Detroit Literary Blog

"Death of a Detroit Drug Dealer"

2010-01-02T11:26:00.000-08:00

A Story by Karl Wenclas

I.

THE REALITY of Detective Rolls was opposite to how he appeared to the world.

Modest; lean; soft-spoken; Detective Rolls wore the facade of mild-mannered intellectual; even something of a nerd. His eyeglasses added to the part. In truth he was the most feared investigator in the Detroit Police Department. Rolls was methodically ruthless in building cases and putting a fair portion of the city's vast number of miscreants behind bars.

Prosecutors worshipped him. When defense attorneys saw Rolls take the stand against their clients, hope vanished. Juries were captured by the modest exterior bolstered by his methodical presentation of facts. Never did he raise his voice, or appear impressed with what he said. His demeanor expressed, "Here it is. That's it. These are the facts. Nothing more needs to be said."

In truth, when Detective Rolls closed his notebook-- knowing himself when questioning was over-- the case was over. The guilty verdict to follow was afterthought.

Someone once asked me which city is tougher, Detroit or Philadelphia. I answered that Detroit is 500 times tougher. It isn't, really, not by that much-- but I didn't know how else to express Detroit's unique character of people. Even its liberal artists carry scarred shells: invisible scabs from countless wounds; from the very fact of existence in such a world.

Detective Rolls knew this character well, and so, showed no mercy for anybody. To Caucasions he showed not a sliver of either resentment or deference. When one claimed Rolls hated white people, Rolls paused for a moment of reflection then said, "I hate everyone." To African-Americans who called him "bro," he'd reply, after jotting unknown, frightening words in his notebook, "I'm not your brother."

On his job, to him, all the refuse of humanity were assholes-- that being not an emotional thought but an objective assessment.

This was the uncompromising man suspects faced in the interrogation room. Detective Rolls spent a fair amount of time in this room-- often with individuals who weren't suspects so much as potential sources of information, picked up on Rolls' say-so for some one or other nebulous ongoing investigation. In a city where 80% of all homicides went unsolved, there were at all times plethoras of ongoing investigations to choose from. Detective Rolls knew what any police force was-- just another gang; albeit a gang just a little better organized and approved than other gangs, if not always better resourced. A gang which worked for a clientele of businesses, property owners, and residents; the advocates of "civilization" and "order"-- themselves nebulous concepts in Rolls' Detroit world. Rolls knew how to martial the underfunded resources of his gang; sending underutilized officers in scout cars on patrol-- who'd been hiding someplace from duty-- to pick up, with blaring sirens and flashing lights, one of Rolls' designated suspects.

The officers knew that Rolls' targets needed to be turned upside down once or twice in process of being delivered to him for scrutiny. They were left waiting in the interrogation room a couple hours before Detective Rolls himself, like a busy doctor, ever got to them.

One such person sat in front of him now; a scrawny black street rat. He'd given Rolls a piece of information which the detective did not jot into his notebook.

"I'm not lying," the shaking addict said. "The details are right. Check them out. Two million dollars, cash money. In the apartment."

They were talking about the city's most notorious drug dealer, Mr. Zongo, who lived in a pricey apartment complex downtown.

Rolls knew of Zongo, though the man's path hadn't crossed his-- yet. Zongo was one more of a succession of young thugs of short lifespan who continually cropped up to, seemingly, dominate, for a year or two, illegal trade in the town. By all description, Zongo, lean, six feet tall, was a younger, cooler, more handsome, if no less intelligent, version of himself. Just the sort of upstart who needed to be broken. Rolls was pre-eminently loyal to the city's official gang, as well as to himself.

What the man had told him intrigued him. Rolls stared into his notebook for ten minutes, though he was actually staring inside himself.

"Bullshit," he at last said in an even, fearsome voice. "Get the hell out of here."

In the next few weeks Detective Rolls did some patrolling on his own, accidentally but invariably taking him through the parking lot of Zongo's apartment complex, or on the street in front of it, or on the side of it. Rolls smoking a cigarette outside the entrance, like a visitor awaiting a resident; or a resident enjoying the outside world. The art deco building-- orange, with black highlights-- was like the city; once modern and elegant, now a melancholy reminder of past success.

His excursions netted him his second piece of important information: Zongo had a girlfriend. he importance wasn't in the fact itself, but that Rolls recognized the trashy blond white girl on Zongo's arm. But from where?

Rolls puzzled over his memory, and scanned his notebooks. Then he remembered. The blonde had once been girlfriend of a white car thief in southwest Detroit named Skarzski. Rolls had busted him a few years prior. A little checking revealed that Skarzski's was out on parole.

The solution to Rolls' puzzle began to present itself. He saw his way inside the fortress.

This was a case which needed to be worked outside official channels. His first step, before moving the Skarzski piece, was to enlist a pair of confederates.

In chess you first control the pawns, using them to control the board. Rolls chose his pawns carefully.

One was a 6'2 250 pound bouncer at a club who'd once killed a patron with his bare hands. He owed Rolls over the matter. The bouncer's name was Clevis.

The other pawn was a short, sociopathic young tough named Leonard who'd been put away for a couple years by Rolls; who feared his reputation, his power, and his inscrutable facade.

"I can move my little finger," Rolls had told him once, "and you'll do another five years hard time. For no reason at all. I'll find a reason. I have a file the size of a phone book of unsolved crimes in this town-- half of which were committed by creeps like you. You can stand in for them as well as anyone. Provoke me with another word and I'll do it."

Leonard knew that everything Rolls told him was true.

"You will do everything I tell you to do," he briefed his pawns, separately. "No hesitations, no fuck-ups, no questions asked. When we're finished you'll have fifty thousand cash in your pocket. Payment for a job."

When the other parts of his plan were lined up, Rolls had Skarzski picked up and placed into the interrogation room. Rolls fiddled at his ancient desk, read a magazine, called his wife-- hearing static of the building's creaky phone system-- stared out the gray-stained window, and dawdled at the coffee maker, giving Skarzski a proper amount of time to consider the ruthlessness of Detective Rolls; the possibility of going back behind bars.

When Rolls entered, Skarzski sat at the edge of the room's heavy wooden table trying to hide his concern and anger. A lightbulb behind a cage in the ceiling exposed him even as it failed to enliven the faded green color of the walls. Rolls sat across from him.

Skarzski had dirty blond hair and the cold blue eyes of a cunning animal whose first necessity was survival. An animal easily enough bluffed. The building around the two men was chief instrument toward that objective. Its columns and masonry facade made it resemble a Greek temple or a reserve bank. The Department's appearance of efficiency and power was largely facade. Yet, at times, the system worked. Rolls had made it work. Skarzski had felt its power.

Rolls dealt with tough people every day. He knew their toughness was cover for their own weakness. Rolls operated on the principle that in a city where everyone was dangerous and everyone fearful, HE was the man to be feared.

"Tell me about Kelly," Rolls said with his usual manner of preparation and threat. "Still hear from her?"

"Now and then," Skarzski said.

"Ever work for Zongo?"

"No way. We, uh, travel in different circles."

"Surprised that Kelly's with him?

"She has a way of landing on her feet, you know," the white man stated.

"Known her long?"

"Since she came to Detroit. Kelly was waitressing at a diner I hung out at, and was crashing with a co-worker in a sooty old building near the cemetary at Woodmere, near the railyard. They got locked out by the landlord one night. That's when Kelly started crashing with me."

"Where is she from?"

Skarzski gave the name of a small town sixty miles from Detroit.

"Parents still there?"

"Her mother is."

"Know the address?"

"Yes."

"Does her mother know you?"

"Yes."

"Does she like you?"

"Yes!"

"Is Kelly sentimental or practical?"

"She's more practical."

"Is that why she left you? A better deal come along?"

"I guess. I suppose."

"Did she love you?"

Skarzski pondered.

Rolls said, "Come on, be real. Why was she with you? Why is she with Zongo now? You were supplying her with her smokes. Marijuana, I'm talking about."

"No, you're right. To be honest she never loved me. I always knew that."

"Women are more practical, more hard-headed and hard-hearted than men. They know what it's about. The bottom line is what it's about. Give them a provider. When the man can no longer provide, he's through."

"You're right," Skarzski said.

"Did you love her?" Rolls asked.

"I was crazy about her."

Rolls allowed himself the trace of a smile.

"I'm going to bring Zongo down," he informed Skarzski. "You're going to help me do it. I'll tell you exactly what to do. At the end of the game you'll have fifty thousand cash in your pocket, no questions asked, nothing ever said. Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

"Do we have a deal?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Once you ran into me, my friend, you never had a choice. I play the cards. You make the best of it."

