grudges to unload. I got the number from the file and called it.
Donald Gates answered from beyond the grave: âNo one can come to the phone right now. Please leave a message.â At least I assumed it was him. I cradled the receiver and left for Iroquois Heights.
The dead man smiled down at me from the billboard at the first exit. The city limits sign still read:
IROQUOIS HEIGHTS
HOME OF THE WARRIORS
YOU ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE
I wondered how long it would be before I could cross that border without feeling like I was stepping into the O.K. Corral with a cap pistol in my holster.
The house was painted lime green, which somehow managed to look like the only color that made sense. It was a Wright knockoff, fresh enough for the junipers planted out front to resemble an architectâs drawing, bunches of broccoli easy to maintain. It was an old neighborhood, with some of the prewar saltboxes still standing on small lots among newer, larger houses, all well-kept; the local ordinances and the Homeownersâ Property Association were plenty clear on that subject.
âMister? Are you looking for Mrs. Gates?â
Iâd rung the bell and was about to push the button again when the woman called to me from a driveway across the street. She wore a cloth coat over a housedress, a scarf covering her hair and tied under her chin, and held that dayâs rolled edition of the local paper. She looked about fifty, and like her house, kept well.
I threw away the cigarette Iâd just lit. âDo you know where she is?â
âBelle Isle.â
âWhatâs on Belle Isle this time of year?â
âHomeless. Detroit lets them set up their tents there in the winter. Amelie helps out, bringing them food and blankets and whatever else they need.â
âI heard sheâs the generous type.â
âI keep telling her sheâs not helping them at all. Some of those people are in their twenties, and not handicapped so far as I can tell. Do you know what McDonaldâs pays? Better than my Chester ever made driving a bread truck for Wonder. In a couple of months theyâd save enough to put down a deposit on an apartment. But theyâre not about to go to work until people stop giving them handouts.â
âI guess it helps to stay occupied, after what happened.â
âYou know about that?â The frown sheâd worn for the twentysomethings on the island turned down farther. âIf youâre looking for a reward, you came to the wrong place. Itâs her church putting it up.â
âIâve got other business with Mrs. Gates. Do you know how long sheâll be gone?â
âAll day, probably. When you waste time on a bunch like that, you waste a lot of it.â
She went back inside. I groped for another cigarette. I could have been the murderer, for all she knew; but she only had time to think about the people who wouldnât flip burgers for a utility flat in the city, and she didnât like wasting it.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
A gust caught the Cutlass broadside as I drove over the MacArthur Bridge from Jefferson. It packed a wallop and I had to clamp both hands on the wheel to avoid drifting into the opposite lane, where a delivery van was headed back toward the mainland on the double. Apart from that I had the span all to myself.
Lake St. Clair was gray as shale and looked about the same consistency. A frozen haze lay on the other side, behind which someone had built a scale model of Windsor, Ontario, out of lead. No telling what was going on there after sixteen straight days without sunshine; Canadians are coy about their suicides.
I never seem to visit Belle Isle in nice weather, when the picnic groundâs in use and the culture crowd is drifting in and out of the Dossin Marine Museum with its dioramas of bootlegging boats and artifacts from the Edmund Fitzgerald. Admiral Perryâs guns still guard the place, their muzzles spiked
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