Shot In Detroit Read online

  “Why would anyone destroy—them?” I wasn’t sure what “them” was.

  “You’d be surprised. Naturalists don’t like my pieces—not one little bit. Nor the boat people—I get in their way. I got my fans but not many.”

  Boat people? For a minute, I thought he meant the Vietnamese.

  “Kids come down here, get a kick out of wrecking shit. Remember doing that? Back when you were a nipper.” He laughed mirthlessly. “City said I can keep at it as long as I stay on that one shoreline and keep my work under a certain height and width. Pretty small area though. Limiting.” He gestured with his hands. “I’ve been known to go overboard, but soon a suit or uniform comes along to remind me. I’m a big pain in the ass, but after Guyton—you know. They’re not looking for trouble again.”

  Guyton’s Heidelberg Project had been a blocks-long display of found objects, arranged artfully, which the City had mostly pulled down. Pieces of it were now in museums or in private collections. Other sections returned mysteriously to Heidelberg Street. Arsonists were also on hand. Nobody knew who they were. Any discussion of Detroit brought up Tyree Guyton sooner or later.

  “And they’d better be careful.” Crazy Guy sat down on the bag of sand with a big plunk. “One or two people who come down here regularly said to let ’em know if the City harasses me. Or if anyone does.” He nodded, repeating, “I got my fans.”

  I nodded too, impressed despite myself. Crazy Guy had managed to garner respect despite his demeanor. Maybe his shit was outstanding.

  “You know,” he continued, “when you were heading over from your car and spotted the bag, you didn’t look scared. People usually freak out for a second or two. You looked pretty damned excited, in fact—moved faster after you saw the bag.” He chuckled with delight. “You into dead bodies maybe?”

  Was I? I changed the subject. “How often do you drag that geobag up here?”

  “All the time.” He sighed. “But usually someone drags it back to the water in a week or so. Who knows why? City’s full of crazies. Already told you, right? So I go get the bag again. This one or another. Hard to tell ’em apart.”

  Was he serious?

  He stretched out on the bag now, his feet hanging over one end, his head the other. “I figure after a while, they’ll give up. All the stuff that needs doin’ and they bother with the damn bag.”

  “Well, I take pictures and am always on the lookout for interesting stuff. Maybe the kind of stuff you’re into. Or what I think you’re into.”

  He nodded and I decided on the spot to share my project with him; I needed another ear and maybe he really was an artist. “Right now I’m photographing dead people at a local funeral home.” Suddenly, I knew this to be true: people, not just Rodney. I’d have to figure out a way to get Bill on board though.

  He gave a long, low whistle. “Pretty gruesome. But anything you’d get here would be kinda further out?” He suddenly sat up. “Look, I can call you if something turns up. A body, a body part. What you’re after today.”

  “Have you ever come across one?”

  I tried to make my tone light and jokey, instead of macabre. I wasn’t sure if this discussion was a sensible one if Crazy Guy was clinically bipolar. “Ever seen one—down here?”

  He gave a start. “Nah, but I’ve found pretty cool stuff. Once an ear, nibbled a little, but you could tell what it was. Another time, a dog’s head. A boxer. And last month I found a guy half-dead from a heart attack. Sooner or later.” He shrugged. “Getting closer all the time. Odds are with me.”

  His hand was stroking something in his pocket and I tried not to stare. Maybe it was the ear.

  “I can get my business card from the car if you can wait a sec,” I said, deciding to go with it. It seemed foolish not to take him up on his offer. The objects he mentioned interested me. If he hung out on Belle Isle all the time, a body was bound to turn up. Or something I could photograph. It occurred to me that Bill’s excessive handiwork on the departed actually camouflaged their real nature. Perhaps we were at cross-purposes in this endeavor. What might make a burial special might make a photograph souvenirish.

  “I’ll come with you,” he said, rising. “Headed for my stuff now anyway. Found a pretty cool item I want to install.” He reached into a large pocket in the front of his jacket and pulled out a piece of metal shaped like a rocket. “Hood ornament,” he said. “Don’t know what car model or year. When I go home I’ll check it out on the Internet.”