He gave Skarzski exact instructions about what he needed to do with Kelly, what he should tell her, what he needed to find out. Rolls had him repeat the instructions. Then he handed Skarzski a wad of spending money and a small .380 automatic pistol.

"Unregistered. It'll serve your purpose if you need an added threat with her. Get some rest tonight and think about how to make the approach. You have three-to-four days to meet with her, get the info, and get her on the bus."

He handed Skarzski a cellphone.

"Here's a ghetto phone. Not registered to anyone. The number is on the back. 100 minutes have been put into it. This is how we'll stay in touch. Once the job is done you destroy the phone with a hammer and discard it. I have a phone just like it."

He had Skarzski memorize a number to call, making him repeat it a dozen times.

"You'll keep me posted about everything you do; everything that happens."

"Sure," Skarzski said, showing in his eyes a hint of excitement about what was ahead. This was a good sign. Rolls didn't want his people too beaten-down. They had much to do. A certain amount of initiative was called for.

Would it work? Rolls knew that the young woman had once been a prostitute. Kelly had a prostitute's mindset. She knew how to be serviceable. She was used to having men do her thinking for her. Kelly was the crux of the plan, but a reliable crux. She was a chess piece that was perfectly predictable. As they all were.

"You were her boss once," Rolls told Skarzski. "Be her boss again."

At home that evening, Detective Rolls envisioned how Skarzski's scripted conversation with Kelly would go.

Skarzski to Kelly:
"You're in effect being kidnapped. Give me both keys to the apartment, and the pass card to the building. Now your cellphone. Good. The word has come down. Zongo is through. It's been decided by powerful forces-- forces that could crush you and me like bugs-- and will, if we don't do exactly as we're told. We'll be dead. There are forces in this town more powerful than we could ever know.

"You'll be put on a bus to your mother's. Wait there. In a few days you'll receive an overnight package that will contain thirty thousand dollars. Your retirement fund. You're retiring from Detroit. You're to never come below Eight Mile Road again."

Rolls gave himself high marks for thoroughness. A chess player doesn't move until studying all possibilities. Was everything covered?

Clevis and Leonard had copies of the floor plan of Zongo's apartment. Leonard would be watching Zongo's building beginning tonight, tracking his movements. The rest depended upon Skarzski.

To go against Zongo, Rolls had recruited three of the smarter, more dependable of their violent, criminal kind.

He sat pondering in his subtly-lit study. Rolls lived in a solid home in one of the city's few remaining respectable neighborhoods, on a quiet street of security and substance. He was married to an educated, well-spoken black woman ten years younger than himself. His two well-behaved young sons studied in another room. His well-groomed wife put her arms around him from behind.

"You're thoughtful," she remarked. "Tough day?"

"I deal with some bad motherfuckers on my job," Rolls told her.

Two night later Rolls received a text from Skarzski on his ghetto phone: "It's a go." Rolls texted the other two. Within the hour he'd picked up big Clevis. They drove downtown. They parked in a fast food parking lot across from the bus station. After a time, another text: "She's on the bus."

Rolls and Clevis stepped out and walked across the street. Skarzski waited outside the station. He pointed them to the car he'd stolen, a large Ford Crown Victoria.

"Plenty of backseat room," Rolls noted with approval as they got in. "How'd it go?"

"Good," Skarzski answered.

He handed a plastic card and two keys to Rolls, who passed them to Clevis in the back seat.

"The larger key's for the deadbolt," Skarzski told Clevis. To Rolls: "I ditched her cellphone, per your instructions."

Leonard waited for them near Zongo's building, which looked tall and ominous at night. The Crown Victoria pulled up to him. Leonard put on a look of fake unconcern. The detective rolled down the window.

"It's only me," Rolls said. "Get in."

From the roomy backseat, next to Clevis, Leonard gave his report in a fast-talking voice.

"Zongo came back from the casino little after twelve. Been there five hours. Looked very relaxed. Very. From his apartment window, looked like he watched TV for awhile. Then it went off-- thirty minutes ago."

Leonard pointed toward the structure's seventh floor. The orange-brick building before them resembled a castle.

Skarzski added: "According to his girl, when she's there they sleep in the back bedroom, but when she's not he watches TV and falls asleep on the large sofa, five yards inside the door to the left. The money should be in the back closet, as said, inside a black duffel bag."

They considered the layout inside their heads.

"Must be a big motherfucking television, based on the light it puts out," Leonard said.

"Security?" Rolls asked him.

"Like you said, during the week the night man at the sign-in desk goes into the back room about two. He's there now."

"What do you think he's doing?" Rolls asked. "Watching the monitors? Or sleeping?"

They laughed. Rolls handed the two men in the back seat snub-nosed revolvers with rough tape on the handles. They all wore gloves.

"Unregistered and untraceable," Rolls said. "Doublecheck, but they're loaded and ready to go. But remember, I want him brought to the car."

They were parked with a good vantage point of the entrance. Leonard said, "Okay." Clevis grunted, putting the revolver and a roll of strong packing tape he'd brought into his jacket pocket. The two stepped from the car, then walked across the driveway and casually within the building as if they lived there. Meanwhile Skarzski opened the car's trunk with a screwdriver through a hole where the lock should've been. He left the lid slightly ajar.

Rolls sensed Skarzski on edge. Rolls remained calm. It was little more than a chess problem. He expounded on this as they waited inside the Ford.

"I realized the trick was to get Zongo out of his place. Nobody cares about a man like him. Those who know him will be afraid to report him as missing. Who they gonna call? The police? Anyway Zongo doesn't announce his moves. He might be in the islands, on vacation for all anyone knows. Without a police report, no one's going to check the building's video tapes. If there was a scene, a body inside the apartment, all that changes."

He studied his watch.

"I told them to get out immediately as soon as they secure Zongo and the bag. The key is to have a plan and everyone has to follow the plan."

As if in confirmation, several minutes later Clevis and Leonard were exiting the building, a third person being escorted between them-- half-walking and half-dragged-- Zongo! Clevis did most of the escorting, one hand on the back of Zongo's neck. Leonard's free hand carried the duffel bag.

Rolls tossed the bag in the trunk as Zongo was put in the back seat. In the car's dome light Rolls saw tape over Zongo's mouth, his hands taped together in front of him.

"In front?"

"I thought it'd look less suspicious that way, on the lobby's camera or if anyone saw us," Clevis explained.

A flashy blue sportjacket was draped over Zongo's shoulders. Rolls pulled this off and walked to a nearby dumpster, where he deposited it. As he slid back in the front seat he noticed a sick bruise splayed across Zongo's right eye and much of his renowned face. Clevis had been forced to get rough. Rolls didn't look directly in the drug dealer's eyes. He didn't care one speck what was in them. To Rolls the man was already dead. Rolls looked at Skarzski.

"Drive!" he ordered.

The car took a left off Fort, down a side street past warehouses to the river, then a right through a gravelly yard, past a large abandoned truck terminal, over railroad tracks to the edge of the river itself. They drove parallel to the tracks and the river for a distance, near a closed shack. In the distance: a dark rail tower and a vast, no longer used railyard. No man's land.

"This used to be a slipdock," Skarzski explained. "Barges with railcars came across from Canada. I worked as a barman here, opening railcars with a crowbar, before it closed."

The lights of the Renaissance Center and the rest of downtown were to the left of them-- to the east-- as they stepped out. They gulped the necessary air after the hideous stuffiness of the car. The span of the Ambassador Bridge loomed to the right. Clevis finished taping Zongo's ankles together, and put small iron weights in his trouser pockets. Leonard helped him drag the man out of the car.

"Drag him right to the edge," Rolls said. Then, to Leonard, "Shoot him."

Leonard held a revolver but looked at Rolls with anxious eyes and shook his head, making a sound in the negative. Clevis and Skarzski looked away, not wanting the assignment either. Clevis still had one large hand on Zongo, propping him up near the water.

"That's Murder One," Leonard put into words.

Rolls had a distaste for firearms, though he qualified with them at the range for his job. Sometimes they were a necessary evil.

"Give me it," he ordered.

Part of being a leader was exhibiting your fearlessness. Rolls put two shots into Zongo's body at close range. The others jumped. It was the first time he'd shot someone. The noise and smell irritated him.

"Dump him."

Zongo vanished into the river. Rolls threw the revolver after him a minute later. Clevis tossed his as well. The four men watched the rushing water, the hard dark waves, imagining how cold it was. They stood and stared at the hectic river for several minutes as if something could come out of it.

