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  Lacy agreed. “What are you doing after work? You still owe me a dinner at the mansion, you know.”

  “I do, but it can’t be tonight. I’ve meetings until midnight. How about we plan for later in the week?”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Are you okay with Walter staying with you?”

  “Don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

  “He’s a good friend. You two will get along just fine.” Then he told her, “I wish I didn’t have these glass walls.”

  “Why?”

  “So I could sit you in my lap and steal a few kisses.”

  “Mmm,” Lacy purred. “I’d like that. Might even show you my little purple garter belt too.”

  Drake’s manhood tightened. Speculating on what other sexy delights she might have on under her conservative blue suit and pearls was so distracting, he knew that if he didn’t get her out of his office he wasn’t going to get any work done for the rest of the day. With a grin on his face, he told her, “You need to go back to your office, Miss Hot Pants, before I find a dark corner and take you up on that offer.”

  Playfully, Lacy looked around the room and pointed to the corner holding a large standing U.S. flag. “How about that one?”

  “Out!”

  She laughed. “All right. I can take a hint. ’Bye Drake.”

  “’Bye, baby. If it’s not too late when I get done tonight, I’ll give you a call.”

  She mimicked a kiss and left him to his work, but it took the mayor a long while to stop thinking about little purple garter belts and concentrate on what he was supposed to be doing.

  The surprise run-in with Bales stayed with Parker all day. He kept seeing that flash of fear in Bales’s eyes. True, Bales recovered quickly, but not quickly enough for him not to wonder what it meant. And who was the other man? Parker’s sense that he knew him from somewhere was strong enough to make him stop by the guard station at the end of the day and ask to see the sign-in log.

  The female guard handed it over. The log was a security measure. Every nonemployee entering the building for whatever reason had to sign in and sign out. Parker went back through the names until he found Bales. Right above it was the name L. Durant. It registered with Parker like a light turned on in a pitch-black room. Parker had seen Durant in the papers. He then looked across from their names to the column where they’d written their destinations. L. Green. Parker’s heart began to race. What had they been doing in her office? He could see Durant visiting her; the man was a tree hugger too. But Bales? Alarms went off inside. Surely Bales wouldn’t be stupid enough to drop a dime on the operations of Parker Environmental? He drew in a few deep breaths and handed the clipboard back to the guard. “Thanks.”

  Walking swiftly to the garage to get his car, Parker pulled out his phone and called Fish. They needed to meet to talk about this. Fish came on the line. They set up a time, and Parker got into his vehicle. As he stuck the key into the ignition, he noticed that he was sweating and that inside of his clothes he was soaking wet.

  At that night’s NIA meeting, Drake told the others on the board what he’d learned from Lacy.

  Myk asked, “What’s she planning to do?”

  Drake shrugged. “Not sure, but she can’t do anything until she hears back from Durant.”

  Myk said, “I wish we knew what this Bales has as evidence.”

  One of the female board members said, “I hate to say this, but it needs to be said. We can fry Parker longer if we get him on the federal charges.” She looked over at Drake sympathetically. “Mr. Mayor, I know this is your city, but those barrels are small potatoes next to murder and bringing drugs over the border.”

  Drake met her eyes. Even though he didn’t want to admit it, he had to look at the big picture, and he knew she was right. “Okay. I’ll have her back off Parker for now. She is not going to like it, but it’s all we have.”

  Someone asked, “Is the driver of the Parker rig that was busted bringing in the pot from Canada still in the county jail?”

  Myk answered, “Yes. He’s still not talking, but then he hasn’t made bail yet either. You’d think Parker would have taken care of him by now.”

  “Maybe the driver will get mad enough to sing.”

  The meeting continued, but all Drake could think about was Lacy and how he was going to explain.

  The next morning Lacy was just hanging up her coat when Janika stuck her head in the door. “Ms. Curry’s on line one for you.”

  “Thanks.” Lacy picked up the receiver. “Lacy Green.”

