After changing into my street clothes, I planned to forego protein stacking in favor of a Cobb salad at Schmear’s Deli. Something that would help move out the pesky remains of four whole rotisserie chickens consumed that week.

As I walked through the first floor of Club Brutus toward the door, members had stopped lifting, running, stretching and cycling. They were all staring up at TVs suspended from the club’s ceiling or hung on walls. Vic Bronson, Detroit real estate billionaire, had just suffered a life-threatening heart attack.

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29

Time was, all you needed for good sleuthing was snappy banter, a wink and a nod with the ladies, comfortable shoes, an assortment of fake business cards, a high tolerance for whiskey, a few extra bucks you could slip a bent maître d’ and maybe a Burberry trench coat with a “gat” stuffed in the deep pocket of thread-bare Brooks Brothers wool slacks.

Nowadays all you need is Hot Pockets Pepperoni Pizza microwave sandwiches to pay a kid with a laptop. In my case, a twenty-year-old Michigan Upper Peninsula Native girl with a bad attitude.

“Why should I help you?” Lucy said, sitting on my kitchen counter, arms folded defiantly across her chest. “You hurt Jimmy’s feelings.”

“How’d you know about Jimmy and me?”

“We’re mostly pals. We talk. And play video games.”

“Okay, listen,” I said. “Jimmy and I just had a disagreement about what it means to help a friend—”

“You know he could’ve taken your face off, right?” she said. “He’s, like, this Bruce Lee/Jackie Chan martial arts monster!”

“Lucy!” I said. “Focus! Are you gonna help me or not?”

She stared at me hard for a moment.

“Reimburse Jimmy for the gun,” she said, “and apologize to him. And not in that macho-guy kind of ‘Hey, bro, we cool ’n’ shit? Wanna get some buffalo wings and beers?’ way. No! I mean a real, honest-to-goodness apology!”

After establishing that Jimmy’s gun wasn’t registered and there was no background check trail that could double back on him (welcome to the Land of the Free and Home of the Well-Armed!), I agreed to buy it from him and lock it away. And I promised Lucy that next time I saw Jimmy I would sincerely apologize. No buffalo wings or beer.

“Seriously?”

“Scout’s honor.”

“Scouts are like Jesuits, dude,” Lucy said. “They have no honor. Just promise like yourself. Like a marine.”

The security around Vic Bronson at Henry Ford Hospital was near-impenetrable, and I’m sure every nurse, doctor and orderly within his orbit wasn’t only bound by the rules of HIPAA but also NDAs. It probably didn’t hurt that while Bronson was being wheeled into Emergency, a couple new state-of-the-art heart-lung machines were being unloaded at the hospital’s receiving dock courtesy of a generous donation from Bronson’s empire.

Iron fist.

Velvet glove.