Rolls had Skarzski open the trunk. Rolls opened the duffel bag. Inside: bundles of cash. For some minutes he assessed the amount, counting a few bundles bill by bill. The other three men looked at one another, wondering how much was there, but said not a word. They knew Rolls thought on another level from themselves.

"Twenties, fifties, and hundreds," Rolls said. "The man was well-organized."

He handed each man his share. They jumped in the vehicle and with spinning tires Skarzski turned around the car. Now they wanted to get the hell out of there.

Clevis and Leonard were let out at separate bus stops. Morning buses began running in a couple hours. Skarzski dropped Rolls at his car parked across from the bus terminal.

"Ditch the Crown Victoria at least two miles from here," Rolls said as he departed with the duffel bag.

Later that morning, sunrise not yet appeared, Detective Rolls stood in the front room of his house staring out the large picture window at the world beyond. There hadn't been two million dollars in the bag--more like a third that, but it was enough. In a few hours he'd stow the cash in a bank safety deposit box.

As Rolls watched, the bushes and spruce tree in his front yard moved. Shadows closed. He imagined a person out there; an animal skulking about. Predator in a land of predators-- likely a cat or dog. He closed the heavy drapes, shutting out that nightime world.

II.

"You're shitting me," Skarzski said.

He was on a cell phone call with Leonard five weeks after the robbery. They'd surreptitiously exchanged real cell phone numbers when Rolls wasn't looking-- had done it without a word. Now Leonard had called to tell him Clevis had died in an auto accident.

"Ninety miles an hour into a telephone pole," Leonard said. "His alcohol content three times legal allowable limit. From what I'm told, the car smelling of whiskey. What doesn't add up about this?"

Skarzski was silent.

"Clevis worked in a fucking club! Bouncer and bartender. Those cats don't drink. They don't drive into telephone poles!"

"Maybe--" Skarzski said.

"It warn't an accident. It's Rolls, I tell you. That motherfucker's evil through and through. He's got to eliminate us to cover himself. I saw it coming. It's the only way he's safe. This is how the motherfucker operates. He leaves no loose ends. Detective Rolls! We're fucked. Rolls has the power of the entire system backing him."

"No, he forfeit that power," Skarzski said, "by becoming one of us."

"They found Clevis with his hands inside the steering wheel," Leonard went on in staccato fashion. "Figure that out. His head smashed the steering wheel and through the windshield. Completely dead. No seatbelt. Airbag never went off."

An air of finalty punctuated Leonard's statement, as if he'd presented a case.

"Thanks for the heads up," Skarzski said.

They agreed to lay low and stay in touch.

"Watch yourself!" Leonard said.

Skarzski turned off his phone, as if its very existence would give him up-- or send more unsettling news. He sat in a well-lit kitchen with a tiny window near the ceiling with an old bullet hole through it; part of a tiny studio on the third floor of a rickety old wooden house in southwest Detroit. Sounds: creeping outside. Steps on the narrow stairs.

That night while asleep, Skarzski saw a corpse with two smoking holes in it. This morphed into a dream about Kelly. She stood, beautiful, in a short skirt, on a sunny day. A man waited on the edge of the dream, in shadow, near a tree. Skarzski didn't know if the man was Rolls or Zongo. Kelly stood with strong legs and back turned, a breeze rustling her skirt. She knew Skarzski was there, but walked away from him. He wanted her. "Kelly!" he said.

Skarzski awoke in a cold room, shaking with anxiety and longing.

Over coffee at a diner he reviewed how his encounter with Kelly five weeks before had gone. He had not followed Rolls' instructions to the letter. Some of them were ridiculous. The gun he'd given Skarzski looked like a cap pistol. He'd tossed it. It would scare no one. Kelly would've laughed at it.

The payoff for her was silly as well. What was thirty grand to Zongo's girlfriend? Skarzski hadn't mentioned it. The delivery to her mother's house probably alarmed her. Blood money-- if she suspected Zongo was dead. Did Rolls think Kelly had no scruples at all?

Skarzski didn't tell her Zongo would be killed. He told her flat out the police were involved. He presented it was solely about the money. He let Kelly believe that Zongo would be temporarily arrested. The cash would vanish, never to be seen again. The price of business. Best if she not be there.

"In the back closet?" Skarzski asked her.

"Yeah, on the floor. In a black duffel bag."

They'd sat in the stolen Crown Victoria smoking some good weed Skarzski provided. He handed her a strong antidepressant capsule and had her swallow it. Carefully he took her cell phone away. Then her pass card and keys.

"You're such an asshole," she told him. "I never trusted you."

"I'm looking out for you," Skarzski said. "You'd go into the slammer sooner than Zongo would."

"I guess you're right. Zongo won't do time. He's smarter than your cop friends."

"You don't know these cops," Skarzski said.

"I know them. I've had enough encounters with them to know all about them. Not a one doesn't believe his badge turns him into God."

Skarzski moved toward her, as if to kiss her. Kelly's sneer and cold eyes turned him back.

Skarzski put Leonard's call out of his head until a few days later when the radio mentioned a victim of a drive-by shooting. The name sounded like Leonard's. Thirty minutes later he listened closer. It was Leonard, gunned down walking home from a store. Twelve bullets in him. Later reports speculated it wasn't a drive-by, but made to look like a drive-by. The killing shot happened at close range, through the head. Leonard had been on his knees on the sidewalk, landing then on his wrists, which had been in front of him as if he'd been praying or begging.

Skarzski packed a bag, took the portion of cash hid under his sink, and left his apartment, not looking back. Later that day he rented a room a mile away, paying cash. He looked at the remainder of his survival money. The bulk of his fifty grand was still in a secret place near the riverfront. He needed to get it and leave town.

First he wanted to know what was happening.

Was it Rolls?

He didn't think so. Too messy. His style was to have others do his dirty work.

Kelly?

She had a temper-- he wasn't sure she had that much of one.

Zongo himself?

Skarzski had seen the gunsmoke; had watched Clevis toss Zongo into the black water as if he were a rag doll.

Skarzski took a bus to another part of town. At a working payphone next to a closed gas station, he phoned Kelly's mother. The woman told him Kelly had split a week after arriving. She hadn't been heard from since.

Next, Skarzski phoned Rolls at his office.

"Heard the news, Detective?"

"I heard it. Someone else here is on the case. Where are you at? Give me your phone number. I'll call you back in thirty minutes."

"Bullshit! We'll talk now, and quick. I don't want you tracing where I'm at."

"Oh yeah, maybe I can look at the caller ID this antiquated phone system doesn't have," Rolls said. "Maybe I'll send helicopters to find you. Settle yourself down. I just wanted to be out of the office when we discussed this. But we can talk here. No one's on this floor right now, as a matter of fact. Saturday afternoon."

"Why are you there?"

There was a paused. "I'm spending more time at the office, until I get this matter solved."

"Will you solve it?"
No response to this. "Where's Kelly?" Rolls asked.

"No longer at her mother's. Think she's behind this?"

"Who knows? This might be all, you know, coincidence. Or she might be working with someone. I've looked into Zongo's background. He has two brothers."

"What if it's Zongo?"

"That's impossible."

"But what if it is?"

"It's not Zongo."

"You should've shot him in the head."

"I know. I've thought about that. But it's not him. If it is, we'll figure him out. I know his kind."

"Yeah. But before, you knew where he was. Now he knows where you are. He knows about me. Kelly will sic him on me. We were tracking him, but now he's tracking us."

"Don't panic. If he's alive, I'll find him. But it's not him. Someone wants us to think it's him. You find Kelly. I'll take care of Zongo."

Rolls voice faded in and out. The police phone system was truly bad. His final words to Skarzski sounded like from a far distance. "Zongo. . . ."

If the killer was Rolls himself, Skarzski was safe until Kelly was found. Rolls needed Skarzski to get to Kelly. Unless he'd already got to her-- and eliminated her.

Skarzski lay on a thin mattress in the rented room, smoking weed. As the weather outside darkened, he planned his exit. Rolls and Zongo both had networks and could find him. For now he was like a small animal trapped in a hole, waiting to escape.

Monday Skarzski learned the killer wasn't Rolls, when the radio reported the detective's death. A passing mail carrier had seen through a front window of the Rolls house the shadow of a hanged man against a wall inside, and reported it. Given that Rolls' hands had been bound in front of him, the death was not considered suicide.

"We have a lot of suspects," a police spokesperson said. "He had a lot of enemies."

The killer worked fast-- like the devil himself. Skarzski acted.

