“I got no stories for you, Anna,” I lied. “Just a private citizen living a quiet life come to check on an uncle. Spastic colon. Not worth a column inch.” I laughed and said, “You just can’t quit the game, can you?”

“Taking an online class in medical billing,” she said. “And I got a book manuscript out to a couple New York agents.”

“Hard-hitting journalism stuff?”

“Romantic time travel.”

“Oh.”

By eleven that evening, the press conference hadn’t materialized.

The print reporters, including Anna, grumbled as they left for the bars along West Grand Boulevard. The radio guys traded swigs from a flask before heading out. The TV news people gave their audience a compelling and thought-provoking live report on the likely reasons the news conference didn’t happen. Then they, too, left for a bar.

I told the pretty young receptionist wearing a white burka that I needed to talk to one of Vic Bronson’s security guards.

One of Bronson’s smaller security guards.

She asked my name. I smiled and said, “Elwood Singer. People call me Lockjaw.”

After five minutes, the security guard I’d gone toe to toe with at Bronson’s office—and Bronson’s part-time playmate—entered the lobby.

“Oh, for fuck’s sakes,” he said upon seeing me. “You want me to call five-oh on you again, homeboy?”

“No, homeboy,” I said. “I want you to call your boss.”

“Maybe you ain’t heard, bro, but my boss is lying upstairs—”

“No,” I said. “Your other boss. The so-called Albino.”

He stared at me for a long, hard moment before taking a step into me and harshly whispering, “You, my friend, are a dead man.”

“Make the fucking call—bro,” I said. “Or they’ll be mopping your ball-sack off the lobby floor in about five seconds.”

30

30

As is often the case during a Michigan winter—especially in this, the disconcerting age of climate change—the weather had gone from near-cryogenic with four-foot-high hardened snowdrifts to forty-two degrees, sunshine and the imminent threat of flooding in a day. While most folks chose to complain about Michigan’s weather being bipolar, I saw it in a much more positive light: since climate change continues at its current disastrous rate, a humid, 95-degree summer day in Detroit would likely be a skin-shearing 123-degree melanoma factory in LA, Phoenix, Vegas, Dallas and a host of other western and southern cities.

Oh, and Michigan will still have a fifth of the world’s fresh water.

A large part of my moderately renewed spirit came from the fact that I’d gained back the weight I’d lost due to my torture injuries, and thanks to K at Club Brutus, most of that weight gain was pure muscle. My boxing coach, had mentored me to a faster, more accurate delivery of punches.