O'Clair opened his eyes. He was groggy, trying to focus, trying to figure out where he was. A voice said, "It's about fucking time." And now the biker appeared, standing in front of him. "Hell, I was starting to wonder about you."
O'Clair was sitting in a chair in a basement room, wrists held tight by leather restraints attached to chains that were bolted to the wall. His mind flashed back to the biker coming up behind him and hitting him, and then something heavy crashed into the back of his head. He couldn't believe these two amateurs had taken him. Jesus Christ, it was embarrassing. "What'd she hit me with?"
"Cast iron skillet," Fly said.
"You going to tell me what you want?" O'Clair pulled on the chains with his arms but couldn't budge them, the leather restraints strained but held his wrists tight.
"Give it a rest, " Fly said. "That's high tensile steel. You're not going to get out till I let you out. Now tell me what you're doing here?"
"Looking for Karen," O'Clair said, and noticed he had a blue-green fly tattooed on his neck and barbed wire that wrapped around his biceps, the tat for idiots with no imagination
Fly said, "What the hell you want her for?"
"She stole some money," O'Clair said.
"It must've been a lot," Fly said. "You're a real high roller, aren't you? Got that '99 Caddy and twenty-eight bucks in your wallet. Man, I'm impressed."
Fly wore a black leather vest with nothing under it, his fat gut hanging over his belt. "Belongs to a guy I work for," O'Clair said. "She ripped him off for over a million."
Fly rubbed his chest. He had a heavy beard but not much body hair, and he smelled.
"Help me," O'Clair said. "I'll cut you in."
"You will, huh? Oh, boy." Fly flashed a crazy grin. "We gonna be partners?"
"You know where she is?" O'Clair pulled on the chain with his right hand.
"I might," Fly said. "Tell me, what the hell I need you for?"
"How're you going to open the safe?" That stopped him, got his brain in gear.
Fly said, "How do I know there is a safe?"
"I work for a bookmaker," O'Clair said. "He had a million dollars in a safe stolen from his house. Karen lived with him. Karen was seen the night of the robbery in front of the house, positively identified by a neighbor. You think I'm making this up? Where is she?" If that didn't get through to him, he might have an easier time breaking the chains that were holding him.
Fly said, "You got the combination?"
"That's what I'm saying," O'Clair said.
"Let me see it," Fly said.
O'Clair said, "It's in my head."
"Maybe I should just beat it out of you." He held up the blackjack like he was going to use it and grinned. "All right, I believe
He unlocked the restraints, first one then the other, dropping them on the floor. O'Clair rubbed his wrists, stood and stretched, glancing around the room now. "What do you do in here?"
"All kinds of crazy shit," Fly said. "It's our dungeon."
O'Clair shook his head. He didn't get it. "So where is she?"
"Karen? Right now, at her mom's with Virginia, the girl you came to visit."
So it was her after all. "They were calling her Ariana at the store."
Fly said, "That's her pretend name, you know, when we go to the dress-up parties and such."
"How'd you get involved in all that?" O'Clair said.
"Just lucky, I guess," Fly said. "Want a beer?"
O'Clair wanted a beer more than anything. They went upstairs to the kitchen and Fly pulled two bottles of Miller High Life out of the refrigerator, popped the tops and handed one to O'Clair. He stared at the cold bottle before he brought it to his mouth and guzzled half of it. He didn't know if a beer had ever tasted so good.
"Jesus," Fly said, watching him, "you're a beer drinker, aren't you?"
O'Clair was staring at a photograph of Fly with hair down to his shoulders on a motorcycle, Virginia standing next him with a joint in her mouth. "What happened to your hair?"
"I was out at a farm one day buying weed and this dude was shearing a horse," Fly said. "It was ninety-seven degrees out and I had long hair as you see. When the dude finished the horse, I asked him if he'd clip me."
O'Clair said, "Shave it yourself?"
"Or Virginia does me in the shower," Fly said.
O'Clair tried to picture Virginia naked and wet with her purple hair, shaving Fly, the image stirring his loins. He drank his beer.
"She said she was lookin' out for Karen, that's why she invited you over here," Fly said. "I just wanted to make sure."
O'Clair slugged down the rest of his beer and said, "Who're you looking out for?"
Fly said, "Who do you think?"
O'Clair raised his empty. "Got another one?"
He held the Caddy-with the new windshield that cost twelve hundred bucks, and the two side windows that were three bills each-steady going sixty. There were still holes in the front and back seats where the arrow had gone through, but he didn't care about that.
O'Clair had gotten his keys and wallet back, including the twenty-eight dollars that Fly had folded and stuffed in the front right pocket of his jeans. Fly wore a silver skull and crossbones ring on one hand. O'Clair had noticed it when he handed him the money.
"You've got to admit you don't appear to have much going for you," Fly said. "Dude, you seen a mirror recently. Look at you, your clothes. That sport coat's a fuckin' relic."
O'Clair said, "What convinced you?"
"You mentioned he was a bookmaker with a safe. I remember Karen going out with him-an A-rab, isn't he? And then it all made sense. Maybe you knew what you were talking about. There was something else that was strange. She paid me two hundred to pick up her car at this motel. I think she was shacking up with some dude."
Right, O'Clair was thinking. He had to pick up her car 'cause she took Johnny's. Why exactly, he couldn't quite figure out. They were on 696 heading for Garden City, a town O'Clair had never been to in his life, Garden City the gateway to Romulus. Fly hadn't stopped talking since he got in the car. Now he was bragging about his days riding with the Renegades, a Detroit biker gang.
"Sixty of us badasses would rumble into a small town, scare the shit out of people. I mean like a western movie. Grown men ducking into stores, mothers pulling their children to safety. Cops would just watch us, too afraid to do anything. We'd go into a bar challenge the whole place." He glanced over at O'Clair. "What's the matter? Am I boring you?"
O'Clair looked out the window, saw a street sign that said "Windsor." They were in a residential neighborhood, passing parked cars and small brick ranch houses.
Fly said, "Take a left up there. It's the third house on the left."
O'Clair made the turn, pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine.
"Okay, let's go get her," he said to Fly.