayed there. He spent the night at her apartment when she was on call so that their dog Fred could be with both of them and Alex would be there to walk him if Jill was called out, which happened regularly. She and Albert shared the call responsibility with two other homicide teams. They’d have a run of murders and then nothing for weeks.

Jill was an enigma; she was compassionate to a fault, yet stupid people drove her crazy. She was impossible to manipulate, except by Alex and Fred, and maintained a steady state of mind, no matter what was happening. She didn’t flinch at the most devastating circumstances. Tough as she was though, the one thing Jill couldn’t tolerate even slightly was bad odor. Stinky trash, dog poop, guts; all things that caused bile to rise in her throat. Those childish forays in the gutter forgotten, she kept a small vial of menthol camphor ointment in her purse to combat the worst decomposition smells. But nothing else got her down. She was empowered by her intense and often horrifying job rather than depressed by it. And Alex’s weaknesses only increased her compassion for him.

They spent the weekends together at Jill’s unless Alex wanted to be alone. Once a month they drove out to Plymouth to see Chris at his group home. It was always emotional for Alex. Here was this innocent man, more child than adult, who loved seeing his sister Jill with such fervor that he jumped up and down, clapping his hands. Alex fought tears most of the visit. Jill told him that he didn’t need to go with her, but he insisted. Here was reality. It gave him a chance to exercise his over-sensitive emotional side. And a reminder to himself of how goddamned lucky he was. Jill loved Chris and they spent the few hours in laughter, playing games, talking, and walking around the neighborhood. His houseparent was an unconventional woman who wore her blond hair in dreadlocks and had a pierced nose. The families of her residents worshiped her because she took good care of their loved ones, providing them with safety and a socialized life. When it was time to go, Chris never begged Jill to stay; he was happy to get back to his stable life with his arranged family. Jill left in peace. Gus always said the same thing; he was sad to go, but so happy that his son was satisfied that leaving wasn’t difficult.

Gus liked Alex. He was resigned to the fact that his only daughter would probably never leave this sad and broken man. The aunts and uncles all had plenty to say about him, from the first time they met him when they were dating in high school.

“What does your girl date that Polack for?” Aunt Maria said. “She’s so skinny that no Greek boy wants her? Why don’t you force her to find a boy from the church?” Aunt Maria never made a comment that wasn’t a question. That way, it wasn’t really her opinion. When Jill was a child and Aunt Maria critiqued her appearance or behavior, Jill’s mother told her to mind her own business.

“Your own brother’s daughter and you talk about her like a dog,” she said. Maria’s answer was, “What? I can’t ask after my own brother’s child?” So it went for years. When Alex lost his residency, it was the first time anyone in the family acted as if they cared about him. No one criticized him, no one gossiped behind his back. They spoke in whispers around Jill, worried about her, tried to feed her. It was a testimony to the family she came from. They talked trash about Alex because he was Polish, but then acted like he was an accident victim when he got thrown out his residency for being a drunk. The aunts showed up at Jill’s apartment with food for days after the news got out. She blamed her cousin Andy for that; he and Alex became close during college. Andy wanted to rally around Alex, get him into rehab, and make it right. But the truth was, and Jill knew this, that Alex was better off out of there. He was a gentle soul. His father was the one who wanted his son to be a doctor. The poor man was heartbroken when Alex came home in the middle of the week with his duffle bag.

“I got kicked out,” he said when his mother asked him what the story was. “I’m an alcoholic and evidently that’s not allowed when you are learning to be a doctor.” But Jill knew the truth. The drunkenness was just an excuse. It was easier to admit failure due to alcoholism than it was to tell your street-cleaning father who spent his life working overtime to put you through eight years of school that you really want to be a painter. Once Alex had the courage to do what he wanted at the insistence of Jill, his parents stopped talking to him. So far, he sold one painting at a gallery on Jefferson. He had them send the check right to Mr. and Mrs. Kazmerek, and the last he heard, they had cashed it. He would pay them back eventually and hoped they would be able to forgive him when that happened.

