Angels of Detroit Read Online Free Page A

it’s good,” April said, eyes still gliding down the page.
    “This environmental stuff,” Holmes said. “No one cares. The city’s such a fucking mess.”
    “It’s not the same,” McGee said. “I’m trying to make it clear these are global issues that affect us locally—” All at once she stopped, her lips still parted.
    Myles felt her gaze narrowing in on him.
    “Seriously?” she said.
    In the corner of his eye, Myles could see something happening on the monitors, but McGee continued to hold him there with her binocular stare. “What?” he said.
    But she wasn’t looking at Myles. It was Fitch this time, slumped in the chair behind him, unshaven chin bobbing against his chest. Holmes and April had noticed, too, and they seemed to be waiting to see what McGee would do, what she’d say.
    The only sound across the entire basement was something burbling in Fitch’s throat. In his sleep, his knee shot up, thumping into the table. One of McGee’s red markers rolled to the edge and onto the floor. It was that dull clatter of plastic on cement that finally caused Fitch’s eyes to pop open.
    “What’s going on?” he said.
    McGee’s nostrils flared, the way they always did when she was angry. “Why do you even bother?” she said. “What’s the point in showing up at all?”
    Fitch yawned into his elbow.
    “We were up late rehearsing,” Holmes said.
    Fitch laid his head down on his arms. “There’s just something about people talking.”
    “He always used to fall asleep in school,” April said.
    McGee looked from one to the next. “Why are you defending him?”
    “We’ve been talking about the same stuff for weeks,” Holmes said. “What are you afraid he missed?”
    The stubble had been on Fitch’s face for three days. His clothes had been on him even longer. And yet somehow he looked the same as always, like one of those guys paid to glower in his underwear next to strips of scratch and sniff cologne. And April could have been the pouty, negligéed beauty draped over his neck. First cousins, and even perfect strangers couldn’t miss the family resemblance. Was there something in the country club water, Myles sometimes wondered, that bred people like these?
    “Moving on,” McGee said, making no effort to hide her anger. “We need to get the banners finished. We’re running out of time.”
    At the front of the store, where the two men had entered only a few minutes before, Myles now saw another guy, newspaper white, wearing a winter coat. All last week they’d gone without a single customer. Now they suddenly had three at once? As Myles debated whether to go upstairs, he watched the man in the winter coat move from monitor to monitor, coming closer with each step to the other two men.
    Myles was hunched over the desk, squinting at the screen, when McGee called his name again.
    “What?” he said quickly. “What?”
    “I asked if you think those friends of yours are still coming.”
    “What friends?” he said.
    McGee gave him a pained smile. “You said you knew some people who’d help us out.”
    “Yeah,” Myles said, already turning back toward the monitors. “Sure.”
    But McGee had another question for him, and another, and then another, and he wanted to tell her what was happening upstairs with the three suspicious guys, but the way she was looking at him made it impossible for him to tell her to wait a second, just one second, justlong enough for him to get another look. Her eyes wouldn’t let him go. Five minutes passed, then ten. He waited for the bell at the cash register to ring for his assistance, but the ring never came.
    And then the meeting was over, but by then it was too late.
    As McGee straightened her papers and markers, Myles glanced from one monitor to the next. The men upstairs had vanished without him having any idea why they’d come. And now the meeting had ended, and he had no idea what had been decided.

    The walk home began in silence, except for the