Born by the River

By Todd Adams

Paul Levi is an aging white lawyer and Malik Pederson is a young Black man accused of murder. When their worlds collide, they must find a way forward in a legal system that seems designed to convict both the guilty and the innocent if they were born with the wrong skin color.

As the two men come together, Paul searches for answers to what happened to the city that he loved and abandoned after a devastating race riot. Malik has his own secrets that he is unwilling to share with his court-appointed attorney, and his family knows Paul from when he defended a cop accused of murdering three innocent Black teenagers in a seedy Detroit hotel during the riot. A socially conscious masterpiece of fiction, "Born by the River" is a must-read critique of the criminal justice system in America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667802091

Book preview

PART I:

FIRST INTERVIEW

Chapter 1

I wasn’t sure whether to represent the young man standing in front of me. First, I needed to understand why three court-appointed attorneys had already declined to do so, but Malik Pedersen was handsome enough. He had broad shoulders, a rectangular face framed by Rasta dreadlocks, and a few hairs between his chin and lips that masqueraded as a soul patch. His skin would shine like anthracite coal in the summer sun, but it appeared gray under the flickering florescent lights in the interview room. Malik’s eyes squinted as if focused on something in the distance but which probably reflected the painful restrictions of the chains that ran from his waist to his ankles. Shackles also restrained his hands.

How are you today, counselor Levi? one guard said to me as he worked to free my prospective client. He was a thin Black man with a grille of white and gold teeth, who’d lost a foot of colon to cancer last year and wanted to quit to spend more time with his daughter and granddaughters. But he needed the health care benefits and kept plugging away.

Fine, except for the snow, I said to hide how I couldn’t remember his name or see his name tag.

You got that right, and more’s coming, the older guard said because an Alberta clipper was due to dock in Detroit that afternoon. The storm would be a relief from the omnipresent, gray clouds on which everyone blamed their crankiness and depression, but the predicted ten inches of snow would also shut down the city with me in it.

After the older guard finished and the guards left, Malik and I were alone with a gritty and grimy taste on our tongues. He stood there, a giant, shifting his weight back-and-forth between his feet, uncertain whether to bolt or not. His eyes—cedar colored close up—darted about the room, never settling anywhere and never meeting mine, and his fingers drew circles and lines in the air to a beat only he could hear. Was it guilt or innocence that caused his restlessness? Or something else entirely? There was no way of knowing. I’d been surprised more than once, and a Wayne County assistant prosecutor, Emma Einhorne, alleged he was a confessed murderer.

When he wouldn’t sit down, I said, Please sit down and call me Paul. I wore my standard gray wool suit, white dress shirt, and red tie. He wore an orange jumpsuit and a white, short-sleeve t-shirt.

Malik did not immediately sit down. Instead, he tried to determine whether he could fit his long body under a speckled, linoleum table where I sat. I wasn’t sure he could either, so I got up and moved my chair to one side of the table and waited. Finally, Malik pulled out a chair, sat down, and stretched out his legs. I sat down, and his shoes accidentally touched mine and pulled back instantly. He made a conscious effort to be still by placing his hands one over the other in his lap.

I’m innocent, Malik said, trying for a rich baritone and producing only a squeaky glissando. His eyes strayed toward me, met, and fled. In that glance, he would have seen quilted maple skin not without a few scratches and dents. My eyes were hazel, and I had a thin mouth and a noticeable nose. I knew he would assume the worst of me and that I was powerless to prevent him from doing so. But how could he not do so, given where he was?

I believe you, I said because every client deserved to hear this from his attorney at least once, even where a client confessed on videotape—a court order required the Detroit police department to record all felony interrogations because of past abuses. But the problem is what will a jury think when it watches a tape of your confession.

They will think I was tricked. The police told me that murder carried the death penalty. Dark green tats of wings and snakes and barbed wire covered ninety percent of his left arm, and on his right, he had only a few slogans. Shifting in my seat to get a better view, I studied them carefully and without success. I would have to wait to find out what they said, but I hoped none of them were gang-related. I had lost a case once because my client had tattooed the date of the murder on his belly.

And there is no death penalty in Michigan, I said, knowing already where this interview was going. He’d heard the rule against coerced confession on TV or from some jailhouse lawyer and believed it applied to his case. The odds were overwhelmingly high that it did not, however, and I would have to tell him so someday.

