FORCE NO ONE: A Thriller

By Daniel Charles Ross

"For Tom Clancy fans who like their characters strong and the hardware cool—don't miss this."
— Doug Richardson, screenwriter of DIE HARD 2 and BAD BOYS and author of the LUCKY DEY crime series

A homicide in Detroit usually doesn't raise many eyebrows, but a victim is found with a busine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Force Poseidon
• Release date: Sep 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9780578410777

Daniel Charles Ross

Daniel Charles Ross is a retired U.S. Navy Reserve chief petty officer, the former chief journalist of the Navy Seabees, and a former active duty U.S. Army military police investigator. His civilian writing career was spent in stints as Detroit editor at Popular Mechanics and as national editor at both Motor Trend and Car and Driver. A Detroit ex-pat, he lives in Lima, Ohio with a yellow MINI Cooper R60, where he is finishing the second STORM CELL novel, Force Majeure. www.genuinedcr.com @genuineDCR

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

C130J

If you know the enemy and know yourself,

you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

Sun Tzu (Unknown-496 BC), Chinese philosopher

So, Joe, my friend, you owe me. You owe me, and you have been dodging me." Xavier Cloud—Zave to his friends—had been looking for his friend for a long time, and he was sometimes not a patient man.

The two men were isolated in an empty Detroit warehouse under the bright yellow cone of a shaded light. It hung from an industrial I-beam thick with countless coats of institutional green paint. Translucent dust particles, random bits of asbestos, and traces of animal feces floated in the dirty beam.

In the distance, a summer storm birthed powerful rumbles as it drew closer.

You were supposed to find me, weren’t you, bro? And yet it was I who had to find you. I understand you don’t want to give me the briefcase. I understand the reasons why you have been a ghost for twelve years—all one hundred million of them. But your loyalties are divided, aren’t they, Joe? They need a tune-up. That’s why we’re old friends, bro. And friends don’t let friends screw up.

He paused for a moment, making an allowance for their shared history. There was a lot of it.

Therefore … my friend … I am here to help you in the not screwing up part.

Without a breeze to relieve the dank conditions in the space, the two men had dissolved into their shirts. One, however, sweated a lot more than the other.

With seven feet of what they used to call green Army tape around Joe’s mouth and head, and another two rolls making him one, neck to ankles, with the chair he’d awakened in, Joe could hardly breathe. He had cause to sweat beyond the humidity.

Cloud sat in a creaky green metal office chair turned backward, muscular arms crossed on the back of his perch. His sleeves were rolled up above the elbows to reveal an old tattoo on his thick right forearm, a death’s head skull with a stiletto plunged into the right eye socket. The socket leaked a single teardrop of blood and the red-lipped skull was Joker-grinning like it had escaped from a Batman movie, the best one, with Jack Nicholson. Blackish text fading to old green in an arc under the Joker’s angular chin read The Gutter Lilies.

Joe sat immobile, one leg beginning to quiver, as Cloud regarded him. He chewed with an absent smile on the crust of a cheeseburger—mustard, no pickles—then pitched the fragment into the humid darkness. Unseen things scrabbled after the food and trailed high-pitched squeaks as they ran away with it, fighting viciously.

Joe, Joe … Cloud said. He shook his head as if disappointed in a child, and rubbed his hands together to dislodge the greasy crumbs of his short dinner. Like you would do before going to work.

Did you know I was a computer programmer at one time? Yeah, after Desert Storm, after I got out of the Army the first time. Way before we knew each other. He didn’t pause for an answer. "True story, systems analyst. Can you believe it? Jee-zus, I hated that job. I enjoy the order, though, the logic of programming. Still do some development for my own amusement."

Cloud smiled. He had Pentagon investigators chasing phantom Chinamen for months that time.

But I just couldn’t stomach the epic idiots I worked with.

He remembered how much wicked fun it was the day he finally quit. You jerk with the bull and you get the horns, dimmy. The building had been too damaged to reopen, and the company quietly folded shortly thereafter.

Good times, man. Good times.

