by
Suzanne Sunshower
mood struck me. I’d get up a head of steam and off I’d go, down into the belly of the city to look for
her, thinking maybe I’d finally question the right person who could lead me to her; hoping that
would be the day I’d find her. On those days, I felt certain that the next dive bar I walked into would
be the one in which I’d stumble upon Linda hanging onto a barstool, drunk, waiting to be found.
A petite woman, Linda was otherwise nondescript, except for the fact that she was incredibly pretty.
Rather than try to describe her look, I carried a photo of her to show people I questioned on the street.
I know. Nondescript but pretty, how can that be? Think about it. Ever tried to describe a pretty
person without the word pretty idiotically becoming the key descriptive term? As if the person has no
other feature than his or her prettiness, you forget that his charming nose is slightly crooked or that
her perfect smile has one chipped tooth - the real stuff that sets someone apart. It’s my theory that
everyone knows pretty, but no one can describe it. So, I carried her picture.
The Polaroid of Linda was shot at a Halloween party. Linda was posed between two kneeling, beefy,
paramilitary-type guys. Standing very tough-like with an M-16 in her hands, like the two guys, she
was in fatigues and a beret. Funny Linda, just over five feet tall, with a smirk on her face, and a yard-
long gun cradled in her arms. The demeanor she exhibited in the photo was so unlike her - a gun in
mild-mannered Linda’s hands! It was my favorite photo of her; the reason I called her Linda Amin.
Taken just after Idi Amin was deposed, the photo made Linda look like she was ready to take over
where Idi had left off.
The photo was getting old and I hadn’t seen Linda in several years, when I got a lead from a hooker
hanging out by The Grove diner. After asking around the diner countless times, and being sent on
my way by various characters ominously warning me about looking for "people who don’t wanna be
found”, this one hooker finally took pity on me.
“I seen you around lots before,” the thin working-girl said to me, plainly, through no front teeth. She
looked keyed-up and intense (which are street-walker traits), but not nervous or wired (also street-
walker traits). “Still lookin’ for her,” she mused, now sounding impressed. “You must really miss
your friend a lot, hunh?”
She seemed sincere, like she wanted to be helpful. All in all, the woman looked in pretty good shape,
and cognizant enough to maybe provide reliable information. Not crazy. On the meaner streets of
Detroit, looking good was relative. And ‘not crazy’ was hard to find.
“Yeah,” I said. “Everyone tells me to stop looking, but I just want to know she’s alright.” I leaned,
what I hoped seemed like casually, against the grimy outside wall of the diner.
“Well,” the hooker said, more like a snort, “she ain’t alright. If she’s out in this...” she waved an unlit
cigarette in circles, indicating our immediate street environment. “....your friend ain’t alright.” She
lit the cigarette from my lighter.
“What do you know?” I asked, ready to discern if it was real information worthy of an offering of
some sort - a walk to the liquor store to buy her a half pint and smokes, or if she was feeding me
bullshit, in which case I’d pretend to be thankful and buy her a coffee inside The Grove diner.
“Your friend...” she said, real slow and sure, tapping on my photograph with a badly polished fake
nail tip. “...is staying on Charlotte Street, with the dude who runs the House.” She saw the betraying
look of confusion on my face, and clarified, “You know,” she gripped my forearm and leaned into me
so she could whisper, “The Money House.” Adding, “She’s his woman.”
I stared blankly at her, digesting the information. If I understood what she was telling me, the House
of which she spoke was a dope house. But not just any dope house. It was the main house where the
money brought in by Detroit’s west-side dope ring was counted.
“Thanks,” I said. “Do you want me to...” I started to go for my pocket, a gesture meaning I fully
expected to treat her to something, but she covered my hand with hers and stopped me.
“No, no, baby. I don’t want nothin’. I told you where your friend is, so you would leave her be. You
got to let her go.” The frail hooker looked into my eyes, which were now seeing her as dignified.
Pleading, she said, “Don’t go up to the House. Please.”
She let go and walked away from me. I stood there, watching her go down the trash-strewn avenue.
I cocked my head slowly from one side to the other, as if allowing all I had just heard to slosh
sideways inside my skull.
