The Turner House (9 page)

David turned the prepaid on, and the car filled with green light.

“This is more of a precaution for you than me,” he continued. “I had a buddy who did real estate in San Diego, and he had this guy who would help him out with people's credit sometimes. The feds brought the guy up on fraud charges, and my friend had to testify in front of the grand jury. They subpoenaed him for all his emails, phone records, receipts, checks, everything from ten years back. But he'd only ever dealt with the dude in cash and spoke to him on one of these, so they couldn't stick anything.”

As ambivalent as he felt about being a cop, Troy didn't want to end up disgraced. Three years before, he would have said that he hated the police, especially in Detroit, where they could take over an hour to respond to 911 calls yet expected residents to respect them. Now that he was one of “them,” he knew that limited resources
did
play a role in delayed response times, but he'd also seen his colleagues, both black and white, shrug off calls to protect and serve folks in the worst parts of the city in favor of others. Francis Turner had never liked Detroit police. He'd told Troy that the only difference between a southern cop and a northern one was that if the northern one killed you, he would try harder to make it look like an accident.

“Alright,” Troy said. “Just call him.”

He took off his seat belt, reclined his chair. If he were patrolling this area, he'd shine a light into a suspicious car like this, or at least drive by at a crawl to encourage the driver to move on. He considered himself fortunate that his district, the Central District, didn't include much of the waterfront. He'd heard of cops stumbling upon major drug drop-offs from Canada, catching idiots attempting to dump bodies or guns into the river, violent confrontations. The water attracted a higher-skilled breed of lowlife.

David made the call on speaker. The line rang once, then he hung up. Troy began to say something, but David cut him off.

“This is how we do this,” he said. “I let it ring once, then he calls back.”

David pulled out his smartphone and played a game. Solitaire. Out of all of the new interactive, drag-and-drop and bubble-pop games available on a phone like that, David picked solitaire. Above all, Troy Turner valued potential, and he had begun to suspect that David's potential for success was outpacing his own. Maybe it was because David had simple desires. He didn't want everything, like Troy did, so it was easier for him to work slow and steady toward his modest goals. Small business installing cable and Internet; a loft on the newly revitalized RiverWalk; a couple cheap properties throughout the city. It was more than Troy possessed but far less than what he desired.

A few nights before, Troy had sat on his sofa, Jillian's head in his lap, his hand on her angular shoulder, and tried to conjure up a segue into the topic of his illegal short sale. They watched one of the many food and travel shows that Jillian liked. This one featured a white man in a rumpled dress shirt and slacks in what looked to Troy like Bangkok, peering into pots of local fish stew. The show broke for a commercial, a perfect amount of time for Troy to say what he needed to say and get an answer from her with minimal follow-up questions.

He'd pitched his plan matter-of-factly, as if being concise would make it feel less illegal. He never mentioned forging signatures or falsifying deeds. He'd kept his hand on her shoulder, kneaded it a little.

“Basically, cause you know how these banks are, running through your whole family tree trying to get their money, I was thinking we could short-sell to
you.
I'd pay the money.”

Jillian jumped up from where she was lying. Troy's hand flew from her shoulder and smacked him on his own chin.

“What the fuck, Troy?”

“What the fuck what?”

“We just talked about both of us putting more into the savings, and now you're tryna get me caught up in some money scheme with
our
money?”

“It's not some money scheme, Jillian,” Troy had said. “It's my mama's house. Damn.”

He had dabbled in less-than-sure things in the past. Once he'd bought in to a classic pyramid scheme, ostensibly selling poorly crafted cell phone accessories, but the real money was made by getting other people to sign on underneath him. That lasted a month. He'd been seduced at mansion parties out in the suburbs, where self-appointed tech gurus, health and fitness gurus, and experts in the emerging Michigan wine market had convinced him to “buy in” to this or that product or service, then foist it onto his loved ones and coworkers for meager profits. He'd never recouped his seed money from any of these “investments.” But he was done with that sort of thing, had sworn it off after the winery venture didn't pan out.