I guess I wasn’t cut out to deal with civilian assholes. Army ones? Sure, maybe. At least there’s some commonality of purpose, some generally shared mindset. Commitment, y’know? Honor. Civilians, pure ones, no military experience, they don’t have any of that. They chase after wealth without compassion. Crave power without accountability. Demand respect without earning it. And what the fuck is gluten-free all about, anyway? I believe you understand these things, too.

As bound up as he was, Joe nodded in agreement. It was hard to do under all the green Army tape.

Civilian life is overrated and, apparently, it’s against the law to kill the assholes. I find that short-sighted. I was reenlisted by late ’99. Then 9/11 happened, and I was back in the show with you and our team.

Cloud unconsciously rubbed a hand up and down his tattoo.

Lost track of you when you got out, though. That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? Twelve years you’ve been missing, man. I’m looking forward to catching up with you when all this— He waved his hands in circles, fingers spread. —is over.

Cloud paused.

Maybe you saw my name in the news in recent years. Joe’s eyes widened just a little. He had, and it frightened him. Yeah, well. Don’t believe everything you hear, and none of what you read.

Cloud’s face hardened. Civilian life was okay, just not my sense, as my Japanese friends say. But even bad experiences usually produce some valuable take-away, Joe, y’know? Some lesson that’s learned if your mind is right. And I learned a valuable life lesson from working with computers. There are only two answers to every question, Joe: Yes, or no.

Cloud heaved a reluctant sigh. The men had been friends a long time. Battle buddies. It shouldn’t have to go like this, but it is what it is. Just business.

Well, listen, he said, can I getcha anything? There was no reply. Can I ask you one more time, please-please tell me where the case is? Then we’ll get you spruced up, forget all this bullshit ever happened and get a few beers. No harm, no foul, huh? The Tigers’ pennant game replay is on a big screen down at Nemo’s.

There was no immediate reply, but Joe wasn’t born stupid, and he did consider the last-ditch offer. This was an opportunity to avoid definite unpleasantness and restore an old friendship with the man, a friendship that would result in much hilarity, great food, many adult beverages and many adult females, among other consumables. You wanted the man to be your friend because he was proven to be a damned good one. There were legendary reasons why you wanted him as your friend much more than you wanted him as your enemy.

Those had been proven, too.

But while it was apparent that Joe was in very serious trouble, he believed the equally sure consequences of surrendering information on the people who now had the silver Halliburton case with the combination lock were probably grimmer, even if he could give it up. That had been made clear to Joe when the Arabs tortured him to get the briefcase, weeks before.

Now his friend was doing the same thing his enemies had, for the same reason—but Joe really didn’t know where the Arabs had gone with the case, which was unfortunate. But whatever happened tonight, Joe didn’t believe his friend would kill him. Or what are friends for?

Joe finished his internal debate and presented a head tilt and shrug of his shoulders that telegraphed a negative reply.

Well, okay then, Cloud said. You always were a tough bastard, weren’tcha? Y’know what, though? He brightened and sat up straight in the chair. We’ve been in tougher spots than this, man. Right? You and me?

He stood and raised an imaginary M4 special operations carbine to his left shoulder and silently shook it a few times as if firing on full auto. Lowering the invisible weapon, he looked down at Joe and smiled warmly.

We’ve helped each other through some close calls before. And we’ll get through this one together, too.

Cloud raised his eyebrows and leaned slightly in, peering at his friend as if for affirmation. None was forthcoming. Cloud nodded his head once, businesslike, and began.

All right. So, there are only two things in life to worry about, Joe. See there? Ones and zeroes, yes or no. Either you’re healthy, or you are sick. If you’re healthy, there is nothing to worry about. But if you’re sick, there are only two things to worry about: Either you get better, or you die.

On a table next to Cloud’s chair was an old ice pick and a new five-pound hammer. The ice pick was a classic and he picked it up carefully, suspended between his thumb and two fingers.

Through an opening in the cinder block wall where a window used to be, peals of thunder and strobes of lightning crawled closer.