Don’t go? Look for Linda for three years, but not go? I knew of the House, I’d heard word when it
was first taken over by the west-side crew and they’d thrown everyone else out of the building. The
crew had taken up residence in the six-apartment building, much to the terror of a friend of mine who
lived next door, and the friend had become afraid to live in his own home.
The House was but the latest repository for all the money collected from Detroit’s biggest dope ring.
Rumor had it the police were paid-off to ignore the temporary set-up. Eventually the operation would
move again to a new building, to threaten and savagely evict those tenants and terrorize different
neighbors. Mercilessly, the crew moved their violence around. That’s how it worked.
I knew it was conceivable that Linda could be with them.
Ten years before, when I first met her - no. Not then. The Linda who was introduced to me was a
New Age religion freak who liked to go on and on about chakras and being surrounded by The
Light. Hell, she’d even gotten me to take a few books out of the library about the foolishness she was
into. But drugs? No. Linda had not been into them. Prostitution and violence? Then, heavens, no.
When my friend Linda started to change was when a guy she was seeing – a guy who lived next door
to me - talked her into trying cocaine. Small and sprightly, and spacily imbued with all that damned
Light, she’d always seemed to have a kind of natural kick to her personality, so it surprised me
greatly when I saw how much she was enjoying the artificial one of cocaine. I'd mentioned this to her
many times but she always told me to leave her alone, she was trying to loosen up like people always
told her she should. I finally stopped warning her about drugs, when one night she turned to me in a
bar, and said, crankily, “Now who’s being a stuffed shirt?”
For months after that, I watched her drink more than she could handle and snort coke like she had
always taken drugs, until I couldn’t stand to watch it any longer. I abruptly stopped going out with
her and my coke-neighbor.
Some weeks later, I noticed that her car had been in front of my coke-neighbor’s house for several
days without moving. Realizing I’d seen neither hide nor hair of either of them for days, I thought I'd
better see if they were okay. When no one answered my knock upon the slightly open front door, I
let myself in. Hearing voices, I followed the sounds into the bedroom at the top of the stairs. There I
saw Linda and my coke-neighbor sitting in his bed, drawing greedily on a glass stem attached to a
small, potbellied glass pipe. A funny smelling smoke was filling the room from their work on it.
“Want some?” Linda had asked, while the coke-neighbor giggled mischievously beside her.
I had never seen it before, but I guessed the drug they were using to be crack. It had the most
unusually acrid odor I'd ever smelled, like burning plastic.
“You know,” I said, disgusted, “anyone could just walk in here.” Then I stood there stupidly for a
few more seconds, before hastily turning and running down the stairs and out of the house. I couldn’t
fathom what kind of drug would make someone not want to leave the house for days at a time, or not
even care enough to close the front door while using it. I was at a loss.
Afterwards, I would occasionally look out my window at Linda’s car, feeling I had to push my
concerns for her aside. She was a big girl; she could handle herself. Or so I hoped. Then one day, her
car was gone. I heard in the local pub that she and my coke-neighbor had spent so much time up in
his bedroom that Linda lost her job as a paramedic and my neighbor had been evicted. Since I
hadn’t spoken to her since running out of the house that day, and had never confronted her about
finding her there - like that - I felt terribly guilty. I had wrongly let the matter go, lamely thinking I
could do or say nothing to dissuade her from the choices she was making. With silence I had written-
off my friend, possibly never to see her again.
That was why I began looking for Linda.
Over the next three years, I heard tales concerning her welfare and her whereabouts. Not long after
she fell away, someone told me that he’d seen her - her person crawling with lice - and that she was
sleeping with anyone who would give her crack.
A white guy told me he’d seen her, and that she’d "sunk so low, she was giving two Black guys head
for crack.” He didn’t tell me how he happened to be in the same room with them to see this. I
figured he must have been in line for a blow, too.
For a little while, it seemed that only I could not manage to run into Linda. Everyone I knew to be
even mildly associated with the criminal class had seen her; yet I, the only person who cared enough
about her to actually be looking for her, had not.
