Twenty-two

Travel the highways and byways of Metro Detroit and you’re bound to see the always startling moon face of Barney Olsen, Esq. plastered on billboards and buses. Next to the multimillionaire ambulance-chaser’s massive, grinning face is the quote that has been his advertising tag line for the past twenty-five years: “You want justice? You want Barney!”

Olsen has been occasionally plagued by rumors of raucous parties at his multimillion-dollar modern split-level, eight-bedroom Spring Lake house. Nothing new, considering most people with homes hugging the shore of the lake are well-off and enjoy drunk boating, drunk fireworks and drunk barbeques in the summer and especially on the long Fourth of July weekend. (Nothing says “I Love America!” like losing fingers to fireworks and beer-bloated rich people fucking on powerboats.)

The stories of Olsen’s parties included the added bacchanalian debauchery of underage girls engaging in sex and drugs. Rock ’n roll was optional.

Now that I’d shaken a branch of the trafficking tree, Olsen had called out some mentally deficient neo-Nutsy bikers to do me bodily injury.

And that just wouldn’t stand.

I brought my Caddy to a screeching halt in the parking lot of Olsen’s five-story office building along the Mariana Trench of the Lodge Freeway in Southfield, prepared to do to him what he apparently had intended to do to me.

“Listen, Octavio,” Tomás said. “Don’t go in there guns blazing.”

“Said the man who broke a federal agent’s jaw.”

Olsen employed a number of other attorneys each taking a percentage of slip-and-falls, car and motorcycle accidents, medical malpractice lawsuits, etc. But Olsen chose to occupy the expansive fifth floor all by his fat-ass lonesome.

Tomás and I each carried Coach 20-gauge shotguns. And those were just the weapons you could see. With irreproachable authority Tomás flashed his wallet at the security guard.

“Need backup, officers?” the security guard said as he made sure his shirt was properly tucked in.

“No,” I said. “Just fifth floor access.”

“Yessir,” the guard said, swiping his card in the elevator’s reader and pushing the button for Olsen’s private floor. He saluted us and the doors closed.

“Amazing how far a driver’s license and Macy’s charge card can get you at thirty paces,” I said to Tomás.

“Ain’t it though?”

On the fifth floor we walked past a fully equipped gym, large conference room, law library and, oddly enough, a sushi bar where the Japanese chef stood leaning against a wall, looking bored and reading from his iPad.

Finally, we arrived at a tall, curving oak desk where a slender brunette sat.

“Where is he?” I growled. “Where’s Olsen?”

The woman stood, visibly shaken by our hard-charging march toward the doors leading to Olsen’s office. I yanked on the glass double doors behind her. They rattled and remained locked.

“Do you have—”

“No, I don’t have a goddamn appointment,” I said. “But I’m sure he’d just love to see me. Now open the damn door!”

Tomás made his way around the receptionist’s desk and found the button release for the doors.

“Sir!” the receptionist said, following Tomás and me into the executive offices. “Sir, Mr. Olsen is—”

“Mr. Olsen is what?” I said standing in the wide doorway of a large empty office bearing the nameplate “Barnard J. Olsen, Esq.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sir,” the receptionist said breathlessly. “He’s not here. Mr. Olsen hasn’t been in the office for a couple days now. Nobody’s heard from him. Partners. Associates. Clients. Nobody. He’s missed two court dates and three depositions. He’s not answering his phone. We’re all kind of—you know—worried.” Nervously, she glanced at our shotguns. “Are you—clients?”

Tomás and I left.

From the Southfield offices of Barney Olsen, Tomás and I headed even farther north to his Spring Lake home. It wasn’t hard to find; it had been featured a few years earlier in Hour and Detroit Design magazines and looked very much like the fever-dream fantasy child of a feudal shogun and Frank Lloyd Wright.

It sat on five acres of prime lakeside property with its own private pier and surrounded by a not-so-subtle iron gate. Next to the gated entrance which bore the large scroll initials “BO” rendered in iron was an old-style red enamel British call box.

“If you gotta call to get in,” Tomás said as we drove up to the gate, “then you ain’t gettin’ in.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem,” I said, pointing to the entrance gate. It was already partially open.

Tomás got out of the car and opened the gate all the way.

When he got back in the car, he gave me a look and said, “Safeties off?”

“Safeties off.”

It’s never a good sign when a house appears to be empty and the main door is open; Tomás went in high and I went in low.

Nothing. No one.

Tomás indicated he would take the upper level of the house while I took the first and lower level.

The house appeared to be completely empty and thoroughly scrubbed down: Empty refrigerator, kitchen cabinets, pantry and closets. No furniture. The two first floor bathrooms stank of bleach. There was a media room with bare wires dangling out of holes and the steel wall brace where a TV had once hung.

The expansive open-concept dining room and living room still held their breathtaking view of the lake, but aside from that, they too were empty.

The lower level was the same.

Big and empty.

As I was about to mount the steps leading back upstairs, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. A small white square peeking out of a corner of the crème-colored carpeting. I knelt by the white square; a piece of lace stuck under a wall. I tugged at the lace and it came free from the wall. Three inches of it. Stained at one end with what might have been blood.

It didn’t take long to find the release for the false wall.

I pushed it open and was nearly overwhelmed by the burning stench of ammonia.

Barney’s private party room. The room was a large, windowless rectangle. It looked as if a quick renovation of the room had begun and just as quickly abandoned; spackle had patched over some holes in the wall while other holes were left open and gaping. Drag marks of furniture or equipment on the carpeted floor. At the far end of the room was a bar with empty liquor shelves, a few toppled over barstools. Hung from the ceiling over the long bar were three chains, one equipped with a pair of furry white handcuffs. In corners of the ceiling there were more holes where multi-colored wires dangled lifeless.

A door off to the left near the bar: Five smaller rooms, three with mattresses saturated with bleach. The fifth room was soundproofed. Empty racks where electronics once resided, a small desk and four wall-mounted closed-circuit monitors, their screens smashed.

I would get the lace to Bobby Falconi at his Wayne County Coroner’s Office for trace analysis, but I had a sickening feeling Izzy had known these rooms.

“Octavio!”

I raced to the second floor and found Tomás in what might have been a bedroom facing the lake.

“What do you smell?” Tomás said.

“Bleach,” I said. “And paint.”

Taking out his pocket knife, Tomás crouched by the wall and sank the tip of his knife blade into a soft spot. He brought the tip of the blade up for me to see.

“Spackle.” I pointed to where Tomás had dug the still drying spackle out. “A bullet hole? What the hell’s going on here?”

Tomás stood. “I think I know where Barnard J. Olsen, Esquire is.”

“Where?”

He pointed out to the expanse of the shimmering lake.