Chapter Ten
O'Clair pulled into the strip mall parking lot and backed into a space in the last row so he'd have a clear view of a store called Mail Boxes. According to Stu Karp, that's where Bobby had a PO box. O'Clair had said, "Why didn't you tell me that the other day?"
"You didn't ask," Stu said.
Behind the strip mall was an alley, but no place to park. O'Clair had checked it out. O'Clair figured if Bobby stopped by to pick up his mail, he'd pull in the lot. He wouldn't be expecting anyone to be waiting for him on Saturday morning. He'd park and go in.
There was a Blockbuster, a Little Caesars, a Starbucks, a dry cleaners and a CVS Pharmacy. O'Clair got there early, seven cars in the lot, the sun was rising over the strip mall roof, blinding him. He scanned the cars, didn't see a red Mustang Cobra with side pipes and eighteen-inch rims. He put the visor down and adjusted his position, leaning back so the sun was off his face. People were coming out of Starbucks with their designer coffee like junkies getting their fix. He watched a suburban mom in an exercise outfit put her cup on the roof of her Land Rover while she searched for her keys, got in, started the engine and drove off with her coffee still on the roof. Didn't remember it until she was almost pulling out of the lot. She stopped, got out, grabbed it and drove away.
His forehead itched from the stitches. He stared at his face in the rearview mirror. The skin around the Band-Aid was bruised and turning black and blue. He ripped the Band-Aid off and threw it out the window. Now he felt the prickly ends of the stitches and it pissed him off the way things had gone. If it hadn't been for the gangbangers, he'd be counting his money right now. He got 15 percent of what he collected. More than anyone else because he got results. Bobby owed sixty grand, so he'd make nine, or more depending on when he found him, the vig multiplying by a point and a half each week Bobby didn't pay his debt.
If Bobby had the money, Samir told O'Clair to make an example of him. Bobby made him look bad, and Samir couldn't afford to look bad. Not in his line of work. If Bobby didn't have the money, they'd take him to a warehouse Samir owned downtown and try to impress upon him the seriousness of the situation.
O'Clair had worked for Samir since he was released from the Michigan State Prison in Jackson after doing a little less than two years for using a firearm to commit a violent crime. A federal grand jury had indicted O'Clair, then a Detroit cop, for shaking down drug suspects for illegal searches. O'Clair thought it was un-fucking-believable. How could he be accused of violating the rights of someone breaking the law? O'Clair roughed up a heroin dealer named Skunk—'cause he had a little stripe of gray hair in his black Afro—took his dope and his money. Yeah? Isn't that what he was paid to do? His commanding officer had said, "Yeah, but you're not supposed to keep it."
The judge, a black dude with a chip on his shoulder, told O'Clair he was a disgrace to the men and women of the Detroit Police Department and gave him nineteen months.
O'Clair's attorney, Mike Solner, said he was the victim of a federal consent decree signed by the U.S. Justice Department and the Detroit police, to help stop violating the civil rights of citizens mistreated by city cops.
O'Clair said, "Huh? Want to run that by me again?"
Solner said O'Clair's record didn't help, the fact that he'd shot two people in three years and there had been two lawsuits against him, one dropped, one settled, the city of Detroit paying $400,000 in damages.
He dug a stained, bent Styrofoam cup out from the crease where the front seats met and poured coffee from a thermos into it. He took a sip and put the cup on the dash. Steam curled up, fogging a circle of windshield. He unwrapped a salami sandwich and took a bite, chewing as he watched the parking lot begin to fill up with SUVs. They were taking over—big, hard to park, bad on gas and preferred by women, the worst drivers in the world. He didn't get it.
O'Clair was watching all these good-looking suburban women come out of Starbucks and he tried to remember the last time he'd gotten laid, had to really think about it. What was her name? Cindy, yeah, that was it. She said she worked for a publishing company in the telecommunications department. What she really did, she called people at night after their long hard day and tried to sell them magazine subscriptions. That pain-in-the-ass call you got when you were having your supper.
Cindy had said, "You wouldn't believe how rude people can be. What I'm selling benefits them, enriches their lives, and they're giving me a hard time because I'm interrupting their precious evening."
After they'd gone out a few times, she started asking questions about money, probing into O'Clair's life. They were sitting at the bar at Mr. B's in Royal Oak, O'Clair drinking Jim Beam and water and Cindy sipping a 7 & 7.
"Do you own your house?" Cindy wanted to know. "Belong to a country club? Invest in the stock market?"
The questions all related to money. O'Clair said, "You want to know how much money I have?" He swigged his bourbon. "I have enough to buy you the 7 & 7 you're drinking and maybe another one, you stop asking questions that aren't any of your fucking business."
