'Looking for Karen,' Virginia said. 'I want to find out what he wants.' The truth was, she was also attracted to him.
'Maybe he's an old friend,' Fly said, 'that ever occur to you?'
'I doubt it,' Virginia said. 'My sister doesn't have friends like that.'
'What's he doing in the garage?' Fly said. 'Better not be messing up my shit.'
Virginia said, 'How could you tell?'
Fly gave her the evil eye. His real name was Gary Garringer. He'd gotten the name Fly before Virginia ever met him. Fly said he used to take acid at parties and think he'd turned into a fly. He'd put on his leather aviator helmet and goggles and move around buzzing at people. That all stopped one night when a guy who called himself the Lizard blew a flaming mouthful of Jack Daniel's into Fly's face. He lost his eyebrows but the name stuck.
Most of the people who knew Fly had no idea what his real name even was.
She watched the big guy come across the burned-out lawn to the back of the house. Virginia swung the door open and said, 'Won't you come in. I've been expecting you.'
His face had the same confused expression it had at the store. She didn't have a plan-just invite him in and see why he was looking for Karen. But, as usual, Fly screwed everything up. He came in behind the guy and hit him in the back of the head with this thing he called his schlepper, a leather sack filled with ball bearings.
The big guy didn't go down, it was amazing. He turned and threw an elbow that caught Fly and knocked him off his feet. Virginia lifted the heavy iron skillet off the stove and swung it and hit him on top of the head. His knees buckled and he dropped to the floor. She didn't mean to hit him that hard and hoped he was okay.
Fly was slow getting up.
'I wanted to talk to him,' Virginia said. 'How am I going to do that now?'
'Don't blame me,' Fly said. 'You're the one who clocked him with the fry pan.'
'You didn't give me any choice,' Virginia said. 'He was going to kick your ass.'
'He got lucky,' Fly said going through the guy's pockets now.
Virginia said, 'You're lucky I was here to save you.'
Fly had the guy's wallet. He opened it and took out his driver's license. 'His name's O'Clair. That mean anything to you?'
Virginia shook her head, but the name did sound familiar now that she thought about it. He worked for the Arab guy Karen used to go out with.
Fly dragged the guy by his feet to the basement door, bent over trying to pick him up. He was a load. She could hear his body bang on the steps as Fly took him down to the dungeon.
Virginia was rolling a joint when Fly appeared a few minutes later, breathing hard.
'Why's this dude looking for your sister?' Fly grabbed her arm, wrapping his hand around her biceps. 'This have something to do with the car I picked up? You know something you're not telling me?'
'Stop it,' Virginia said, 'that hurts.'
Fly said, 'You holding out on me?'
'No,' Virginia said.
Fly let her go. 'You better not be. Where's Karen at?'
'I don't know. I've been calling her cell phone all day. She doesn't answer.'
Fly gave her his mean biker look, trying to be a badass.
'You think she calls me up,' Virginia said, 'tells me what she's doing every minute? Hey, Gina,' she said in a voice trying to sound like Karen, 'I'm going to take out the garbage, I just wanted to let you know.'
'Don't get smart with me,' Fly said.
He had the same look on his face the night he hit her. Hauled off and decked her because she didn't bring him a beer fast enough. I'm not your slave, Virginia had said at the time, and he'd lost it. Her cheek was black-and-blue for weeks. She split after that, went to live with her mom.
Fly showed up a week later and said he was sorry and asked her to come back, and against her better judgment, she did. Karen told her she was nuts. If he hits you once, he'll do it to you again. Virginia realized she was afraid of Fly and always would be. 'I'm going to see her tonight, you forget? Me, Mom and Karen-it's girls' night out.'
'You have all the fun, don't you? If you're lucky, Mom will tell you a few of her entertaining choir stories. Or what she did yesterday.'
Fly could be a real dick.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Karen wanted to drive to the Bingham Center and say goodbye to her friend Mika, a former model from the Czech Republic who ran the Elite Model Agency, the company that had represented her for fifteen years, but realized it was too dangerous. Karen phoned her from Schreiner's house.
'I can't believe you're leaving,' Mika said, a hint of an accent still there after twenty years in the U.S. 'I'll miss you.'
'Me too,' Karen said.
'Listen,' Mika said. 'There were two men here looking for you earlier. One asked for you by name. He said he wanted to hire you.'
'Hire me for what?' Karen said.
'A new clothing line, but it didn't sound right, like he was making it up on the spot. I said, give me your card. But he did not have one,' Mika said.
Karen said, 'What was the name of his company?'
'I asked him,' Mika said, 'but he did not answer.'
'How many clients walk in off the street,' Karen said, 'and ask for a specific model?'
'They are the first in twenty years,' Mika said. 'They give me the creeps. Do you know them?'
'No,' Karen said. But she knew who they worked for. She was nervous now. 'What did they look like?'
'The one that did the talking had dark hair and a fancy beard, you know like it was sculpted, perfect. The other one was tall and thin and never spoke, not a word. He just stare at me.'
Mika had just described the two guys who were with Ricky at Lou's house the night before.
'I told them you are not available,' Mika said, 'you quit the business and left town.'
Karen said, 'What'd they say?'
'Nothing,' Mika said. 'They walked out. Ever see the movie Men in Black? That's who they remind me of-those two guys who wear sunglasses, there was something strange about them. They are not from around here, I can tell you that.'
This was one of four locations on the list from Ricky, 3945 Schaller Drive in Garden City. The name confused Tariq. There was no city and there was no garden, just small houses lined up one after another. They had been sitting in the splendid Cadillac Escalade, a gift from Tariq's uncle, since two o'clock in the afternoon and it was now five o'clock. He saw no one enter or exit from the house. Tariq had read Sada Alwatan, the Arab American News, every word, from the front to the back. The large headline on the cover page said: 'Uncertainty Hangs over Mideast.' He was thinking, of course, what else? He was thinking about his four years in the elite Republican Guards, the Hammurabi Mechanized Infantry Division, wondering what so was elite about marching behind Soviet T-72 tanks on maneuvers in the desert for weeks at a time. Or loading shells into Austrian GHN-45 howitzers, firing at targets they could not see, even with the aid of binoculars. He wondered too about the namesake of his military unit and its connection with the ruler who established the greatness of Babylon in 1792 b.c., uniting Mesopotamia with his code of laws.
He was also thinking of his good fortune to be living in America, away from the suicide bombers and the craziness of Baghdad. To Tariq it made no sense-Arabs killing Arabs. Why? But that part of his life was over. Now he was looking to the future and saw himself as a man of great wealth. When they found Karen Delaney and brought her to Ricky, he would give each of them $25,000, a considerable sum of money. If they found her within forty-eight hours, he would give each of them $50,000. Ricky was desperate to find this woman, but he did not tell
