Trust Me (22 page)

    Bobby's mother believed bad things happened in threes. He could hear her saying:

    "A baj haromig meg sem al."

    And you had to get out of bed on the same side you got in on or you had bad luck. Bobby's bed was against the wall so that wasn't an issue. His mother also said if your left hand itched, you were going to be rich.

    "Ha a ball kezed viszket, penzt kapsz."

    And if your right hand itched, you were going to be poor.

    "Ha ajobb kezed viszket, penzt kotesz."

    He didn't believe in these crazy notions but at that moment he wanted his left hand to itch. He lifted his arm and stared at his hand. He'd take anything. But he didn't feel any unusual sensation and it bothered him.

    He thought he heard a car, got up and looked out the window. It was a pickup truck parking in front of a trailer down the street. He went back to the couch. He heard a dog bark. In the odd silence the bark sounded like a guy calling someone named Ralph. "Raaaalph," a long bark followed by two short ones, "Ralph, Ralph." Maybe the dog was calling his buddy.

    "Barney, shut the hell up, that's enough," a voice said.

    The dog stopped barking. All Bobby could hear now were crickets and he wondered why they made that noise. When he was a kid someone said it was because the crickets were doing it, having sex and that's the sound they made. He started drifting off…

    Next thing Bobby heard was the floor creaking. He opened his eyes and saw Lloyd moving toward him with the bow in his hand, an arrow ready to go. It was dark out. Lloyd put his index finger over his mouth and pointed toward the window. Bobby thought he heard the sound of a car door closing.

    They went to the window, crouching, looking out. There was a guy standing next to a dark-colored Cadillac, an old Seville, the car was between the guy and Lloyd's trailer. Bobby thought he was the shylock who had grabbed him at the casino, and he was probably the one who trashed his apartment and followed him here. Bobby watched him coming around the car, holding a semi-automatic with a suppressor on the end of it that was almost as long as the barrel.

    Lloyd slid the window open, pulled the bowstring back and let fly. The arrow sliced through the front passenger window like it was made out of paper, and now the guy was on his knees, scrambling to get on the other side of the car. Lloyd moved into the kitchen ready with another arrow. Bobby saw the shylock's head appear, looking over the hood of the Seville, and an arrow went through the windshield inches from him.

    The shylock ducked behind the car again and then rose up and started firing. With the silencer, the big semi-automatic sounded like a BB gun. Rounds were punching holes in the thin aluminum walls across the front of the trailer. Bobby hit the deck, got on his belly and stayed as low as he could, and called to Lloyd, "You all right?" No response. "Lloyd…" Nothing. Bobby crawled the length of the trailer on his stomach. When he got to Lloyd's room he looked out the sliding door. There was a deck and beyond it, a grassy area and a pond. The shooting had stopped. He didn't see anyone. He slid the door open went out on the deck, moved down the stairs and started to run.

    O'Clair'd gone back to Bobby's apartment and waited till Bobby showed up, knowing he'd open the door, take one look and make a run for it. And that's what he did. O'Clair followed Bobby to the trailer park—Chateau Estates—hanging back giving him plenty of room. He figured Bobby was going to the Diehl residence. Dumb- shit put his real address on the warehouse rental contract, a bone- head move that reminded O'Clair of dimwits he'd arrested over the years. The moron who robbed a Comerica Bank during a snowstorm came to mind. O'Clair followed his footsteps from the bank to his house three doors away. The man was at his kitchen table, counting the money, when O'Clair came through the door and drew down on him. Another good one was the guy who held up a liquor store and wanted all the money and a fifth of Jack Daniel's. The store owner said he couldn't give him the booze unless he was twenty-one. The guy took out his license and held it up and it was recorded by a security camera. O'Clair was first on the scene, got the guy's address, went there and arrested him. Unbelievable.

    O'Clair pulled up in front of the trailer with his lights off and killed the engine. He picked up the Browning, racked it and opened the door. There was a glow on the eastern horizon, the sun starting to rise. He got out and pushed the door to close it, trying not to make noise, and started around the car. He heard it before he saw it, an arrow that blew through the front passenger window and took out the driver's side window too. He got down and crawled around to the other side of the car. He waited and peeked over the hood and another arrow just missed him, went through the windshield and through the front and rear seats and landed in the trunk.

    O'Clair rose up and fired eight rounds across the front of the trailer, reloaded and grouped four more shots in a tight circle where the last arrow had come from. Now he made his move, running to the trailer and went in. It was the kitchen. There were bloodstains on the cabinet doors and more on the greasy linoleum floor, spots of blood and smears. He got one of them, he hoped the Indian, but it appeared as though he was still alive, the blood trail going across the floor of the kitchen into the main room. He followed it through the main room into the bedroom. Checked under the bed and in the closet, and went in the bathroom and slid the shower curtain open.

    O'Clair went back in the bedroom and glanced out the sliding door, opened it and saw the blood trail continue across the deck. He went outside and looked around. There was a pond. He saw people staring at him from the windows of their trailers, and then he heard the wail of a siren in the distance.

    Lloyd sat hunched under the deck holding the bow as best he could. He'd been hit in the thigh, the round had punched through the aluminum wall of the mobile home and slammed into the meaty center of his upper leg. The velocity had knocked him off his feet and probably saved his life as rounds continued to punch holes in the beige laminate cabinets above him. The pain was intense. There was no other word he could think of to describe it. The wound was through and through, a little hole in front, and the back of his thigh was blown out, blood and tissue on the cabinet door below the sink.