  Then he did live somewhere.

  He was struggling to keep up with me. “Got one going right now—a sculpture, I mean. This doodad will look awesome on it.” He held the rocket out and flew it around like a child might. “Don’t find stuff this good much. It may have drifted in from the river. Or maybe over from Canada.”

  This good. He had to be kidding? When I didn’t put my hand out for it, he put it back in his pocket.

  “I’ll come over to see your work soon,” I said, trying to pretend enthusiasm.

  But after the hood ornament, I felt a bit deflated, and it was hard to take him seriously. “But right now I have an assignment—out in the ’burbs. A bar mitzvah,” I said, unnecessarily. I didn’t really have any immediate plans but was wondering by then if there actually was a sculpture site. It might only exist in his head. Not too different from my professed project though. Who was kidding who?

  But if there was a chance he’d come up with an interesting find, well, it was worth a risk. We reached my car and I opened the door and took a card from the purse I’d left under the seat, remembering too late it was probably not a good idea to show him where I kept my purse. He could grab it and run. He could push me inside and rape me. Hell, he could grab the keys and steal the car.

  But he didn’t do any of those things, and I knew he wouldn’t. He took the card, nodded, and drifted away, heading for a wooded area, quickly passing through a stand of oaks. Maybe the card would end up as part of his next project. He held it in his hand like a trophy. Shit!

  After about twenty-five yards or so, he turned around. “Hey, Violet,” he said, looking at the card again. “Name’s Derek Olsen, case you need to know.”

  He yelled this information into the wind, and I had trouble hearing him.

  “I’m down here most days. Mom—well, she likes me to get out of the house.”

  Derek had a way about him that set my teeth on edge—despite his friendliness and offers of help. I doubted he was dangerous, but he was strange. Old men with zippers at half-mast were one thing, men in their twenties another.

  As I drove across the bridge a few minutes later, I caught sight of Derek Olsen on the shoreline. He was standing on top of a sculpture, mostly concrete from what I could see. It was pretty big. I wondered the exact limit the city had set. He was probably placing his hood ornament at the pinnacle now. From the distance, he looked like an explorer who’d discovered new land and was planting a flag. I could see similar objects lining the shore; each of them probably festooned with various found objects, much like children’s sand castles at the beach. Wow, the Tyree Guyton debacle had made its mark. I couldn’t believe the City put up with it.

  “Your mind is like a live camera that is constantly taking pictures of every single moment that comes onto you… So be a good photographer!”

  David Acuna

  “The rugby player’s teammates loved the picture,” Bill told me a few days later. “All of ’em asked for copies. Okay I gave it out?”

  I shrugged. “Ask his parents. They paid for it.”

  My original elation had faded. Now I could see what a poor photo it was; the angle bad, the high-gloss paint in the prep room giving it the clinical look of a morgue shot. It was only Bill’s highly skilled work preparing the corpse and the eeriness of the subject matter that saved it from looking like one of those photos tacked on a whiteboard in cop shows. I’d thought about this guy more than I wanted to since taking the picture. Dressing him in that rugby uniform emphasized his youth. It wa
s one of those freak accidents no one could have predicted, and the thought of his parents pulling this photo out of an envelope was tragic.

  It reminded me of my sister, Daisy’s death in its unexpectedness, its assault on someone too young. One minute Daisy was bouncing up the steps. The next, she’d tripped over my errant roller skate and was dead. Thirty years later, I could still hear her sharp scream, and I was standing at the rail, looking down as blood seeped over the worn gold carpet, the wheels on the skate slowly coming to a stop.

  “True,” Bill said, nodding. “But I thought it might be important to you. Who gets copies of your photo, I mean.” He was lying in my bed, examining himself in the mirror above him. “Definitely have to give up that second scotch before dinner unless you can promise me this is a funhouse mirror.”

  “Or at least the bag of chips that goes with it.”

  “Now you’ve pissed me off.” He reached out to grab me. “Have you ever, and I mean ever, seen me eat a bag of chips?”

