Motor City Burning Read Online Free Page B

kept it pinned to the partition. He would not allow himself to forget what had happened to Helen Hull.
    In the photo she was lying on her back on the hallway floor with shards of glass all around her. But it was her expression and her body language that got to Doyle every time he looked at that picture. Her eyes were wide open, like she had just seen something unimaginably horrible, and she was holding up her hands, as though pleading with someone or trying to ward off a blow. There was a dark stain just above the belt of her creamy dress. That’s where the bullet went in and her life-blood poured out. Whoever pulled the trigger was one hell of a shot.
    The scene was starkly lit. The police photographer had to use a flash because the cops had shot out all the lights as soon as they arrived on the fourth floor. The last thing you noticed was the uniform standing off to the side of the frame holding a flashlight and looking down at Helen Hull with an expression that was hard to read. Was it pity? Or was it scorn that anyone could be stupid enough to stand in a brightly lit picture window while a war was being fought down on the street? The uniform was Charlie Dixon, a classmate of Doyle’s from the police academy. One day, when this was all over, Doyle planned to ask Charlie what was on his mind when that flashbulb went off.
    â€œYou say we missed something, Mr. Hull?” Doyle said now, sipping coffee and trying to sound excited. He wasn’t awake yet.
    â€œSomething that was right under our noses the whole time! It’s a miracle we missed it!”
    His excitement was more contagious than the measles, and Doyle found himself waking up a little. “What is it, Mr. Hull?”
    â€œI can’t explain over the phone, Frankie. You gotta come see it with your own eyes. It’s unbelievable!”
    Doyle woke up a little more. Henry said “unbelievable” only when he had something good. “I’ll drop by soon as I clear up some paperwork, Mr. Hull. Give me, oh, a couple hours.”
    â€œNo rush. I’ll be right here.”
    Doyle thanked him for calling and tore open the manila envelope. It contained a pair of tickets to tomorrow afternoon’s game between the Tigers and the Chicago White Sox. The tickets were tucked inside a note that read You don’t know where these came from. Enjoy the game. Rod . Doyle had planned to spend Sunday weeding his vegetable garden, but those weeds weren’t going anywhere.
    He studied the tickets. They were upper-deck box seats on the first base side, his favorite spot in the park, and the first pitch was at 1:05 P.M. Perfect. He was enough of a traditionalist to believe that baseball was meant to be played in sunshine, not under the hot white glare of those lamps they’d bolted to the stadium’s tarpaper roof. And he knew from careful reading of box scores in the Free Press that the fever of Opening Day had already cooled. After drawing more than 40,000 fans for the opener, the team pulled in only about 10,000 the next day. It was still early, of course, but a lot of people were saying that these Tigers had a legitimate chance to win the pennant and atone for losing it to Boston on the last day of the ’67 season. That would be nice. This city could sure as hell use a little cheering up.
    Doyle was glad his brother hadn’t sent tickets for Opening Day. He hated Opening Day, which he called Fair-Weather-Fan Day, and he avoided it for the same reason he stayed home on New Year’s Eve, which he called Amateur Night. Noise-makers and stupid hats and champagne expensive enough to make you act like an asshole but cheap enough to give you a head like a dirigible the next morning. All that forced gaiety. The only thing Doyle hated worse than being told when to have a good time was being told he wasn’t allowed to have a good time.
    The question now was: Who to invite to the game? He wanted to ask a woman, but the right kind of