Free Trust Me by Peter Leonard

of the elevator, looking at him, probably thinking he got what he deserved.
        Bobby said, "He watched me cash out and followed me."
        "Sir, you're going to have to come with us," the first security guard said to O'Clair. He was Italian and reminded O'Clair of De Niro, but a bigger version, De Niro on steroids. It didn't make any sense to argue. He was going with them whether he wanted to or not. They escorted O'Clair to a room that reminded him of an interrogation room at a police station. He sat at a long table across from two of the security guys, nobody saying anything. What was he going to do, tell these meatheads he was collecting the vig from a mark who was four weeks late? Would they understand that?
    ----
        

Chapter Eight
        
        The door opened and Frank Moran came in wearing an expensive-looking black sport coat and tie. He looked at O'Clair, and said, "Are you out of your mind? Next time wait till he walks outside. You can't hold up our customers in the casino. It's bad for business." Now he grinned.
        O'Clair said, "Frank, how you doing?"
        "Not bad," Moran said.
        "Seen Sparkle lately?" O'Clair said.
        "Funny you should say that," Moran said. "I was just thinking about her the other day."
        Frank Moran was a former robbery-homicide investigator O'Clair had worked a case with ten years earlier. The body of a woman was found in a motel Dumpster on the Ferndale side of Eight Mile Road, just outside the Detroit city limits. She'd been strangled with a piece of electrical cord. Two more bodies-strangled the same way-had been found a mile and a half away in Detroit near Palmer Park. O'Clair worked the case for the Detroit police department, Moran for the Ferndale PD. They had a rough description of the killer and a plausible motive. The women were known prostitutes and the killer had an appetite for crack cocaine.
        O'Clair and Moran hung out around Palmer Park for a couple of weeks, giving money to, and making friends with, every transvestite, homosexual, pimp, prostitute and freak they came in contact with. They broke the case when the killer attacked a streetwalker named Sparkle Jones. Sparkle fought him off and got away and called the police. O'Clair and Moran questioned her at Henry Ford Hospital where she was admitted for stab wounds in both hands and her right shoulder. Sparkle gave them a description of her assailant and his probable motive.
        "He was a tall, skinny, cracked-out homeless motherfucker lookin' for money for his next fix."
        O'Clair said, "Sparkle, that's a good name. Did you make it up?"
        "No sir, it's my given name, Sparkle Tiffany Jones. Was a sparkle in my mom's eye when she have me."
        O'Clair remembered, glanced at Moran, both of them trying not to smile or laugh.
        
        
        Moran took him up to his office that was open and spacious and had a big desk. "What do you think of the place?"
        "I like it," O'Clair said. "You've done well for yourself." Thinking he'd come a long way from his days as a robbery-homicide detective in Ferndale.
        "It's the largest casino in the state—ninety table games. You can play craps, roulette, baccarat, two-way monte, Spanish 21, you name it. We've got 4,500 of the latest slots and video poker games, Detroit's premier poker room, a four-hundred-room hotel with nine rooftop VIP suites and the only full-service spa in southeast Michigan. There's even a dance club, Oak. I know how you like to shake your booty." He smiled now.
        There was excitement in his voice. He was fifty but looked ten years younger—his hair was full and didn't look like it had a speck of gray.
        Moran said, "Still working for the Chaldean?"
        "Got to do what you've got to do," O'Clair said. It sounded lame, and at the moment he felt like a loser, seeing Moran doing so well.
        "Who's Robert Gal?" Moran said. "Wait, let me guess. He