Weathered, stained and rusty, the ice pick hadn’t been used to pick ice since Cloud’s father had driven a milk route in the 1960s. Cloud kept it as a warmhearted souvenir of those days when he jumped from his dad’s boxy, slope-nosed Divco milk truck as a boy, and double-timed a wire rack of clanky glass milk bottles, or orange juice or butter, to an unpainted metal box lined with cork on a porch or to a built-in milk chute, like some of the houses had.

He’d swap the full containers for the empties and run back to the truck. Every single trip his father would say, Good job, mister! and smile warmly at his boy. Every single trip.

Their rusted second-hand milk truck in those days wasn’t refrigerated. The milk and other products were kept fresh with angular blocks of crystal-clear ice big as beer kegs. It was the boy’s job to use his ice pick to dismantle the blocks and distribute the fragments over the dairy products so that nothing spoiled or was delivered to a customer warm.

The boy knew taking care of people was what kept the milk route alive, even as big grocery chains built their soulless superstores on every other block, the bastards.

As golden sun streaked the heavens above Norman Rockwell streets, the faded creamy yellow-and-green milk truck would trundle back to the dairy. The cranky diesel engine, warm and happy at last, purred its approval, and the last of the ice dissolved to water and left drippy wet trails, like memories, on the road.

Xavier Cloud’s father would reach out and clamp a giant’s right hand on his boy’s shoulder. He would give it a strong squeeze and say with honest sincerity, Thank you, son. Thank you for helping me today.

The boy would beam with pride in himself, in his work, and with an abiding love for his father. On chilly mornings, they would sip pungent, unsweetened coffee poured into a dented aluminum Thermos bottle cup and agree not to tell his mother, their little secret, fun and only for the boys.

Good and black, his father would say with his big grin, hoisting the battered cup in their regular toast, just as God and the U.S. Navy intended.

It was a glorious time, every precious moment. The worst day he’d ever had on that milk truck had been great. Those were the days, man, those were really the days. But those days were long gone.

The milk route finally died out in time. Soon after, the boy’s father died along with it. Life was unfair, but death was a bitch. This was a life lesson Cloud had reinforced many times, though he often thought calling it a life lesson was a contradiction in terms.

Unlike the ice pick, the hammer possessed no such golden glow. It was a spanking new Stanley Anti-Vibe 24 you could buy at Lowe’s or Home Depot for a reasonable price. It was a durable tool, with a wide head, a robust steel shank, and a grippy, rubber-clad handle.

Some wretched workmen in a smoky Taiwanese factory somewhere probably churned them out hundreds or even thousands per day, but so what? A nice tool was a nice tool. The hammer gleamed in the dim light in stark contrast to the rusty ice pick, but not all the dark red stains on the ice pick were rust.

So, Joe, see, if you’re sick and you get better, Cloud continued, there is nothing to worry about. But if you die, there are two things to worry about: Either you go to Heaven, or you go to Hell.

Cloud slowly rolled the ice pick back and forth in his right hand and that wry smile creased his face one more time. How might things have gone differently in life, he thought once again, if his father had lived, if his lonely mother hadn’t rebounded and married that abusive prick?

Well, that little love-nest deal hadn’t ended very well for old stepdad, had it?

Cloud picked up the hammer and positioned the ice pick just above Joe’s left kneecap. He moved it around his friend’s pressed and creased blue jeans until he found the location he was looking for, the quadriceps tendon at the top of the patella. From there it was a straight shot into the marrow of the tibia.

Joe’s eyes got big and watery then. The lower half of his face was so wrapped in the green tape that he could scarcely get much air through his nose, let alone cry out. That was going to be a cast-iron bitch when it came off his beard. Joe was as scared as a helpless man can be, especially a big man used to being in complete control.

A man who would do this same thing to someone else.

In last-ditch panic, Joe sucked in a deep, watery breath through his runny nose and bore down with all his might, grunting and flexing his big upper body to try and break the tape holding him.

