Chapter Thirty-four

    "Are they gone?" Virginia whispered.

    "Yeah," O'Clair said. He stood looking down at her on the bed. There was blood on her face and neck and more on her pillowcase. She was naked, on her side, knees curled up to her chest. He covered her with the sheet.

    "You're sure?"

    "Don't worry," O'Clair said.

    "There were two of them," Virginia said in a low voice he could hardly hear. "Arabs looking for Karen."

    O'Clair said, "Where is she?"

    "Chicago."

    He touched her cheek with a warm washcloth and she winced. "Did you tell them?"

    "I would've told them anything they wanted to know," Virginia said. "I was begging to tell them."

    By the look of her, he was surprised she could talk, surprised she was conscious, surprised she was alive. They'd broken her nose and beat her body with pieces of broom handle. O'Clair saw the straw broom head on the floor and two broken lengths of wood.

    They'd pulled the stud out of her lip with a pliers. That's where most of the blood had come from, the wound in her face. They beat her for the hell of it, for the sport. He tried to clean her up before he called 911.

    Virginia told him what happened in her quiet voice. How she opened her eyes and saw the barrel of a pistol pressed against her lips and then pushed into her mouth, the second man holding her arms behind her back. This was how she woke up, scared out of her mind.

    "The man with the gun had a heavy accent. 'Where is Karen Delaney?' It sounded strange the way he said it, using her first and last name in a formal way. I couldn't answer, the gun was in my mouth. I gagged and I saw his face in the dim light, grinning. When I didn't answer, the second man hit me with something that stung the back of my legs. He let go of my arms and hit me on the bottom of my right foot. Ever been hit there? It hurts more than you can imagine. I said 'You want Karen she's at the Drake Hotel in Chicago.' He hit me again with the stick and kept hitting me till I passed out.

    "I woke up and heard the door close downstairs. I saw the card you gave me on the table next to the bed. It was all I could do to pick up the receiver and dial your number. I put the phone on the bed and got my face next to it and listened to it ring ten rings before I heard your voice."

    O'Clair said, "Just lay there and don't talk, okay?"

    "Do you remember what you said when you answered the phone?"

    Yeah, he remembered, but it didn't seem particularly memorable.

    "You said, 'This better be important.' Your voice deep and angry."

    He saw her try to smile and then make a face, knowing she hurt bad.

    "It was the best sound I've ever heard," Virginia said, her eyes holding on him, trying to smile again.

    "Don't talk anymore," O'Clair said. He touched her chin with the warm washcloth trying to wipe away some of the blood and she turned her face away from him in pain.

    "I'm sorry," he said. He could see right through her lip to her teeth and it made him angry, and he knew if he had any chance of catching them he had to get going. He sat on the edge of the bed, leaned over, and kissed her forehead. "I have to go, but I'll be back soon."

    "You've got to find Karen," Virginia said, her sad eyes locked on him. "Promise me you'll help her."

    "Don't worry," O'Clair said.

    He was in his car now parked across from Virginia's house, watching an EMS van pull up in front, lights flashing. Two med techs got out and went to the front door that was open, and went in. O'Clair considered his next move. It was 4:56 a.m. The Arabs had a forty-five-minute head start. He assumed they were driving. How else could they could get to Chicago with their guns? It was 284 miles. But maybe he could close the gap, make up some time on the road. At seventy miles an hour, it was a four-hour drive. If he drove ninety he could shave an hour off and get there before them.

    According to Virginia, Karen was at the Drake on East Walton in downtown Chicago. He'd been to Chicago a number of times and had a pretty good idea where it was—a block from Lake Michigan. O'Clair wanted to find Karen and the money, but his priorities had changed in the past hour and now he wanted the Arabs more. He felt anger he hadn't felt for a long time. Things didn't set him off like they used to. He actually thought he was mellowing till he saw what they did to Virginia and the adrenaline started pumping and hadn't stopped.

    What was it about this oddball girl with purple hair and a tongue stud that made him feel so good? He felt something inside, in his gut, and it made him happy, the feeling so new and unexpected he didn't know what to make of it at first, and now he couldn't get her out of his head.

    He was on 1-94 passing the exit for Saline when he began to doubt himself. Maybe he was seeing something that wasn't there. What did Virginia, this wacko kid fifteen years younger, see in a fat old guy like him? But in O'Clair's mind it didn't matter, it was right. She trusted him. Who'd she call to ask for help, and to help her sister? She called him.