  “’Morning, Ms. Green. This is Rhonda Curry.”

  “’Morning,” Lacy said cheerily.

  “The mayor would like to see you as soon as possible.”

  Lacy paused and wondered why he hadn’t just picked up the phone. She’d waited for him to call last night, but he hadn’t. “Do you know what this is concerning?”

  “No,” Rhonda said, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Okay. Be right up.”

  Lacy let Ida know where she was going, then left the office to grab the elevator.

  Upstairs, the outer office was packed with people lined up to see the mayor. When Lacy entered, Rhonda, wearing a stunning black suit, beckoned her over. “This way.”

  Lacy could see folks watching her as she followed Rhonda to the hallway that led to Drake’s office. He was on the phone, but gestured her to a seat. Rhonda exited and closed the door softly.

  From the conversation he was having, Lacy assumed another city water main had broken. The city’s ancient infrastructure was being held together with bobby pins and prayer. The millions of dollars needed for genuine repairs just weren’t in the city’s budget. He finally said good-bye to the person on the other end.

  “’Morning,” Lacy said.

  “’Morning. I need to talk to you about something.”

  Lacy studied him. He looked very serious, and it made her wary. “What’s up?”

  “Parker Environmental. I need you to pull up on the case for a while.”

  Even more wary now, she asked, “Why?”

  “There are some other forces at work, and I don’t want anyone’s toes stepped on.”

  “In English, please.”

  Drake could see the skepticism in her eyes. “Let’s just say you aren’t the only dog in this hunt.”

  “Is this political?”

  “In some ways, yes.”

  “You know I got fired from my last job because the polluters had more clout than I did. Is that what this is about?”

  “No, baby. Definitely not.”

  “Okay, but we’re going to let Parker or whoever is doing the dumping just go on about their business?”

  Drake’s jaw tightened. “For now, it’s the only option.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “I know. All I can say is, Parker is the subject of an official investigation.”

  “Federal?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “So what am I supposed to do when Lenny brings me the pictures and videos from Bales?”

  “Hold on to them until I say it’s okay.”

  Lacy sighed.

  “Sorry.”

  She shrugged. “Hey.” She asked then, “What if I decide to do my job anyway?”

  “Then you won’t have a job.”

  “You’d fire me?”

  “As much as I enjoy your company, in a heartbeat.”

  Lacy’s lips tightened and she stood.

  “Baby, look—”

  Lacy shook her head. “It’s okay. You obviously have your reasons for doing this, and I’m going to trust you enough to follow your directive. I don’t have to like it, though.”

  “That’s fair.”

  “So is the city going to send me on a paid vacation somewhere since you don’t want me to work?”

  Drake didn’t care for the sarcasm, even if he did deserve it. “No. You have the Blight Court to put together. Work on that.”

  “You
’re the boss. Anything else?”

  He shook his head.

  “Thank you.” And she walked out.

  By the time she’d walked back into the Environmental Office, she was sure steam was rising off of her twists, because Ida took one look at her and said, “Girl, you look hot. What did he say?”

  “For us to pull up on the barrels investigation.”

  “What? Why?”

  “All he said was that there were other dogs in the hunt.”

  “Like who?”

  “You got me. He wouldn’t tell me.”

  Ida looked as confused as Lacy had been upstairs in Drake’s office. “Well, we know he’s a good man,” she said. “Just go with the flow and see what happens.”

  “And while we’re waiting for this good man to fess up, the dumpings will keep flowing into the city of Detroit.”

  Angry, Lacy continued her walk to her office. Once inside, she slammed the door.

  For the rest of the week she fumed and worked on setting up the Blight Court. Her days were spent coordinating moves with the various agencies involved, like the courts, law enforcement, and the state’s environmental departments. The staff worked on the revised warning letters that would be sent out to violators and whispered about Lacy and the mayor not speaking. Although she didn’t realize it, everyone in the building knew hers and Drake’s business, and down in the mailroom some of the clerks were even taking bets on when the Big Chill, as folks were calling the stalemate, would end.