Exactly, it’s unconstitutional, he said, speaking my code flawlessly. I would have to wait to watch the tape to know whether it was.

It is, I said and looked away from his too-bright eyes.

But we should be careful until we see the video, okay? I said, lifting one side and then the other of my numb bottom off of the chair.

Okay.

What did you tell them about the crime scene? They would have asked.

When he didn’t answer, I tried to wait him out. I counted spots on the wall until his lips moved but still didn’t hear anything. I turned up my hearing aids before turning them down almost immediately. A buzz from the overhead lights made it impossible to hear anyone else unless they shouted in my ear.

And? I said, shifting my weight again and wishing I could plug my nose to keep out the fetid smell coming from the vents. It should be illegal to keep human beings locked up like animals waiting for the slaughterhouse.

I made something up, he said. His hands were keeping beat again.

I bet he had, but the state would still have to prove its case if it went to trial. Unfortunately, it would be all too easy to do so.

Your mom and dad know about all of this? He would need their love, and I would need their money if he wanted to take it to trial. The court fee schedule wouldn’t pay for half of what Malik required to defend his case if he wasn’t plea bargaining it out.

Not around.

Whatever that meant.

MawMaw was the one that kept me off the streets and made sure I did my homework, he said. He continued by telling me that he was studying tensor calculus, whatever that was, at Wayne State University. But it wouldn’t matter to the assistant prosecutor, and the judge wouldn’t be able to do anything about it if it mattered to her. Gang-related murder was a mandatory life sentence.

I changed the subject to why we were here. What happened?

Everything was cool at the start. We went to some parties and ended up at the bar, he said, flickering to the beat of the overhead lights. Then some brother started joshin’ with the girls I was with and wouldn’t stop. We got into it a little, I guess, but nothing physical, only words. The bouncer threw us both out. Him first because he started it.

I jotted something down on a yellow legal pad as he watched in amazement. I was sure he’d never seen one before.

Patterson was thrown out first?

Ya. Fifteen minutes earlier at least.

More than enough time for premeditated murder, the assistant prosecutor would advance, but I would argue too long for Malik to have followed the victim.

What were the names of your friends? I said.

Ana, Chelsie, and I suppose Nora, he said as if the last name required an effort to remember. He would never survive in prison, but what choice did he have?

Did you see Patterson after you left the bar?

No. He’d gone all Bermuda Triangle on me.

Did you know him?

No, he said. At least I don’t think so.

Fair enough if true. But Malik’s eyes were glued to the wall as I extracted his alibi—or rather his lack of one—out of him. He had walked to his home on Hastings Street, not far from the river, without seeing anyone.

There isn’t much left there, I said. Malik didn’t bother to agree to the obvious, so I continued, And you never went near the bus stop at Rosa Parks and Clairmount where the murder happened?

No, he said.

But you know of it?

MawMaw and Uncle Michael took me to the memorial when I was twelve, he said about two fused, black cubes, set on their tips, one on top of each other to remember the forty-three who died during the 1967 riot. Those who would wander the city, neither living nor dead, for years afterward received no monument. Perhaps they wanted none.

And you confessed?

Only when they showed me a picture of a body on a slab and said I could end up like that, he said, his skin palpitating and sallow under the lights. I heard innumerable gears turning as they crushed and tore their prey into a bloody pulp without a thought.

So, that’s when you confessed, I said, rolling a tobacco-filled piece of paper around on the table, straightening it out, and then stopping self-consciously. Unless I was wrong, showing a picture wouldn’t invalidate the confession.

Ya, he said, compressing his full lips with a ripple of what seemed to be self-disgust this time. I wanted to tell him it would be okay, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to end up dead, so I said it was self-defense. I said I followed him because I was angry, that all I wanted to do was talk to him, and then he pulled a gun, and it went off by mistake.

The assistant prosecutor will offer you a deal, I said as I cleaned my glasses. Malik had told me enough; Maybe too much.

I’d rather drown, he said with a teenager’s bravado.

You won’t have that option, I said as the industrial-tan walls closed in. They had been painted so many times that they had crinkled in places. Other spots had pealed. A window behind Malik revealed a guard with bored eyes. No one would ever know or care if Malik and I died in the room.

