Unknown Man #89

16

“I’M TICKLED TO death I’m talking to you,” Mr. Perez said. He was hunched over the papers and folders that covered the desk, smiling into the telephone.

Ryan, on the couch, was trying to listen while Raymond Gidre was telling him how he got along with niggers, how he didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother him.

“I know it must be a surprise, yes indeed.” He was giving it his Nice Mr. Perez tone. “I’m just happy I was able to locate you… No, I’m pretty sure. Miz Robert Leary, Jr., is that correct?”

“Matter of fact I had a good friend was a nigger,” Raymond Gidre said to Ryan, across the coffee table. “Boy name of Old Jim, we called him. Me and Old Jim’d go crabbin’ down to Grand Isle.”

“No, I’m afraid, Miz Leary, I can’t tell you much more than I have on the telephone. What I’d like to do is come out and see you, explain this in detail… No, it’s a property… No, not necessarily, Miz Leary. Tell me something. When would be convenient for you?”

“You ever go crabbin’?”

Ryan said yes, to shut him up. Raymond told him about it anyway, how you put the meat in the crab net, rotten meat if you had some, and how the sides of the net collapsed when it was laying on the bottom, then, see, the sides raised up again when you lifted out the net.

“Yes, ma’am, I can come out this evening, or I can meet you somewhere if you’d rather. Whatever’s convenient.”

“Drop them suckers in the boiling water, watch ’em turn red. First, though, you want to put in your bay leaf and your Tabasco, also some thyme.”

“That’d be fine, Miz Leary. It was nice talking to you and I’m looking forward to seeing you… Yes, ma’am, five o’clock. Bye-bye.”

“I generally eat five, six. Shit, they go down good.”

“What’s that, Raymond?” Mr. Perez was off the phone.

“Gulf crabs.”

“What’d she say?” Ryan asked.

Mr. Perez was grinning at Raymond. “Now you talking. Leave this meat and potato country and get back to cooking.”

“How’d she sound?” Ryan said.

“Surprised… though not too excited.” Mr. Perez got up and walked around to his bookcase bar next to the window. He began making himself a drink. “She seemed vague, like she just woke up.”

“Well, I doubt she’d be expecting anybody even to call her,” Ryan said. “You think?”

Mr. Perez came over with his drink. Raymond got up quickly and Mr. Perez sat down in his deep chair.

“You talked to her, did you?”

“I had to. Find out where she lives.”

“How’d she sound? I’m wondering if the booze has made her soft in the head any.”

“She’s not drinking,” Ryan said. “She quit.”

“She tell you that?”

“She was sober. You could see she hadn’t had anything in a while.”

“How do you tell that?”

“Her appearance. She looks like a different person now,” Ryan said. “It couldn’t have just happened overnight.”

Mr. Perez nodded, accepting that, but still curious. “You say you hung around this place, Uncle Ben’s. She came in to get her driver’s license and you started talking to her. How’d you go about that?”

“I went up to her, I asked her if she remembered me. She said no. I said, Aren’t you Denise Watson? I told her I met her in a bar one time. We had a cup of coffee and talked a little.”

“You tell her who you are?”

“I told her my name, I told her what I did. She seemed nervous then; but I didn’t pull out any papers, so she relaxed.”

“How’d you find out where she lives?”

“I asked her. Well, first I asked her if she’d like to go out sometime. She wouldn’t say yes right away, but before I left she gave me her phone number and told me where she lives.”

“In Pontiac?”

“No, it’s in Rochester.”

“Rochester doesn’t mean shit to me.”

“It’s east of Pontiac,” Ryan said. “The address is on the piece of paper I gave you. With the phone number.”

“You go to her place?”

Ryan paused. “Yeah, I did, to check. Make sure it wasn’t a phony address.”

“But you didn’t go in, huh, and visit?”

“No.” Ryan shook his head. “I was wondering,” he said then, “when you see her you don’t have to mention my name, do you?”

“Why?”

“I mean, if she asks how you found out where she lives. Since she isn’t in the book or anything.”

“I ask you why,” Mr. Perez said, “but you won’t tell me.”

“I just wondered, that’s all. In case I ever see her again.”

“I don’t see any reason to bring you into it,” Mr. Perez said. “Your part’s done. ‘Less she gets drunk and runs away again.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Ryan said. “Once she finds out her husband’s dead, I think she’s gonna be more relieved than anything else.”

“Feel you know her pretty well, huh?” Mr. Perez gave Ryan a little smile to show he understood. “How many cups of coffee you have with her?”

“A couple,” Ryan said. He was being honest and literal and gave Mr. Perez a nice boyish grin in return.

“You interested in her?”

“Well, I got to admit she’s a good-looking girl,” Ryan said. “Is that what you mean?”

“Another week or so, when she gets her money,” Mr. Perez said, “she’s gonna be even better-looking, isn’t she?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Ryan said.

Raymond was grinning now. “Wants to fuck him a rich lady for a change. Shit, I don’t blame him.”

“They’re no worse or no better,” Mr. Perez said, and looked at Ryan again. “I don’t blame you, either. It’s none of my business what you got in mind for Miz Leary, once we’re done. As long as it’s her you intend to fuck and not me.”

“I hope I’m not offending you,” said boyish Jack Ryan, “but I think if I had a choice…”

Mr. Perez smiled and Raymond Gidre laughed out loud and Ryan said he’d keep in touch and left. In the silence, then, Mr. Perez sipped his drink.

He said to Raymond, “You feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“That boy’s gonna try and run with it,” Mr. Perez said. “I don’t think he knows it yet, but he’s gonna try.”

Mr. Perez visited Denise Leary on Tuesday, after she got home from work. He spent forty minutes with her while Raymond Gidre waited outside in the rented car. Raymond watched people coming and going in and out of the apartment complex and studied some of them very closely, but he did not see any niggers.

At seven-thirty Ryan called Mr. Perez at the hotel.

Mr. Perez told him it went about the way he’d expected. He’d left the agreement with her and would call in a day or two. There was nothing to do now but wait. Ryan tried to ask questions. How did she react? What’d she say? But Mr. Perez told him to save it, he was going out for his supper.

Ryan had decided not to bother Denise this evening, so he didn’t call her until the next morning at eight. He’d ask her if he could pick her up after work, get something to eat and go to a meeting.

There was no answer.

At noon he drove out to the A&P in Rochester and found out Denise wasn’t working today. She’d called in sick.

He called her several more times that afternoon and evening. On what he had decided was his last try, at ten o’clock, Denise answered the phone.

“Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day.”

“Why?” She sounded all right. Calm.

He had to settle down. For all he was supposed to know, she could have been anywhere. “I was worried about you.”

“Were you, really?”

“I stopped by the grocery store, they said you were home sick. I kept calling and there was no answer.”

“That was nice of you,” Denise said. “Can you come over?”

“Now?”

“Yeah, if you can. I’ve got an awful lot to tell you.”