Unknown Man #89

  "Line's busy," Virgil said, his hand over the phone. He straightened in his chair then, getting ready. "No, she can ring now." Virgil waited, then seemed to smile. "Who am I speaking to, please?"

  "Who do you want?"

  Tunafish, sitting in his leather coat, deep in a chair, could hear the man's voice.

  "You the man lost something this evening?"

  There was a pause. "Yes, I lost something."

  "Well, I'm selling scrap paper," Virgil said. "Paper that's gonna get scrapped if nobody wants to buy it. You dig?"

  Mr. Perez placed a call to the Elmwood Motel in Windsor, Room 115. "Me again, Raymond. You in bed?"

  "Almost. I been looking out the window, I don't see a thing to do. You know, coming here"-Raymond laughed-"I seen a sign, you know what it said?"

  "What'd it say, Raymond?"

  "It said 'Chinese and Canadian Food.'"

  "You'll have something to do tomorrow," Mr. Perez said. "One of our nigger friends in the paper business called up."

  "You don't tell me."

  "Wants to sell my own property back to me. I asked him how much. He said he already had a bid of ten thousand. I said all right, I'd give him fifteen. He said if I could pay fifteen I could pay twenty."

  "What he had in mind, huh?"

  "To him, all the money in the world. I said all right, twenty."

  "He believe you?"

  "He wants to, so he does."

  "You ask him if he'd take a check?"

  "They don't think about how a person goes about getting twenty thousand dollars together. They think anybody staying here must be rich and rich people have money in their pockets."

  "He's coming tomorrow?"

  "No, says he'd soon as not walk in the hotel carrying my suitcase. I said you walked out with it, it didn't bother you none. He wants to meet us two o'clock a place called the Watts Club Mozambique."

  "The what?"

  Mr. Perez repeated the name. "On a street called Fenkell. Look it up in your directory."

  "No problem."

  "You go look at the place in the morning, then we'll meet and talk about it."

  "That sounds good," Raymond said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

  Mr. Perez hung up.

  Less than a minute later the phone rang. When Mr. Perez answered, Raymond said, "I forgot to ask you, what do you think they mean, Canadian food?"

  There had been time to think during the night and time to think after waking up with Denise and finally getting out of bed to shower and get dressed. They didn't talk about Virgil or Mr. Perez or any of it until they were sitting at the counter with juice and coffee and Ryan told her he was going to call the police.

  "Good," Denise said. "I'll get the number."

  Ryan was stirring his coffee. "I don't mean the cops here. I've been thinking, maybe the best thing would be to call Dick Speed first. Tell him what's happened, you know, get him in on it instead of going right to the local cops and trying to explain why a guy was shooting at me. You see what I mean? It's pretty involved."

  "Whatever way you want to do it," Denise said, "as long as we get it over with."

  "He knows about most of it. I'll ask him what he thinks we should do, if we've got a chance of involving Mr. Perez-" Ryan stopped. "Shit, I can't tell him the whole thing. How do I explain I sent a guy to burglarize a hotel room?"

  "Don't tell him that part," Denise said, "just tell him about Raymond. All we want is for them to leave us alone. It doesn't have to have anything to do with Virgil . . . does it?"

  "I don't know. Once I open it up ..."

  "Call him." Denise reached for the phone on the counter and moved it closer to Ryan. "You know you'll have to sooner or later."

  Ryan lit a cigarette first, getting ready, before dialing the number. He asked for Dick Speed and could hear sounds, voices in the Squad Six offices as he waited. Then Speed was on the line. They said hello and how's it going, fine, and Ryan got to it, saying, "I want to talk to you about something. A guy tried to kill me."

  "I believe it," Dick Speed said. "Which one?"

  "You remember the two guys from Louisiana you looked up for me, Perez and a Raymond Gidre?"

  "Hold on a second."

  Ryan could hear voices again, Dick Speed asking someone for a file, saying it was right there on the desk. Denise was watching him expectantly. He looked at her and shrugged. "He told me to hold on."

  "Okay," Dick Speed said. "Perez and Gidre tried to kill you."