Cloud sat back a few inches and waited, picturing cartoon steam jets shooting out of Joe’s ears to the sound of a Loony Tunes train whistle. But Joe’s effort to break free, as they both knew it would be, was momentary. And futile.

A wet stain smelling strongly of ammonia, body-building supplements, and inevitability spread in the crotch of Joe’s jeans. If Joe’s sweat-soaked right sleeve had been rolled up, it would have revealed a death’s head skull with a stiletto plunged into the right eye socket. The socket leaked a single teardrop of blood and the red-lipped skull was Joker-grinning like it had escaped from a Batman movie, the best one, with Jack Nicholson.

Blackish text fading to old green in an arc under the Joker’s angular chin read The Gutter Lilies, but it was hard to discern under Joe’s dark skin, so Joe’d had the letters scarred in. That effect had raised them so well above the skin that even Stevie Wonder could read them.

Cloud held the hammer at about half-choke for accuracy. This was a soft spot in the flesh and required little real force, but he couldn’t jab like he used to before the stinging carpal tunnel set in. He raised the hammer over the ice pick on his friend’s kneecap until it was even with his black shark’s eyes, fixing the sight picture on his friend just as he once had with a rifle aimed at bad guys.

If you go to Heaven, Joe, there’s nothing to worry about. He took a steadying breath, and exhaled.

Outside, the storm that had been threatening all evening let loose a monstrous thunderclap that shook dust from the building.

"But Joe, man, if you go to Hell ..."

CHAPTER TWO

C130J

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances

for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish playwright and novelist

A pristine yellow 2013 Corvette Z06 convertible rolled to a precise stop at the crosswalk. This Vette rumbled with low and spiteful intent, just a click more impatient than the factory intended when the car left its ancestral birthplace in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

The blonde driver drew admiring glances from passersby, men and women alike. Amber Corvette Watson pulled 58 mm Ray-Ban aviators from her face and turned to her conspicuous redhead passenger, Tracey Lexcellent. They were talking about Amber’s on again-off again long-distance romance with a much younger Michigan State Trooper boyfriend.

It was great when he was still stationed in the Detroit post, Amber groaned, but since his transfer he lives in just about the ass-crack of nowhere, outside Traverse City. Only it’s a beautiful little town and smells a lot better than this place.

She gestured to the downtown Detroit cityscape that surrounded them, and put her sunglasses back on.

But man, you can’t get there from here, nearly. I can drive there faster than I can fly. She blipped the Corvette’s throttle and the car rocked with an edgy growl. And when I drive, I don’t feel like I’m crammed in a crowded Greyhound bus with everything but chickens flyin’ around the cabin.

Amber reached over with her left hand and squeezed the cross-draw leather holster on her right hip, a habitual move that reassured her the gun was still there. She often did the same check with her leather credentials wallet.

And I also don’t have to worry about getting my hardware through security with those TSA boneheads.

Tracey laughed.

I know, right? Every one of those birds is absolutely sure he’s gonna bust Osama bin Laden coming through on a tourist visa. I think most of them don’t even know he’s dead.

Amber smiled her secret smile, thought again about her muscular, youthful state trooper boyfriend, and shook her head slowly. He did live way up north and, yes, they had to find time to be together and, yes, it was hardly ever convenient—but yes, the former active-duty Recon Marine officer took pride in his physical appearance, and he was a very collectible specimen.

I dunno if I’m going up there this weekend or not, she said. We might have to work. We workin’?

Tracey shrugged indecisively.

But my boy makes me feel better, y’know? She revved the car’s growly V-8 a few hundred rpm and held it for emphasis, and the two women grinned.

A lot better.

The traffic light changed. With only the smallest chirp of wheelspin, the Vette accelerated smartly away from the intersection under the green.

Stopped in a vehicle behind the Corvette, a man had been admiring the bright yellow sports car and its scenic occupants as it receded from him. He smiled at the classic white-on-blue Michigan license plate reading 2HOTT4U bolted in the Corvette’s license plate receptacle. The man had an interest in personalized license plates, and the coincidence he enjoyed was remarkable even to him.

