That was code for: I met a girl and shacked up with her. O'Clair was going that way anyway so he said okay. He parked his Caddy on the street, leaned back against the seat, looking at the small single-story white house. Now the front door opened and Johnny Karmo appeared, buttoning his shirt. Johnny stopped like he was talking to someone, then moved back in the house, kissing a girl with long blond hair. He pulled himself away from her and started down the cement walk that led to the street. The girl went after him again, and he kissed her one final time.
Johnny got in the car and said, "I knew when I walked in the bar and saw her I'd take her home. I got this vibe."
O'Clair said, "You got this vibe, huh?"
Johnny gave him a look. "You want to tell it, or let me do it?"
O'Clair said, "I'm on the edge of my seat."
"I held her hand," Johnny said, "traced a line down her palm, like I could see her whole life in that line, and I said, 'You've been hurt, haven't you, baby? By a man.' Who the hell else was she going to be hurt by?"
"She could've been a lesbian," O'Clair said.
Johnny wasn't listening.
"Then I looked into her eyes and she said, 'How'd you know?' Christ they believe anything you tell them."
O'Clair noticed Johnny was losing his hair, going bald on top, dark hair combed over from the side trying to hide it, and dark spots under his eyes, as he sat back in the seat and let out a breath, Johnny, the palm-reading gigolo, looking old.
"She wore me out," Johnny said. "Twenty-two wanted to go all night."
O'Clair put it in gear and the Seville moved away from the curb, accelerating past parked cars. He saw Johnny take a gold wedding band out of his pants pocket and slip it on a nail-polished finger. Then he took a cell phone out of his shirt pocket, dialed and listened.
"Rosita, Johnny, do me a flavor… send a dozen to Darlene at Nino's Salon in Troy." He listened. "I don't know her last name." He paused. "Wait a second…" He glanced out the window. "Okay, ready? 'If I can't be with you these should.' You got it?" He paused again. "Okay." He turned off the cell phone, put it back in his shirt pocket and glanced at O'Clair. "I also use: 'When you look at them, think of me.'"
O'Clair thought Johnny the Chaldean romantic should be writing greeting cards with those corny lines. "If you spent as much time working as you do fucking around you'd be rich." O'Clair shook his head. "Where's your car at?"
"A parking lot in Auburn Hills," Johnny said.
"What were you doing way out there?"
Johnny said, "I've got to go places where people don't know me."
"That's right, you're married," O'Clair said. "I forget. What do you tell Ann-Marie when you don't come home at night?"
"I'm working," Johnny said. "She's used to it."
"I've got to make a stop first," O'Clair said.
Johnny looked at his watch. "I've got an appointment at nine."
"You're not going to make it," O'Clair said.
T.J. Dolliver stared at himself in the mirror, eyes puffy and bloodshot. He got maybe three hours sleep, his mind was racing and wouldn't stop. He didn't have the money and didn't know where he was going to get it. He looked at his watch. It was ten to eight. His wife, Renee, thank the Lord, was up north at her parents' summer home for a month.
T.J. lathered his face with shaving cream, turned on the water, just the hot, and picked up his razor. He heard a voice and looked out the bathroom window. His ditzy neighbor was walking her dog. The window was open and he could hear her through the screen. T.J. put the razor under his sideburn and moved it down his jaw feeling the tug of his beard, clearing a smooth path of skin. He moved the razor around his chin and cut himself and blood appeared, mixing with the shaving cream. He heard a car and glanced out the window as it passed by-an old Cadillac. Take it easy, he told himself, quit worrying.
He finished shaving and splashed water on his face and grabbed a towel. He dabbed the cuts-three of them-with little pieces of Kleenex. He looked out the window and thought he saw someone on the front porch and he moved through the living room and stood at the front door, glancing out one of the narrow vertical windows that flanked it. The doorbell rang and rang again. The sound startled T.J. and he took off, moving through the house to the back door. He fumbled with the lock, swung the door open and stepped out on the deck. Something hit him in the chest and he was down on his back, gasping for breath, squinting up at the morning sun.
O'Clair stood over him. "T.J., where're you going?"
"Watering the plants," he said, getting his wind back.
"You're a little late," O'Clair said, scanning the deck, seeing wilted flowers and weeds in the planter boxes.
T.J. was wearing a black V-neck tee shirt, black pants and strange-looking black tie shoes with thick rubber soles that reminded O'Clair of the shoes nuns wore. He knew T.J. was married and was some kind of advertising executive. He made TV commercials and had twenty people working for him. Put on a black outfit, pretend like you knew what you were doing. O'Clair was in the wrong business.
He was a young guy too, didn't look older than thirty. Borrowed money, lost it gambling, borrowed more and that's where O'Clair entered the picture. He'd stopped by T.J.'s office to collect the original loan plus the juice. First, a snippy receptionist kept him waiting for twenty minutes and then T.J. appeared and started bullshitting him, talking to O'Clair the way he probably talked to his clients, calling him "my friend."
"Give me the fifteen grand I'll be on my way," O'Clair had said to T.J. when they were in his huge corner office that looked out over Troy. O'Clair liked the view. He could see subdivisions and the Somerset shopping mall and 1-75 in the distance.
"Ever done any acting? You've got a great look, my friend." T.J.'s cell phone rang and he said, "It's New York, I have to take this."
New York calling him, he must've been important, or thought he was. While T.J. talked, O'Clair looked around. There were stacks of black boards with scenes on them, commercials, he assumed, and a giant TV with a couch and two chairs, and a desk covered with stacks of papers. On the other side of the room, O'Clair looked out and saw the Silverdome where the Lions used to play. Nice office. T.J. ended his conversation, put the phone down.
"Like commercials, my friend?" T.J. said moving toward the TV. "Want to see our new campaign for the world's thinnest condom? We're calling it Freedom, like screwing with nothing on."
"Listen to me," O'Clair said, "I'm not here to look at commercials, understand what I'm saying?"
T.J. paused and gave him a big grin. "The good news is I have it. Bad news, I don't have it here. Can I get it to you later? Meet you somewhere? Name the place."
O'Clair did, Joe Kool's on Sixteen Mile, and TJ. said, "No problem, my friend, I know where it is, I owe you one."
T.J. looked nervous now stretched out on a La-Z-Boy recliner in his family room. O'Clair stood behind him holding the back of the chair. Johnny was standing next to the chair, gripping a silver aluminum bat that O'Clair had taken out of his trunk. Johnny choked up high, holding the bat like he was ready to swing for the fences. The bat was for show. O'Clair wasn't going to hurt T.J., 'cause if he hurt him, T.J. wouldn't be able to work and repay his debt. "He told me the good news was he had it," O'Clair said to Johnny. "Agreed to meet me and never showed. Isn't that what you said?"
"If you touch me," T.J. said, "I'm calling the cops."
"They can't help you." O'Clair was tired of T.J. jerking him around. He picked up the remote off a table next to the La-Z-Boy, pressed the power button and watched the big Mitsubishi pop on transforming from wavy gray lines to crisp color. Jerry Springer appeared in close-up, asking three seedy-looking guys with mullet haircuts why they had an affair with their mother-in-law.
"With their mother-in-laws," O'Clair said. "Where do they find these wackos?" He turned up the volume and looked at T.J. Dolliver. "Listen to me, my friend. I want you to put the money, $17,500, in my hand by five o'clock today. I don't care what you've got to do to get it. lake out a second mortgage, sell your car, sell your wife if you have to. Hear what I'm saying, my friend?"