    He'd heard Bobby call him, but he was in too much pain to open his mouth. The son of a bitch didn't even check to see if he was okay. Lloyd dragged himself the entire length of the trailer, thinking at the time, he should've rented a Vouv-ray model, which was a little shorter—five feet—but might make a difference if the guy came in and caught him.

    Lloyd heard movement and felt the floor above him sway and held the bow, watching the backyard through a section of latticework. He could see a couple canoes beached at the edge of the pond. People fished its murky depths, kids mostly, catching goldfish and carp.

    Lloyd rubbed his leg trying to get some relief from the pain, and had to breathe a certain way or it hurt more. The pond reminded him of a lake he swam in when he was a boy in northern Minnesota. He'd float in the warm clear water and then dive into the cold depths, the water temperature changing as he went down, getting colder and darker until he touched the bottom and scooped up a handful of sand, and then shot up toward the light, lungs ready to explode, coming out of the water, taking gulps of air. He'd show his friends the sand, proof that he made it all the way down.

    He was directly above Lloyd now, the metal creaking. Then he was on the deck, his footsteps sending dust through cracks in the plank floor. Lloyd sat up with the bow ready to fire as a khaki leg appeared and then another one. He took a breath and knocked a broadhead, aiming at the guy's leg and he heard the wail of a siren.

    Karen parked on the street four houses north of Lou's in front of the Robertses, Jeff and Shelley. She knew them and liked them. It was Friday night and they were having a party. There were cars lining the street and her Audi blended right in. It was 9:30 and dark, and still hot, a sliver of moon hanging over the lake. She could hear music and voices from the party as she walked between the Robertses' house and their neighbor's down to the water, and moved along the beach back to Lou's house. He didn't care about swimming and let the reeds grow tall along his 150 feet of waterfront.

    The house was dark. Karen knew he was back from Vegas and had been trying to reach him. She had called his cell phone and left a message. She tried his office at the restaurant and got his answering machine. Well as long as he wasn't home. In her current state of mind Karen was in no mood for a confrontation with Lou. She'd had enough excitement for one day. She was exhausted, drained.

    She crossed the backyard and took the steps up to the deck, and used her key to open the sliding door. She went into the family room with its comfortable couches and chairs and great view of the lake, locking the door behind her. The house was hot and stuffy. The air wasn't on and hadn't been on for some time. She stood and listened, but didn't hear anything. It was dark and she waited till her eyes adjusted. She had come back to get letters her dad had written, and a one-karat diamond wedding ring that had been her Grandmother Nonie's.

    She moved through the house to the living room and looked out. There were cars parked along the street all the way to the Robertses'. None she recognizedjust dark shapes in the dim light. She went in the front hall and saw a pile of mail (days worth), on the floor, confirming that Lou hadn't been home for some time. She went through the living room into the bedroom, and thought about the night Bobby and Lloyd broke in, the night it all started.

    Karen opened a drawer in the antique desk and found the letters and her grandmother's wedding ring. She decided to take some of the clothes she'd forgotten when she walked out. She went in the dressing room and got her small suitcase and put it on the bed and unzipped it and folded the top open. She went back in the dressing room, opened dresser drawers and grabbed a pair of jeans, her white shorts and a couple blouses. She couldn't see very well so she turned on a small lamp that was on top of the dresser, and picked up a pair of boots and a pair of shoes and took everything in the bedroom and laid it on the bed. She went back in and grabbed the pearls she'd bought herself at Tiffany's, and a couple necklaces and bracelets and turned off the light.

    Ricky was in the back seat of the Escalade, watching Lou Starr's house on Walnut Lake for the second night in a row, talking to the Iraqis, Tariq and Omar. They were lucky tonight, someone was having a party, and it must've been a big one. There were cars parked down four or five houses.

    Once Ricky realized Samir might not make it, and he was in charge, running the show, it was easy. He was the boss now and didn't have to take shit from anyone. All Samir's collectors: Romey, Saad, Joey, Nasir and now Moozie reported to him. They brought the money they collected and gave it to him, and he couldn't believe it. He was rolling in dough. He'd paid off Wadi Nasser, and still had plenty left over, and more was coming in every day.

    Ricky was thinking about the night of the robbery. He'd heard a girl's voice, and that girl he believed was Karen Delaney. She had lived in the house, slept with the man for six months. She probably had an idea how much money was in the safe, and he wouldn't doubt it if she also knew the combination. He didn't know why Samir had hit her and knocked her down and thrown her out of the house, and then burned her clothes in the backyard, first dousing them with gasoline. His uncle wouldn't let anyone mention her name after that. Ricky was thinking, do that to a woman and she would be angry, and he believed an angry woman was capable of anything.

    He had contacted the Iraqis a couple days after the robbery. He'd gotten Tariq's cell number from a friend at the Chaldean Social Club, realizing there was no one on his payroll qualified for this kind of work except O'Clair, and there was no way he was going to involve him. So who? And the Iraqis popped into his head. They'd be perfect.

    He invited them to Samir's house, and received them in Samir's office, sitting behind Samir's massive oak desk, commanding authority and feeling good about himself. He was the boss now and the Iraqis gave him their full attention and respect as he laid out his plan to find Karen. He gave them photographs of her, shots Samir had taken on their many trips together, close-ups of her face, smiling, happy, white teeth, red hair cut short in one and longer in another, the photographs capturing her with unmistakable clarity.

    The Iraqis, as it turned out, were interesting. Tariq told Ricky how they had left Baghdad on the second night of the American air strikes that shook the city, and believed, as did many of their countrymen, that the American weapons were far superior to anything Saddam had. They snuck out of the garrison, stole a car and drove into Syria.