Michigan didn’t require a front license plate, but if it had, Amber might have considered her rear-view mirror as she pulled away and wondered about the license plate on the black Dodge Magnum R/T station wagon that read IMHOT4U.

The man in the powerful car smiled. As he turned left off Woodward Avenue, he wondered whether he might ever see them again.

CHAPTER THREE

c130j

It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.

W.C. Fields (1880-1946), American actor and comedian

Tabithae Wilkins is a stout woman who supervises a large Michigan Secretary of State office in downtown Detroit. This is the familiar state office for acquiring vehicle registrations and license plates, driver’s licenses, and so on.

Her mother named her for Samantha Stevens’ little white girl, Tabitha, in the old TV series Bewitched, but she wanted her daughter’s name to be more distinctive, so she added the letter e at the end and pronounced it Tah-BEE-thay. With similar inspiration drawn through a four-inch length of glass crack pipe one day, her mother later named Tabithae’s younger brother Lemonjello, and pronounced it La-MOHN-shello. That poor boy was ate up with the dumb-ass because of his mother’s drug use during pregnancy, and he spent most of his time down at the Goodwill, sorting clothes.

Tabithae wasn’t a bad person. She was a lonely, slightly heavy, never-married single woman, almost broke sometimes, who just got by on her salary, paycheck to paycheck. A woman her age had needs she couldn’t satisfy with the money the State of Michigan paid her to renew driver’s licenses and issue car tags and manage an office of mostly menopausal or high or angry women, as well as a few old men who did the same things the women did, just slower and with more bitching.

So, when special circumstances arose, or she was sent a friend of a friend, of a friend, she wouldn’t do anything too terribly out of the ordinary, but she could help people out of some jams or get a registration squared away that sometimes didn’t have all the most perfect paperwork on Earth. She also helped people get personalized vehicle license plates that wouldn’t normally be available.

Like other states with vanity license plate programs, Michigan doesn’t permit obvious profanities or expressions that might offend tender public sensibilities. Absent that, almost anything was fair game if it wasn’t spoken for by someone else and could be spelled with a combination of seven or fewer letters, numbers, or a few symbols. What remained was a broad and creative range of possibilities.

Ambiguous plate requests, often turned down by one of the anxious old biddies at the customer counter, sometimes could get through with her approval, though. Like the time a friend of a friend, a shapely working girl who had a specific clientele with special desires, wanted ULICKME. That couldn’t get through the computer even with Tabithae’s help, but she convinced the customer that ULIKME would get through if she told the desk clerk it meant you like me.

Small victories were still victories, and she still got paid.

Under different circumstances—like a higher salary—Tabithae would never have entertained the unusual requests, because special treatment was strictly against the regulations. She was careful, though, didn’t bend the rules much, and she made a lot of friends in high places.

High friends in low places, really, is what she would bray at parties when drinking too much, laughing too loud, and being way too indiscreet, but what was the difference? These people all had money they wanted to spend and, at the end of the day, she was a public servant in the customer satisfaction business.

So, when the man phoned and said Bobby sent him, and could she help him with a licensing thing, Tabithae said yes, yes she could.

Eighteen minutes after closing time she let him in through the office back door. All the other good state employees had bolted eighteen minutes prior, so there were no worries about anyone observing the curious work ahead.

The tall, handsome man was obviously in great shape, even under his expensive suit coat. He was very attractive in a slightly older guy way, though she saw the birth date on a strange federal police credential he displayed, and he was fifteen or twenty years older than he looked, the blue-eyed devil.

If Tabithae wasn’t a particularly law-abiding state employee, she was indeed a loyal American. She took immediate note of the man’s Middle Eastern name on his business card, plus he was a cop of some kind, seemed like, and here he was making a side deal with Tabithae after closing time.

She worried for a moment about getting rolled up in some sting. Every person she had ever done a favor for—that Bobby, one—would give her up in a hot second if they thought it would keep their own asses out of a jam. The attractive man’s money promise wasn’t enough to make her go to jail.

