hundred thousand dollars,’ Tayyar had said when he’d showed them around his
home. ‘But this is a suburb. It’s clean, it’s bright, there’s no junkies. In areas like Brush Park, which is where a lot of
old auto-executive mansions sit mouldering in the street, you can’t give property away. I’ve heard of old houses with gardens
selling for a dollar.’
‘A dollar!’
‘These places are ruined,’ Tayyar had added. ‘Full of junkies, crackheads and rats. Who wants places like that, even if they
were the height of style back in the 1920s?’
He’d prepared them a fabulous meze featuring such dishes as pickled squid, Russian salad and warm home-made hummus. This had
been followed by a delicious roasted trout served with a pilaf, and then the scrumptious, glutinous baklava. All of this comfort
food had been washed down with a lot of Turkish rakı. Now they were drinking coffee, smoking and grazing on whatever was left
of the dessert.
‘This is a lovely house, Tayyar,’ Süleyman said. ‘But I don’t know how you could have swapped Bebek for Detroit.’
‘You don’t?’ Tayyar was a couple of years older than Süleyman, and quite a bit shorter and darker. The eldest son of one of
Süleyman’s father’s sisters, he was another one with royal blood in his veins. ‘But then I suppose, as cops, you wouldn’t,’
he continued. ‘This is a tough town. Makes İstanbul look like a crime backwater. A village like Bebek, well . . .’ He smiled.
‘For a journalist, Detroit is great. As a profession, we live off the pickings from the bones of the dead.’
‘What a gruesome analogy!’ İkmen said.
‘But it’s true!’
They drank, ate and smoked some more. Tayyar put a Bruce Springsteen CD on, and they all took their drinks and ashtrays to
comfortable chairs arranged around a blazing log fire. Once they’d settled down, İkmen talked about Ezekiel Goins and the
Melungeons. In spite of what Lieutenant Diaz had said about forgetting the whole thing, he was finding that he couldn’t.
‘If we think it’s bad now, there were some terrible things that went on in the sixties and seventies,’ Tayyar said. ‘Way beyond
’67 it was open race warfare in parts of the city. In those days, the drug of choice was heroin, and there were endless turf
wars between gangs of what were basically drug-dealers.’
‘This old Melungeon’s son got mixed up in it.’
‘If he was young and unemployed, it was almost inevitable,’ Tayyar said. ‘It still goes on, except now the main drug of choice
is crack cocaine. The difference these days is there’s a will to at least try and put the city back together again. In the
sixties and seventies, thewhole fabric of the place was just atomising. Corruption was endemic. Cops were, figuratively, getting into bed with gangsters;
so was City Hall. The big three car manufacturers wanted to move the plants to the suburbs. Black civil rights versus, in
some quarters, continuing white desire for segregation. It was chaos.’
‘And yet for Ezekiel Goins it was just yesterday,’ İkmen said. ‘But when your child dies, clocks stop.’
They all went quiet for a moment. Tayyar as well as Süleyman knew what had happened to İkmen’s son, and he didn’t know what
to say. In the end it was İkmen himself who was obliged to continue the conversation. ‘Mr Goins believes that a man called
Grant T. Miller killed his son,’ he said. ‘Have you heard of him, Tayyar?’
‘As far as I know, Grant T. Miller was a foreman in the old Ford plant,’ Tayyar said. ‘He’s well known because his father
was a tailor who used to make suits for Henry Ford. Why would he have killed this man’s son?’
‘Mr Goins seemed to think that he was some sort of white supremacist,’ İkmen said.
Tayyar shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that.’
They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes while Bruce Springsteen sang ‘Born in the USA’. When he
home. ‘But this is a suburb. It’s clean, it’s bright, there’s no junkies. In areas like Brush Park, which is where a lot of
old auto-executive mansions sit mouldering in the street, you can’t give property away. I’ve heard of old houses with gardens
selling for a dollar.’
‘A dollar!’
‘These places are ruined,’ Tayyar had added. ‘Full of junkies, crackheads and rats. Who wants places like that, even if they
were the height of style back in the 1920s?’
He’d prepared them a fabulous meze featuring such dishes as pickled squid, Russian salad and warm home-made hummus. This had
been followed by a delicious roasted trout served with a pilaf, and then the scrumptious, glutinous baklava. All of this comfort
food had been washed down with a lot of Turkish rakı. Now they were drinking coffee, smoking and grazing on whatever was left
of the dessert.
‘This is a lovely house, Tayyar,’ Süleyman said. ‘But I don’t know how you could have swapped Bebek for Detroit.’
‘You don’t?’ Tayyar was a couple of years older than Süleyman, and quite a bit shorter and darker. The eldest son of one of
Süleyman’s father’s sisters, he was another one with royal blood in his veins. ‘But then I suppose, as cops, you wouldn’t,’
he continued. ‘This is a tough town. Makes İstanbul look like a crime backwater. A village like Bebek, well . . .’ He smiled.
‘For a journalist, Detroit is great. As a profession, we live off the pickings from the bones of the dead.’
‘What a gruesome analogy!’ İkmen said.
‘But it’s true!’
They drank, ate and smoked some more. Tayyar put a Bruce Springsteen CD on, and they all took their drinks and ashtrays to
comfortable chairs arranged around a blazing log fire. Once they’d settled down, İkmen talked about Ezekiel Goins and the
Melungeons. In spite of what Lieutenant Diaz had said about forgetting the whole thing, he was finding that he couldn’t.
‘If we think it’s bad now, there were some terrible things that went on in the sixties and seventies,’ Tayyar said. ‘Way beyond
’67 it was open race warfare in parts of the city. In those days, the drug of choice was heroin, and there were endless turf
wars between gangs of what were basically drug-dealers.’
‘This old Melungeon’s son got mixed up in it.’
‘If he was young and unemployed, it was almost inevitable,’ Tayyar said. ‘It still goes on, except now the main drug of choice
is crack cocaine. The difference these days is there’s a will to at least try and put the city back together again. In the
sixties and seventies, thewhole fabric of the place was just atomising. Corruption was endemic. Cops were, figuratively, getting into bed with gangsters;
so was City Hall. The big three car manufacturers wanted to move the plants to the suburbs. Black civil rights versus, in
some quarters, continuing white desire for segregation. It was chaos.’
‘And yet for Ezekiel Goins it was just yesterday,’ İkmen said. ‘But when your child dies, clocks stop.’
They all went quiet for a moment. Tayyar as well as Süleyman knew what had happened to İkmen’s son, and he didn’t know what
to say. In the end it was İkmen himself who was obliged to continue the conversation. ‘Mr Goins believes that a man called
Grant T. Miller killed his son,’ he said. ‘Have you heard of him, Tayyar?’
‘As far as I know, Grant T. Miller was a foreman in the old Ford plant,’ Tayyar said. ‘He’s well known because his father
was a tailor who used to make suits for Henry Ford. Why would he have killed this man’s son?’
‘Mr Goins seemed to think that he was some sort of white supremacist,’ İkmen said.
Tayyar shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that.’
They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes while Bruce Springsteen sang ‘Born in the USA’. When he
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