Storm Prey

with three women named Star, Michellay, and Jamilayah. There was talk of money, but Barakat flashed the Ziploc and they were out of there, across the street to the Shangri-La Motel, where the three women lived in adjoining rooms.
    Star and Jamilayah, one white, one black, were all over Barakat, and Michellay, a thin blonde with a knife-edge nose and narrow lips, hung on Cappy’s arm, which made him feel thick in the chest.
    Like this was it.
    And this was it, and it didn’t take long, listening to Britney on the Wave CD, doing lines off the dresser top, playing grabass through the three rooms, and then they were on the beds, Barakat with his two, and Cappy with Michellay, who slipped him out of his pants like an eel out of its skin,
    And heck,
    Everything went Pretty Damn Well.

    BARAKAT, walking through the rooms, waving his erection around, laughing, “Look at this, you bitches, look at this one,” and Cappy drinking out of a tap, bent over the sink, and Jammy goosing him, and him almost going through the mirror, then chasing her down, the black woman screaming, Cappy rolling on top of her and bang.
    It went Pretty Damn Well again.
     
     
    LIKE RIDING out of Bakersfield, up into the hills and down the other side and out into the Mojave, screaming through the night with the wind in his face ...
    And they left at four o’clock in the morning, and Cappy leaned his head against the dashboard and said, “I think I just fucked a spook.”
    “About six times, my man,” Barakat crowed, slapping him on the back. “You were wondrous.”
    “She was like ... pink inside,” Cappy said. They headed back into town, and Cappy felt a surge of gratitude toward Barakat. He hadn’t known if it would ever happen, because women, generally, didn’t care for him. He’d accepted that: there was something in him that cut them.
    Now, he knew, you just had to find the right women.
     
     
    SHAHEEN WAS a more intricate situation, and Barakat more sober about it: “I have known him for a long time. He is nothing, but still, I have known him. I would like to do this quietly. No guns. We have to come and go, leave him behind ...”
    As an emergency room physician, Barakat had seen all kinds of trauma. After considering it, he decided that the best solution would be a blow to the head with something heavy. “When he is down, then we can finish him. The main thing, we attract no attention. With what the woman saw, Karkinnen, we don’t want somebody describing me.”
    Shaheen lived in an anonymous tan-stucco apartment building in south Minneapolis. Barakat and Cappy left the van on the street and walked back to it, in the night, and Barakat said, “His light’s on.”
    “He have a girlfriend?”
    “Shaheen? No. There’s a girl back home that he’s supposed to marry, fixed by his father. But he’s told me he doesn’t care for her.”
    “Don’t care about that—I just wondered if he had one, if she’s up there.”
    “What are your ideas for this?” Barakat asked. “To be quiet about it.”
    “Got no ideas,” Cappy said. “Just be simple and do it.”
     
     
    THE APARTMENT building had an interior door that was supposed to be locked, but Barakat pulled on it, hard, and the lock popped and they went through.
    “How’d you know about that?” Cappy asked.
    “Lock has been broken for two years,” Barakat said. “Nobody uses their key anymore.”

    SHAHEEN PEEKED around the door to see who it was, then let them in. “Now what? Has something happened?”
    “We came to tell you that nothing has happened, everything is okay,” Barakat said. “The police have found the people who did it, and they were killed.”
    “The police killed them? I didn’t hear ...”
    And they got into it, talking in circles about the people who’d robbed the hospital. Cappy had come lounging in the door behind Barakat. Shaheen glanced at him and then turned to his talk with Barakat, glancing sideways at Cappy from time to time, but not asking who he was, or what he was doing with Barakat.
    Shaheen’s apartment was furnished in Poor Student, with ramshackle bookcases holding dozens of texts, piles of medical papers. A couch faced two old easy chairs, with a glass-topped coffee table between them, and, to one side, a wooden desk with a computer, printer, and more piles of paper. A bar separated a kitchenette from the living room. There were two interior doors, both open, one leading to a bathroom, the other to a bedroom. They could see