  "No, it was just Raymond . . . Gidre."

  "With what?"

  "A shotgun." Ryan told him about it briefly, the high points, the breaking glass. He didn't mention shooting at Raymond; he'd save that.

  "You reported it to the police?"

  "That's what I'm doing. Aren't you the police?"

  "The Rochester police," Dick Speed said. "Outside Detroit I don't give a shit who tries to kill you."

  "Look, I'm calling you because it's kind of an involved situation," Ryan said, "if you know what I mean. I'm not sure what all I should tell them."

  "You mean if you should tell them about the papers were stolen from room 1705, the Pontchartrain Hotel, at approximately eight-fifteen last night?"

  "Jesus," Ryan said. There was a silence.

  "You still there?"

  "I'm here."

  "How'd you like to go someplace with me this afternoon?" Dick Speed said. "Maybe eyeball the guy tried to shoot you. How's that sound?"

  "I don't believe it," Ryan said. "How could you know all that, I mean about the papers?"

  "How come you know they were stolen?" Dick Speed said. "You want to answer that?"

  "I told you it was complicated."

  "Isn't it, though," Dick Speed said. "You want to go with me or not?"

  Ryan felt tired, like he hadn't gotten enough sleep.

  "I'll go."

  He listened, nodding, then hung up the phone. Denise was waiting.

  "Well?"

  "Well, I talked to the police," Ryan said.

  Chapter 23

  "You mentioned, talk about small worlds," Dick Speed said. "We get Tunafish on this attempted extortion that's very flimsy, in fact not worth a shit, but long as we're talking to him, he's right there, why not play let's make a deal? Drop the beef, save him some of the best years of his life, we say, if he'll talk to us about his brother-in-law and try and recall if Virgil was actually with Tunafish a certain night or was he visiting somebody at a hotel. Tunafish says, What hotel? It got a little confusing about hotels before Tunafish says, The man talk to you? We say yeah, he did, not knowing who the fuck he means at all. See, we're trying to put Virgil in the hotel where Bobby Lear was shot dead and Tunafish's talking about, it turns out, the Pontch. Says he went up there with Virgil, yeah, thinking he was gonna see a man, and so on. We say right, you haven't done nothing. He wants you to go with him to make the drop, fine. Says carry the man's gun, do it, what he tells you. Your soul is now spotless, free of sin." Dick Speed looked out his side window. "They went in there at one-twenty-five. All we need now's your other two friends."

  The bar was across the street from where they sat in Dick Speed's unmarked Ford. A brick building with a glass-brick window and a painted sign that said Watts Club Mozambique. A smaller sign said Jazz Nightly. The place didn't look to be open or doing business, though several people had gone in and come out during the twenty-five minutes they had been waiting. It was cold in the car, dull gray outside, the street of storefronts dirty and old-looking, a street that had been handed down, Ryan remembering it as a Jewish neighborhood, and was now nearly all black.

  "Very active at night around here," Dick Speed said. "Down at the corner of Fenkell and Livernois was where we almost had another riot last summer, you remember? The bar-owner comes out, shoots a spook in his parking lot."

  "I remember reading about it," Ryan said.

  "Very touchy for a while. A guy was pulled out of his car, going home from work, the guy didn't even know what the fu
ck was going on. Some foreign guy, an ethnic you say now, gets the shit beat out of him and dies in the hospital."

  After a few moments Ryan said, "Saint Gregory's, it's around here somewhere. I used to play basketball there in the seventh and eighth grade. It was about maybe half black then."

  "You ever go there to Confession?"

  "No, why?" Ryan looked at him and saw the dumb-innocent expression. "Oh. Yeah, I forgot. You want to hear it?"

  "I already did, from the Tuna," Dick Speed said. "He didn't mention you in particular. I mean your name isn't written down anywhere, but-Jesus, that's about the dumbest thing I ever heard of a supposedly intelligent person doing. How much you pay 'em?"

  "Nothing yet. Virgil was supposed to get something if we made it."

  "I asked you how much."

  "Ten grand."

  "Jesus Christ, you know what you're talking about?"