    He was approaching a road sign that said "State Correctional Facility Exit 139"—Jackson Prison, Michigan's largest, housing more than five thousand inmates, and O'Clair thought back to his twenty-seven months in protective custody. He wouldn't have lasted a day in general population after the gangs found out he'd been a Detroit cop.

    A deputy director of MDOC—Michigan Department of Corrections—told O'Clair he should apply for a job. He said, "Inmate labor goes hand in hand with our mission to help you successfully reenter society and become a productive, contributing citizen."

    O'Clair wanted to deck the ignorant bureaucrat, thinking he'd been a productive, contributing member of society when he was convicted and sent to this godforsaken shithole.

    Just past Jackson he was tired and started to nod off. He stopped at a McDonald's and got two cups of coffee, a sausage McMuffin and hash browns, and ate while he drove. It was 6:05 a.m.

    From there it was just O'Clair and a parade of semis. He got to the outskirts of Chicago two hours later, pushing it, cruise control set at ninety, passing through Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, passing woods and farm fields and orange and white construction cones lining the highway on both sides, passing Dowagiac and Holland and Benton Harbor, passing through the top edge of Indiana into Illinois.

    He followed the Dan Ryan into town and looked for a parking space on East Walton across from the hotel, but there weren't any. The street was lined with trucks and delivery vehicles at 8:30 in the morning. O'Clair didn't see two guys who looked like the guys Virginia had described. He wasn't sure how to play it from here. Should he go in the Drake and call Karen? And tell her what, her life was in danger?

    He took East Walton to Michigan Avenue and went right again. He cruised by the west side of the Drake. There were cars parked to his left in the metered spaces on Oak Street that extended from Michigan Avenue all the way to Lake Shore Drive. He noticed a man sitting behind the wheel of a Jaguar sedan, parked across from the faded canopied Oak Street entrance to the hotel. Just sitting in the car like he was waiting for someone. O'Clair drove around to the front of the hotel. He sat in a "No Parking Zone" for fifteen minutes, watching taxis pull up to the hotel to drop people off and pick people up. He was thinking about the guy in the Jag and went around the hotel again to see if he was still there. He was.

    This time he got a better look, studied him and thought he might be one of the Arabs who attacked Virginia. O'Clair drove to the end of the street, saw the bright blue expanse of Lake Michigan in the distance, and made a U-turn and found a parking space halfway up the block. The Jag was about twenty cars down the street. He took the Browning out of his sport coat pocket and screwed the suppressor on the end of the barrel.

    Four-thirty in the morning Ricky heard his cell phone ringing. He picked it up and said, "Tell me you've got her."

    "We are driving to Chicago, Illinois, in search of Karen Delaney," Tariq said.

    He always said her last name too. Ricky thinking, you don't have to say Delaney. She's the only Karen we're looking for. They were a couple of oddball dudes, but he had to admit they were persistent—still on the job at 4:30 in the morning, while everyone else on the payroll was sacked out, snoring. Ricky said, "Where the fuck you at?"

    "We are on Interstate 94, approaching Marshall, Michigan," Tariq said in his straightforward, no bullshit way. He sounded like a Middle East robot.

    Ricky said, "You don't have to say Michigan. I know where Marshall's at, okay?"

    When Tariq told him Karen Delaney was staying at the Drake Hotel on Walton Street in Chicago, Illinois, pronouncing the "s," Ricky said, oh Chicago's in Illinois, huh? I didn't know that, thanks for telling me. He'd decided he'd better get up and go there himself, protect his interest. He wouldn't need the hundred grand from Wadi Nasser now. He'd be able to pay off Samir and be set for life.

    Ricky called Northwest and booked a seat on the 7:00 a.m. nonstop to O'Hare, flight 1235, arriving at 7:23. He'd fly in, get there before Karen got out of bed. But it didn't go that way. Ricky was in first class, drinking a screwdriver and the plane was taxiing on the runway when the pilot said I've got good news and bad news. The good news is we're the next plane to take off. The bad news is we have a mechanical problem and have to go back to the terminal. Ricky couldn't believe a pilot would talk like that: good news, bad news. Like it was a fucking joke.

    The flight was delayed for an hour while they fixed the plane and Ricky didn't arrive in Chicago till 8:22. He rented a car and called the Iraqis.