Trust Me (25 page)

    "That's good to know," Karen said, and grinned. "What are you doing today?"

    "Working," Schreiner said.

    "It's the weekend," Karen said.

    "Look outside," Schreiner said. "Can you tell what day it is?"

    That surprised her. She thought of him as more of a slacker than a worker, and wondered if he smoked weed at the office.

    "How about you?" Schreiner said.

    Karen said, "I've got to run some errands."

    "Are you crazy? I wouldn't go anywhere till it gets dark," Schreiner said.

    "There are some things I have to do," Karen said.

    "I'll go with you."

    This was her deal. She wasn't going to involve Schreiner or anyone else. "I'll be fine, but I need a place to hang out till this evening, if you don't mind. I'm meeting my sister to say goodbye."

    "Be careful," Schreiner said. "You see anyone following you, I want you to call me."

    "Peace in the valley," Karen said and Schreiner grinned.

    Karen decided to pick the money up first. She borrowed one of Schreiner's dark blue University of Michigan caps with a maize-colored M on the front and a blue windbreaker that was too big. She had to roll the sleeves up. She put the cap on and pulled it down so the brim was just over her eyes. She went in the kitchen where Schreiner was still sitting and said, "How do I look?"

    "Unbelievable. You're one of us, a member of the U of M nation. I wouldn't have recognized you in a million years."

    She drove to Target on Coolidge and bought an Eddie Bauer Northlake duffel bag in a dark color called volcanic gray that looked almost black. The description on the tag said it was made out of lightweight, water-resistant, tear-resistant polyester, and it had a shoulder strap, which was perfect for carrying heavy loads.

    Karen paid for the bag and drove back to Birmingham. She parked in a small lot on Hamilton Street. She looked around before she got out of the car, and went in the rear entrance door of Comerica Bank with the Eddie Bauer duffel bag over her shoulder. A young stylish Comerica customer service representative named Pam Glefke escorted Karen downstairs to a private room with a desk and chair and a Picasso print,
Three Musicians,
framed on the wall. Pam disappeared for a couple of minutes and came back with two long narrow safe deposit boxes.

    "Take all the time you want," Pam said. "When you're finished, or if you need anything just call me."

    There was a phone on the desk. Pam Glefke left the room and Karen got up and locked the door. She unlocked the first box and lifted the top off and stared at the rows of bills in banded packs. She couldn't believe what she was doing or what she'd done. Yeah, Karen had gotten her money back, but at what cost? It seemed unimportant now weighed against all that had happened. She kept picturing Johnny dead on the bed, and Yalda in the kitchen, blood all over the walls and floor. She couldn't get those images out of her head, but it was too late for that now.

    She started filling the Eddie Bauer duffel, emptied the first safe deposit box and locked the top back on it. She opened the second box and did the same. The duffel held all the money. She zipped it closed and called Pam Glefke and said she was finished.

    Ricky went to the hospital for a meeting with Samir's sisters, Noor and Huda, who Ricky thought looked like men in drag because of their big hands and receding hair. The sisters decided, after an emotional tug-of-war, to take Samir off life support. The doctor had told them that Samir might have brain damage as a result of the beating he received. He could be a vegetable. Ricky wondered what kind? He pictured a head of wet cauliflower from the produce aisle at one of the stores.

    The sisters stood over Samir, crying and dabbing their eyes with tissues. They loved their younger brother. They said he was a great man. Ricky was thinking, you ought to work for him, see how great he is. He embraced his aunts and pretended to be sad, but the truth was he'd never been happier in his life. With Samir out of the way, he was in charge, the one giving orders and collecting the money.

    They pulled the plug, but Samir didn't die, and Ricky believed, he chose that moment to come out of his coma.

    Samir's older sister, Noor, said, "Look his eyes are open."

    "It's a miracle," Samir's younger sister, Huda, said.

    To Huda everything was a miracle. If the sun shined on a day it was supposed to rain, it was a miracle.

    Samir looked at Ricky and said, "Did you find the bastards who stole my money?" Raising his voice, challenging him the second he regained consciousness. The man was a freak. Ricky was so stunned he couldn't talk. He stood there in shock while the sisters embraced Samir, crying again until Samir said something loud and guttural in Arabic and silenced them. They got up and moved away from him, afraid now. They moved toward the door and walked out of the room.

    Ricky looked down at Samir and said, "Don't worry, I know who did it."

    Samir said, "You know who did it, what are you doing standing here? Why aren't you out finding them?"

    Dr. Kirshenbaum came in the room and said, "My God, you're awake."

    "Yes, I'm awake," Samir said, "and I'm getting the hell out of here."

    "You're not going anywhere," he said. "You've been in a coma for two days. Your condition is profoundly unstable."

    Samir said, "I take full responsibility. Get me a release form and I'll sign it."

    Dr. Kirshenbaum walked out of the room, shaking his head. Samir tried to sit up, got about a foot off the pillow and crashed back down. He didn't look good.

    "Yo," Ricky said. "You okay?"

    Samir glared at him. "Who did this? Who stole my money?"

    "It was Karen," Ricky said. "And I think Johnny." Ricky didn't know for sure, but he was dead and couldn't defend himself.

    Samir took a breath. "Where is O'Clair?"

    "I don't know," Ricky said. "He's disappeared, vanished. He could be—"

    "Not O'Clair," Samir said. "I do not believe it."

    "Well where is he then?"