“I'm really disappointed right now . . . you haven't put any money . . . in the savings account since February . . . I checked.”

Jillian took a deep breath every few words. Around the holidays they'd had a shouting match that caused her to have an asthma attack so bad she'd ended up hospitalized. Afterward she and Troy agreed not to yell anymore. Deep breaths were how Jillian diffused her anger. Avoiding eye contact and feigning indifference were how Troy attempted to control his.

“It's not that much money, compared to what we actually owe. It's the best way to get my mom out that loan—we short-sell it, and the bank just writes off what she owed them as a loss. I'll start putting more in the savings each month, starting on the first.”

“That's what you said in February . . . but it never happened . . . How bout you just let me know . . . if you want out of the savings . . . altogether?”

They'd opened a joint account right after Jillian earned her cosmetology license. At thirty-two she'd quit her job as a flight attendant and begun pursuing a dream to own her own salon. The savings was for a down payment on some sort of split-level property in a decent neighborhood where she could have a salon on the first floor and they could live on the second. They'd met at a job fair at Cobo Center three years before, back when Troy was living with Viola on Yarrow. He'd been out of the service for six months, still smarting from the way his ex-wife, Cara, had left him and taken their daughter to Germany. He and Cara had not been doing well, true. He'd cheated three times, yes. Still, Troy thought he was owed one more chance, one more opportunity to straighten up. He never got it. His sister Netti, always thinking dollars and cents, had harangued him into going to the job fair, reminding him that his pension for twenty years of service wouldn't be enough to live on after paying child support. Jillian was there, a volunteer rep for the airline she worked for at the time. Once she'd sussed out that he was a pensioned vet, not your average deadbeat, she introduced him to the guy at the Detroit Police Department table, talked Troy up to the man as if she'd known both of them for years. There was a big sign at the table saying
INFORMATION ONLY. DEPARTMENT NOT HIRING
, but Troy still received a call for an interview. Back then, Jillian oozed potential from her pores. When they moved in together, Troy made a vow to himself to do better this time, to simply leave before cheating again. He was getting old for the lies required, all of the ducking and dodging. He'd kept that promise so far. But he now wondered if there wasn't a better way for Jillian to harness her potential. She had been doing hair for nearly two years and had yet to secure a decent roster of clients to justify her booth rent.

“Do you know how many weaves I'd have to put in to get that money back?” she had continued. “A lot of fucking weaves, trust me. And it's not like your family needs more reasons to hope we break up. Do you want em to hate me?”

“It's not even that much money. Like two thousand—”

“The money's not the point.” Jillian had turned off the TV and searched Troy's face. “Why do you wanna do this? Why you and me? You act like you're the only one of the thirteen that could buy the place. Rahul could do it, and I'm sure he's got better credit than me.”

Troy couldn't say, and because he offered no convincing reason, Jillian had refused.

Now the prepaid phone tinkled and bleeped on the dashboard. David accepted the call and put it back on speaker. Wheezing, followed by nothing for several seconds. Throat clearing with considerable pushback from what sounded like bronchitis-grade phlegm.

“Dave-O, that you?”

David sat up straighter in his chair, as if the man on the other end of the phone could see him.

“Hey, uh, what's up, man? Yeah, it's me. Dave-O,” he said.

Troy would have made a joke about this nickname, but David had warned him not to speak unless prompted.

“Long, long,
long-ass
time, huh?” The man chuckled, then caught something in the back of his throat. Hacking ensued.

“Yeah, man,” David said. “Working for myself these days. You know how it is.”

“I do, I definitely do. No days off, and if you take one, ain't
nobody
payin you for it!”

More laughing, more hacking.

“So what I need help with is a little thing,” David said. “A minor paperwork thing.”

A muffled thud on the other end of the line, as if the phone had dropped on carpet.

“Hold on right quick, Dave-O,” the man said.