  "What's the amount? It's breaking and entering, isn't it? I mean to Virgil, what's that? Looking at it relatively. He's taking something from a guy, he's not taking money, information that legally belongs to somebody else."

  "You think that's the way your lawyer's gonna plead it?"

  "I don't know"-it was dumb and it wore Ryan out trying to make it sound rational-"I made a bad call, I admit it. Now what?"

  "Now what, it's up to Virgil and the Tuna," Dick Speed said. "They get their ass in the cogs, and got to sweat and pray they don't take you with 'em. We'll see what we can do. So far you've been pretty lucky."

  "That I've got you on my side?" Ryan couldn't help saying it. He sat there while Dick Speed gave him a grim look.

  "You gonna be a smartass now?"

  "No, I'll be good," Ryan said.

  "Boy, I don't know about you." Dick Speed was shaking his head.

  Ryan let it go and sat quietly. He didn't know why he did things like that, antagonized people. Maybe to see their reaction. He wasn't serious; he was kidding. Right now would be the time to tell Speed he had a gun on him, watch him go through the roof. He'd almost left it home when he stopped to change his shoes, but he reloaded it instead-thinking of Raymond, knowing he was going to see Raymond again, and Virgil-and stuck it back in his raincoat pocket. He didn't mention it to Speed, though, or show it to him. He figured the guy had enough to think about.

  They didn't talk much after that. At two, Dick Speed said, "Okay, where are they?"

  About ten after, Ryan said, "There's one of them. Raymond Gidre." He was coming toward them on the sidewalk. Three cars away, in front of them, he crossed the street to the bar.

  "Where's the other one?" Speed said.

  By a quarter after, they were pretty sure Mr. Perez wouldn't be taking part today.

  Virgil took some time deciding where Tunafish should sit with the suitcase. Tunafish said, You making the deal, you sit with it. Virgil said no, he would be observing the transaction. The man, whoever came, would see the suitcase. He could look in it if he wanted. When the man gave him the money, Tunafish was to bring it to Virgil and then watch the man, with his hand in his pocket holding his new little Baretta. If it didn't go down right, if the man didn't hand Tunafish the money or if he tried to grab the suitcase and run, Virgil would step in and kill the deal. Step in from where, though?

  Watts Club had a U-shaped bar extending to a small bandstand that faced the restrooms. It was a strange layout: tables on this side of the bandstand along the bar, and tables on the other side, in the back of the place. The best seat in the house would be in front of the door to the men's room. Virgil thought at first that's where he should be, inside the men's. Place Tunafish so that whoever came would have to sit or stand with his back to the door and Virgil could cover him easy, keeping the door open an inch. But he couldn't see himself waiting in the men's room very long with that disinfectant pissy perfume smell.

  So he decided he'd sit around on the other side of the U-shaped bar with his back to the wall, where there were paintings of naked African ladies and a buck straddling a bongo drum, beating the shit out of it. Virgil placed Tunafish at the end table closest to the toilet-so the man would have to walk all the way in-put the suitcase on a chair, got Tunafish a rum and Coke, and walked around the U-shaped bar to the stool he liked. From here he could look directly across the two bar sections to see Tunafish sitting at the table. Virgil ordered a tall vodka and orange juice from the lady bartender. The manager or somebody was straightening up behind the bar, counting change, and two other employees were around somewhere, one of them in the checkroom that served as a front office. There were no other patrons in the bar besides Virgil and Tunafish when Raymond Gidre walked in at ten minutes past two.

  The first thing Raymond did was count the house. Four, no, five that he could see.

  He stopped at the bar and said, "Let me have a Jim Beam and Seven-Up if you will, please."

  The lady took a long time to make an easy drink and charged him a buck seventy-five for it. Jesus Christ, in a nigger place. He saw Mr. Perez's suitcase on the chair and the boy sitting next to it, round fuzzball head sticking out of a leather coat with big shoulders. Boy with a drink in front of him and his hands in his pockets.

  Another boy with a hat and sunglasses sitting across the other side of the bar like he was a nigger cowboy, riding the barstool with his big orange drink. That one, Raymond said to himself. The skinny boy had the suitcase, but the cowboy was the one to watch.