  Sixteen

  Parker was in his office trying to play the chess game that had become his life. He was losing. According the federal agent who’d stopped by yesterday, the dogs would be coming in tomorrow morning. His lawyer said nothing in the search warrant implicated him personally in a crime, only that the government was operating on what they’d told the judge was a solid tip. Parker knew better. The agent had asked him all kinds of questions about Wheeler. Did Wheeler have a woman on the side? Did he have gambling debts? Did he know that Wheeler had a sizable amount of cash stashed in the Seychelles Islands? Parker knew Wheeler had been embezzling, but the number the fed quoted as being in Wheeler’s account just about knocked him to his knees. When Parker asked how and when he could get the funds returned, he was told the process couldn’t begin until the accountant or his corpse was found. Once again Parker couldn’t wait to run across Wheeler in hell.

  The other big problem involved Bales. He was nowhere to be found. The old lady who lived next door to him told Fish that Bales told her he had a new job waiting for him down South and that he’d sent his family on ahead last week. As close as Fish and Parker could determine, Bales had disappeared right after Parker saw him downtown. He hadn’t even picked up his last check. Parker was furious. Bales’s disappearance left him vulnerable because he had no idea what Bales might have said in Green’s office.

  Now, finding Durant had become imperative. More than likely, any evidence left behind would be in his hands or Green’s, and Parker wanted whatever it was. Fish was scouring the streets. Parker took heart in one thing: If Durant was still in town, Fish would find him. Parker also wanted to grill Lacy Green, but he couldn’t just snatch her up. She had to be handled creatively, so he decided he would put the screws to her in a different kind of way.

  Lacy was concerned that she hadn’t heard from Lenny Durant. Just a little while ago she’d called the number he’d written down the night they met, but his mother said she hadn’t seen him in days. Lacy wondered where he was. After he left her office with Bales, she’d assumed he’d contact her that same day or, at the latest, the next day, but he hadn’t showed. Not that it mattered now. Since Drake pulled the plug on her investigation, she couldn’t do anything with Bales’s evidence even if she had it in her possession.

  Drake. Thinking about him made her sigh. A week had gone by since that conversation in his office. In spite of the way they parted, she missed him. Missed him a lot. She and Walter spent their evenings honing Lacy’s skills on the firing range, playing the occasional board game, and watching lots of NBA basketball, but the more Lacy and Drake were apart, the more she wanted him near.

  Ida stuck her head around the door. “Security just called. Your car alarm’s going off.”

  “Oh, shoot.”

  She grabbed her keys and ran to the elevator. For some reason, the elevator took a long time to get to her floor. When it finally arrived, she saw why. It was filled with laughing, giggling middle school kids. Lacy supposed they were in the building for a field trip.

  She finally reached the garage and was taken aback by all the activity and people. She saw police and the security men and women from the garage. Lacy could also hear the loud pulsating blare of a car alarm. Whatever was going on, she’d have to find out later. She hurried off in the direction of the alarm.

  To her confusion, there were policemen at that end of the parking structure too. Again she wondered why. Had a car been stolen, someone shot, what? When she saw Drake and Walter, her steps slowed. Drake looked especially grim.

  “Hey,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “I need your keys.”

  “I can turn off the alarm, Drake. Are all these folks down here because of my alarm?”

  “That and something else. Give me the keys.”

  She turned to Walter, who said, “You don’t want to see—”

  Lacy pushed past them, intending to get some answers, but when she saw the car, she stopped, and so did her heart. The keys slipped from her fingers. The beautiful coupe her mama had given her was covered in what looked like buckets of blood and gore. The ghastly sight roiled her stomach so violently, she turned away and involuntarily retched until she had nothing left.