Clouds of fog, mist, rain, and blowing snow made the world around the hesitant car a land of chaos. The windshield wipers swept unevenly. "Thunk, thunk." What a shitty poorly maintained vehicle. It deserved to be stolen-- but he who'd stolen it paid the penalty for its condition. As long as it made it to the town. He'd find Kelly. The crazy mystery would be solved.

Fog; snow. "Thunk; thunk." Weak headlights protruding into an unknown void. Instinctively he thought about what a clusterfuck life was; yet like a distorted crazy machine, every part and every act within the madhouse were connected. A tiny point-- Zongo's hands taped in front of him-- might've led to a series of steps which now took Skarzski on this nightmare road. Might've. Had it? No-- it was madness. Zongo drowned. What was indisputable was that some part of the Detective's perfect plan had gone wrong.

Up an exit, down dirt roads, around sharp curves, pulling in front of a misshapen white shack house on the outskirts of town. Kelly's slutty alky mother lived in the house.

Skarzski took with him a two-ffot long screwdriver used in his work. He'd made it himself, some years ago in an industrial shop. The screwdriver had a hardened amber plastic handle around a steel bar with a flat, sharp bevelled edge at the end of it. It was serviceable as an advanced crowbar, great for breaking into things, but also, if necessary, for fucking people up.

From outside, through ugly yellow curtains, he saw Kelly's hard-faced mother watching television, Kelly nowhere around. With the handle of the screwdriver, he tapped on the door.

"Have a seat," the mother said as she let him in. The room smelled of gin. Her eyes noted the object in his hand. She didn't comment on it.

"I'll stand," Skarzski said while she turned down the screaming volume of the television. "I won't be long."

Once, this unfortunate vision of what Kelly would look like in twenty years had hit on him herself. She knew what he could do with the screwdriver-- had no illusions regarding men-- but with hardened cynicism, liked him regardless. She leered at him with a cockeyed grin.

"I told you, she flew the coop," the woman tried.

Skarzski laughed out loud. He weighed the balance of the heavy screwdriver in his grip.

"I see some of her stuff. Kelly leaves nothing behind when she moves. Where is she? Out catting around? Some bar? At Parkies??"

Parkies was a dump Skarzski and Kelly often stopped at when visiting her mother, before the visit and after.

"No," her mother said, but he knew by her pleading expression that she lied to him.

The crooked door wobbled after him.

Parkies had a large neon sign on a pole in its parking lot. The saloon resembled an extended trailer. It was as cheap as you could get. The interior was done in fake-wood paneling that gave out a weak green glow in the artificial bar light. The mismatched tables, chairs, and barstools were from someone's kitchen.

A warped pool table sat unevenly near the back. Two bearded young men in green baseball caps with the logo of an agricultural implement company on them shot amateurish pool. Kelly sat at a table in the center of the room with a dark-haired girlfriend of hers. Many long-necked brown beer bottles covered the small table. Skarzski noted from inside the door that the bartender was a woman. No men in sight but the two at the back. No black man.

Like the thief he was, Skarzski walked like a cat. In a moment he stood over Kelly and the other woman. He'd been there half-a-minute before they noticed.

"Take a leak," he told Kelly's friend, then sat in her already-warmed chair.

He waited until the drunken friend vanished into the bathroom, the thin door clattering shut. Kelly's fucked-up eyes stared at him. She dragged on a cigarette. Kelly wore thick purple eyeshadow and bright orange lipstick. Skarzski had enough emotion about the situation to stare back.

Kelly's eyes burned through him.

"I hear your detective friend is no longer with us," she said.

"He wasn't my friend."

"I feel sorry for his wife and kids, I really do. What a pathetic asshole. He really thought he could go up against Zongo. The detective was insane. He was deluded by his comfortable world. Zongo is way smarter and tougher. He's had to be. A doberman against an arrogant poodle. Even you might stand a better chance."

"A poodle which almost killed the doberman," Skarzski told her. "Have you seen Zongo?"

Kelly dragged on her cigarette.

"Yes."

"Oh shit. He's alive?"

"Your detective friend never stood a chance. Now, hardly do you."

"Will you give me up to him, Kelly? Really? You've told him who I am, haven't you? How much you hate me still. How much hate. . . . Where is he?"

"He's coming for you."

"Shit. Where is he?"

"I'm not telling you."

Skarzski stood, knocked over her beer so that it spilled over the table and onto her, as she calmly smoked and glared at him. He cuffed her on the side of the head, hard enough so that she winced, then he was outside and quickly in the car; quickly driving out of the lot.

Quickly; quickly. What headlights behind him were Zongo's? What car waited ahead on the side of the road, with Zongo inside?

On the expressway driving back down to Detroit he felt more comforatble. He coaxed 80 miles an hour out of the car's speedometer, then more. He'd give Zongo a run. Was he worth Zongo's time?

The rattling car surged ahead. Lights floated in and out of the rearview mirror. Skarzski paid them no attention. He decided he no longer cared. Part of him followed the animal instinct for survival, but he no longer cared. His real life-- any dreams he'd held-- had ended years prior when he went into prison. All that followed was mere existence. Mere breath.

The lights of downtown. Into the lawless city. An exit. The riverfront he knew well. Skarzski parked at the abandoned truck terminal and stepped out, bringing forth the large screwdriver. Normally he'd hear crickets, and the river, but all was muffled by the falling mist. He stood for a minute, keying into the scene, senses alert.

Inside the dark terminal, whose gray ceiling was high, whose lofty windows were broken, with night air rushing through, was a white painted wall made of stone blocks. The wall had cracks through it. One of the dusty blocks could be removed. Skarzski used the large screwdriver to do this. Inside, wrapped in plastic, was his blood money. He gripped the plastic encased envelope and turned around.

"Hold it!"

Skarzski bristled as he felt the cold muzzle of a steel pistol against his head. Perversely, he hoped the voice came from Detective Rolls. Glancing sideways he saw: Zongo!

"Wait," Skarzski said, realizing he'd dropped the large screwdriver.

"The will to live is strong, isn't it?" Zongo laughed. "My girl knows you well. You went right to it. Don't look at me!"

Zongo's eye remained sickly bruised. To Skarzski he was still a corpse. Whatever Zongo was, the voice dropped in tone and moved closer.

"I told the late Mr. Rolls he should've known who he was fucking with before he fucked around with someone. Why didn't you throw that motherfucker into the river after me, and taken the cash for yourselves? I asked the big guy, Clevis, that also, when I forced him to chug a bottle of Crown Royal. Were you afraid of law and order? An outdated concept, my man; inoperable. There's no law and order in this city. Rolls was proof of that. He was a bad cop! A turncoat; a two-face. Worse than us. He's met his proper fate in this hellish down-beaten place where it's every man for himself, where every man is prey-- it's time my sad stupid friend for you to meet yours. Look at the river and say a prayer."

Skarzski dropped the packet and moved his hands together. Dreams; mist against his face. . . .

The spray of blood from the bullet exiting Skarzski's head made a bright red pattern against the concrete wall.

"The Zeen Writer"

2009-11-03T10:47:00.000-08:00

A story by Karl Wenclas

Zack was the kind of skinny and eager young writer you meet at zinefests who won't have their own table-- they can't afford the fee-- but will wander the hall with their photocopied zeens anyway trading for what they like, or if no trade is available, giving their zeen away free. Many of the people at the tables are college-grad hipsters selling colorful work with the glare of newness, yet it's from the rootless wanderers you'll find the most strikingly real writing. Albeit very crude writing-- unprocessed; only the raw unfiltered experience of their knockabout lives. It's in their sloppy pages you'll discover a different more basic America.

Zack had never heard of Jack Kerouac. Cometbus was his hero, and the Urban Hermitt, and Logan Mason-- punk vagabonds who travel the country by bus, rail, or hitchhiking to write about it; selling their zeens at music shows or squats or cheap diners in gritty neighborhoods or on the buses themselves.

If you say there are no street poets left, and what's more, no street, I can point you first to the Zacks of America, then to Detroit, which within its city limits is by and large nothing BUT the street.

Twenty year-old Zack came to Detroit in a carload of undergrounders from Pennsylvania. He'd been raised in impoverished coal country. After high school he began expanding his territory, writing on lined pages (the same way I'm writing this story) about his traveled adventures then photocopying the pages. No revisions available or necessary.

He met the zeen people-- two guys and a wild-haired girl-- at a punk coffeeshop in West Philadelphia inhabited by the usual seedy types like local musicians such as Eric Broomfield or Adam Maizelle and by voluble New Age refugees from the Seventies. "Midnight. Kee-rist!" one of the zeen people said. "Ten hour drive. The thing starts in the morning. Can we make it?"

