I felt the barrel of a gun press into the back of my ribs. One of Quinn’s private security guards was leaning hard against me his breath condensating on my neck when he said, “Mothafucka, you’d best be easing up.”
I clamped the four fingertips and thumb of my right hand on Quinn’s trachea and said, “You’re gonna tell this slab of beef to stop humping my ass right now, or swear to God—I will rip out your throat.”
Quinn managed to squeak, “Do what he says.”
“You sure, boss?”
“Does it look like he’s fuckin’ around, asshole?” I bellowed.
The barrel of the bodyguard’s gun eased out of my ribs, and he took two steps back. I loosened my grip from around Quinn’s throat.
One of the cops spoke into his walkie: “City Hall detail eight one eight. We have a situation—”
“We do not have a situation!” Quinn shouted. “Now everybody go about your damned business!” He pointed to his bleeding bodyguard. “You’re fired. You and your partner. I’ll leave a jar of pennies on the steps for you.”
“Boss—”
“Get the fuck gone!” Quinn said. “Billy, escort these two cooning-and-baffooning jagoffs outta here. They’re the real problem!”
“Yessir!” Billy gestured for the two very confused DPD blues to help.
“So, what now, Detective Snow?” Quinn was trembling.
“I’m thinking we move this party to your office, where I can beat the bloody shit outta you and still be well within reach of a good scotch.”
“How ’bout that scotch first,” Quinn said quietly. “Then we can discuss your daily rate for personal protection services.”
“Well, I did not see that coming.”
Behind the closed doors of his opulent office, Quinn was about to offer me what I was sure would have been an exceptional scotch whisky. I gave his left popliteal fossa a good kick. He dropped to his Persian rug.
“You said I was ‘screwing’ the people of Detroit,” I said as he tried to scramble away from any more damage. “You called me a ‘con artist’ and an ‘opportunist.’”
“Hey, man, that’s what the people was saying about you! If I wanna keep this job, I say what they say. It wasn’t nothin’ personal, man! That’s all it was, brotha! Politics!”
“My mom lost fifteen pounds during the trial,” I said, following him as he crawled away from me. “Couldn’t eat. She got sicker and sicker. Down to ninety pounds. Cops my dad knew his whole career—guys he’d partnered with!—blue-walled him. Blood pressure through the roof. Blood sugar spiked. That sound like ‘politics’ to you, you sonuvabitch?”
“Snow, please—come on, man,” Quinn pleaded. “I need help, man! Word around town is you somebody who knows how to handle a ruckus. Any ruckus! I’ll—I can pay you!”