I got a bit of a surprise when Vic Bronson exited the bathroom accompanied by the shortest member of his three-man security detail. The little man with the big gun. They were holding hands and laughing in their white terry cloth bathrobes as they trod across an expanse of thick carpet toward the bed.

I said, “Y’all moisturize?”

Bronson jumped at least a foot in the air.

His partner suddenly struck a martial arts stance. I think it was “crouching dickweed, hidden asswipe.”

I shot him with a Taser. He did a twelve-hundred-volt jitterbug/krump for maybe three seconds before collapsing unconscious to the floor.

After Bronson recovered from his initial shock, he managed to fumble a phone from the pocket of his plush white robe. “Security alert,” he said. “Master bedroom. Security alert.”

“Yeah, about that,” I said, standing. From my black tactical bag, I proceeded to pour out an arsenal of Tasers, semi-auto pistols, four retractable composite batons and two MAC-10s I’d taken from his now mostly unconscious perimeter security team. “If I were you, I’d start interviewing other personal security firms. In the meantime, why don’t you have a seat and we’ll have a chat?” I gestured to a corner of his high-tech king-sized bed. “Do I smell lavender with a hint of patchouli?”

“My—bodywash,” Bronson said distractedly.

“Seriously, Vic—you need to try African shea butter,” I said. “Best moisturizer on the planet.”

“I don’t keep cash here. Anything else, you can have.”

“Wow,” I said. “Generous. But let’s start with you handing over the truth.”

“The—truth?”

“Yeah, I know that’s a hard concept for your billion-dollar brain to wrap itself around.” He started to say something, but I stopped him. “Before we begin, I should probably warn you: I’m having a really shitty winter so far. My best friend—my godfather—was shot. An old man who owned a building I think you were trying to acquire through less-than-legal means was murdered. Three freshman assassins came after me, and I killed one of them. And a little man called Mr. Sloane made a lot of trouble for me before staging his own death and disappearing with ten million dirty dollars. And that’s put me in somebody’s crosshairs as the thief—”

“Sloane is—he’s dead?” Bronson said.

“He’d like everyone to think so.”

“But you . . .”

“I’m not buying it,” I said, pacing in front of a clearly distraught Bronson. “I think he’s probably been looking for a way out of whatever this is for a long time. The planets aligned in Detroit, and poof—he’s a ghost.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Bronson said, his eyes wide with disbelief. “Jesus.”