Say Nice Things About Detroit by Scott Lasser Read Free Book Online

there.”
    â€œSo you should feel at home, on account of your mom.”
    â€œYou leave her out of this.”
    â€œSo don’t bring her,” Dirk said. Today he’d received the FBI file on Miles. Miles was his real name. He’d graduated from high school at Liggett School. He’d gotten a 3.5 his first two years in Ann Arbor, which meant he definitely knew where Novi was. With mandatory sentencing, he was going away for a while. It was going to be a pity.
    More silence from Miles. Dirk could feel him calculating.
    â€œYou don’t trust me, don’t show up,” Dirk said. He hung up and smiled at Everett. “Sorry.”
    â€œAnd I got cancer,” Everett said.
    â€¢ • •
    M ILES DIDN’T SHOW. Dirk couldn’t believe it. He’d never lost someone so quickly.
    He called downtown and then headed for Everett’s, figuring he’d have that talk with Marlon now that he had three and a half hours till the stakeout. The talk was the first thing he’d promised Everett the night before. The second was that if Everett didn’t make it, Dirk would check in on Patrice, his wife. “That pension ain’t much, and she would only get half,” Everett said. The third request was Marlon. “He’s gonna need a father. If I ain’t around, that’s got to be you. I don’t know how else to say it.”
    There was obvious symmetry to the request, but this occurred to Dirk only later. At this moment, he simply felt that it was right. He would have done anything for Everett, and welcomed the chance to do it. All the relationships he had with his blood relatives—his biological mother, his half-sisters—were hopelessly complicated, burdened with decisions made before he could reason, some before he was born. What he had with Everett was different.
    â€œWhatever he needs,” Dirk promised. “It comes to that, it will be as if he’s my own.”
    â€¢ • •
    D IRK DROVE EVERETT’S street at a prowl, the black-tinted windows of his car lowered so Marlon could see him if Marlon happened to be on the street. These streets were working-class black, except for the odd Eastern European holdout who hadn’t fled with the rest of the white people twenty-five years ago. The whites here were Ukrainian, Polish, Belorussian, and Dirk found it odd that he even knew this. Come from Africa and you’re black. Come from Europe and they got it separated out by neighborhood.
    Marlon was standing in the front yard when Dirk pulled in. There was another boy with him, and two others materialized by the time Dirk climbed out of the car.
    â€œHey, Marlon,” Dirk said. He was a skinny kid, which he must have gotten from Patrice’s family.
    â€œHey, Uncle Dirk.”
    â€œCan we look inside?” asked one of the kids, peering in the car. The kid was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a white guy in mirrored shades pressing a .44 to a puppy’s head. Under the photo was a tag line that read, “Say Nice Things About Detroit.”
    â€œWhat’s with the shirt?” Dirk asked.
    â€œWhat you mean?”
    â€œI don’t get it.”
    â€œLike, say nice things about Detroit,” the kid said, “or the white dude shoots the dog.”
    Dirk had to admit it was funny. He opened the passenger door and Marlon’s three friends stuck their heads inside the car. “A Blaupunkt,” said one. “Real leather,” said another, running his finger across the seat. Marlon hung back.
    â€œWhat you pay for this?” asked one of the kids.
    â€œIt was free.”
    â€œFree? No way.”
    â€œSure, got it from a drug dealer.”
    They all looked at him. Probably they thought he was a drug dealer.
    â€œSure. You use a car in the commission of a crime, you forfeit the car. This baby now belongs to the U.S. government.”
    â€œWhy you got it?” asked the skinny one.
    â€œI