I’m not pleading out. He said as if ready to pull the court system down around him if necessary. Too many trials would gum up the works.

Okay, I said, now understanding why no attorney wanted to take the case, and I couldn’t take his case just yet either. I would need my legal partner, Allan Buchbinder, and Rachel Kaplan—his niece and our associate—to watch my back at trial, and they would have to agree. They might not, and I should tell Malik this. I tried to form the right words and failed. If we take your case to trial, we’ll need the help of my partner, and that means I have to talk to him first before I can accept your case.

A dull indifference easily mistaken for stupidity appeared behind his acorn eyes before spreading to his mouth and cheeks. The expression plunged me through the ice in the Detroit river, and I gasped for air as my body shivered into pieces. I wanted to tell him not to worry, that Allan’s approval was a mere formality, but it wasn’t. Partners were partners until they weren’t, and I wouldn’t lie to Malik. Two guards—both a handsome brown, one female and one not—came into the room and shackled Malik again. Another loud clanking announced their exit. Malik hadn’t looked at me.

Alone, I gathered my material and hurried through the same door but to a different destination. Allan would ask if I’d viewed the murder scene before he would agree to take the case, and a foot of snow would soon bury it until spring after the Alberta Clipper dumped its load. I pulled on rubber galoshes to protect against the salt in a grubby locker room, shrugged into my gray wool overcoat, and adjusted my blue scarf. Then I headed through the gate to an unearthly cadence of beeps and buzzes. Somewhere Mother Rosa was gently weeping.

Chapter 2

Outside the jailhouse, I saw aluminum gray clouds scudding overhead toward Canada; I had even less time left to visit the murder site than I had thought. Hurrying to my old Crown Victoria, I found its windshields frozen inside and out. A turn of the key and Vicki grated to life. While she did her best to warm the cabin, I got a scraper from the back seat well and cleared the outside of the front windshield with long, sweeping motions, throwing up ice and making a rough sound. When I finished, Vicki began to dodder up Woodward. The avenue used to be the main thoroughfare between downtown and the northwest suburbs before the state and federal government built the superhighways, and it divided the great half-wheel of Detroit into east and west sides of town. Vicki and I caught glimpses of Wayne State University, the cultural center, and the Fisher Building. All still alive if not well.

At Henry Ford Hospital, Vicki turned onto Grand Boulevard and headed west for several blocks. There it made a right turn and headed north toward the murder site, but we stopped at the now-empty Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception first. No amount of cajoling and threats could get Vicki moving again, and I was forced to stare at the church’s old-fashioned red brick façade for several minutes. It reminded me of how my older brother Jon and I waited for Mom to declare the first star had risen so that we could break our Wigilia fast on Christmas Eve. Once she had, we said our prayers, and the whitefish melted on our tongues while Dad told us stories about how the fish jumped unbidden into the boats of the Chippewa fishermen at the Sault. Her face beatific, Mom would sing, Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht afterwards. It was the only time German passed through her lips.

Jon and I then had our faces scrubbed pink and put on our Sunday best suits and ties. Once we met her inspection, Mom passed us off to Dad and finished her preparations for midnight mass. They involved lipstick and powder and a fancy new dress that Dad would have bought for the occasion. He dressed in his one-and-only suit for his single visit to Immaculate every year. Then they would jointly herd Jon and me like so many cats to the garage, where we’d pile into a new two-tone, blue Custom Dad had bought with his overtime pay.

The bells would have been sounding, calling several thousand people to worship, but they were silent now in 2008. The diocese had removed the carillon, the stained glass windows, and everything else valuable in 1982 and returned the building to profane use. Immaculate’s wedding cake topper of a bell tower had no purpose, and probably no one had stepped into it for decades, which was good because a gust caused it to wobble and shake right then.

This distraction broke whatever trance Vicki and I were in, and I rolled down the window to look at the sky. The lowest layer of clouds had turned to gunmetal gray and started to reach tentacles out to the ground like a gray octopus. Returning to Bloomfield Hills far to the northwest had all but disappeared as an option. I pointed this out to Vicki, and she hurried the best she could in the slippery street to Rosa Parks and Clairmount. According to the indictment and Malik, this corner was where Malik had shot and killed one DeMarcus Patterson in a fit of rage.