Zack, who'd been pushing his zeen on them, had a few dollars for food and gas and his sleeping bag at his feet so he hitched a ride.

Wow! The glamor of nighttime driving, as long as you're not the one doing the driving. The passing road beneath your rattle-trap vehicle.. Headlights spraying upon painted lines. Etc. "Kee-rist!" the ready-to-nod off driver saying occasionally, every hour or so when encountering a toll, or thinking he'd lost his way. Zack stayed awake in the front seat, absorbing the excitement. The two others slept with arms around each other in the back seat.

In Detroit Zack had two excellent days living in a small dormitory room at a university; space that had been reserved for zeen people. Everything was new for him. Every view, every person, every smile or verbalized "Hi!" A city he'd never seen! The farthest west he'd been! He looked at a map. Next stop: Chicago. When the zinefest ended Zack remained.

This was July. He knew he could sleep anywhere if he liked. With his sleeping bag he trudged through the streets of Detroit south of the university looking for squats, but there were no squats. Detroit maybe was too unsafe for squatters. At least, there weren't any. Zack scanned around. The sun glowed from a magical blue sky like a piercing yellow headlight. Around him, an expanse of bleakness. Vacant land and dusty tottering buildings decaying in the heat. A wasteland of opportunity. Pioneer days. Gray-blue buildings of downtown close by. Painted crazily in front of him with black swath letters on a red brick building:

"DETROIT IS THE RUSTED SHOPPING BASKET OF THE AMERICAN DREAM."

To a zeen writer this was jazz music of the streets. He gaped. Evidence of artistry. Zack absorbed the crumbling devastation, knowing tonight or tomorrow he'd write in his notebook new riffs, never heard musical word-licks about this city, this neighborhood. But first he needed a place to sleep. In his pockets: no money. He'd given it all to the zeen people.

Fortunately he'd filled a bottle with water at the university, and a hardening bagel was in a pocket of the hoodie he carried. But he was thirsty and hungry and the sun was now red and expanded redly across an expanding Detroit sky. The sky is different in Detroit than east. This wasn't west, but already the sky was bigger, the colors deeper, the inhabited land more isolated, more lonely. The sky above, more vast and empty, as empty as the city.

Many vacant buildings stood along the streets. Zack found what had formerly been a hotel-- it had a faded-red grime-colored that said the word. It looked to him more like a large boarded-up Victorian house of the kind back east. The yellow-stone structure was surrounded by a fence inside which rose fierce six-foot high weeds. Zack hopped the fence and studied the building.

A large porch sat half-a-story up. The windows below the porch and on the first floor were boarded. Like a fortress. The windows on higher floors were open. No boards, no glass: empty eye-sockets. Such was the height of the other floors. Boarding them hadn't been thought necessary. Opportunity!

"This Building Is Under Renovation," a sign near the porch said. The listed completion date was three years prior. Zack listened as night fell, but heard nothing. No sign of habitation.

With a huge throw he tossed his sleeping bag through a second story window. Then like Spiderman he scaled the building, using cornices, finding crevices like a mountain climber. He was wiry and had practiced being Spiderman a lot in past days.

He fell onto a dusty gray floor covered by inches of dust. Brown objects scattered out of sight. A larger rat had arrived. he wandered through rooms on the vacant floor and found a shaky stairway which held his weight.

Zack chose for his residence a corner of the highest floor, the farthest point away from possible intruding rats or people. He had a view of the southwest part of the city. He could see beyond downtown buildings the bridge to Canada, and imagined the river flowing beneath. Zack had a sense of scope from this vantage point. He sneezed at the dust, which he cleared out with a rag that'd been left on a railing. Then he laid out the sleeping bag and, exhausted, went to sleep.

His next days were spent exploring. Found painted on another building:

"DETROIT IS THE LAST STOP ON THE BUS RIDE TO OBLIVION."

Bus fare home was forty-nine dollars, a huge sum of money, so he wasn't going anyplace.

Walking through the neighborhood one Sunday, he saw two people cooking in an alley behind a building. The smell drew him. A heavy-set black woman sat next to a black-bearded white man with black eyes. The man looked like a biker. The woman sat behind a small table with a deck of strange cards on them, while the man grilled a steak. Zack gaped at the colorful, unusual-looking cards.

"A tarot reading is ten dollars," the woman announced. When Zack didn't reply, she said, "For you, five dollars."

She spread out several cards before him. The grotesque images jumped at him.

"Hey," he asked. "Who writes the slogans on buildings? Is that you?"

"Slogans?" she asked.

"The Graffiti Artist," the biker without a bike reminded her.

"Oh, him."

The biker described him as a mysterious black man in sunglasses who never spoke to anybody. "I almost caught him at it one time," the biker bragged. "He ran away."

Zack gaped at the cards. "I don't have any money," he apologized.

"For you," the woman said, "a free one-card reading. The tarot will choose a card to represent your Significator-- your current standing in life."

She shuffled the cards, then turned over the topmost one.

"The Fool," she said.

A young man dressed as a jester, moving like a free spirit, was the image presented.

"This means," she said, "open to the world, to opportunity. To life."

"I like it," Zack said.

The biker handed him a piece of steak.

Zack walked downtown, to be under the tall buildings, many of which were boarded and empty. The scattered clubs and restaurants had signs: "Restrooms for Customers Only."

Zack thought cities should have public restrooms and drinking fountains.

Another day Zack traveled in the other direction, to the same university which had held the Zine Fair. On a red morning he saw a blue-and-white striped tent on a stretch of grass; vague amplified words drifting out from it. He stepped inside.

The words were from a poetry reading. Several serious-looking poets stood about a makeshift stage. At the microphone, the most beautiful woman Zack had ever seen stood leaning forward, staring at the less-than-a-dozen person audience. At him, Zack believed.

The attractive young woman had long rich brown hair, tats on her bare white arms, and wore a multi-colored smock over faded jeans. Her brown eyes were focused, captivating. Her intense words bounced around him like heavy rain. Her name was Beth.

"I like your poem," Zack said to Beth when the performance completed.

"Thank you," she said.

Magical music played in his imagination on all sides. Her image and her recognition of him stayed with him as he walked back to his secret spot: the Castle, he'd named it.

On the metal rolldown door of a shuttered factory, another painted slogan:

"DETROIT IS THE FORGOTTEN STEPCHILD OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF GREED."

Zack watched for the Graffiti Artist who never spoke to anybody. Zack believed he'd find wisdom from the man; answers to life. That the man didn't speak was to Zack sign of his wisdom. As it was, with the people Zack encountered, especially older people, when they talked to him Zack had the impression they were in on a secret joke which excluded himself.

He couldn't find the Artist, but became familiar with other characters of the neighborhood. Such as a grumpy old black man in a wheelchair being pulled over broken sidewalks by a happy yellow dog. Sometimes the man and the dog would be stopped outside an empty building with plywood on all sides.

"Crazy people!" the man exclaimed to the dog, who continued smiling. "It's hot now, but wait. Winter coming.. Where do they all go? Every winter, hundreds of them-- thousands of them!-- die in them. Crazy fool people."

"Um, wouldn't that be a public health problem?" Zack asked.

The man glared at him.

"Health? We're talking a frozen city for five months! Health!? They vanish without a trace!"

Or, there was the shady drug dealer up Second who asked Zack every other day if he wanted to buy stones, or blow. There were the high, skinny prostitutes black or white who asked him if he wanted to GET blowed.

For food money Zack hawked remaining copies of his zeen on downtown streets-- the one place in Detroit, Zack figured, where people still had money. One dollar was its affordable price.

"Ah! Villon," an elderly white man with a white goatee said after studying Zack and the zeen, but didn't buy a copy.

Most people passed him by. A hip couple departing a breakfast place bought the issue, the man scanning it critically until his girlfriend told him, "Buy it, Josh."

"Can't beat the price," Zack added.

After an hour on another corner a well-dressed black woman ran up to him and handed him a five.

"You forgot your copy," Zack said, waving it, as she fled.

"Keep it," she called back.

He wondered how he looked. Earlier in the week when he'd been walking down a devastated avenue north of his hideout, a church van had stopped, a window rolled down, and a stout white woman inside handed Zack a free sandwich. Zack liked the idea of Samaritans prowling his neighborhood. He kept lookout for the van when he was hungry.

He took the six dollars he'd made to a dollar store and bought canned tuna fish, a loaf of bread, peanut butter, a 99-cent can of iced tea, and a bag of nacho chips. Back at his place, he stored the bread, peanut butter, and tuna fish for future days. His prized Swiss army knife had a can opener on it and would come in handy.