    Samir closed his eyes like he was in pain. "Tell me why this happened?"

    "How should I know?" Ricky couldn't read minds, predict what people were going to do.

    Samir said, "Johnny's weak…"

    It sounded like it was an effort for him to talk. Ricky said, "Not anymore, he's not. He's dead."

    "What happened?"

    Ricky told him.

    Samir shook his head. "I want you to find her and bring her to me."

    He still wouldn't say Karen's name, like he'd be cursed or something if he did. He closed his eyes, and Ricky wondered if he was dozing off.

    "I've lost respect," Samir said, eyes open, back on Ricky. "Robbed in my own house. My enemies are laughing, and also my friends."

    Ricky found his clothes, black pants and black shirt, in the closet. He helped dress Samir, thinking this was going to be his new job, dressing the man and taking him to the bathroom, and waiting while he did his business. He went down the hall and got a wheelchair at the nurses' station. He went back to Samir's room and helped him into the chair, and rolled him along the clean shiny hallway. He took the elevator down to the first floor and wheeled him to the front entrance.

    When the valet brought Ricky's car up, Ricky lifted Samir out of the chair like he was a child and put him in the front seat of his Lexus. Ricky was sweating, Jesus, exhausted from the effort, and he was in shape.

    On the way to his house, Samir told him that anger, the buildup of rage in his subconscious, was what brought him out of the coma, and anger was again his ally, pumping adrenaline into his weakened condition, giving him the strength to leave the hospital against his doctor's advice. Ricky wasn't buying it, the man looked like an extra in
Alien Dead
, a zombie movie he just seen on late night TV

    He pulled up in the circular drive and carried Samir through the front door that had been repaired, up the stairs to his bedroom. He helped undress him and helped him in bed, propping pillows behind him, working his ass off to make the man comfortable and never once did Samir thank him. All he did was give him orders:

    "Get me some water," Samir said. "Hand me the switcher for the TV"

    It was right there on the table. What, he couldn't reach over and pick it up? Samir was treating him like a servant. Ricky went in the bathroom and filled a glass with water and took it to his uncle.

    "Just leave it there," Samir said. "And bring up the money you owe, and everything that you collected while I was in the hospital."

    Ricky felt like he was going to be sick. He wasn't expecting that. He'd spent $82,000 of Samir's money, $57,500 to pay off his gambling debts and interest, and $15,000 to get his watch back. What could he say? I gambled and lost my ass and used your money to bail myself out. He wondered what Samir would say if he told him that. He could put his uncle off for a little while, but there was only one way out of this. He had to find Karen and the money.

    "Is she a dom or a sub?"

    O'Clair had no idea what she was talking about. He didn't say anything, just glanced at all the strange things on the wall behind her: whips and chains and handcuffs and leather masks. What kind of wacko bought this stuff?

    The girl said, "I'll bet she's both, huh?"

    Lou Starr said Virginia worked at this place in Royal Oak called Noir Leather, and that's where he was, standing across a glass counter from this girl with purple hair and a stud under her lip. She wasn't that good-looking but there was something weirdly sexy about her.

    "I'm fifty percent dominant," she said, "thirty percent submissive, and the other twenty percent, I like to get kind of crazy and experiment."

    Now he was looking in her mouth at the tongue stud while she talked. His forehead itched and he rubbed the swollen area around the stitches. She stared at him and he looked down into the glass case at the fireman pumps—whatever they were—on display. He felt like he was in grade school, tongue-tied in the presence of a girl.

    "How old is she, your lady? Or is it your mistress? Or your slaveboy?"

    "She's forty," he said, making it up.

    "What's she into? Bondage? We're having a sale on restraints. A bondage table, maybe? Body suspension? A spanking bench?"

    A skinny guy with long hair and tattoos covering his arms like shirt sleeves came through the beaded curtains behind the girl and said, "Ariana, I need you."

    "I'm with a customer," she said.

    She turned and grabbed a small whip off the wall and cracked it across her hand.

    "Or, how 'bout a penis whip for that naughty penis in her life," she said, giving him a sly smile.

    O'Clair could feel his face turning red.

    "I know a beautiful Domina who's accepting applications for slaves and pantyboys. Kinky sissies preferred, but she will train the right applicants."

    O'Clair had had enough of this freak show bullshit. He said, "You know a girl named Virginia works here?"

    "Never heard of her," she said. "What's she look like?"

    "If she worked here," O'Clair said, "I think you'd know."

    "I don't but I'd like to know you."

    She wrote her address on a store business card and handed it to him.

    "I'm off at five," she said.

    O'Clair didn't get it. Why was this girl with a tongue stud coming on to him? He watched her pull out in a red Tempo, trying to decide what year it was, '87 or '88. O'Clair knew the car, his sister Mary Beth drove one just like it that leaked oil.

    Two of the calls Karen had made from the hotel were to the weird store he was just in. Karen's sister supposedly worked there, but this girl Ariana he was talking to had never heard of her. Something wasn't right.

    O'Clair followed the Tempo, taking Main to the Freeway and cutting over to Woodward, hanging back giving her plenty of room. He didn't know what she was up to, but this weirdo girl with purple hair sure turned him on. He couldn't explain it, what she did to him, how he felt when she was standing across the counter from him. He wanted to reach over and touch one of her perfect pure white cheeks. God she was sexy. O'Clair had stood there, staring at her, hoping she couldn't read his mind.