Forty-one

14:58.

The call at Forward Operating Base “Lion” in the Panjshir Province, Afghanistan: Eight British SAS pinned down in the Korengal Valley by at least twenty Taliban.

I was, by helicopter gunship, six minutes out.

My spotter, Corporal Maximillian “Maxie” Avadenka, and I dropped in less than half a click north of the SAS team. Close enough to see the Taliban noose tightening on the Brits.

Three minutes. Seven Taliban killed from five hundred meters. A corridor for the SAS team to bug out. Four minutes more and Maxie and I took out another five enemy combatants.

Of the eight SAS, six made it out alive.

For Maxie and me, just another day in the sand.

Four days after the engagement, we get a bottle of good Irish whiskey. A note written on SAS Forward Command letterhead: “There for us. There for you. Anywhere. Always. Semper fi, mates.”

Before I left for The Whitney restaurant to meet the mysterious Miss Olivier, I checked the website for Ogilvy’s charity group—Global Community Action Corp. It was the same website Lucy and I had checked several weeks earlier. Everything was the same save for one rather sizable difference: The photo of the Director of International Community Outreach—Trent T.R. Ogilvy—was not the man who had briefly been my Markham Street neighbor. Now, Trent T.R. Ogilvy was a well-dressed, thickly built black man in his fifties.

I was wearing a light grey checked linen Hackett London suit, white shirt, baby-blue socks and black suede Bruno Magli loafers for my dinner date with the mysterious Miss Olivier.

No tie. Ties are for suckers, especially during a steaming Michigan summer.

You can search the world and not find a restaurant equal or better than The Whitney. The Romanesque revival mansion was built of rose-colored jasper in 1894: fifty-two rooms, twenty fireplaces and a number of Tiffany stained-glass windows. It was the family home of lumber baron David Whitney, Jr. Today, the 22,000 square-foot mansion is known for its understated opulence and unmatched cuisine.

There were only three other vehicles in The Whitney’s parking lot: a black Lincoln limo with blacked out windows and two serious-looking Chevy Suburban SUVs.

Inside, it was cool and sedate. There was innocuous live jazz music coming from the landing between the first and second floor.

I was greeted by three men: Two looked like they only ate glass and babies. The third was considerably shorter, thickly built and wearing black-rimmed round glasses.

“I’m afraid the restaurant is reserved for a private affair tonight, sir,” the short, thick man said. I recognized his voice; the man who had called the biker at the freight dock and me this morning.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Miss Olivier.”

The man stared at me for a long time before saying, “And you would be?”

“The King of Spain on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” I said. “Right now, I’m just a guy who’d like a few minutes with your boss. Do I give my drink order to you or what?”

Again, the short man stared at me for a moment, then gestured for the two gorillas flanking him to check me out.

One of the gorillas stepped forward with a wand and with an English accent said, “Open your coat, raise your arms and spread your legs, sir.”

“Is this going to tickle?” I said. “I’m a little ticklish.”

The other gorilla took out a semi-auto .45 from a shoulder rig and stood holding it with his hands casually folded.

The muscle running the wand over me nodded to the short man, indicating I was clean, and stepped back. His partner replaced his gun back in its shoulder rig.

The short man with glasses escorted me upstairs. On the landing was a jazz quartet—baby grand piano, double bass, simple drum kit and trumpet. The quartet was flanked by two more security guys.

“Hey, fellas,” I said to the quartet. “Y’all awright?”

“Oh, yeah, brotha,” the drummer said, shaking his head no. “Couldn’t be better.”

I was escorted to a private dining room with a fireplace.

Even though it was still a muggy eighty-three degrees outside, a small fire burned brightly in the fireplace, its yellow light playing off the room’s single chandelier and stained-glass window portraying Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music. Considering the restaurant’s history, I half expected to see the ghost of David Whitney rise up from the floor, cocktail in hand, critically eying the woman seated at a small round table draped in white linens, sipping white wine and picking at a large salad.

