Chapter Twenty-One

Chad Williams had finished the last of several important, work related, phone calls. He had also called his driver to come and pick him up. he leaned back in is desk chair and tried to relax. Things had been hectic at work.

The view of the New York skyline was amazing from where he was sitting in his home office. The apartment cost over four million dollars years ago but the view and its size made it a steal.

He did go into his office downtown but he now did much of his work from home.

“A stock broker can make many personal connections with evening calls,” or so his father had told him more than once. “A call from a quiet room to a man or woman’s home can often lead to a great relationship unhurried by the pressure of office politics or sales quotas,” his father mentioned often, in office meetings.

Chad was now as content as any man could or deserved to be, or so he thought at the moment. His marriage was the last puzzle piece of a perfect life.

The driver arrived in twenty minutes after crawling through the endless traffic that always seemed to tie the city’s traffic into and long delays. The city was always a decade behind the curve when it came to the magic solution for better traffic.

Most professional drivers had plenty of time to stew over that issue and others while waiting in traffic. The price of a taxi license was another hot topic among many private drivers still waiting for one.

The city father’s were close to throwing their collective hands in the air and just leaving the traffic engineers out in the cold when it came to blame. The engineers were blamed time and again for the city’s traffic woes.

“Our local politicians are like all the others since cities were created,” Chad’s driver thought as he sat still for what seemed like hours, not minutes, waiting in a long line of black cars to move while heading to Chads tall apartment building.

Chad gathered up his keys and heavy jacket snd took the elevator down several stories after the front desk called him. The porter had come up for Chad’s luggage earlier. The front desk had been contacted by the driver and relayed the message to Chad.

The driver, Jack, was great at his job and loved it most of the time. Tonight was an exception.

Chad came out of the wide glass doors of the building with the porter following him. Jack saw them as he pulled up out of the street and into the curved driveway. Chad waved to him as he left the protection of the of the warm lobby for the long car. Chad was dressed in a black suit with a white scarf wrapped around his neck. It had been a gift from Suzan a few months ago.

The rain had been falling intermittently and the highly polished car was covered in millions of sparkling water droplets shimmering under the streetlights above. The car was perfectly clean as always. There had been a few sprinkles over the last hour.

They had made the view from his apartment change from crystal clear to a faded and blurred view as the rain drops clung to the large windows of his living room where he waited for the phone call.

Chad had sat waiting with his briefcase in his hands until the phone rang. His luggage had been brought down by Hector, the Puerto Rican porter, as always.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

More soon to come, as always.

Don’t miss “Atlanta,” now available on Amazon and Audible.

It’s a wild detective novels set in Atlanta, of course.