was in charge, the one giving orders and collecting the money.
They pulled the plug, but Samir didn't die, and Ricky believed, he chose that moment to come out of his coma.
Samir's older sister, Noor, said, 'Look his eyes are open.'
'It's a miracle,' Samir's younger sister, Huda, said.
To Huda everything was a miracle. If the sun shined on a day it was supposed to rain, it was a miracle.
Samir looked at Ricky and said, 'Did you find the bastards who stole my money?' Raising his voice, challenging him the second he regained consciousness. The man was a freak. Ricky was so stunned he couldn't talk. He stood there in shock while the sisters embraced Samir, crying again until Samir said something loud and guttural in Arabic and silenced them. They got up and moved away from him, afraid now. They moved toward the door and walked out of the room.
Ricky looked down at Samir and said, 'Don't worry, I know who did it.'
Samir said, 'You know who did it, what are you doing standing here? Why aren't you out finding them?'
Dr. Kirshenbaum came in the room and said, 'My God, you're awake.'
'Yes, I'm awake,' Samir said, 'and I'm getting the hell out of here.'
'You're not going anywhere,' he said. 'You've been in a coma for two days. Your condition is profoundly unstable.'
Samir said, 'I take full responsibility. Get me a release form and I'll sign it.'
Dr. Kirshenbaum walked out of the room, shaking his head. Samir tried to sit up, got about a foot off the pillow and crashed back down. He didn't look good.
'Yo,' Ricky said. 'You okay?'
Samir glared at him. 'Who did this? Who stole my money?'
'It was Karen,' Ricky said. 'And I think Johnny.' Ricky didn't know for sure, but he was dead and couldn't defend himself.
Samir took a breath. 'Where is O'Clair?'
'I don't know,' Ricky said. 'He's disappeared, vanished. He could be-'
'Not O'Clair,' Samir said. 'I do not believe it.'
'Well where is he then?'
Samir closed his eyes like he was in pain. 'Tell me why this happened?'
'How should I know?' Ricky couldn't read minds, predict what people were going to do.
Samir said, 'Johnny's weak…'
It sounded like it was an effort for him to talk. Ricky said, 'Not anymore, he's not. He's dead.'
'What happened?'
Ricky told him.
Samir shook his head. 'I want you to find her and bring her to me.'
He still wouldn't say Karen's name, like he'd be cursed or something if he did. He closed his eyes, and Ricky wondered if he was dozing off.
'I've lost respect,' Samir said, eyes open, back on Ricky. 'Robbed in my own house. My enemies are laughing, and also my friends.'
Ricky found his clothes, black pants and black shirt, in the closet. He helped dress Samir, thinking this was going to be his new job, dressing the man and taking him to the bathroom, and waiting while he did his business. He went down the hall and got a wheelchair at the nurses' station. He went back to Samir's room and helped him into the chair, and rolled him along the clean shiny hallway. He took the elevator down to the first floor and wheeled him to the front entrance.
When the valet brought Ricky's car up, Ricky lifted Samir out of the chair like he was a child and put him in the front seat of his Lexus. Ricky was sweating, Jesus, exhausted from the effort, and he was in shape.
On the way to his house, Samir told him that anger, the buildup of rage in his subconscious, was what brought him out of the coma, and anger was again his ally, pumping adrenaline into his weakened condition, giving him the strength to leave the hospital against his doctor's advice. Ricky wasn't buying it, the man looked like an extra in Alien Dead, a zombie movie he just seen on late night TV
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.
Chapter Twenty-six
'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.