August Snow Read online

  “So am I, Ms. Mayfield,” I said.

  “Thank you for helping Eleanor out with that awful business with her husband,” Mayfield said. “She may have appeared to be a fierce woman, but I know she suffered greatly over it. She appreciated what you did for her. I appreciate it.”

  After a moment of polite conversation, I asked her if she knew where I could find Kip Atchison. She pointed toward the front of the church. Atchison was tall, handsome, fair-haired and, judging by the rapt attention of the people collected around him, commanding and charming. He was Eleanor Paget’s handpicked CEO, maybe a year on the job.

  “I take it Titan Securities Investments Group has a policy against hiring ugly people,” I said, still looking at the chiseled Adonis that was Atchison.

  “Except for me, yes,” Mayfield said with a laugh.

  I scowled at her and said, “Ms. Mayfield, my knees weaken in the presence of your beauty.”

  Mayfield laughed, quickly covering her mouth. “Mr. Snow, church is no place for bullshit.”

  “On the contrary,” I said. “Church is exactly the place for bullshit.”

  I asked her if Vivian Paget, Eleanor Paget’s daughter and only child, was in attendance. Mayfield lowered her head for a moment, then said no. Since Vivian was a delicate type, she had decided against attending. Crowds made her nervous. Crowds of strangers feigning pity, piety, sympathy and love made her especially anxious. No, Vivian would come down from her home in Traverse City another time for a private service.

  Rose Mayfield smiled and said, “I’d better get back to my seat. I just wanted you to know not everybody thinks you’re a pariah.”

  “I appreciate that, Ms. Mayfield,” I said.

  She gave my arm a gentle squeeze, then made her way to the front of the church to Kip Atchison, who welcomed her back into the fold with an arm around her shoulders. She did not look pleased by it.

  I sat in a pew at the back of the church on the aisle. Next to me was an attractive woman—Armenian maybe?—in her forties with short-cropped auburn hair. We traded smiles and she said, “You look like that actor. You know. Oh, what’s his name? Dwayne Rocky?”

  “The Rock?”

  “Yes! The Rock! Only, not as, you know,” she fluttered her hands over her shoulders before saying, “big.”

  “Thanks,” I said with a wan smile while thinking, Not as big? Pound-for-pound I could take that poser anytime, anywhere. “And you look exactly like—you know.”

  “Julia Roberts?” she said, laughing.

  “Exactly!”

  “I get that all the time!” She laughed again, giving my shoulder a light touch. “I mean Julia and I may as well be twins.”

  We laughed.

  She looked nothing like Julia Roberts.

  Easiest place for the devil to play and make hay is in church, my father used to say.

  A third of the way through the pastor’s excruciatingly uninspired sermon, the woman next to me extracted a card from her black sequined clutch and handed it to me.

  Brooke R. Bunnell, Director Account Services, Adecker/McCulkin Public Relations—New York, Chicago, Detroit, São Paulo.

  I took it, smiled at Brooke and whispered, “Make that out to your biggest fan, Ms. Roberts—August Snow.”

  She giggled, wrote, Best Wishes, August Snow! Brooke a.k.a. ‘Julia’, on the card and handed it back to me.

  After another fifteen minutes of the pastor’s droning, a raised and angry voice filtered in from outside the church.

  As the voice grew louder, I was able to recognize it.

  Tomás. My old friend and Eleanor Paget’s former house manager.

  I excused myself and slipped outside the church.

  “Before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, I say I am glad you’re dead, you bitter old hag!” Tomás shouted in Spanish. “Rot in hell, Eleanor Paget!”

  Four young, tuxedoed security guards had formed a tight semi-circle around Tomás and, without putting their hands on him, managed to back him several feet away from the entrance of the church.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, walking quickly to Tomás’s back and placing my hands gently on his shoulders. “I’ll take it from here.”

  The guards gave each other confused looks then backed off.

  Tomás spat on the ground in front of the church and shouted in English, “Burn in hell, you evil fucking bitch!”

  “Come on, Tomás,” I said. “Let’s bring it down a notch, mi amigo.”

  Danbury and Grosse Pointe’s police chief appeared at the door of the church and assessed the situation.

  “I got this,” I said to Danbury.

