The clerk behind the glass was an older man with bloodshot eyes and an unbuttoned collar, rubbing his temples against the noise of the concourse.
"The van," I said, laying my Michigan license and six hundred dollars in folded cash on the counter. "I need the keys."
The clerk looked at the stack of bills, then at my face, his eyebrows pulling together as he took in the dark grease under my fingernails and the certified court folder tucked under my arm.
"The heater blows lukewarm and the rear axle whines above fifty," the clerk muttered, pulling a worn key fob attached to a brass split ring from his drawer. "Snow chains are under the passenger seat. She’s parked in Bay 44 on the outer commercial deck. Bring her back with a full tank or I keep the deposit."
"I’m leaving the state," I told him, scribbling my legal signature across the rental agreement.
"Mister, for six hundred cash tonight, you can drive that van into Lake Michigan as long as I don't have to haul it out," he said, stamping the agreement and sliding the brass ring across the glass.
I caught the keys in my palm, gripped the canvas duffel against my ribs, and pushed through the automated double doors into the frozen Chicago sleet.
CHAPTER 3: The Counter Where Titles Shatter
The wiper blades on the battered utility van scraped across the windshield in jagged, rhythmic shrieks, shoving mounds of frozen gray slush into the corners of the glass. The heater core groaned beneath the rusted dash, coughing out an anemic stream of tepid air that barely kept an oval patch of the windshield thawed directly in front of my face. Lake Michigan had thrown an unbroken curtain of lake-effect snow across the Indiana toll road, turning Interstate 94 into a three-lane skating rink choked with jackknifed tractor-trailers, their hazard lights blinking amber through the swirling whiteout like warning flares on a shoal.
I did not stop for fuel until the state line. At an all-night truck plaza outside New Buffalo, I kept the van’s engine idling while I shoved forty dollars through the cashier’s slot, bought a quart of thick motor oil to silence the whining rear differential, and poured black drip coffee into a paper cup. While the gas pump rattled against the frozen hose, I sat on the freezing plastic seat and checked my watch: 4:12 AM.
Four hours and eighteen minutes remained before the doors of the Wayne County Register of Deeds unlocked on the sixth floor of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center on Woodward Avenue.
I pulled back onto the interstate, shifting the transmission down to third gear to keep the tires biting into the packed ruts. My fingers were stiff around the thin plastic steering wheel, the muscle along the base of my neck pulled tight as wire. Every twenty miles, I tapped the breast pocket of my coat, feeling the rigid rectangle of Officer Ramos’s stamped incident report and the heavy cardboard sleeve containing the certified appellate decree.
The storm finally broke east of Kalamazoo, the dense white bands thinning into a brittle, freezing drizzle that coated the asphalt in a sheet of black ice. By seven in the morning, the flat industrial outskirts of Ypsilanti appeared through the mist, followed by the sprawling concrete ramps of the Ford Freeway cutting across Dearborn.
At 7:42 AM, I pulled off at the French Road exit and dialed Pete Holbrook on the speakerphone.
The call connected before the first ring completed.
"Pete," I said, my voice hoarse from six hours of dry heat and engine fumes. "I'm in Wayne County."
"You made better time than I figured," Pete said. His voice was grim, the sound of an idling diesel engine vibrating in his background. "Listen to me close, David. At six-thirty this morning, a black Lincoln Navigator showed up at your shop. Raymond Cross was in the passenger seat. Leonard was driving. But they weren't alone. They had that suit with them—the one from Chicago."
"The man who took my seat?"
"The very same," Pete said. "He had your Kennedy rolling chest in the back of the Lincoln, still tagged with the airport airline bands. I walked out to my fence line with a pipe wrench in my hand, and Raymond just rolled down his tinted glass, laughed at me, and said they didn't need to break my trailer hitch because they already had the corporate seal. They pulled out of the drive fifteen minutes ago, heading south on the Chrysler Freeway. They're going straight downtown to beat the recording bell."
"Did they have the green lockbox?" I asked.
"Leonard was carrying it on his lap," Pete said. "David, Raymond brought Harlan Vance with him. He brought his high-priced downtown contract lawyer. If Vance puts an emergency affidavit in front of a county clerk with a verified corporate seal and a man swearing under oath that he's Arthur Ross's surviving executor, that clerk is going to stamp the transfer into the land ledger before you even find a parking spot."