  I hadn’t actually, but Bill was beefing up. He was propped like a fattened Thanksgiving turkey against the ornate headboard of my bed, a Victorian piece of furniture I’d hauled to Detroit from New York.

  “You do take sex seriously,” a guy once told me after jabbing his elbow on a sharp corner. “Ever discuss that with your shrink?”

  “Or maybe I just buy a nice piece of furniture when I see one,” I shot back at him.

  I grew tired of insights about my sex life being flung at me by men who asked for seriously weird embellishments to theirs. Remain unattached after a certain age and you’re labeled as promiscuous, witchy, or weird.

  The bed was a beauty. The headboard was walnut and four feet high. Carved angels and nymphs chased each other across a forest of dour-looking trees and predatory flowers. The deep penetration of the carvings made for sharp edges. You could only lean against it cushioned by thick pillows. Head-banging sex was risky.

  I tossed Bill the crossword puzzle, stymied by a six-letter word for Pandora’s Box. Risqué words came to mind, but this was the New York Times.

  “Brooks,” he said after a minute. “Louise Brooks played Pandora in the film.” When I looked at him puzzled, he continued, “She was a 1920s-era actress—bangs, straight hair. You know.”

  “How old are you, buster?” I asked, grabbing the crossword. “Your familiarity with women from a hundred years ago is alarming.”

  He tossed me the pencil. “Don’t you ever watch old movies? They show silent ones on Turner Classics. Sunday nights, I think.”

  “I don’t like black-and-white movies much,” I said, a bit embarrassed. “Except perhaps aesthetically. They seem more like an exercise than a story. Like playing scales on the piano.” I paused, thinking. “I like to be swept away.”

  “Who says black-and-white films can’t sweep you away?” He took a sip of his coffee. “Try The Third Man. Or Casablanca. Color would’ve ruined them. Where’re the shadows in color? Rain on city streets? Can’t believe I’m lecturing a photographer on the artistic merit of black-and-white photography, on the use of shadows.”

  “Anyway, I like black and white under this mirror,” I said.

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  It was true that I felt comfortable with black men. Or more comfortable at least. “Well, what about you and white women? Goes both ways.”

  “You’re my first white woman—wait, let me rephrase that before you jump down my throat. You’re the first white woman I’ve had a romantic relationship with. And if my mamma comes to hear about it, you’ll probably be the last.”

  “Racism?”

  “Black people can’t be racists.”

  “Says you.” I filled in another word on the puzzle and changed the subject. “Did his parents like the photos? The rugby player’s?”

  “Haven’t heard a word. Body was delivered to their mortuary last week. They’ll probably pay the bill and move on.” He took the newspaper, looked at it, and scratched his head. “Let’s do the Monday puzzle next time. I need the boost doing Monday’s puzzle gives me.”

  “I never buy a newspaper unless you’re coming.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’d like to try it again, Bill.”

  The words somersaulted out of my mouth. Only through the greatest effort had I been able to delay my request this long—until it didn’t seem like the primary reason for our date. My trip to Belle Isle had decided it.

  It took him a few seconds before he understood I didn’t mean sex or the crossword puzzle. I meant more photographs. Like the one of the rugby player.

  He slowly shook his head.

  “I told you, I use this guy who’s perfectly adequate for my…”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I added. “When I was finished with the photograph of Rodney, I realized it was art I was making—or trying to make—not just a record of a death. I wouldn’t be taking a photograph for the family, Bill. It would be for me—for a project. A study.”

  My voice was shrill, pathetic; I struggled to control it. “I hate the photograph I took of him. I’m embarrassed I couldn’t do better.” I steepled my fingers intently. “I have lots of ideas about how to make the photos more striking. Make the lighting more dramatic. And I’d use my Deardorff. Also I’d like to try for a heightened color palette—so the photos don’t look so waxy.”

  “My subjects are waxy. They’re dead, remember?” Bill paused. “So you’re talking about art photography, aren’t you?” I nodded. “A Deardorff? A camera, I take it?”