The woman was nice looking, sophisticated, perhaps in her early fifties with short, severe jet-black hair and an expensive but conservative suit. She sat as if she were a mannequin posed to look bored.

Miss Olivier.

There were two other people in the room with her.

One was a nondescript man in a nondescript suit looking intentionally bored. I’m sure to Miss Olivier, he was invisible until needed.

I recognized the other person.

Anna Green Eyes.

“Well, you’re looking better than the last time I saw you,” I said to Anna Green Eyes.

“Jesus!” Anna Green Eyes said, taking out her gun and aiming it at me.

“Is that truly necessary?” the woman calling herself Miss Olivier said to Anna Green Eyes. She had an upper-crusty English accent and sounded eternally disappointed.

“He’s a fucking cop,” Anna Green Eyes said, not putting her gun away.

“Ex-cop,” I said. “Now I’m just a gadfly man-about-town.”

“He’s the one who fucked up the safe house,” Green Eyes said.

“And shot you. Remember that?” I said. “Wow. The times we’ve had.”

“Ma’am—” she started.

Miss Olivier said to me, “I assume you’ve done all of this in an effort to replace Mr. Krenshaw? Perhaps become our vendor of choice in the region, mister—?”

“Snow,” I said. “August Snow. And if Mr. Krenshaw was the smelly neo-Nazi biker with the harelip and porn-stache, then yes. I hope you’re not disappointed.”

“He was quite good at his job,” Miss Olivier said. “But he smelled, took drugs and used rather offensive language to describe certain people. I loathed dealing with him, but—well—business is, after all, business.”

“Ma’am—” Anna Green Eyes began.

“Would you tell her to put her gun away?” I said, pointing to Anna. “Then have her get me a drink. Scotch.”

The stoic Miss Olivier moved her unblinking hazel gaze from me to Anna.

Anna reluctantly holstered her gun and limped out of the room in a huff, presumably to fetch my drink.

“I’m more than willing to hear what you propose, Mr. Snow,” she said. “Naturally, since we’re still working out the kinks of a relatively new operation, we’d like to minimize any further damage. Am I clear, Mr. Snow?”

“Perfectly.”

“And just to reemphasize, should we have any further meetings you are to attend them sans weapons.”

“No problem,” I said. Then nodding to the invisible man, I said, “I figure if I need a gun, I’ll just take his.”

Miss Olivier’s bored bodyguard flashed his eyes at me.

Anna returned with my drink, setting it gently in front of me. We exchanged glances before she took several steps back and resumed her sentry post.

“I must admit, your actions, though destructive, revealed a weakness in the system we hadn’t quite anticipated,” Miss Olivier said, lifting her glass of wine to me. “And for that I commend you.”

“And,” I said, raising my glass of scotch to her, “I must say you are quite the psycho sack of shit. You’re the monstrosity that cut a distribution deal with a few rogue ICE units, right? The sicko who bought up Duke Ducane’s trafficking routes?”

“I’m not sure I like your tone, Mr. Snow.”

“And I’m on the fence over brussels sprouts,” I said. “Who gives a shit on either count, right? I’m pretty sure you and your merry band of mercs had everything to do with the disappearance of Barney Olsen, Esquire. So, fuck you, Cruella.”

“I take it you’re not here to replace Mr. Krenshaw?” Slowly she sat back in her chair, her hands folded with poised precision in front of her.

“You take that correctly, Miss Queen of the Fucking Undead.”

I reached into my suitcoat jacket. Anna and the invisible man took a quick step forward. I pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it and sat it in front of Miss Olivier. It was the coroner’s photo of Izzy.

Miss Olivier glanced at the photo. Then she took a sip of her wine.

