Page 2 of King’s Ransom

If you haven’t met me before, I’m Sam Speedman.

I’m a private detective based in Houston.

I’m 38 years old and 5 foot 7 (a little short).

I weigh 160 pounds (skinny).

I wear thick glasses (near-sighted). I’ve also been called a ‘four-eyed’ something 124 times in my life—four-eyed freak, four-eyed fuck, four-eyed weirdo—usually by people who are upset with me for being too direct. (It’s happened six times in the last year alone.)

I have degrees in pure mathematics and industrial chemistry from Rice University and a doctorate in Criminology (so technically I’m Doctor Speedman, but I never correct anyone who calls me Mister Speedman).

If I’m being totally honest with you, I have to admit I’m a little quirky (Heidi says this about me often; Dr Lucy says I’m ‘just different from everyone else’).

Either way, I’m on the autism spectrum, which I like to think helps me with my job—great attention to detail—but sometimes it makes things difficult when I have to interact with other human beings (see above, re: being too direct).

I’m working on it (see above, re: Dr Lucy, my therapist).

Like a lot of people on the spectrum, I find comfort in routine.

For instance, whenever I’m in Houston, I always eat lunch at the Hooters off Kirby Drive near my office and always at twelve noon. This is mainly because (a) the food there is very reliable—it’s cooked exactly the same every time—and (b) the waitresses are nice to me.

(Millie-Mae is my ‘regular’ waitress and she calls me handsome even though I’m not objectively handsome at all. Another waitress, Darla, calls me darlin’ and she helps me out with clothing tips because as she once said, ‘Darlin’, you may be smarter than all of Wikipedia combined, but you ain’t got no God-dang fashion sense at all.’

Having said that, my lunch routine is actually in danger. Following recent bankruptcy issues, the Hooters corporation is transitioning all of its restaurants from a company model to a franchise model. Millie-Mae was telling me that unless our Hooters found a franchisee willing to stump up $4.1 million in refitting and franchise fees by the end of January, the restaurant would have to close.

This is very troubling to me, not only because of my extreme preference for consistently cooked food but for the waitresses. They’re sweet and they work hard and I don’t want them to lose their jobs.)

But I digress.

Anyway, most of the time, my job as a private detective entails catching unfaithful husbands in the act. That’s my bread and butter.

Corporate gigs for insurance companies are also fairly common. Less regularly I find extortionists (seriously, please tell your kids not to make sex tapes) and on rare occasions, even a serial killer or two.

And a little over a year ago, while searching for a woman who’d been missing for seven years, I uncovered a vast conspiracy among some wealthy families in the South.

You might’ve heard about that case.

It was all over the news.

In any event, I enjoy my job because usually it involves solving puzzles and I like solving puzzles.

But back to the phone call that woke me up at 6:09 a.m.

It was the FBI on the phone.

‘It’s an emergency, sir,’ the agent at the other end of the line said. ‘You gotta be in New York by noon, local time. A pool car with a police escort is en route to you as we speak and a jet is waiting for you on the tarmac at Houston Hobby.’

‘What’s going on?’ I said, sitting up in bed and rubbing my eyes. ‘Why do you need me?’

‘The billionaire Aristotle King and some of his children have been kidnapped.’

I knew who Aristotle King was.

Everyone did.

He was the richest guy in the world. And also one of the most famous; a playboy-tech-genius-oligarch.

‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ I said, ‘but why me? I mean, you’re the FBI. This is literally what you guys do.’