The driver was white. Thirty-five, forty years old. He looked up at me with a mixture of fear, surprise, and feigned innocence. Like why on earth would you be bothering me when I’m sitting here in my car, minding my own business? It’s an expression I saw seven or eight times a week.
“Can I get some ID from you, sir?”
“What’s the problem, Officer? We’re just sitting here.”
“Did I say there’s a problem? I’d just like to see some ID, if that’s all right.”
The passenger was black. Franklin was asking him the same question, and it was obvious the passenger had been down this road before. He just sat there, shaking his head, like he was the most unlucky man in the city.
We got the two men out of the car and put them in handcuffs. The white man started shaking about then and asked me why he was being arrested.
“You’re not under arrest,” I told him. “We’re just doing this for your safety and ours.”
“But you don’t have probable cause, Officer. You’re violating my rights.”
I looked over at Franklin.
“You’re parked half in the weeds in a known drug-trafficking area,” Franklin said to him. “And I’m pretty sure this young man here isn’t giving you directions back to the suburbs.”
I searched the driver and came up empty, but Franklin started pulling little bags with white rocks out of one of the passenger’s pockets. He pulled a large wad of money out of the other.
“That’s not mine,” the man said. “I don’t know where that came from.”
“What, the crack? Or the money?”
“The money’s mine. I don’t even know what that other stuff is.”
“This is amazing,” Franklin said to me over the roof of the car. “Didn’t we just hear about the same thing happening the other day? Somebody going around slipping drugs into young men’s pockets? It’s like an epidemic around here.”
I asked the driver if I could take a quick look through his car. He said yes, and it came up clean. Nothing on his person, nothing in his car. It was turning out to be a very fortuitous day for him.
“So tell me the truth,” I said to him, getting close and looking him in the eye. “Were you just down here trying to buy some crack? Or was there something else going on?”
“Hey, hey,” the passenger said. “Don’t even be saying that now.”
“I hear this is the place for it,” Franklin said, “and you’re sitting in the man’s car. What else are we supposed to think?”
“I don’t go in for that kind of stuff, man. That’s blasphemy.”
“No, you just sell crack,” Franklin said as he started hauling him back to the car. “Right next to a church. That’s not blasphemy at all.”
“I’m sorry, officer,” the driver said to me. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure we both know exactly what you were thinking,” I said, “but I appreciate the honesty. If I let you drive away, am I ever going to see you back down here?”
“No, you’re not. I swear.”
“All right, get the hell out of here.”
He got back in his car and drove off. I rejoined my partner in our car. The young man in the backseat was smart enough not to say anything else. He just sat there looking out the window while we drove him back to the station. He looked like he was eighteen years old, maybe nineteen. He lived in a world I’d probably never understand. But he didn’t have to be hanging around the train station selling drugs to white men from the suburbs. He had a choice. Or at least, that’s what I had to tell myself to keep doing this job.
It was already past lunchtime when we got through processing our young dealer. I tried giving Jeannie a call, like I had promised Franklin, but I just missed her. Then I saw Detective Bateman walking down the hall, looking like he had a few more things to say about the basketball game. So I got the hell out of there and rejoined my partner in the car. My stomach was rumbling.
Franklin had this thing about “Coneys,” which were Detroit’s version of the Coney Island-style hot dog. There were a dozen different places around town that sold them. Now, I knew all about ex-football players and how they’d often put on too much weight once they stopped playing, but I’d long ago given up. Franklin was going to have his three dogs no matter what I said or did. The diet Faygo Redpop on the side just made the whole meal that much more ridiculous.
“Admit it,” he said. “A Coney sounds pretty damned good today. Am I right?”
“Doesn’t mean I’m going to eat one.”
“You don’t understand, Alex. On these short-shift days, you naturally crave comfort food. It would do you great emotional harm not to take care of yourself today.”
So of course we ended up at one of the stands on Woodward. Franklin had three. I had two. Principles be damned when you’re standing there and you haven’t eaten since an early breakfast and you’re smelling those grilled onions. When we were done we headed back out on the beat. Back by the stadium, where the game had started. We ended up talking to a man who was pretending to be a game-day parking attendant. He was out in the street, waving cars into a closed private lot, taking ten dollars from every car. When I questioned him, he stood his ground and lied to my face and kept lying even after we got the official confirmation from the lot owner. Yet another man telling me the sky was green. Something that would never stop amazing me.
We would have run him off with a warning, but there was real money involved and apparently this wasn’t the first time for him, so we ended up driving him back to the station and processing him. That meant more paperwork, another solid hour and a half in the station, hoping Detective Bateman didn’t find me.
Then finally back on the street. That was the afternoon. That’s every afternoon when you’re on the day shift. A whole lot of whatever happens next, and you never really know. I honestly don’t remember one other thing that happened, until it got close to four o’clock and we could see the end of the shift coming. Home for dinner, maybe a few words with my wife, making an effort. A night of sleep and maybe we’d all feel better the next day.
“Swing by Roosevelt Park one more time,” I said to Franklin. “Just for the hell of it.”
We were already halfway down Woodward Avenue again. Over the freeway and into the heart of the city, one more time before we called it a day. He made that same turn down that same road. The train station loomed above us. Here’s where time slows down for me. It stretches out like a long rubber band, and every single event is stretched out with it.
The whole place was quiet and deserted. Even more so than the first time we had come by. Not unusual, I guess. They see the cops taking someone away in a patrol car, that tends to put a damper on their business. For the rest of that afternoon, at least.
“Swing through the lot,” I said.
“This place is dead.”
“Just humor me.”
With a sigh he pulled hard on the wheel and circled the car back toward the lot. There were maybe thirty or forty cars there. Far from the salad days, but at least there was somebody still taking the trains. There was so much room in the lot, the cars were scattered all over the place. I didn’t see anybody in any of the cars. Franklin made one loop through the lot, taking us closer to the tracks.
That’s when I saw him.
A young man, black, jeans and a gray T-shirt. Black baseball cap. He was walking down the tracks, right at us.
I was out of the car before it even came to a complete stop. He saw me. He turned and ran in the opposite direction.
“Hey, hold up!” I yelled at him. “Stop right there.”