Finally, I heard that Linda’s mom in the suburbs had thrown her out for stealing from her. She’d
driven Linda back into the inner city, and dumped her on a corner in Detroit’s redlight district.
Where, if she was alive, she might still be staying. That was where I was looking for her, in the
neighborhood around The Grove diner.
Not exactly unfamiliar with the streets, I'd been surprised to meet with so much resistance to my
inquiries and such distrust of my motives, while questioning street dwellers about Linda’s alleged
whereabouts. When I first began looking for her, I naively thought I would find her long before
spending three years at it. I didn't believe that someone could simply disappear, truly become
enshrouded within the anonymity of The Forgotten, so to speak, among the people who lived and
died on the ugliest, most dangerous, streets of a big city. I kept looking for Linda because I wanted to
prove that untrue, almost as much as I wanted to see my friend again.
So, I drove to the Money House.
I parked at the curb, right in front of the building. Even if I hadn’t known it was the Money House
because it was next to a friend’s house, I would have known it from the five men seated about the
front stoop, brazenly holding their guns aloft. When I got out of my car, I was approached by one of
them.
“You can’t park there,” he said angrily. “This is a ‘no parking’ zone.”
“This whole block, is a ‘no parking’ zone,” another called out from the stoop. “Can’t you see the
signs?”
There were no signs, but as if on cue, they all raised their guns and leveled them at me.
“I need you to watch my car,” I said to the one who had approached me. I was scared, but I stood
fast.
“Didn’t you hear?” He shouted at me, moving so close his toes stubbed mine, and I could feel his
breath on my face.
“I hear you,” I said, evenly, “but I have to talk to someone. It’s about Linda.” I showed him the
photo from my pocket.
I watched his face. He looked confused for a moment, and then smiled. “Her?” He chuckled.
“Who is it?” One of the others from the stoop asked. I didn’t see which one; I was watching the man
with the gun in my face.
The curbside gunman looked from the picture to me, then said, accusingly, “You that artist, keeps
askin’ 'bout her?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head and looking straight into his eyes.
“Go,” was all he said, moving from my path. He called out to the men on the stoop, “Let her pass.”
I walked up the caving concrete steps slowly, deliberately, making no sudden moves. One man
standing at the entrance warned in an evil tease, ”We don’t make no promises ‘bout your car...or
your life.” His comment made all the men laugh. Very slowly, he moved out of my way.
Entering the building, I heard a directive from behind, “Keep going. He’s on the top floor.” I
followed the directions, at once wishing I had not come and knowing I could not turn around.
“What’s on?” I heard a disembodied voice call out a window from a floor somewhere overhead.
“Nothing. That artist...” came the shouted reply from the street.
All the apartment doors - two to a floor - were closed; trash and human waste carpeted every hall and
each stairwell I climbed. I suddenly remembered I had not told anyone where I was going. It
occurred to me just as quickly that it didn’t matter. Telling someone I was going to the Money House
wouldn’t have changed the fact that my life was in the hands of thugs.
At the top landing, on the third floor, was an open apartment door where two gunmen met me.
“She’s okay. Let her pass,” ordered an average-looking, milk chocolate-colored man standing behind
them, who was not holding a gun. He motioned me inside the room. “Sit down,” he said, matter-of-
factly. “Beer?” He held out a hand-warmed quart of malt liquor, and no glass, before sinking heavily
back into his chair.
“No. Thank you,” I replied hesitantly, not so much afraid of offending him by saying no, as repulsed
by the thought of sharing his germs.
“So you want to know about Linda,” he said, grinning, taking the offered photograph from my
hand. He looked at it and laughed. “I like that,” he said, waving it a little then passing it to the other
two men. “Yeah,” he said, “I like that one.” Meaning, the photo.
“Have you seen her?” I asked, accepting the photo back from one of the gunmen.
The Money Man responded by lighting a cigarette and taking a slug from the quart he’d offered me.
“Look around you,” he said quietly, his eyes trained on me.
