Mr. Paradise A Novel Read Free

death investigator—was Val Trabucci—took his pictures and then laid the dismembered guy back together. I said, ‘What you doing that for?’ Val goes, ‘Make sure the parts match.’ Hey shit, huh?”
    F RANK D ELSA, THIRTY-EIGHT , acting lieutenant of Squad Seven, Homicide Section, Detroit Police Department, had been living by himself in this house on the far east side since his wife’s death: now almost a year alone after nine years with Maureen, no children, Maureen herself with the Detroit Police, lieutenant in charge of the Sex Crimes unit. Married nine years when they decided they’d better start afamily if they were going to have one, Maureen, already forty, three years older than Frank, went to see her doctor and was told she had cancer of the uterus. The hardest time for Frank was coming home, walking into the silence of the house.
    Last night he’d made a run with Sergeant Jackie Michaels, forty-three, to the Prentiss Hotel on Cass. “Home to hookers, winos and crackheads,” Jackie said. “My neighborhood, Frank, when I was growing up. I might even know the complainant.” In some ways Jackie reminded him of Maureen. They’d been rookies together working out of the Tenth, the black girl and the white girl close friends, both from the street; nothing surprised either one.
    The complainant at the Prentiss Hotel was Tammi Marie Mello, W/F/49, lying on the stairway landing between the fifth and sixth floors. Apparent cause of death, the evidence tech said, a single gunshot wound to the back. “Yeah, I remember her from when I was a little girl,” Jackie said. “Tammi Mello, been selling that big ass of hers all her life.” They followed a trail of blood up the stairs and along the hall to 607 where a uniform stood by the open door, Jackie Michaels saying to Delsa, “Do you thank God like I do they’re stupid? Or stoned or lazy or generally fucked up?” The occupant of 607, Leroy Marvin Woody, B/M/63, unemployed bus driver, sitting by himself hunched over, a nearly full half-gallon of Five O’Clock gin next to him, ashtray full of cigarette butts, blood on the front of his white T-shirt, seemed in a nod. He didn’t respond to Jackie saying, “What’d you kill that woman for, Uncle? She make you mad? Say somethingmean and you lost your temper? Look at me, Mr. Woody. Tell me what you did with the gun.”
    I N THE MORNING, AFTER the call from Harris at the scene of the triple, Delsa had his coffee and got ready for work.
    The car they gave him to use was a dark blue Chevy Lumina with 115,000 miles on it and a Service Engine Soon light that was always on. He parked on Gratiot, a block from 1300 Beaubien, Detroit Police Headquarters for the past eighty years, the worn-out nine-story building hemmed in by high-rise wings of the Wayne County jail, the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice and, a few blocks south against the sky, the Greektown Casino.
    Most of Homicide was on five.
    Delsa walked past Seven’s squad room to the end of the hall and the office of his boss, Homicide Inspector Wendell Robinson, a cool guy, twenty-eight years with the Detroit Police. Wendell was up on the triple, he’d stopped by the scene on his way in.
    “Frank, it’s over by Tiger Stadium, that famous old ballpark of no use to anybody.” Wendell had hung up his trench coat and now stood by his desk, still wearing his Kangol cap, this one beige. Wendell had been wearing those soft Kangols as long as he’d been here, longer than Samuel L. Jackson had been wearing his backwards. He said, “Right across a parking lot’s a White Castle. You can smell those beautiful sliders with the onions fried on ’em, seven in the morning. How we doing?”

    Delsa wanted to remind Wendell that he needed people. With Seven’s regular lieutenant in Iraq working for army intelligence, two on furlough, one home with her new baby, his executive sergeant, Vinnie, gone to Memphis to question a witness, Squad Seven was down to three: Delsa, Richard