  “Well, thank God,” Danbury replied. “I was beginning to think you were completely useless.”

  Twelve

  Tomás and I sat in my rental car.

  He’d been drinking. He was breathing like a bull ready to charge and, from the stench, he’d been favoring tequila. He wasn’t out-of-his-skull drunk, but he was lubricated enough to find the courage to call out a dead woman at a high-society memorial service. The tow-haired security boys had no idea how lucky they were that I’d come out and interrupted: Tomás may have been over fifty, lacking in height and slightly overweight, but I’d seen him take on bigger, beefier opponents two and three at a time.

  We sat quietly for a while looking out over the silver-flecked Detroit River. A few small boats were anchored near the freighter channel and their occupants had fishing lines in the water. I’d often wondered what kind of mutated excuse for a fish they were hoping to hook.

  After a while Tomás said, “You arresting me, Octavio?”

  Only a few people called me by my middle name, Octavio—I’d been named after my mother’s favorite poet, Octavio Paz. Mostly family friends, neighbors and a few Mexican-American schoolmates from the old days used that name.

  “I’m not a cop any more, Tomás,” I said. “You know that.”

  He wobbled his head in a nod and said, “Right. Tha’s right. Si.” He burped a smelly tequila burp, then said, “Just like your old man. Full of pity for an old spic.”

  When my father was a beat cop, he caught a notorious drugstore and pharmaceutical warehouse thief. A thief who knew how to circumvent top-end security systems. Only certain items were taken—prescription antibiotics, EpiPens, asthma and diabetes medications, prenatal vitamins. Never money. Never Schedule II controlled substances. The thief was Tomás. He distributed to the sick and dying. People without healthcare. People crushed by this recession or that automotive layoff. His clientele was big. His payment? A meal here and there. The occasional neighbor’s sofa to sleep on. A rosary blessing from an elderly immigrant Mexican woman. A stone-faced bullshit alibi from an old Mexican-American man.

  Instead of arresting Tomás, my father treated him to an early morning breakfast. Soon after, my dad put Tomás in touch with a young Mexicantown activist named Elena Montoya. She was a thorn in the side of everyone from the mayor and city council to Michigan’s governor. Tireless, persuasive and unafraid, she lobbied for neighborhood clinics, educational initiatives, and a police presence in Mexicantown that was protective, not persecutive. My dad figured Tomás and Elena together would be an unstoppable force for Mexicantown.

  He was right.

  Soon after, the two were married.

  Tomás once told me, “Couple weeks go by and your dad asks me what I think about Elena. I says, ‘That’s the kind of woman a man takes a bath for.’ I can still hear him laughing his black Alabama ass off.”

  My father had simultaneously broken his oath as a servant of the law and fulfilled its most important precept: to Serve and Protect. And in doing so he opened the doors to Mexicantown for himself and his family.

  “That wasn’t pity my father felt for you,” I said. “That was love for and belief in you.”

  “He was a good man, your father. I’m sorry.” Tomás hung his head.

  “What’s going on, Tomás?” I said.

  It took him a moment to gather his thou
ghts through the silver fog of tequila. “You know how old I am?”

  I shook my head.

  “Fifty-four,” he finally said. “Fifty-five in December. Worked hard all my life, even when I was a thief. Especially when I was a thief. As a kid? Worked every field in Michigan. Asparagus, potatoes, cherries, apples, cantaloupe and watermelon. Only thing I didn’t pick was the seeds out of white folk’s teeth.” Tears formed in his eyes. He paused, wiped his face, then looked out at the river for a long time before saying, “No love lost between blacks and Mexicans in this city. But your father? He worked every day for our respect. We trusted him. Loved him.” With red, swollen eyes, he held me in his gaze. “When the metal stamping plant in Pontiac went under, I got unemployment. But you can’t eat or raise a family on unemployment. I needed work. Ten years I worked for Eleanor Paget. Maintaining her house. Organizing staff schedules. Helping plan her fucking parties. Listening to her bitch, moan, piss and groan about this, that and the other. All for six-fifty cash a week—and the puta hated parting with that.” Tomás smiled at me and said, “Ten years. Six in the morning until six at night. Sometimes later. And after ten years, you know how much I was making? Six-fifty cash a week. But it’s—”

  Tomás took a deep, ragged breath and we stared out at the sparkling river watching the fishermen bobbing in their aluminum boats.