~ ~ ~

While Albert talked to Mike Ahmed and visited his Nana, Jill Zannos interviewed the employees who made the blood clot filled drain discovery. She was treating the building like a crime scene until the DNA reports came back. The entire third floor had been taped off, security videos aimed at the hotel room from the elevator retrieved, and ten employees who had worked Sunday night brought in for interviews. Room three forty-six was half of a double. A married couple from Manhattan occupied the rooms: Mr. and Mrs. Eric Archer. They paid cash, had an American Express card and a New York driver’s license. The driver’s license was a fake. So that was that. Until the lab reports came back, Jill wasn’t sure if this was even related to Gretchen Parker. Albert was convinced Mike Ahmed was involved in some way and Jill felt certain of it. None of the Sunday evening employees interviewed could tell Jill anything helpful. Next, they’d interview the Friday evening employees. The list was long and they would be talking for a couple of days. Finally, pay dirt.

The housekeeper who was assigned to the third floor Friday night saw a dark haired man enter the room next door to three forty-six with a “drunk” woman over his shoulder. In this part of town with the Greektown casinos and the bars open late, it wasn’t so unusual a sight. The man even said to the housekeeper, “Too much to drink.” She remembered that the man trilled his r’s.

“Did he have an accent?” Jill asked. The woman shook her head
yes
.

“He was trying to cover it up, but the ‘r’ gave it away,” the woman explained.

“Did he look like a tourist or was he local?” Jill inquired.

“I don’t know if he’s a local or not, but he’s a regular. I mean, I’ve seen him here before. They come from New York most of them, to gamble.” Jill didn’t doubt that she had seen him before, but why would a New Yorker come to Detroit to gamble when they have Atlantic City? It didn’t make any sense.
Unless there’s a prostitution angle to this
. She needed to get an ID on the man.

“If I bring you a picture, do you think you would recognize the man with the lady over his shoulder?” Jill looked the woman in the eyes and saw her expression subtly change from confident to fearful.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ve got to leave now, my babysitter doesn’t like it when I’m late.”

Jill finished interviewing the rest of the employees but no one could tell her anything more. After she cleaned up her notes, she’d go back to the precinct to watch the video. She hoped there was an image of a man with a woman thrown over his shoulder.

Chapter 15

Nicholas Zannos came from Greece to live with his Canadian relatives. His brother, George immigrated to Toronto and worked in a steel plant saving money for his own grocery store. Their sister, Anne lived in Windsor where she and her husband had a grocery. When Nicholas and Eleni moved to Detroit, they had two children, Nick and John, and she was pregnant with Peter. It made sense to open a grocery there as well. It wasn’t a problem to move supplies across the border back then. The Canadian family would help Nick get started by providing the stock needed until he had the money to open his own accounts stateside. Anything fresh they needed for the deli would come from the Eastern Market. The market overwhelmed Eleni. Cavernous spaces of rows of farmers with their bounty beckoned her in. The butchers were the most intriguing. The Zannos’ decided that roasted lamb would be on the menu daily.

Greektown had already changed from a Greek residential community to a Greek commercial district by the time they moved in. The old neighborhood was mostly Polish and Lebanese, but the Greeks still living in the area were a tightly knit group who worshiped together and tried to uphold their own politics. The new family was heartily welcomed.

Nick and Eleni’s grocery and deli with take-out was a new concept. It would give them an edge. As the children grew up, they worked alongside their parents, saving money for college or making plans to leave to go out on their own. Gus was the youngest boy. He spent his baby years riding on the hips of his older siblings. As soon as he could contribute, he was given jobs that a toddler could do. He swept floors, kept the table and chair legs of the few set up for customers to use sparkling clean, and dusted canned good that were stacked close to the floor. He loved canned goods. He would catch himself buying a product because of its beautiful label once he was running the store himself.

He met Christina in Sunday school. They grew up together, best friends through high school. Their friends called them “The Odd Couple”. He took after Eleni’s side of the family and was shorter than Nick, the other brothers and their father. While Gus’s hair was thin and blond, his brothers had the thick, wavy hair of the Zannoses. Lovely Christina was tall for a woman; not taller than Gus but gave the illusion she was when she wore high heeled shoes. She was slender and had an athletic build. Gus’s friends teased him all the time. “How’d you get Chris?” they asked. He wondered the same thing.