All this rattled around in Tabithae’s head until the olive-skinned man fixed those blue eyes and long eyelashes on her and smiled. That lit her up like the marquee of the Fox Theater on opening night. She forgot everything else. If this gorgeous man is here to sting me, Tabithae thought dreamily, let’s get to stingin’.

The man wanted a certain combination of letters and numbers that spelled no profanity and made no off-color joke—in fact, she discovered the perfectly legal license combination had already been issued randomly to a motorist in her county of Wayne. That meant it was even easier to help the gentleman. She had done such things before.

Tabithae called the motorist from her office phone so that the telephone Caller ID would indicate ST OF MICH. She informed him in her most bureaucratic manner that the plate had been flagged for an unspecified problem that she couldn’t discuss.

No, she told the motorist, he wasn’t in trouble—and wouldn’t it just be easier for everyone if it stayed that way?

However, Tabithae said, the problem was such that, regrettably, the state was canceling the motorist’s current registration, and she was sending an officer to retrieve the plate right away.

The woman talked the motorist through the procedure of ordering a new license plate, which she was happy to execute right there on the phone while he waited. The motorist had a personalized plate option in mind and, bonus, it was available in the system. Tabithae told the obliging man that, in recognition of his cooperation, she wouldn’t charge the extra fee the state demanded for a custom license plate.

In fact, the state computer didn’t permit such generosity at taxpayer expense, but she would pay the fee from a debit card she maintained for certain personal purchases, some via the internet, that required more discretion. The balance on this account had run down nearly to the basement, but she had enough in there to pay the registration fee tonight, and yesss baby, by lunchtime tomorrow the account balance would be at an all-time high. An all-time high, do you hear me?

She promised the man on the phone that his new plate would arrive within ten to fourteen business days, she clucked sympathetically about how 9/11 had changed everything in America blah-blah, she thanked him again, and the thing was done.

Before leaving to get the plate, the handsome man took Tabithae’s limp, damp handshake and thanked her, all up close and in her personal space. He was so close that she was certain the back of his hand brushed a fat breast and she thought she might fall lightheaded to the floor right in front of him.

When he smiled that smile at Tabithae, a bead of sweat ran straight and cool down her spine and she could taste that coppery, electric taste on her tongue. Then he was gone, leaving her slightly delirious and with a steadying hand on the counter.

The attractive man drove up Jefferson to the motorist’s flat on the north side of Beaconsfield, just down from the Detroit-Grosse Pointe Park border. He parked a solid black Chevy Tahoe SUV porcupined with extra roof antennas and shrouded in the blackest window glass in front of an older two-family house with a large, covered porch and two opposing sets of steps.

At the lower-flat door to the motorist’s home, the man pulled from a different pocket a second police ID wallet with the gold badge of a Michigan State Police lieutenant and matching photo credentials. He did his own curt yeah-this-sucks sympathy act, got the plate off the man’s station wagon himself, and delivered the temporary registration for the new personalized plate the cooperative man had asked Tabithae to issue.

Okay, Mr. Sal—Sala—Saladin, is it? the man said. We appreciate your cooperation. Here’s the paperwork. Have a nice rest of your day.

When the paperwork exchange occurred, the motorist had to lean out of the door of his flat and into the fading light. When he did so, an American flag pin in the officer’s lapel silently captured the motorist’s crystal-clear digital image.

The paperwork said the motorist was getting a new vanity plate that read imhot4u. The agent shook his head as he drove away in the black Tahoe, thinking imhot4u is such a load of crap.

The man returned to the licensing office and Tabithae. She concluded the transaction by re-registering the confiscated plate to information the attractive man provided from a black leather Levenger notebook. He didn’t show any prior registration or insurance documents, like the state required for plate transfers, but he had all the correct insurance policy and vehicle identification numbers for a run-of-the-mill 1978 Chrysler Newport four-door. Mint green.

He had shown her that impressive federal gold badge, though, and a fine business card that said he was from some Homeland Security office or another, but he didn’t let her keep the card or any of his notes. When she asked him why he didn’t take care of this in his own office, he just smiled and said nothing.