That evening he stood comfortably at the window and looked out at the city-- the bridge; the sparkled hint of river-- while drinking ice tea and eating nacho chips. That was living.

Mornings he wrote, working on the next issue of his zeen. Carefully with a black pen he lettered norebook pages to be photocopied. He had so much to write about; feelings he needed to convey. Most of all the melancholy city: its interesting people; the view from his window. At night, the throbbing, haunted streets.

On a building:

"DETROIT IS THE ROTTING CORPSE VICTIM OF A SERIAL KILLER."

One evening Zack chatted with the owner of a small parking lot who was parking cars for the night's baseball game. The Arabic-looking man let Zack help him guide in cars, while keeping a running commentary about the state of the city.

"These people abandoned the city years ago," the man said while waving in a huge SUV. "They come back for the games."

The man's name was Mike. His lot was some distance from Comerica Park. They saw the stadium's lights glowing above buildings in the evening sky.

"Follow the lights," Mike told the suburbanite patrons.

Some of the people were families, some couples, and some were beer-drinking guys. All of them were white.

"Go Tigers!" Mike said to a carload of drinkers.

"Hell yeah!" the driver replied.

The tiny lot soon filled. As the game played, Zack and Mike listened for sounds of its activity. At times, a distant cheer. "Tigers must've scored," Mike said.

"This city could be great," Mike continued his lecture. "I mean, really. It used to be. But look at the vacant land everyplace. The waste. You can't have a hollowed-out core of a city. It kills everything. The whole area. That's what these people don't realize. I mean, they're hurting. I'm hurting. Everybody's hurting. But ya gotta have people living down here, I mean right here, if the city's gonna survive."

When early departees came back to their vehicles, the two men knew the game was in its late stages.

"Tigers ahead, eight to five," a man with a young son said. The boy held a Tigers pennant. "Go get 'em Tigers!" he told Zack.

Then, a rush of people, until only two vehicles remained, one of them Mike's.

"They're at a bar," Mike said about the other. "Sometimes I don't wait, but I want people who park here to feel safe. We need people spending money."

The drinkers eventually returned. Engine roared, with exhaust. The vehicle hurried away. Mike peeled off a ten for Zack from a roll of bills in his pocket, jumped in his own car and drove away.

Zack spent the entire ten-spot at one of the all-hours Coney Island restaurants downtown, for chili-covered hot dogs, hot burning fries, and a huge soda. Afterward he felt satiated. Ten dollars gone. He needed to better budget his funds.

Mike let Zack work the remaining home games. Zack flagged in cars while listening to Mike complain about property taxes or crime or the city. When the lot was full, Mike would hand Zack a ten and split. Zack could've left also, but he had nothing better to do-- he couldn't write in his journal once night fell. Anyway, he wanted the people who came into town to feel safe.

One night when the Tigers were out of town, Zack wandered near the university. A woman with brown hair stapled colorful flyers on a wooden pole with a staple gun. The poet! Beth.

"Hi," Zack exclaimed. "Whatcha doing?"

"We're holding a poetry reading," she told him while continuing to staple.

She motioned toward a word on the violet psychedelic flyer, "POETRY!" The paper gave the name of a local saloon. The date of the event was a month away.

"Will you be there?" Zack asked.

"Of course," she replied, pointing out her name among the list of celebrities.

She looked at him with her large, powerful eyes. "Will you attend?"

"Sure, Zack said.

"Good," she remarked before parading imperially away with her flowing hair, her flyers, and her staple gun, a passing vision of beauty.

For Zack it'd been a memorable conversation. He wrote down the date of the upcoming reading.

He tracked the days. Zack wanted the poetry reading to arrive quickly, but he also noticed the summer drifting away. In the back of his mind this was scary.

"What comes after baseball?" he asked Mike one Sunday during a day game.

They were enjoying the fading sunshine.

"Football at Ford Field, the big stadium behind Comerica Park. You got eight home football games plus two exhibition games. That's it. Ten total. The Detroit Lions never make the playoffs."

Back at his place Zack stocked up on tuna fish. The stack of cans in a corner of the spacy room looked inadequate.

The temperature began dropping., night arriving earlier. The day sky changed in quality, becoming bluer, cloudier, darker; then like a black-and-white movie, almost always gray. Zack's notebook word-paintings became correspondingly scantier.

The remaining baseball games took on a haunted air. Fans were less exuberant, more melancholy. Less pennant waving. The season almost over.

The man in the wheelchair and the happy dog saw him climbing into the Castle one evening.

"You can't stay there!" he called as Zack was halfway up the building. "You ridi-ka-lus fool. Don't ya know every winter wipes out whole pop-a-lations of homeless people? Where do you think the city went to? You see anybody anywhere around here anyplace? Detroit's been de-pop-a-lated. Nobody's left!"

With dog in tow he wheeled off, shaking his head.

Seen on a wall two days before the poetry reading, in blue paint:

"DETROIT IS THE CULMINATION OF ALL POSSIBLE ANGST."

Zack didn't understand the meaning of "angst."

The night before the reading was cooler than usual. In his sleeping bag, Zack had unsettling dreams.

The awaited day arrived. Zack wasked up at the university and made it at the announced spot on time for the reading: a nondescript glass front brick building. A line of cars were parked outside. The sky overhead was slate-gray, on the verge of vanishing.

Zack took a seat at the bar and ordered a large Coke from an arty-punk barmaid. It was early. There was yet a sparse audience-- yet so used had Zack become to vacant streets and his vacant Castle, his presence in society came to him as an unfamiliar surprise. The saloon's interior was done in white with stark tubular furniture, modern style. Colorful paintings tastefully positioned added splashes of color. At the front, under spotlights, awaited the stage.

The writers had arrived. A tight group. Hugs to one another. Beth was among them, wearing a tie-dyed smock. She looked psychedelic.

Zack wanted to show them his zeen. They appeared tense; busy.

"Testing, one, two, three, four," a fashionably geeky hipster in eyeglasses said into a microphone. "Testing. testing."

An older woman of substance looked on from a front table. After assuring himself the microphone worked, the hipster walked to the bar to retrieve a specialty drink for the impressive woman. A tall glass with a mountain of whipped cream.

"Hi," Zack said to him. "I'm Zack."

The floppy-haired young man peered at him through his eyeglasses.

"Here for the literary reading?" he asked.

"Yeah!" Zack admitted. "Is there an open mic?"

"No, the man said. He walked back toward the stage with the woman's drink.

"Testing, one, two, three. Testing. Testing."

Colorful abstract paintings looked on from behind the stage. Several more people arrived. A signal: It was okay to begin.

"Without further adieu. . . ."

The young hipster introduced the impressive-looking woman, a lady professor of some standing at a local university. Her name was Maureen, or Francine. She was tall and lanky in a green dress and arm bracelets and spoke in a scarcely audible voice drowned out by the clanking bracelets. The elegant dress hung on her like on a wide-shouldered clothes hanger. Her words were directed at the close-by occupants of the front two tables.

When she finished speaking and took her seat, the writers gathered about her. This reminded Zack of high school. He was glad Beth hung back. She focused on a sheet of paper in her hands, was next on stage.

Zack studied the figure on the low stage with more intensity. Beth leaned forward at the microphone, under a warm spotlight, her long hair falling strategically over her face.

"I am the World,
I am the Why,
I am the Who,
I am the How,
I am the bathroom light
waking you up
in the middle of night;
Revealing your pathetic worthlessness,
patter play,
dropped lipstick
on the bathroom floor
ground under heel,
smearing your tile,
your life,
your disrupted spirit
with my wonderfulness."

In truth, he'd see zeen readings which were way better, with more energy, but Zack believed in these special people who presented themselves to the world-- at least to the audience-- like gods. They held the magic of writers.

The headliner, named Jon-- a dark-haired instructor at a small college-- held up his chapbook. "River City Industrial Zug Island Press. Only twelve dollars. Copies at the end of the bar. . . ." He pointed.

To Zack's left sat a small stack of thin copies with glossy black covers that had polite white lettering over them. Zack flipped through a copy. Not many words were on the pages.

"Sorry for the plug!" the man said. "Bills to pay. Er . . . " He opened the chapbook and began reading in a monotone, staring self-consciously at the pages.

The piece sounded to Zack like:

"A river,
a boat,
a boat,
a river,
flows . . .
boat on a river,
river boat
flows down the river."

"Yeah!" Beth said. Sustained restrained applause.

"Thank you. Thank you," Jon said. "Remember to purchase your copies. They're signed."

Hugs all around. The reading had ended. Zack walked over to congratulate them, standing near their tight circle. beth stepped back, into him.