  “Deardorffs are especially nice cameras for portraits.” On my feet now, I headed for the closet. “Large format cameras give a subject more dignity and grandeur than most cameras can muster. It allows for depth of field and is really great for perspective. They capture a lot of information.”

  I brought the camera across the room and made him hold it. “Takes a long time to set it up though. It’s not designed for a casual shot. But your clients—they aren’t going any place, are they? At least not right away. That’s what makes them perfect as subjects. They don’t move, not ever. Deardorffs are made for that sort of shot.”

  “Looks like my granddaddy’s old black box. Hide your head under a black curtain?” “Isn’t photography digital now?”

  “Not for this sort of thing—nor for a picture I’d take. I want a more formal shot than the one I took of Rodney. I wish Rodney wasn’t back in England. I’d love to do him over. As it is now, the photo is practically unusable. If I ever have a show—I mean.”

  “You make him sound like a piece of meat. And trust me; you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Rodney now.” Bill grimaced. “A show?” He pretended surprise but then smiled. “Don’t you think I know what you’re talking about?”

  This was the right tactic to take—making Bill understand exactly how serious I was about this project. Surely, he understood dedication to craft.

  Bill got out of the bed, grabbing his shirt from the chair. “You got off on it, huh? Lucky I called you over that night.”

  There it was again; he was trivializing or cheapening my intentions—conflating it with sexual desire, thinking there was an opportunistic element to it.

  My voice was stiff as I put the camera back in its case. “It piqued my professional interest.” I closed the closet door. “Don’t you get satisfaction in making those bodies look good? In finding the right look?”

  “It piqued something all right,” he said, stepping into his navy slacks and ignoring the comparison.

  Was he enjoying hassling me or was it something else? Maybe he wouldn’t acknowledge me as an artist, but I wasn’t about to let his attitude sabotage my work. I bit back the typical snarky response I usually tossed out when cornered—a retort to the effect that he made his living from the dead.

  “Got anyone down there now?” I said instead, trying to keep my voice low and steady. “In the prep room, I mean.”

  He zipped and belted his slacks, ran a comb through his hair. “Now, whe
re’s my wallet?” He turned around, saw it on the dresser, and walked over. “Ninety-year-old woman who died of breast cancer is waiting on me now. Wanna take her picture?”

  He looked at himself in the pocket mirror he carried and clawed his hair back again; it had the slack waviness of a white man’s hair. “Only trouble is, you’ll have to stuff her chest to make her look good. Maybe fill out her cheeks a little. Use a wig. Ready for those trimmings? You saw a healthy individual the other day. Dead, yes, but healthy hours before. Young. Remember that, please. There’s an enormous difference. This gal is Granny Clampett, Vi, not Barry Sanders.”

  I had no idea who Barry Sanders was but figured it was a sports-related reference. It always paid to assume that with men.

  He picked up a small bottle of cologne he kept on my bureau and dabbed a drop behind his ears. “It’s better to have a consistent, manufactured smell,” he’d told me once when I asked why he wore cologne. “In my business, that is,” he’d continued. “Unpleasant odors tend to cling.”

  “I’ll be sticking to younger people.”

  Taking pictures of either the elderly or children was—macabre. The project was sorting itself out as we talked, setting its parameters. “I want attractive dead people.”

  “That’s pretty freaky, Violet.” His face said even more.

  It did sound odd and I started to amend it. “You know, vibrant ones. Or recently vibrant.”

  Hard for my words not to sound callous because they were. But there’s no surprise in the death of the elderly and nothing but horror in the death of a child.

  “And all of a particular sex, I expect.” He made a face. “I’m gonna introduce you to a woman. I think it’d do you good to have a female friend. You two could knit scarves for the boys overseas. Take in a movie. Do some girl-talk.”

  I’d never learned how to make small talk, the friendly banter I saw in coffee shops and in a movie theater before the place went dark. No one gave me the instruction manual.

  He looked at me carefully. “Taking these pictures is pretty important to you, I guess. I’m not sure why—don’t know if you know either.” He was heading for the door. “But I’ll let you know if another—candidate—comes along.” He nodded several times, massaging his chin a bit. “Not like it can hurt them, I guess.”