The state’s computers cross-checked the data for accuracy, and she processed the transaction. The attractive man thanked Tabithae and complimented her on her efficiency and patriotism. He emphasized the need for discretion and confirmed her agreement with that.

She thought he might have been openly flirting with her a little bit now that the business segment of the program was concluded.

He held her departing handshake for additional seconds, and told her how much he personally appreciated a state office working so well with a federal office. While he couldn’t tell her why this deal seemed so odd and hush-hush, he implied that grave national security issues were at stake, and then he paid her in bundles of brand-new hundred-dollar notes—a lot of them—pulled from one of those wide black briefcases she’d seen pilots carry onto airplanes.

Tabithae’s breath quickened with every bundle dropping onto the countertop, plentiful as autumn leaves, and she thought this was all she really needed to know.

As the attractive man drove away, Tabithae daydreamed about what having a class act like that in her life could mean. He was obviously a powerful man, physically and professionally, a person with connections, with class. She loved that he was so good-looking—and he had money, lord.

He had given her enough cash in this one deal that she needed to borrow an office cash bag to carry it to her night deposit. The big one. Now she could buy a solid black Buick Lacrosse, the all-wheel-drive one, that was her modest dream car.

Honey, he just dripped status, too. He wore a two-piece dark blue suit with a little faint stripe to it that whispered powerrr ever so faintly. She thought it was expensive and probably had a very recognizable label sewn into its lining. And he wore the most highly polished shoes she had ever seen, those fancy ones that businessmen wore with the swirls and holes punched in the toes and sides.

Most crazy of all was the expensive deal he’d made for a simple license plate that wasn’t even personalized.

CHAPTER FOUR

c130j

Needing to have things perfect is the surest

way to immobilize yourself with frustration.

Wayne Dyer (1940-2015), American psychologist

Corvette Watson and Tracey Lexcellent accelerated hard down southbound Woodward Avenue, but only covered four blocks when they were slowed to a crawl and then a dead stop next to Campus Martius Park in a gridlocked traffic backup.

Come on! Tracey yelled to no one. We have no freakin’ time for this right now.

Tracey typically had two speeds, fast and faster. She unbuckled her seat belt, raised manicured hands to the convertible’s windshield header, and pulled herself up into a standing position.

Behind the Vette and on both sides, the heads of three men and one woman swiveled up in unison and locked on her. Their gazes lingered just a little long and then they looked away, afraid she would catch them staring in open admiration.

Tracey stood a wasp-waisted five feet, nine and one-half inches tall, with alabaster skin, large breasts, and an unruly mane of thick, red hair. Standing in the open-top sports car, Tracey, the men, and the woman all appreciated the view for entirely different reasons.

Can you see what the hold-up is, Trace? Amber asked. She took a fast habitual glance at her instrument panel to review the gauges and determine all was well with the car.

"No, Christ, she said in frustration, using the palm of her right hand to push a wind-blown tangle of red hair off her face. But there are blue lights by the City-County Building and there is one dark ambulance on the sidewalk on the Woodward side. Uniforms are detouring the traffic away from Woodward at the Larned and Jefferson lights."

Tracey looked around and surveyed the scene in their immediate area. In the center of three lanes just north of Fort Street, the Chevy was locked in by unbroken southbound traffic in the left lane, and by a smoking rust bucket of prehistoric Plymouth Voyager minivan to the rear. The string of stopped traffic gummed up the southbound lane to their right—but there was still a little bit of space behind a hulking SUV next to the Corvette.

A chubby, middle-aged woman in a black Buick Lacrosse was thoughtfully stopped about half a car length behind the SUV. The woman craned her head out of her window to see what was going on up ahead, though all she could see was a conga line of brake lights.

Tracey did a fast 360-degree look around, lingering for just a moment on the hulking Ford truck stopped in the lane next to them.

Hold on a sec, she said. Pull forward a few inches. I have an idea.

Tracey removed