"Oh. Hello," she said.

"Hi. I'm here!"

"Great," she told him. "Did you enjoy my performance?"

"Yeah. I thought you were great. Will there be another one?"

"I sure hope so." She looked away.

"Yeah," Zack said to her, or to her sleeve. "I wanted to show you my zeen. It's spelled 'zeen,' here. I spell it 'zeen,' but it's reall spelled 'zine,' z, i, n, e."

Beth glanced at the crude production as he flipped through the tight-written hand-lettered pages.

"Yeah," he explained, "I've been reviewed in Zine World. Maybe you could include me in your next reading."

The woman looked at him as if he'd insulted her.

"We're real writers here," she told him.

The geeky hipster walked up between them. He kissed Becky, then the two, arm around each other's waist, joined the procession of writers who were now leaving. Headlights jumped on outside. A series of cars pulled away, as quickly as if leaving a baseball game. The street turned into abandoned silence.

Zack found the air'd become cooler when he stepped outside. He zipped his hoodie and walked quickly. On the way he discovered a fresh slogan. The Graffiti Artist had procured red paint someplace. Scarlet letters ran down the yellow stone remnant of a broken building:

"DETROIT IS THE OBLITERATION OF EMOTION."

Zack observed the distorted play of downtown buildings in the night sky ahead as he walked back to his empty place.

Coming Attractions

2009-10-22T08:49:00.001-07:00

COMING SOON-- two great new short stories set in Detroit: "The Zeen Writer" and "Death of a Detroit Drug Dealer." Watch this site for release dates.

Lobbying for Detroit

2009-04-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

See my April 16th post, "The New York Problem," at
www.kingwenclas.blogspot.com

New Protest!

2009-03-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

Join the list of petitioners at

www.penpetition.blogspot.com

The goal: to begin to breakdown the literary dominance of the city of New York.

Sister Cities

2009-01-29T06:44:00.000-08:00

Towering new buildings are going up throughout Center City Philadelphia. It's hard to believe that once, Detroit and Philadelphia were comparable in size and prosperity. Philly has no discernible industry. It has problems, but remains one of America's great cities-- and is more beautiful and dynamic than it's ever been. What is it doing right?

COLD!!!

2009-01-15T07:49:00.000-08:00

You can tell in an old apartment building when the temperature hits zero or lower. The building begins to creak, loudly. Pipes through the building begin banging as if they're about to burst. Sometimes they do. As do old pipes in the ground beneath the very streets outside, bursting because of the cold so that water gushes from the concrete ground, freezing across the old city into beautiful white layers of ice.

When it gets very cold, colder still, one can hear outside at night the vast sky itself cracking. In its way, a fantastic, spiritual experience.
*************************************
By the way, isn't Fahrenheit a perfect artistic measurement? 100, the top of the scale, truly feels it-- as does zero on the bottom. When you dip below zero, then you're in dangerous territory.

Celsius, which Canadians use, is what you'd expect from a bureaucratic measuring system-- confusing; unrelated to human beings and to nature itself.

Similarly, bureaucratic literature so everpresent now is unartistic. True art isn't ultrarefined, regulated, and regimented, but discovers and expresses the eternal patterns of nature and God. Art traditionally, historically, was an attempt to express, or commune with, the Great Artist who created the universe. The best art transcendentally does this.

Wake Up!

2009-01-03T09:16:00.000-08:00

I stopped at the coffeeshop at the new Double Tree hotel downtown on Lafayette. Multiple greeters opened doors for me as I entered and exited. The hotel seemed empty. Is there really enough business for two large new restored hotels in Detroit, outside the occasional special event?

Half of downtown Detroit is a ghost town. I'd guess that at least half the businesses which are open are barely hanging on. The trick is to not engage in endless wishful thinking, which this city is very good at, but to take drastic action.

Boldness!-- strong moves which will bring people and attention to Detroit are called for.

0-16

2008-12-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

A jailed mayor; collapsing school system; collapsing industry; and a failed football team. Has any city been hit by so much bad news in one year?

Scoundrels

2008-12-12T11:00:00.000-08:00

Richard Shelby, Mitt Romney, Thomas Friedman, Mike Gallagher, etc. etc etc.

Solidarity

2008-12-08T11:44:00.001-08:00

I was at a public event this Saturday evening, at the heart of the city, when the host mentioned the auto companies, and the large audience broke into strong, spontaneous applause-- myself included.

This is simply because we know this town is being beat-up by the rest of the country right now. This great city, with a tremendous history and legacy of so much value to the nation, is in the biggest crisis it's ever been in-- one not of its making. If the auto companies fold there will be nothing left. But if Detroit survives, it might signal a long-term bottom, from which, with the worst over, it can climb back upward.

Anyone raised here, as I was, has the auto industry in their soul. Cars are in our blood and I've realized since I returned it's not easy to get them out.

Defense?

2008-12-04T11:16:00.000-08:00

There's a huge contradiction in self-described conservatives who claim to be interested in America's defense yet are willing to flush America's industrial base down the tubes. This country's military might has been based on the "Arsenal of Democracy"-- its industrial power.

How to Go on the Offensive

2008-11-25T09:39:00.000-08:00

To get a better shake nationwide, Detroit needs to vastly increase its media noise and leverage. Like Dorothy in Oz with her ruby slippers, Detroit has that power and has always had that power.

Bureaucrats or Pirates?

2008-11-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

AT THE SENATE HEARINGS, Detroit's Big 3 execs should've ripped the Senators hearts out. This would've earned public respect. Instead they said nothing, looking to the world like incompetent stooges. In those hearings, THEY were their brand. Fast? Energetic? Forceful? Dynamic? These adjectives were nowhere to be found.

Detroit's problem is that it's a city not of free-booting entrepreneurs, AS IT ONCE WAS 100 years ago, but of tame ticket-punching office holders. I noticed the defeated attitude when I arrived back here a year ago, and I still smell it in the air. (Not just around Ford Field!) The city needs extreme dynamism, a go-to-war attitude if it's to survive.

Down But Not Out

2008-11-21T10:02:00.001-08:00

Detroit is being kicked by the media and both political parties. Even John Dingell has been overthrown. There remain, however, ways to fight back, as I'll be outlining.

The Phony Liberal

2008-11-21T10:01:00.001-08:00

Jack Lessenberry, defender of unions and workers, has never been so laughable as in trying to explain why he nevers buys a union-made car.

Defending Detroit

2008-11-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

This morning I called in to the Bill Bennett national radio show (www.bennettmornings.com) in order to defend the auto industry against the know-nothing guest host, Kevin Wall. I was on near the end of the second hour of the program. Host Wall had his head handed to him.

More Losses

2008-11-07T09:12:00.001-08:00

THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY

Insanity is Jennifer Granholm, the Rod Marinelli of the nation's governors, being sent to Chicago to advise President-Elect Obama on economic matters.

A Loss

2008-11-07T09:11:00.001-08:00

It's sad to see Beans and Bytes on Woodward Avenue go under. It was the only internet cafe in the city.

Defense or Offense?

2008-11-07T09:09:00.001-08:00

Silicon Valley is now in the race to build the first economically viable electric car, moving hard into Detroit territory. Detroit needs to realize it's competing against other city-states and begin moving hard into their territory.

Dream Cruise

2008-08-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

"I JUST WANT TO CELEBRATE"

Things are heating up downtown Detroit with the coming Jazzfest. Before any comment about that, first a belated story about the recent Woodward Dream Cruise.

I was working on the fourth floor of a downtown building one Thursday afternoon as pre-Dream Cruise activities began on the street below my window. Classic cars were on display, along with some live classic-looking "models" from the Motor City casino. I and a co-worker-- Mr. Jones-- took a fast break to check out the models of both varieties.

The event was being staged by the casino, owned by the all-powerful Ilitch family which also owns the Red Wings and Tigers sports teams as well as the Little Caesar's pizza empire. A stage was set up at which various musical acts-- some from the casino-- began to play.

Back upstairs in the office, I listened to the changing music. At one point the music became louder. A rock band of some kind, playing to about a dozen people. (The organizers of the event must've counted on an audience from the nearby Tigers game at Comerica Park-- but no one of the forty thousand suburban visitors stopped by after-- all presumably anxious to flee Detroit.)

The rock band was pretty good. After a time I realized they were great. They were playing magnificently, with tremendous energy.

The songs sounded familiar to me. Could it be-- ? Naw! No way would they be here at this tacky event playing for a handful of people. But their signature song began-- an awesome extended live version of "Get Ready."