  “It’s what?” I finally said.

  “Respect,” Tomás said, still staring out at what life there was on the Detroit River. “How can I respect myself—my wife—after what she did?”

  “What did she do, Tomás?”

  Tomás locked me in a hard, unblinking gaze. “Last summer,” he began. “After her Belle Isle aquarium charity gala at the house. I thought I’d sent the last of the staff home. I’m in the kitchen finishing up. I feel somebody press against me from behind. I turn and it’s her—naked. She whispers she wants me to fuck her. Wants to suck my cock. Kisses on me. She can barely stand, she’s so drunk. One of the staff walks in. Sees me. Sees us.” Tomás unlocked his eyes from mine and looked back out at the river. “I’ve seen shit, Octavio. Done shit. But I’ve never once cheated on my wife. Never wanted to. I got the best God ever made even though I might as well have been born to the devil.”

  “Wha’d you do?”

  Tomás offered a crooked smile. “I carried her up to her bed. I’m carrying her and she’s threatening to fire me if I don’t fuck her. Calls me names. Spits at me. Tries to hit me. Scratches me. I throw her in bed and she passes out.” Tomás paused for a moment, then said, “I look at her laying there. Snoring like some drunk casino whore. You know how easy it would have been to push a pillow on her? Snap her neck?”

  “You didn’t cheat on Elena, Tomás.”

  “You know what machismo means, Octavio?” he finally said. I did. My mother had taught me the true meaning of the word when I was a boy. But I said nothing. I figured Tomás just needed to talk. “White folk, they take a word—an important word—somebody else’s word—and they fuck it up. Twist it. Macho. Machismo. For us it means a man who takes care of his family. Stands tall for his family. Loves his wife, his family more than his own life. How’m I supposed to be that man, Octavio?”

  “Machismo isn’t something that comes and goes with the tides, Tomás,” I said. “You’ve either got it or you don’t. You’ve always had it. Always will.”

  I wasn’t quite sure if what I’d said had gotten through to him, but he nodded. Then he said, “When I saw her body—Eleanor Paget—Madre Maria, forgive me—you know the first thing I thought? I thought, ‘Thank God.’ Forgive me Jesus, but that’s what I thought.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I think—someone else was there. Had been there.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to get nobody in trouble,” Tomás said. He furrowed his thick black eyebrows at me and smiled. “Not a cop but still a cop, eh?”

  “Talk to me, Tomás,” I said. “We’ve known each other for a long time. You trusted my dad. You can trust me. Talk to me.”

  Tomás inhaled deeply. “There was the champagne flute on the side table next to where she … died. But there was a watermark on the side table next to the love seat facing her. Still fresh. Damp. I know that house, August. Every inch of it. Furniture, too. There was a watermark—round like the bottom of another glass—on that side table. Only—”

  “Only what, Tomás?”

  “Manuela. The one who brought you coffee when you were at the house. She’s young, Octavio,” Tomás said. “New to America. New to the house. She wanted to make an impression. Worked hard.”

  “What about Manuela?”

  “She cleaned the room before the police arrived,” Tomás said. “She didn’t want Miss Eleanor to be embarrassed. And she didn’t want herself to be embarrassed by the state of the room. So she polished the table. Cleaned up a little bit.” He took in another deep breath. “The police already interviewed her. They interviewed all of us. Now Manuela has no job and she’s scared she’ll be sent back to Mexico.”

  We were silent for a moment. Then Tomás burped again.

  “You sobering up?” I asked.

  “A little,” he said.

  “Good,” I said. “Let’s get a drink.”

  After insisting Tomás drive with me, I moved his F-150 truck to the outer edge of the valet parked cars and left the keys under the driver’s seat. I texted Danbury and asked him to volunteer a patrolman to drive Tomás’s truck back to Mexican Village Restaurant two blocks away from Tomás’s home in Mexicantown.

  A couple minutes after Tomás and I swung onto Jefferson Avenue heading back to the city from Grosse Pointe, I received a text from Danbury. Tomás read it: ok. but you owe me.