I did as I was told. I saw that the room held no furniture, aside from the beat up overstuffed chair on
which he sat and the matching filthy couch upon which I was stiffly perched. Nothing in the room
betrayed what business he was in. Except, I finally noticed, for the random bullet holes in the plaster
walls and the streaking, reddish-brown stains and spatters around them. I instinctively knew that the
spots of blackened gunk were bits of rotten flesh and tissue. I knew, too, that the large, brownish
stains on the disgusting wall-to-wall carpeting were dried blood pools, probably from people he felt
had betrayed him. We weren’t in the money counting room; we were in his execution chamber. I
looked back at him.
“Have you seen her?” I asked again, undeterred.
For many tense seconds, we sat looking each other in the eyes, silent.
“Nah,” he finally said, his body relaxing, as he settled further back into his chair. “Haven’t seen her
in months. Had to let her go...she liked the product too much.”
I kept looking at him, not moving, waiting for further explanation.
“She moved on,” he said, more definitively, as if to assure me that this was indeed the case.
“Thank you,” I said calmly, rising. It was over. I had an answer. I started to the door, unimpeded.
“Hey,” he called lightly to me, “Miss Artist. You need to stop looking for her. Some folks just don’t
want to be found.” He got up from his chair, adding, “Maybe, she don’t want to talk to you now
because she’s ashamed. Have you ever thought about that?” He walked me into the hallway, saying,
“You’re just doggin’ her now. She don’t belong to you no more. You best let her go.”
I walked down the stairs, blinking, thinking about what he’d just said: I was dogging her; like, he
hadn’t? Suddenly, I realized what I appeared to be in the eyes of the people I had been questioning.
By uninvitedly continuing to hunt Linda down, I had become the wild card in a hand they all felt had
already been dealt – and played. In this picture, I was the bad guy.
Safely in my car, finally shaking, I pulled away from the curb. I drove around the neighborhood in
circles, half thinking about what I had just been through, and half thinking about what the Money
Man had said.
I parked in front of the local pub, and sat. I thought he could be right. In some horrible, ironic way,
the Money Man had given me a sense of closure I could accept. He had graciously given me an ‘out’
to looking for Linda.
Just as everyone on the street knew by then, Linda, too, must have known I was looking for her. Even
if she wasn’t still alive, then before she died, she had to have known I was looking for her. She’d
always known where to find me if she had wanted my help to change her life, yet she'd remained
hidden from me. Finally realizing and accepting those small facts made me feel better. I hadn’t
found my friend, but for the first time in years, I felt I had found some peace about her
disappearance. The pain I’d felt over losing her to her choices, and the guilt of what I had always
perceived to be my failure to intervene in her life, finally abated.
I had walked into the very jaws of death to find my friend. After the surreal meeting at the dope
house, I finally felt I had traveled as far as I could in my search for her. I would live with what had
been revealed to me by a killer. I found comfort in what he’d said about Linda not coming back to
me out of shame for what she had done and become, even if it was a lie. That explanation fit the
Linda I had known. The Linda who was groomed and punctual, light and airy, my Linda - pretty
Linda - would never be found on the streets or in a dope house, a disheveled, lice-ridden, toothless
mess. In a way, The Money Man was right. The Linda he’d known didn’t belong to me. I didn't
know her at all.
Even though letting go of Linda would be difficult, I felt that ending my search for her seemed like
the right thing to do. To have continued would have been acting more for my own benefit, to assuage
my own sense of disappointment and loss, than hers. I felt I should accept the fact that real life
endings are what they are. Real life stories don’t always end happily, or the way one would write
them if life were merely a tale unraveling from the tip of one’s pen.
I ended my search, choosing against the odds to believe that Linda might contact me on her own one
day out of the blue; that my friend might call or show up, and I would be there for her then, in
whatever way she needed me to be.
Although fifteen years have passed since I last saw Linda, I think of her often and fondly. I still
believe that people don’t just disappear without a trace or anyone’s knowing; however, I learned
during my period of searching that there are, indeed, deep and dark secrets in the belly of a big city
which are not destined to surface to the light. And so I never looked for Linda again.
published them. This issue I decided to take liberties with length. As for my lost friend Linda - no, I still don't
know where she is, but this story is included in the memoir I am writing called Living on Detroit Time: Life in
the Motor City Fast Lane.
