The scowl slowly returns to his face. “You got a problem?”
“Hmm. Which comeback to go with?”
“Huh?”
“I could say, ‘No, YOU got a problem’ or ‘Me? Not a care in the world’—something like that—but really, none of those snappy rejoinders are calling to me.”
Big T looks perplexed. Part of him wants to simply shove me aside. Part of him remembers that I was sitting in Celebrity Row and thus I might be someone important.
“Uh,” Big T says, “I’m going to the party now.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no party here.”
“When you say there’s no party—”
“The party is two blocks away,” I say.
He puts his mitts on his hips. Coach pose. “What the hell is this?”
“I had them send you the wrong address. The music? It’s just for show. The security guard who let you in by the VIP entrance? He works for me and vanished the moment you walked through that door.”
Big T blinks twice. Then he steps closer to me. I don’t back up even an inch.
“What’s going on?” he asks me.
“I’m going to kick your ass, Teddy.”
Oh, how his smile widens now. “You?” His chest is the approximate size of a squash court’s front wall. He moves in closer now, looming over me, staring down with the confidence of a big, powerful man who, because of his size, has never experienced combat or even been challenged. This is Big T’s amateurish, go-to move—crowd his opponent with his bulk and then watch them wither.
I don’t wither, of course. I crane my neck and meet his gaze. And now, for the first time, I see doubt start to cloud his expression.
I don’t wait.
Crowding me like this was a mistake. It makes my first move short and easy. I place all five of my fingertips on my right hand together, forming something of an arrowhead, and dart-strike his throat. A gurgling sound emerges. At the same time, I sidekick low, leading with my instep, connecting directly on the side of his right knee which, I know from research, has undergone two ACL surgeries.
I hear a crack.
Big T goes down like an oak.
I lift my leg and strike him hard with my heel.
He cries out.
I strike him again.
He cries out.
I strike him again.
Silence.
I will spare you the rest.
Twenty minutes later, I arrive at Swagg Daddy’s party. Security whisks me to the back room. Only three types of people get in here—beautiful women, famous faces, fat wallets.
We party hard until five a.m. Then a black limo takes Swagg and yours truly to the airport. The private jet is gassed up and waiting.
Swagg sleeps the entire flight back to New York City. I shower—yes, my jet has a shower—shave, and change into a Kiton K50 business suit of herringbone gray.
When we land, two black limos are waiting. Swagg involves me in some kind of complicated handshake-embrace as a way of saying goodbye. He takes one limo to his estate in Alpine. I take the other directly to my office in a forty-eight-story skyscraper on Park Avenue in midtown. My family has owned the Lock-Horne Building since it was completed in 1967.
On the way up in the elevator, I stop on the fourth floor. This space used to be home to a sports agency run by my closest friend, but he closed it down a few years back. I then left the office empty for too long because hope springs eternal. I was sure that my friend would change his mind and return.
He didn’t. And so we move on.
The new tenant is Fisher and Friedman, which advertises itself as a “Victims’ Rights Law Firm.” Their website, which won me over, is somewhat more specific:
We help you knee the abusers, the stalkers, the douchebags, the trolls, the pervs, and the psychos right in the balls.
Irresistible. As with the sports agency that used to lease this space, I am a silent partner-investor in the firm.
I knock on the door. When Sadie Fisher says, “Come in,” I open it and lean my head inside.
“Busy?” I ask.
“Sociopaths are very much in season,” Sadie says, not looking up from the computer.
She is right, of course. It’s why I invested. I feel good about the work they do, advocating for the bullied and battered, but I also see insecure-cum-violent men (it’s almost always men) as a growth industry.
Sadie finally glances in my direction. “I thought you were going to the game in Indianapolis.”
“I did.”
“Oh, right, the private jet. Sometimes I forget how rich you are.”
“No, you don’t.”
“True. So what’s up?”
Sadie wears hot-librarian glasses and a pink pantsuit that clings and reveals. This is intentional, she explained to me. When Sadie first started representing women who’d been sexually harassed and assaulted, she was told to dress conservatively, garments that were shapeless and drab and hence “innocent,” which Sadie saw as more victim blaming.
Her response? Do the opposite.
I am not sure how to broach the subject, so I just say, “I heard one of your clients was hospitalized.”
That gets her attention.
“Do you think it would be appropriate to send her something?” I ask.
“Like what, Win?”
“Flowers, chocolates…”
“She’s in intensive care.”
“A stuffed animal. Balloons.”
“Balloons?”
“Just something to let her know we are thinking about her.”
Sadie’s eyes turn back to the computer screen. “The only thing our client wants is something we don’t seem to be able to give her: Justice.”
I open my mouth to say something, but in the end, I stay silent, opting for discretion and wisdom over comfort and bravado. I turn to leave, when I spot two people—one woman, one man—walking toward me with purpose.
“Windsor Horne Lockwood?” the woman says.
Even before they whip out their badges, I know that they are in law enforcement.
Sadie can tell too. She rises automatically and starts toward me. I have a slew of attorneys, of course, but I use those for business reasons. For personal affairs, my best friend, the sports agent/lawyer who used to inhabit this office, always stepped in because he had my full trust. Now, with him on the sidelines, it seems that Sadie has instinctively slid into the role.
“Windsor Horne Lockwood?” the woman says again.
That is my name. To be technically correct, my full name is Windsor Horne Lockwood III. I am, as the name suggests, old money, and I look the part, what with the ruddy complexion, the blond-turning-gray hair, the delicate patrician features, the somewhat regal bearing. I don’t hide what I am. I don’t know whether I could.
How, I wonder, had I messed up with Big T? I am good. I am very good. But I am not infallible.
So where had I made a mistake?
Sadie is almost by my side now. I wait. Instead of responding, I let her say, “Who wants to know?”
“I’m Special Agent Karen Young with the FBI,” the woman says.
Young is Black. She wears an Oxford blue button-down shirt under a fitted cognac-hued leather jacket. Très fashionable for a federal agent.
“And this is my partner, Special Agent Jorge Lopez.”