The question that rattled in my mind like a can of oil bouncing around in a trunk on a dirt road was why? Why did he need more power than he already possessed? The why had always intrigued me: Why did a billionaire need a second billion dollars? Why did dictators risk what they already controlled to gain more? I couldn’t wait to get to the office to start sorting out these thoughts. This is what we did best at the Pro: take a complex situation and run it through the mind grinder to make it easy to understand and digest. It was going to be a long night, and I expected to love every minute of it.

And then I got to the parking lot.

12

I did not have the emotional attachment to Van that I had to Mighty Chair or Cher. I liked Van; he was reliable and dependable. He was always there when I needed him and required little maintenance. But to my mind, Van lacked the panache of Mighty Chair or the warmth of Cher.

I had parked Van at a diagonal to the curb in the last handicapped spot on the right. There were several feet of empty space next to me, painted with blue crisscrossed lines prohibiting parking. That was pretty much a necessity when I was driving alone. It left me sufficient room to remotely slide open the side panel and extend the ramp. Van’s single front seat was on tracks that enabled it to slide back and forth between the driver’s slot and the passenger side, which enabled someone else to drive. If Jenny or someone else was with me, I didn’t need that extra room on my right; I could park anywhere. The other person could back Van out of a spot and lower the ramp for me. But if I was alone, that space was essential.

Jenny had met me at Lucille’s and we were planning on going home together. Instead, she had taken an Uber back to the Hill. But some jerk had wedged an expensive sports car in the restricted space on Van’s right. In their quest to protect that car, they had not left enough room for me to extend and lower the ramp.

Yes, I was pissed. I had spent considerable thought and the necessary time and money to create a world in which I could live a life that was as close to normal as possible. Most things just required a little extra planning and anticipating the hurdles I might encounter. The important people in my life had become so used to Chair that they rarely even thought about it. At times they had even won bar bets, usually a free round, wagering that Chair and I could complete some esoteric task. But this one, this was tough. If I had one of the new self-driving vans, I could have backed it out, but I didn’t. And I couldn’t materialize the extra few feet I needed.