The band was Rare Earth, who'd been known for their live sets as far back as the 1960's. They were legendary as the first and best white act signed by the Motown label. They lived up to their reputation.

When I left for the evening I joined the tiny crowd in front of the stage, as the band kicked into their finale, "I Just Want to Celebrate." Then they were finished and left the stage, as if they'd played to a stadium of people, like dinosaurs come back in a time machine. Timeless sounds and energy. Amazing.

Staggering Ignorance

2008-07-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

THERE ARE many other topics which I should be addressing here, but I have to comment about this week's column in Metro Times by Jack Lessenberry, which shows staggering ignorance about how commodity futures markets operate. (The problem with too many liberals like himself is that they spout off about subjects with which they have no knowledge whatsoever.)

The speculators he knocks, yes, are a way for producers to lessen risk, and therefore make necessary investment to increase supply of a good.

Farmers, for instance, are more likely to expand the amount of acreage devoted to growing corn, if they can sell that future crop far in advance, to ensure proper return; and guard against drought, storms, disease, and so on.

Speculators betting on the future price of corn allow the farmers to do this.

Futures prices move based on the underlying supply-demand fundamentals. Speculators can't go against the real situation without facing ruin.

If anything, their actions usually reflect the actual situation-- how the fundamentals play out. Speculators are individual investors who most often bet AGAINST the producers; against the oil companies, if you will, and are guarantors against price-fixing.

The idea that the "real" price of oil is $65 a barrel, as Lessenberry affirms, is nonsense. No, the real price is the market price-- the spot price; what is actually paid to the suppliers. All speculators have to eventually get in line with the real price, as futures contracts near expiration. They can't fight reality. All they are doing is expressing the actual reality. And so, if four months ago they were betting that $140 barrel oil reflected the actual supply-demand situation, they were absolutely correct. If the price should be $65, the futures price, if anywhere, would show this. Speculators would be pushing the price down.

If speculators are wrong, all the producers need to do is call their bluff-- by selling their oil. As I'm sure they're doing to every extent possible.

What the futures price also allows producers to do is to drill in areas previously unprofitable-- and thereby bring more supply to the table, which is the way (along with decreased demand) to bring down the price of oil.

This is basic stuff.

Yes, the price of oil has exploded far greater than wages, inflation, et.al. The reason for this is the REAL story which Lessenberry misses.

What happened in the interim?

Only a costly war that needs to be paid for. Financing the war has caused the value of the U.S. dollar to plummet. Since foreign oil producers receive payment in U.S. dollars, this means the cost per barrel, for U.S, buyers, has to increase to a corresponding amount. If the dollar drops by half, the price of oil for us doubles. Duh!

This happened once before-- in the 70's when the dollar was greatly devalued by Nixon to pay for the Vietnam War. History has repeated itself, that's all-- with the added factor of increased subsidized demand by countries like China. So the price went up. Markets are self-correcting. As people drive more fuel-efficient cars, and more oil supply is brought on-line, the price will go down. This is certain. Markets are living organisms which have to be allowed to move, to breathe, to fluctuate. Speculators, greasing the machine, allow this. The other option, to allow government or big business to determine the price, free of the markets, will lead only to economic disaster.

This is a very brief explanation of a complex situation. Unfortunately, economics is a complex subject-- and shouldn't be approached from a total lack of knowledge, as in this case.

Many of my ideas could be considered to come "from the Left," but at the same time I loathe most liberals because of their dishonesty and inconsistency. Lessenberry is a good example, and lately he's been blundering to an abnormally high extent-- as in another column where he claimed to be a defender of civil liberties while arguing for the banning of cigarettes and firearms. Uh, liberty is liberty. Either we have Big Brother regulating us or we don't.

(As for the oil companies, what we should be arguing against is the government subsidies they receive, over and above wind, solar, et.al. We should argue AGAINST government intrusion into the marketplace which allows the dominance of big oil, which in fact has an incestuous relationship with government which has nothing whatsoever to do with speculators. We should also be arguing against currency manipulation, the lack of a stable currency-- the ability of the Fed to print money at will, which enables the fighting of foreign wars; is the only way to enable such wars.)

The Missing Ingredient

2008-06-23T07:26:00.000-07:00

I listened to an interesting discussion on a Detroit public affairs radio show this weekend which featured Rick Rogers of the College of Creative Studies. Mr. Rogers made some good points, promoting the idea of a creative corridor in Detroit's old Cass Corridor. Through million-dollar panel studies, Rogers has come to many of the same conclusions I've reached simply by being a bohemian: the need for density of artists in a metro area; artists serving as a magnet for population and investment; and so on.

Missing from his talk was one key ingredient: low rents! Too much low-rent housing stock may have already been allowed to burn down in the Corridor the last twenty years, accidentally or intentionally, for Roger's vision to happen.

History shows that the creation of a bohemia has been the necessary spark for a city; from the Lost Generation in Paris of the 1920's; the Beats in San Francisco in the 50's, and the rock music hippies in the same city in the 60's; and punks in East Village New York in the 80's. In some respects, Fishtown in Philadelphia now. The artists and writers involved in every instance have been of the low-rent underground variety, living the kind of lives which become the basis of legend, of romantic p.r. for a city.

(Recommended about 1920's Paris: the book Geniuses Together by Humphrey Carpenter; the Keith Carradine movie "The Moderns.")

Detroit's Corridor was closer to the ideal fifteen years ago, when it had more population along with the whore houses and dive bars which give a bohemia its artistic character.

Cutting-edge writers, artists, and musicians have always been found living ON the edge.

If anything, Rogers seems opposed to bohemia. In his talk he disdained the idea of "starving artists living in garrets." Yet I'd wager that's how many of Detroit's artists live now, from Maurice Greenia to Yul Tolbert.

Rick Rogers has a tops-down, bureaucratic approach which is badly flawed. He wants his artists to be yuppies living in sterile, newly-built condos while working draining 9-to-5 jobs for the auto companies. To realize this, the Detroit boozhie class has bulldozed, in the form of old apartment buildings and houses, the very history and character that would make the Cass Corridor a magnet and inspiration for artists-- and has simultaneously driven out the lower class population whose stories and lives necessarily broaden the outlook, and deepen the sympathy, of the artistic temperament. It's madness!

Great art doesn't come from robots. It's spawned by merging oneself with the opposite of an antiseptic environment. This is what Detroit truly offers! The artist needs around him the ferment of life; life in all its variety; a city presenting the full scope of humanity. It won't happen by transplanting suburbia into the inner city.

You want art, Mr. Rogers? Then leave your high-status position. Become a Sherwood Anderson or a Paul Cezanne. Move into a Corridor garrett and bring your friends. Make the creation of art your full-time obsession. BE a model for those you want to follow you.

(And get that book and that movie!)

Hockeytown

2008-06-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

Exciting happenings in Detroit last week. A week ago Monday I was at Hockeytown itself late after work with a co-worker watching the game. That night downtown was full of expectation that wasn't realized until Wednesday. Friday I saw the parade, among hundreds of thousands of people, white trash mostly, with a smattering of blacks and boozhies. On the edges of the crowd, vendors and scam artists proliferated. I thought of the crowd, "These are the people we have to get reading somehow, some way." Maybe with hockey zeens! The zeen scene has made inroads into the mass public in tiny ways, but needs more ideas.

These are the people who've never been into a Barnes and Noble in their life. Find a way to connect with them and the growth curve would be as explosive as dynamite.

Saving Detroit II

2008-05-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

DETROIT AREA leaders seem frozen in the face of impending disaster, unwilling to take bold measures, relying on the same old tried-and-failed incremental steps to rescue them. They count on the survival of the auto companies, or on continued sports team success, or window dressing like the Jazz Festival and Hoedown to see them through. Newsflash: The Hoedown will not save Detroit! All economic and psychological arrows remain pointing down.

What's required is a bold move that will put the area on the offensive; new projects that will of themselves signal and enable a sea change in p.r. climate. Projects, moreover, that will be ridiculously affordable and easy to set up. They will work by utilizing leverage this area has RIGHT NOW which it isn't properly using.
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WHY LISTEN TO ME?
Glance at my Wikipedia entry (see link on this page) and you'll see a portion of the noise I made on the east coast, including entries in "Page Six," America's number one gossip column, which many of Manhattan's highest-paid publicists can't get their clients in. I obtained press with a handful of rag-tag writers and a nonexistent budget-- through publicity skill alone.

Publicity: Detroit needs exciting writers and most of all it needs exciting publicity; a new face and new ways to market itself to the world.

Are you paying attention yet?

No? Have you given up? Don't believe I can back up my talk?

Stay tuned.