He yelled to someone near him, “I said lemon pepper, nigga! You know the buffalo ones is nasty. Hurry up and go back fore they close.”

“Alright, I'm back,” he said. “So a little thing, huh?”

“Yeah, my boy's worried about his mom's house. She's not doing too well health-wise, and she's behind on her mortgage. He wants to go ahead and get a short sale done in his girlfriend's name before anything happens.”

An impressive, selective truth, Troy observed.

“Smart man,” the voice said. He made a glugging noise and gasped for air. “Thing is, you know with this housing crisis blowing up, banks are looking twice at everybody's papers.”

“Which is why we're seeking your expertise,” David said.

“It ain't free, though. It
sure
ain't free.”

Troy blew out air through his nose and slumped down in his seat.

“Of course,” David said. “Don't worry about that. We'll take care of you. Right now we just need to know what paperwork he has to get in order.”

The man outlined the extensive dossier required to work his fraudulent magic. Viola's social security card, Jillian's employment history, and so on. Troy knew all of Viola's important paperwork stayed in a plastic freezer bag in her top dresser drawer at Cha-Cha's in case of an emergency. He could get those easily. The voice said Cha-Cha's signature was required if he was currently on the deed. Well, that signature would have to be forged. Luckily Cha-Cha had the signature of a teenage girl, all loops and legibility. He'd written Troy enough checks over the years for Troy to imitate it.

“I'ma need all those plus the mother's signature and thumbprint for my notary guy to make it all official,” the man concluded.

“Thumbprint!” Troy yelled. “What for?”

Silence on the other end.

“Dave-O? Everything good over there?”

David sighed.

“Yeah, it's fine,” he said. He put his hand up to silence Troy, who shook his head violently. “We'll get it together, then I'll hit you back. Thanks for this, man. 'Preciate it. Eat some carne asada fries for me out there. I miss them things.”

David hung up without waiting for a response. He switched on the overhead light.

“If you want to do this, you're gonna have to get her thumbprint.”

“Apparently,” Troy said. But how? He couldn't imagine doing it himself. Picking up his mother's gnarled hand, dropping her finger onto a pad of ink, pressing it on paper, and baby-wiping away the evidence. Not even if she was in one of her pain-pill hazes.

“That's gonna be a problem?” David asked. He drummed his fingers on his knees, and his nails looked especially shiny. Troy wondered if he buffed them. Could he remain friends with a man who buffed his nails?

“I mean, I can figure out a way to do it,” Troy said.

“I know it's weird. I'd have to think about it before I did something like that to my own mom.”

“You already own her house though, and damn near half of the east side.”

“Shut up, man. I don't own anything close to that.”

Troy was again reminded of David's success, of how different their lives had turned out. Their first tour was on the USS
Carl Vinson
, a ship that would later gain fame for delivering Osama Bin Laden's body to the bottom of the Arabian Sea, but was just a run-of-the-mill super-carrier in 1990. They'd gone to different high schools and were not as close as they'd been as kids, so each man sailed for three months without knowing the other was on board. One day Troy was eating on the mess deck, trying to remember the last time he'd seen the sky, when he heard someone with an accent like the long-lost twin of his own telling a story about a house full of sisters he once knew.

“I'm tellin you, you could get blue balls just walkin to the corner store. There was six of them, and the oldest one was like forty, but she was
still
bad. I'm talkin Pam Grier bad, you know, just getting older and finer? They all had these thick thighs and small waists.”

The surrounding men had whistled in admiration. Troy stood up from his table and located the speaker. He recognized David's face—skin like ink, high-contrast white teeth, and a Roman nose—but out of context and so far away from the east side, he couldn't recall his name.

“You ever get with any of them?” someone asked.

“Nah, not really, but I'ma try again when I get back. Even if they put on some weight, none of them had the type of bodies to get sloppy, you know? The youngest one was around my age, and I fingered her once in high school, but then she got married and moved away.”