“Ah! Sarp? What are you doing here?”
For several moments, three pair of eyes traveled from face to face. There was deadly silence.
“Who on earth is Sarp?” I finally asked, surprised and a bit panicked.
Ipekten eyes’s shifted from me, to Sarp, down to his limp manhood, and then back to me again.
“You see…”
“You slept with him?” I interrupted.
“You could say that…”
Either they had or they hadn’t.
“So you did…” I said, pointing the gun at the floor. It suddenly seemed heavy.
“Uh-huh…” she said, feigning embarrassment. The shameless hussy.
Now we all avoided each other’s eyes. What an unpleasant development. The person I’d called for help turned out to be my assailant’s lover.
We both turned to look at Sarp, who was speaking.
“Would one of you mind pulling up my underwear?”
Ipekten sprang to his side, seizing the opportunity to plant a small kiss just where his waistband snapped into place.
“Ipekten! Really!”
“Oh, come on, he’s a good kid, actually.”
She was standing right next to him, one of the guns in her hand. It was like one of those scenes where the heroine switches sides, goes over to the forces of evil.
“But he broke into my house. Assault and battery with a deadly weapon,” I protested, getting a firmer grip on my gun and waving it about a bit. “And he won’t even tell me who put him up to it.”
Ipekten took two steps in my direction, glancing now and again at me, then back at Sarp. Nothing’s worse than doubting an old friend. But once you’ve got a man in the picture, friendship goes out the window. She made up her mind.
“Who hired you? You’ll tell us, won’t you?” she said to him.
“Don’t be stupid!” Sarp muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
“What kind of an answer is that?” asked Ipekten, running her fingers through his hair. It wasn’t a good sign, but it was still too early to take action. “Talking like that to me of all people. And in front of my best friend, no less… Well, I won’t stand for it!”
“You just don’t get it!” shouted Sarp. “You’re a couple of clueless shitheads!”
“Look, lion boy, watch who you’re calling ‘shithead.’ When I blow my top, I blow it big time. I’ll shit in your mouth, I will. I’ll wipe that sneer right off your face. That tackle you’re so proud of won’t do you any good when I get through with it. Do I make myself clear?”
She dug the gun into Sarp’s crotch and opened the safety with a click chillingly audible to us all.
This was getting interesting.
Sarp had no intention of talking. Even worse, he was insolent about it. A crooked smile on his face, he even threatened us with a long list of likely retributions.
We had no choice but to wrap more tape around his ankles and turn our attention to the mute.
“If you don’t talk, we’ll torture you,” said Ipekten.
She was serious. Even I believed her.
Eyes wide with fright, the mute stared at us.
Of course, meddlesome Sarp did all he could to discourage him.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“None of your business. It’s not like you’re going to get married.”
Sarp seemed to think that a formal introduction inevitably leads to nuptials. It was the second time tonight he’d said that. Either he had an extremely limited vocabulary and utter lack of imagination, or he was obsessed with the wedding ceremony.
“Sorry, Ipekten,” I said, giving Sarp a good kick to the ribs. He’d begun to irritate me.
“Look, shake your head if you have something to say!”
Ipekten was kneeling next to the mute.
“If you write a single word, you’re dead. No one’ll be able to save your ass. You can count on it!”
Clearly, Sarp hadn’t been satisfied with a single kick. And Ipekten wasn’t helping me reprimand him.
Then she motioned with her head for me to follow her. The two of us went off to the kitchen, shutting the door behind us.
“I’ve got a plan,” she whispered.
It was simple. First, we put them in separate rooms. We also had to muzzle Sarp. He was quite the chatty Cathy. And he’d gone as far as calling us “a couple of stupid fags.” I have zero tolerance for the word “stupid.”
We filled a hypodermic needle with the saline solution I use to clean the colored lenses I sometimes wear.
Brandishing the needle, Ipekten went up to Sarp.
“It’s truth serum, honey. Rohypnol. Once we inject you with this, you’ll be singing like there’s no tomorrow. We’ll find out even more than we’d care to,” she said, holding the needle in front of his nose.
The lens solution would, of course, have no physiological effect of any kind, but as a placebo we might get results. Anyway, it wasn’t entirely unscientific and certainly worth a try. We’d try it out on both Sarp and the mute. It would be enough that they believed us.
“Where should we stick it in?” I asked.
“Where would it hurt most?”
“Down there, I suppose…” I fairly cackled.
Sarp was trembling. The cords in his neck had come out and his eyes had grown into dinner plates. I stifled a giggle.
“Pull down his pants. I’ll do it,” said Ipekten.
Sarp struggled to move, but failed. We’d made a tidy little package out of him, nicely gagged and bound. I managed to get his trousers and underwear down and grabbed his hips so he couldn’t move.
“Look here,” said Ipekten, “if you shake like that the tip of the needle will break off in your dick. So lie still, darling. Or talk…”
He was a big, strong boy, our Sarp. A regular commando. But when the needle pricked his privates he was out cold. I could have roused him with cold water but decided a good slap would work just as well.
“Open your eyes, you big lug!” I shouted. “We haven’t even done it yet! You’ll miss the show!”
I could only guess at the curses and threats building up inside him, but his mouth was taped shut. Those liquid eyes were petrified, glassy. It seemed we were finally getting through.
“I’m asking you for the last time,” said Ipekten, giving his pee-pee a poke with the needle. “Are you ready to talk?”
Sarp nodded.
I took great delight in tearing the tape off his mouth, once again uprooting mustache and beard hair in the process. His eyes flashed fire.
Gritting his teeth, he gave us our name.
“Nimet Han?m.”
And he passed out again.
Chapter 33
The wife of our newly departed loan shark, Faruk Hanoglu, came from an old family of good stock and enjoyed a reputation as a traditional lady of impeccably conservative credentials. Her name was none other than Nimet Hanoglu! Life’s full of surprises, and this one was a real doozy. Gracious wife and mother Nimet Hanoglu had sent a pair of thugs after me. There I was, hard at work salvaging my own reputation and the good name of her husband, and she’d arranged for a couple of shantytown roughs to break into my flat! Great favors are so often repaid with ingratitude.
It was now morning. I had things to do, places to go, people to meet-and two thugs bound and gagged on my bedroom floor. I felt like a busy executive with no time to pick his teeth.
Full of energy, I took a shower, shaved quickly (twice), and applied a light coat of makeup. Meanwhile, Ipekten sat in front of the TV with an enormous cup of milky coffee, a gun, and a can of pepper spray, watching a
Sarp and the mute had been dragged out of the way but were still in plain view. Sarp hadn’t yet regained consciousness. The mute was still trembling.
The day was sunny and my spirits high. I decided on pastels. I was thrilled at the prospect of finally getting to the bottom of this murder case. Slipping into the sweetest little beige pantsuit, I knotted a pink and yellow Hermes scarf just above the Mao collar, around which I draped a faux gold chain that hung nearly to my waist. The seventies had sprung to life. With a wide-brimmed hat I would be the spitting image of Faye Dunaway in the original 1968 version of The Thomas Crown Affair. A hint of Chanel No. 5 and I was set to go.
Every time I pick up a bottle of Chanel I think of the magnificently icy demeanor of Catherine Deneuve in that old ad, then I remember Marilyn Monroe replying “two drops of Chanel No. 5” when asked what she wore in bed.
I suddenly felt like Monroe, Deneuve, Dunaway, and Audrey all rolled into one. It was a bit unsettling. Such a rare cocktail of beauty and elegance could prove overly potent. I decided to remove the hat.
“Hey hubby, why’d you ditch that tray on your head?”
“