Gus went to college in Philadelphia while Christina stayed in Detroit, commuting to Marygrove. She lived with her grandparents and widowed mother and they were reluctant to let her go too far from home. Going to an all girl’s college was good for her. There were no distractions and she liked the nuns. She spent her free time in the kitchen with her grandmother learning to make Greek pastries and bake the breads she grew up eating.

One month after they graduated college, Gus and Christina got married. Nick and Eleni had a party in the apartment above the store with all the Canadian family and Gus’s seven older brothers and sisters and their families. Christina was an only child; her father died when she was a baby, so Gus’s brother Nick who was the closest friend to the couple walked her down the aisle. While Gus talked shop with his father and mother, Nick took pity on the new bride and danced with her. She later said that her palms were sweating for the wrong reasons. Nick was so handsome!

She would do all the baking for the store. Christina’s specialties were wedding cookies dredged in powdered sugar and a round New Year’s loaf of bread with a dime baked into the center. On New Year’s Day, whoever got the piece of bread with the coin received good luck for the rest of the year. Christina imagined a special paper sleeve for the bread printed with the words ‘Caution! Contains Coins! Choking Hazard!’ but Eleni was afraid it would scare customers. They had an undeclared battle going on, the mother-in-law trying to keep her daughter-in-law from taking control. It had the right effect; eventually Christina stopped trying to initiate any change, losing interest after a short time and looking for something else to be enthusiastic about. The newlyweds settled into the apartment above the store, their predictable life stretching out as the lives of their ancestors had.

Chapter 16

Albert Wong returned to Dearborn to interview Gretchen Parker’s coworkers at the bank after he saw her parents and her best friend Leah. Whenever he came into Dearborn, he was always surprised at how different it was from the city. It was so green. Beautifully landscaped lawns in modest neighborhoods spoke of pride of ownership. In the more affluent areas historic homes were mixed in. He drove past a lovely cemetery, an oasis of park-like forested hills. The ancient trees stood as sentries guarding the mausoleums. Albert saw an elderly couple walking a path to gravestones. It was serene and peaceful. No traffic noise had penetrated the area. An eighteen-hole golf course dominated the center of the neighborhood. Gretchen Parker was raised here. The variety of styles of homes, from hundred-year-old brick colonials to modest timber Cape Cods were unified by their lovely gardens and verdant expansive lawns. The Parkers lived in one of the smaller Capes.

In the driveway Albert saw a bright candy-apple red Chevy Malibu; Gretchen’s car.
What the hell was her car doing there?
He got on his phone right away to Dearborn Police discovering that they had completed a cursory exam of the car, and found nothing of importance. Albert avoided a screaming match with them; he called his commanding officer instead who would be the one to do it. After a text to Jill about the car, Albert walked up to the door of Jacob and Marianne Parker’s perfect, white house surrounded by a picket fence that was covered with late summer blooming roses. The juxtaposition of the tortured body of Gretchen Parker over this idyllic scene rang false. There was a lot going on under the surface here; Jill was correct, as usual. He lightly tapped on the glass door, the lace curtain covering it not hiding the silhouette of Jacob Parker watching him. Marianne Parker opened the door.

“Yes?” she asked. Albert could see she was exhausted. Her eyes were swollen almost shut and bright red. “I didn’t think we would see you so soon.”

“Mrs. Parker, could I have a look at Gretchen’s address book? We’d like to talk to her friends. Also, did she keep a diary, or a journal?” Jacob Parker flinched slightly, Albert noting it.
He’s hiding something.

“Come in,” Marianne said, stepping aside. “Though I don’t know what good it will do.” She started crying again. Jacob Parker didn’t move. He was watching his wife, hands clenched at his sides. “My husband doesn’t want you to have her address book, do you dear?” She looked in Jacob’s direction. He lowered his eyebrows with a menacing look at his wife, but said nothing. “Is there something in it that can incriminate you dear?” Albert was shocked, but kept following her through a narrow hallway and up a steep flight of stairs. She was taking the detective to her late daughter’s bedroom. The door was closed; Marianne turned the handle and pushed it open. A whoosh of fragrant air blew out at them.