There was a Plexiglass bus shelter for ten facing south on Clairmount but not much else besides empty lots and snow. Gone was a grocery store owned by Herman Auerbach that had stood on the corner, where Mom bought cherries and strawberries every year. Gone was Mendelsohn’s music, where she purchased her music and me a toy guitar. Gone were a dozen Jewish bakeries with workers kneaded challah, let it breathe, and then re-kneaded it before braiding it together. A people and their G-d knitted together in the minds of the pious, Bubbe said, but I paid more attention to the egg and yeast smell permeating four blocks every Friday morning, lifting the entire street into heaven in a child’s imagination.

Leaving Vicki’s motor on, I clambered out the door and started taking pictures with a Nikon that Rachel had given me to replace my venerable Kodak. She claimed it could do miracles because it took ten something-or-another photographs, but what I noticed most was that pressing the button caused it to take a series of pictures faster than I could count. In any event, I started with a broken street lamp—the city probably hadn’t fixed it in a decade—and panned around the rest of the bus stop to please her. She also claimed that computers could put them into one giant picture.

Done for the moment, I went back to Vicki and fished out my scraper again. The backside of the shelter, the one facing the wind and snow, was hopeless, but maybe scraping away some of the ice inside the structure would reveal vital evidence. I began chipping away at the ice, and after a while, the Nikon started snapping the usually transparent Plexiglas. After several minutes, it had photographed four bullet holes dozens of times. It also snapped pictures of sprayed geometric shapes and bulging fluorescent letters accumulated like sediments on the bottom of the Detroit River. Most of them would turn out to be written by Kilroy when we deciphered them, but Allan demanded thoroughness above all if we took a case.

That was all I found. There had been no revelations. No exculpatory evidence, but no damning evidence of guilt either. Not everything, of course, had fallen into those two categories; I had seen the two black cubes marking the riot’s victims behind the shelter. The memorial replaced a nondescript, brick building with an orange neon sign advertising Economy Printing. I couldn’t remember being in it, although my Mom said I had once when Dad needed to print something for the union. Over the years, it had transformed into a blind pig serving the thirsty at any hour. One steamy July night, friends and family hosted a welcome-home party for a returning Vietnam veteran. A tired, drunk doorkeeper let in three detectives impersonating college basketball players from North Carolina Central, and three days later, a whole world was in flames.

Six decades later, banshees screeched outside the shelter as the Alberta clipper arrived. A veil of snow was also advancing down Rosa Parks toward me. My cigarette had burned to its end, leaving a bitter, smoky taste in my mouth, and my face was an icy mask.

Gathering myself and sinking into the growing drifts, I clomped my way to Vicki. She started slaloming toward the river like a blind Jean-Claude Killy, ignoring gates and hurtling through red lights. Joe Louis’s massive fist brought us to a stop at the base of Woodward. Turning through a hole in a colossal berm full of heating and air conditioning equipment, we reached the misnamed Renaissance Center built by the Deuce, AKA Henry Ford II, himself. He intended the building to revitalize the city, but it had only sucked the rest of the city’s buildings dry like a giant black widow spider.

I dropped Vicki off with a valet driver at the entrance to a hotel in the center of the complex. The business had changed hands half a dozen times in the last ten years, and it was a miracle that it was open that night. After checking in, I went to the restaurant at the top of the hotel, which no longer rotated, and sat down in the pale darkness and watched the Iowa caucuses. The flat-people on TV predicted the Clinton machine would crush Obama, but Goliath was favored too.

Chapter 3

Vicki and I left the city on still treacherous roads a few days later. She slowly weaved her way through jackknifed behemoths and abandoned cars littering the superhighway. Arriving in Novi Town Center—one of a dozen town centers encircling the city—I went inside. The marble lobby was empty except for the guard behind his rosewood station. After a lift to the twenty-sixth floor, where we had a small suite amidst the stockbrokers and minor tycoons, I found Allan sitting behind a Danish modern teak desk. He looked as trim and neat in a gray, three-piece pinstriped suit from Fifth Avenue as when I first met him. He had varied his look today with a striped yellow tie.

We’d grown up within six blocks of each other, but we’d never met before Mother Michigan threw us together in the same first-year dorm room at the butt of the McCarthy era. The attraction was instantaneous on my part,