  Raymond took his drink and walked over to Tunafish. He said, "How you doing? Your hands cold?"

  Tunafish, looking up at him, said, "My hands? What?"

  Raymond placed his drink on the table. He reached into his coat, brought out his German Luger and shot Tunafish in the face, twice.

  Virgil was several beats off, thinking it was still the preliminary stage when it was almost over. He did have his hand on Bobby Lear's nickel-plated automatic and he got it up over the edge of the bar. He was looking at Raymond and couldn't believe what was happening. He had been patient and planned it--

  Raymond was half-turned to him, extending the Luger. He fired twice again and blew Virgil off the stool, his head hitting against the high breasts of a painted African lady on the wall.

  The manager and the lady bartender, in the pen of the U-shaped bar, standing by the cash register, didn't move. If it wasn't a robbery, they assumed it was dope business. The employee in the coatroom stood by the counter of the half door. No one in the place screamed; no one said a thing.

  Picking up the suitcase, Raymond was thinking, Shit, them peckerheads'd never make it the night in New Iberia. He knew the four people were watching him as he walked down the length of the bar, turned to the right past the tables, and reached the inner glass door that opened into the vestibule. About twenty paces in twenty seconds.

  It took Virgil that long to push himself from the wall to the bar and slide along the rounded edge on the blood coming out of his chest. He thought the man would turn around to make sure. He hoped the man would, seeing him past the nickel-plated barrel extending from his arm. The arm, across the bar, and his free hand, hanging on to the rounded edge, held him up. Somebody would see him, but he wanted the man to see him, ready this time. He hadn't been ready before. He wished he could do it again, start over, be waiting here, the man comes in-he'd have to have hit the man coming in to beat him. Better than hitting the man going out and that was all the chance he had left in the whole fucking world left to do, shit, when he'd just learned the natural way to do things and had only fucked up this one time, being a little late, a little too patient-the man was almost out. Virgil concentrated and began squeezing the trigger of the nickel-plate, hearing it loud close to him and seeing the man seem to jump like somebody had kicked him in the ass, the man pushing through the door, not stopping or turning, gone, with the glass door swinging back in.

  The manager and the lady bartender and the employee back of the coat-check counter still didn't move or say anything.

  There were patrol cars on the side streets at both ends
of the block and a Seventh Squad detail in unmarked cars parked within sight of the bar entrance. Officially this was their stakeout, to recover stolen property and apprehend the suspects. With the sound of gunfire it was the Seventh Squad that radioed its units and got the show going.

  It took a few moments for Ryan to realize what was happening, hearing the shots and the voice on the radio repeating numbers and saying, "Move in ... move in!" He didn't recognize the sound of the first four shots as gunfire or relate the sound to the sudden static-y words coming over the radio. Dick Speed was already out of the car. Ryan got out his side and slammed the door and heard Dick Speed say, "Stay in there!" But at that moment there were more gunshots from inside the bar, four or five, Ryan counted. He saw the Colt Magnum in Dick Speed's hand. The door to the bar opened. Raymond was out on the sidewalk with the suitcase. Ryan saw the two Seventh Squad plainclothesmen in the street about twenty yards away, and beyond them a squad car with its flashers spinning blocking the intersection and the cops getting out, hurrying this way.

  Dick Speed, the closest one to Raymond, said, "Stand where you are-drop it!"

  Raymond was coming out from between two cars parked in front of the place, the suitcase in one hand and the Luger in the other-coming the way Ryan remembered him coming the night before, but staggering, bumping against the trunk lid of a car. Ryan had his .38 out, pointing it at Raymond.

  Dick Speed, not ten feet from Raymond now, was holding his Mag extended in both hands. Ryan heard him say, "Drop it, motherfucker, you're dead!"

  Raymond stopped. He took a step, tried to, then buckled, as though dragged down by the weight of the suitcase, and fell on top of it. Ryan could see blood on the back of his suit coat. Dick Speed circled him, moved in, and pressed the Mag against the back of Raymond's head.

  "Let go of the gun."