  She remembered somebody handing her a bottle of water so she could rinse her mouth, and then Drake was seated beside her. He placed his arm around her shoulders and held her as she watched the tow truck drag the blood-covered coupe away.

  Only later, after he and Walter walked her back to her office to get her belongings so she could go home, did they tell her about the note.

  Drake said, “The police took it to test for prints.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Where’s Lenny Durant?”

  Lacy held his grim eyes. “This has turned into a nightmare.”

  Everyone in the office agreed.

  Lenny Durant drove through the early morning streets looking for a place to hide. Word was, a fish-eyed, light-skinned man with a pocked face had been asking after him all over town. Lenny was pretty sure Parker was behind the search, especially after discovering that Bales and his whole family had left town. Bales had talked much stuff on the ride back from Lacy Green’s office about what he would do to Parker if he harmed his family. He’d even handed over the evidence, as he’d promised, but in the end, Lenny realized, he must have decided he didn’t want to take on Goliath after all and moved his family out of harm’s way. Lenny didn’t really blame him. Parker had a pretty serious rep.

  By today Fish Eyes and his boss would also be aware that Bales had bailed, so that probably put him in the bull’s-eye. Parker had seen them together that day downtown, and undoubtedly Parker wanted to talk about what he and Bales had been up to. Lenny didn’t want to have that talk. At least not until he had a chance to think over his options. The press was an option, as was turning everything over to Lacy Green, as they’d initially planned, and letting the city have him. But Lenny thought Parker deserved a more just punishment; something more pointed and painful for his sins.

  And Parker’s crimes were sins. Lenny looked at the rampant blight now ruling the streets of his hometown Highland Park, a small city inside of Detroit. There were streets so blocked with trash he had to go around the block to get to his destination. He and the members of BAD had spent a week last year hauling tires, couch frames, broken windows, glass, and mattresses from one such location. Most of the people on the block had pitched in to help, but others sat on their porches and watched the cl
eanup as if it were the latest reality show.

  But because there were so many other trash-filled areas in need of the same kind of intense attention, that particular cleanup had been nothing more than a pimple on a giant, and folks like Parker just added to the pus. Polluters had left their mark all over the area, in the deaths of children from tainted soil that tested fourteen times higher in toxic substances than allowed by standards set up by the government. Slum landlords and their slow reactions to lead paint removal notices were to him directly responsible for the poisoning of children nationwide. In kids younger than six, lead poisoning impaired the development of their brains. How were inner city residents going to rise if their children were looking at lifelong behavior issues and learning disabilities?

  It was a subject that angered Lenny because of his own lead poisoning diagnosis. As part of a routine screening, the army doctors had tested his blood and some tissue samples. His levels were off the charts. The doctors said the high lead concentrations might be responsible for the headaches he’d experienced all his life and for his sometimes violent mood swings; mood swings that got him sent to the brig more than a few times for fighting and for clashes with officers. In the end, the army asked him to leave, but they took his health issues into consideration and gave him an honorable discharge. The lead in his body would eventually put him in an early grave, he was told, and that was just one more reason he wanted Parker and parasites like him dead.

  But now he had to find a place to hole up until the heat died down, and so he could think. He and Melissa had made three copies of Bales’s pictures and video. He had one set on him. He’d left one in a sealed envelope in his mother’s safety deposit box at the bank. And Melissa had the other. The video had been shot at night, and it showed workers in HazMat suits loading barrels on trucks. Another portion showed men leaving unmarked barrels beneath overpasses. There was even footage showing the barrels being left behind at the elementary school.

  Lenny drove the Gremlin onto a street that looked as desolate and derelict as a bombed-out area of Mogadishu. The human night rats who supplemented their lives by stripping buildings of everything they could sell had gone through the area like locusts through an African grain field. The few homes still standing were virtual skeletons; even the siding and bricks were gone. Lenny stopped in front of one that had most of its front walls still intact. He drove up onto the curb, steered the car around the back and inside. Let Fish Eyes think he’d left town too.