“Suicide from the bridge,” she said, bringing her soulless eyes back to me. “Needless to say, there have been—speed bumps—along the way. Mr. Olsen’s— club—was one of those unfortunate speed bumps. We’ve since made adjustments. This sort of thing, I can assure you, won’t happen again.” With well-manicured fingertips, she slowly pushed Izzy’s morgue photo further from her and closer to me. “Do you know what many of the great cities in the world have in common, Mr. Snow?” I didn’t answer. She was going to tell me anyway. “The availability and variety of clean, organized and exclusively priced sex. Do you really, honestly believe millionaires—billionaires—go to Las Vegas, Monaco, Ibiza, Playa Mujeres for strategy breakout sessions followed by a bit of high-stakes poker? No. Certain—appetites— can only be satisfied by well-trained, well-paid, beautiful women and young men who exceed most any sexual fantasy.”

“Detroit?” I said. “Really?”

It was the first time I saw Miss Olivier form the hint of a smile.

“My organization—like any business wishing to survive in today’s global marketplace—actively searches for ways to expand our business model. Niche markets. Detroit’s recent rebound has not gone unnoticed globally. It’s less an anomaly and more a model for sustainable growth.”

“But you’re kidnapping and trafficking women out of the city.”

“Yes,” she said. “And the commodities we move out help to finance the higher-quality commodities we bring in: Very select, high-end commodities from Russia, Ukraine, France, Ghana, South Africa, Montenegro and Spain. Commodities that will build, enhance and maintain this city as a truly world-class sex destination.”

“Hey, listen, Frau Humpenstein, I don’t give a shit about you or your organization,” I said. “Any more rogue ICE units or neo-Nazi biker gangs come to my neighborhood, I’ll kill ’em. I’ll kill ’em all. I will stack their bodies on your doorstep just before I put a bullet in you.”

“Perhaps I can arrange a safe-zone. Anything else, Mr. Snow?”

“Yeah. There’s one more thing I want.”

“That being?”

“His gun,” I said pointing to the invisible man.

The room was frozen silent for a tenth of a second.

Enough time for me to grab Miss Olivier’s dinner fork, spin out of my chair and plant the fork in the invisible man’s right eye. I reached inside his suit coat, grabbed his gun and fired through his jacket at Anna, catching her in the stomach.

Her .38 was out, but before she could level the weapon at me I pushed the invisible man into her. He caught the bullet meant for me and the two crashed to the floor.

I stepped out of the dining room.

The bodyguards by the jazz quartet took stances on the staircase. Before they could fire, I unloaded three shots, killing one and sending the other tumbling down the staircase with a bullet in his right hip.

I walked back towards Miss Olivier, who sat in wide-eyed horror.

Standing over her I ejected a bullet from the gun’s chamber and dropped it in her glass of wine. Then I ejected the clip into her salad.

“Her name was Isadora Rosalita del Torres. She was nineteen.” I picked up the coroner’s photo of Izzy, refolded it and put it back in my suit coat pocket. “You so much as have an unkind thought about me six-thousand miles away and I will step out of your dreams and kill you in your bed. You and anybody else who comes after you.”

Noise from downstairs.

Five men wearing black balaclavas, helmets and military uniforms with semi-automatic rifles quickly ascended the stairs.

No time to move.

One of the men took a firing stance four-feet away from me.

He didn’t shoot.

Four of the men hustled into the room. One dropped a black bag over Miss Olivier’s head. Two scooped her up. The four moved her into the hallway and down the staircase.

The man stationed on me followed the other four men and Miss Olivier, leaving me alive and alone in the private dining room.

After forcing air back in my lungs, I leapt two, three steps at a time down the staircase.

“You guys awright?” I say double-timing past the musicians on the landing.

“Worst gig EVER!” the drummer said.

No bodyguards, dead or alive. No little man with round glasses.

I got to the door in time to see Miss Olivier hustled into the back of a black Chevy Tahoe, no plates.

One of the last men standing by a second black Chevy Tahoe started to get in, hesitated, then turned to me. He took off his helmet and balaclava. Smiled. Saluted. Then got in the SUV and closed the door.

Trent T.R. Ogilvy.

Three SUVs sped past me, bouncing onto Woodward Avenue and racing off into the night.

Looks like I’m stuck with the check.