  “This Danbury,” Tomás said. “He’s one of the good guys?”

  I nodded. “He’s one of the good guys.”

  A declaration of hope is sometimes as good as a statement of fact.

  Thirteen

  In your quest for good, authentic Mexican food in Detroit’s Mexicantown, you’ve probably driven past Café Consuela’s on Bagley north of 24th a thousand times. And frankly, that’s okay; the people who do know Café Consuela’s—people like me—hope you keep on driving. No mariachi bands at Café Consuela’s, no bright paintings of matadors dodging Godzilla-sized bulls or busty Mexican maidens carrying baskets of corn. No six-page menus offering eight types of margaritas. It wasn’t Cancun cruise-ship food. Café Consuela’s was as good as it gets.

  Like a lot of buildings in this part of town, this little white house was outfitted with year-round Christmas lights entwined around its red wrought iron porch rails. And like a lot of houses in this part of town, Café Consuela’s grew their own peppers, cilantro and tomatoes.

  The often irascible Consuela Marquez-Juarez had done it this way for thirty-five years and when she died seven years ago, at the ripe old age of ninety-two, her granddaughters—Martiza, Louisa, Nina, and one sister-in-law, Dani—continued the fresh-cooked authentic Mexican food tradition with the same commitment and passion.

  They would never be rich.

  They would, however, be welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven, no questions asked so long as they brought St. Peter a plate of their chicken chorizo tortillas with spicy green salsa.

  Café Consuela’s had the dubious distinction of having been raided by the Detroit police. On a false tip perpetrated by a competitor, Café Consuela’s was raided on suspicion of growing marijuana in the basement. What the police found were sixty tomato plants under grow lights being serenaded by scratchy recordings of Mexican folk music.

  The café’s owners didn’t begrudge the cops. On the contrary: they cooked a massive meal and sent it to the 14th as a thank-you for being vigilant in the fight against drugs and the protection of the neighborhood.

  Shortly after the raid, my mother—trying very hard not to laugh—told me that if the police had been a bit more inquisitive and a lot more observant, they would have discovered something was in fact illegal i
n the basement of Café Consuela’s: the tomato plants and even the soil they grew in had been smuggled in from Mexico.

  Nothing like a real Mexican tomato.

  When the oldest of Consuela’s granddaughters, Martiza, saw Tomás and me enter the restaurant, she walked to the four occupants of the restaurant’s lone booth and said, “I’m gonna have to move you.”

  No “I’m sorry” or “Would you mind?”

  I’m gonna have to move you.

  The occupants of the booth—members of that next wave of young, white, messenger bag-wearing gentrifying class—wasted no time in moving their dishes and silverware to a table. They could still tell their equally trendy foodie friends that they’d eaten at Café Consuela’s and, wow, what an awesome—just awesome!—experience.

  Tomás and I took over the booth. Martiza—a big, strong woman of indeterminate age with a thick black braid—bent down, hugged Tomás and told him how sorry she was about his suddenly being out of work. Then she stood up, pushed her fists into her ample waist, scowled down at me and said, “Entonces, ¿cuál es tu excusa?”—What’s your excuse?

  “I have none,” I replied in Spanish.

  “I thought so,” Martiza said before bending, cupping my face in her strong hands and giving me a wet kiss on both cheeks.

  Martiza had always been a good judge of people. And although Café Consuela’s didn’t have a liquor license, her astute judgment resulted in her bringing a bottle of Cabresto Ultra Silver Tequila, lemon slices and a small blue bowl of coarse salt to the table. She accompanied this with warm, homemade corn chips and a green chili salsa that would have had the devil fanning his mouth and saying, “Ooo! Hot! Hot! HOT !”

  Tomás gradually loosened up, but he was reluctant to talk any further about his time with Eleanor Paget. He knew that with me if he didn’t want to talk, he didn’t have to. His reluctance was understandable: For as degrading and nullifying as it is to be pulled over by cops for “driving while black,” it is equally degrading and nullifying to be caught “working while brown.” Even if you’d been an American citizen for twenty, thirty, a hundred years, you were still a “wet.” Somebody who would steal anything and lie about everything. Best not to talk.