Detroit Noir by E J Olsen John C Hocking

Author:E J Olsen, John C Hocking [E J Olsen, John C Hocking]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SNOW ANGEL

BY E.J. OLSEN

Grand Circus Park

In late December, Mrs. Rose Erwell passed away slightly ahead of schedule. She’d been diagnosed with Stage IV bone cancer back in August, and the only thing they could do for her was increase the painkiller dosage in the IV drip every week. Palliative care, it’s called, and it usually means keeping the patient too stoned to care about the terrible pain. The way her doctor told it later, Mrs. Erwell’s condition “had not yet progressed to its terminus,” and she was scheduled for a few more months of suffering before the motor shut down. He backed it up with a bunch of statistics.

In the previous three months, seven terminally ill people in Detroit died before they were supposed to. Being of sound mind and failing body, these seven folks elected not to wait for their respective conditions to reach the ultimate conclusion and ended their lives with very strong narcotics. Not street poison, but clean, prescription-grade pharmaceuticals. End of suffering. They simply floated away on a pink cloud of dope. In all seven cases, the friends and relations of the patient were sympathetic to the decedent’s wishes, but ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing. In all seven cases, the cause of death was a combination of drugs other than what was prescribed for the patient. In all seven, the last visitor these people had was a man who wore a Roman collar; a man who called himself Father David.

We were double-parked at Downtown Coney Island. My partner, Tucker, was outside in the unmarked while I was accepting an illegal bribe from the proprietor in the form of lunch. Gus Manos loved to see cops in his joint. All that blue was good insurance. In the sixty-odd years he’d been open he’d never been robbed. An absolute miracle in Detroit. An ancient, grease-spattered Philco was tuned to WJR, and it told us that the Pistons dropped another game to Cleveland. Gus shook his head and shrugged. I shrugged back, and thanked him for the food. As I reached for the door, my partner’s immense frame blocked out the dull winter daylight.

Tucker was a man of few words. He was tall and wide, like a human vehicle. He wore his hair very short, but it didn’t look paramilitary like so many of the rookies these days. He was quick and light on his feet, and in all the time I’d ridden with him, I never heard him curse or even raise his voice. In fact, he hardly talked at all. It was kind of like working with the Buddha.

He held up his cell. “Priest.”

Tucker drove. We hit I-375 and had the Coneys gone by the time we took the McNichols exit. The address was on Dequindre above Seven Mile. The neighborhood was mostly ranches. Aside from the bars on all the windows and doors, it could have been a suburb anywhere. Not so remarkable if it wasn’t a pocket surrounded by the urban prairie that was reclaiming the city.

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