Peter Leonard - Trust Me

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.

He saw the Tempo slow down and turn right on Albany. The houses were old and close together, California ranch style, with big front porches. He watched her pull into a driveway, park and get out. O'Clair cruised by and saw the address over the front door as the purple-haired girl walked up the driveway to the side of the house. He noticed there was a two-car garage in back.

He drove around the block, searching for 310 and found it and parked behind a Ford F-150 with a camper top over the bed. He sat back against the cracked leather seat checking things out. There was no hurry. He saw a teenager pushing a stroller along the sidewalk. She glanced at O'Clair and looked away, minding her own business. In this neighborhood he could've been serving a warrant or repossessing a car or arresting someone who'd skipped bond.

O'Clair was thinking about the bowhunter from the trailer park. He'd found out the guy was a hick with a police record from Eagle Bend, Minnesota, named Lloyd Henry Diehl. He was in police custody, Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, a second floor private room. The Southfield cops that showed up in response to a 911 emergency-gunshots fired at the Chateau Estates Mobile Home Community-found a. 45 semiautomatic handgun, and a ring stolen from the Lou Starr residence in Bloomfield Hills, O'Clair connecting Bobby and Karen now.

Lloyd was going to be moved to the Oakland County Jail hospital in twenty-four hours, O'Clair had learned. So if he was going to pay him a visit, he better do it quick.

He drove to Beaumont and picked up a bouquet in the gift shop, cheapest one was $15, and hung around the second floor waiting room, watching the nurses' station, and when it seemed like something crazy was happening-all the nurses freaking out and running down the hall-O'Clair made his move, got up with the bouquet and walked down the hall.

Lloyd was watching TV and glanced up when O'Clair entered and said: "Dude, you're in the wrong room."

"My sister dated a guy from Minnesota, Jim Dudley," O'Clair said. "You don't by any chance know him, do you?"

"The hell're you talking about?" Lloyd said.

"These are for you," O'Clair said. He picked up a water pitcher on the table next to Lloyd, pulled the top off and stuffed the freshly cut ends of the flowers in it. Lloyd was flat on his back in bed staring at the TV. It looked like a Seagal action film, the one where Seagal was in a coma for seven years and woke up the day someone was coming to kill him. Lloyd's leg was in a cast elevated by a contraption of silver chains. "You eat a lot of hot dish up there, I understand." O'Clair could see one of the silver hoops of the handcuff locked around the steel bed frame, the other one attached to Lloyd's left wrist. The bed had metal sides that flipped up and locked in position to keep patients from falling out. The only way Lloyd could get out of the room was to drag the bed on one leg. "What exactly is hot dish?"

Lloyd looked at him now. "You start with a can of Campbell's mushroom soup." He split the name Camp-bell's making it two names. "After that it's anything you can think of. There's hamburger and wild rice hot dish. Chicken and potato hot dish. And my personal favorite, ham and lima bean hot dish."

Hot dish sounded like the food O'Clair grew up on, casseroles his mother used to overcook. He glanced down at Lloyd, "Where's Bobby? You going to take all the heat while he's out having fun?"