She thought they had a future together, did he? O'Clair wondered if maybe she was hard of hearing, looked at her, said, no, finished his drink and walked out of the bar.
He'd never had very good luck with women. Married a dental hygienist named Joan right out of prison. She was Armenian, full- body with a bush so dense she could've shaved it and knit a sweater. At dinner, Joan would tell him about people's teeth, using words like plaque and gingivitis. O'Clair'd be eating his stuffed peppers as she'd describe how bacteria caused tooth decay, periodontal problems and halitosis.
"If only their home care was better. You know you should floss more yourself, mister, once a day, at least."
"I'm trying to eat my dinner," O'Clair said. "Can we talk about something else?"
One of Joan's sisters—who was the size of an East African rhino—had just had her stomach stapled so she wouldn't eat herself to death. "Mary's lost eighty pounds," Joan said. "And the poor thing's having terrible gas."
That's how she changed the subject.
O'Clair had met Joan in the dentist's office. She cleaned his teeth one evening, the last appointment of the day. She'd joked around with him, the only two people in the office, and banged him in the dental chair after she finished flossing him. She took off her blue scrubs and climbed on top. It was O'Clair's best trip to the dentist ever. If getting laid was part of the deal, Jesus, more guys would have their teeth cleaned. They'd be lining up.
Things went downhill fast after their wedding in the Armenian church with the gold dome near Northland. A friend of O'Clair's asked him when he knew the marriage was in trouble and O'Clair said, the day I proposed. Joan moved out after three months, and he hadn't seen or talked to her since.
At noon O'Clair got out of the Caddy and walked behind the drugstore and took a leak next to a green Dumpster and almost gave a stock boy a heart attack as he came out the back door and saw a big middle-age dude with his pecker out taking a wiz. O'Clair said hello to him and the kid ran to the door and disappeared inside.
O'Clair walked down to the pizza place and ordered a meatball sub and a Coke. The kid behind the counter said five minutes, and gave him a cup. He filled it with Coke and went out the back door and looked down the alley. There was a delivery truck parked and a guy in a brown uniform unloading boxes. Beyond the truck, Jesus Christ, was a red Mustang parked next to Mail Boxes, and Bobby was coming out, shuffling through his mail.
O'Clair dropped the Coke and ran through Little Caesars, knocked a balding dad in a golf outfit on his ass. He heard the kid behind the counter yell, Sir, your sub's ready.
He ran across the parking lot, going as fast as he could with his knee, the pain slowing him down. He got in the Caddy, fired it up and punched the accelerator as a white GMC Yukon backed out of a space in front of him. O'Clair laid on the horn. The driver's door flew open. O'Clair floored it, swerved around the Yukon, ripping the door clean off. He saw the driver in the rearview mirror, running after him. He swerved around a woman with a shopping cart, turned right and then left out of the parking lot. No sign of the Mustang. He went right on a side street, gunned it, and saw a glimpse of red sheet metal turning on to Rochester Road.
O'Clair caught up to him just before Sixteen Mile, passing a Wendy's, a Taco Bell, a Bob Evans, picturing the food at each place, knowing what he'd get and getting hungry. He followed Bobby to Somerset, stayed with him as he cut through the mall parking lot, O'Clair worried now that Bobby was going shopping. But he wasn't; he was going to the Somerset Apartment complex that must've been a mile long. O'Clair hung with him through a maze of streets until Bobby finally turned into a driveway and pulled into a carport.
O'Clair parked on the street and watched Bobby go into a tan-brick apartment building. The place looked pretty good to O'Clair. Somerset. It was called Sin City when it first opened, all the single professionals shacking up, a party on every balcony. It still looked that way, good-looking babes everywhere. You'd have to be a paraplegic not to score here.
There was a golf course that ran through the middle of the complex. All Bobby had to do was walk out his back door and tee off. There was a pool too. He could see girls in lounge chairs through the bars in the fence. It was a nice setup. O'Clair should get out of his dingy bungalow in Ferndale and move here.
He scanned the directory. There he was: R. Gal in apartment 22B.
The door to the building had a cheap lock with a lot of give. O'Clair picked it and went in. He saw the staircase and went up to the second floor and followed apartment numbers as he moved down the hall and saw Bobby in the doorway of his place talking to a dark-haired girl in a bathing suit.
O'Clair went back to the Caddy, sat in the driver's seat, started the car, and checked the rearview mirror. An SUV was approaching. He let it pass and made a U-turn, creeping by Bobby's building. He'd come back later. The hard part was done. If Bobby still had the money, it would be in the apartment-under the mattress or behind the toilet or in the ceiling—some of the classic places people used, thinking they were being clever.