Unknown Man #89

21

“IT’S A HOTEL LOBBY,” Virgil said. “You never seen one before?”

Tunafish brought his gaze back and looked straight ahead, toward the bank of elevators. “I never seen this one before. It’s the first time I been here.”

It was Virgil’s first time in the Pontchartrain, too, but he didn’t bother to mention it. He said to Tunafish, “Yeah, we here.” Like what was the big deal? “Anybody ask, we going up to see a man. See if he want his walk shoveled.”

They got off the elevator on 17 and walked down the hall looking at room numbers, Tunafish saying them out loud, beginning with 1725.

“Oh-five,” Virgil said and stopped by the door. He knocked, giving the door panel three light taps, and waited. “Hey, I don’t believe nobody’s home,” he said, and reached in his coat pocket for his ring of keys and was going through them when Tunafish touched his arm.

“Somebody coming.”

Virgil looked past him, his hatbrim brushing the door frame. A chambermaid had appeared from somewhere and was coming down the hall pushing a linen cart. Virgil slipped the ring of keys back into his pocket. His hand moved inside his jacket and remained there.

Approaching them, the maid said, “Good evening,” with the trace of an accent.

“How you doing?” Virgil said, looking over his shoulder as she moved past them with the cart, a heavyset woman in a white uniform, white anklets, and black crepe-soled shoes. Virgil kept watching her. When she stopped at the next door and took a sheet of paper out of her pocket, he said, “Hey, mama?” She looked up. “Yeah, come here, will you? I wonder you could open this door for us. My friend forget the key.”

“Uh-oh, shit,” Tunafish said. He didn’t like the look on the fat ugly woman’s face, puzzled, frowning a little. She came over to them, though, her hand in her pocket, probably holding on to the passkey.

“You stay with Mr. Perez?” she said.

“Yeah, I’m his brother come to visit him,” Virgil said. “Open the door, Mama.” He brought out from under his jacket Bobby Lear’s gleaming nickel-plated .38. The maid didn’t see it right away.

She said, “You his brother?” Then she saw it. “Oh, my God,” and her hand went up to her mouth.

“Open the door, please,” Virgil said. “Nobody want to hurt you.” Getting the key out and putting it in the door, she looked like she was going to cry. Virgil patted her shoulder gently. “Come on, Mama, it’s cool,” assuring her again as they entered the suite and Virgil steered her into the front closet, asking why would anybody want to hurt a pretty woman like her.

As Virgil closed the door to the closet, Tunafish walked over close to it and said, “You make a sound, we come in there, we both of us gonna rape the ass off you. You hear?”

“Get a suitcase,” Virgil said, going to the desk. “Look in the bedroom.”

They used Mr. Perez’s black Samsonite two-suiter. Virgil cleared off the desk, taking loose papers, folders, and notebooks, scratchpads, and everything in the desk, including hotel stationery and the room-service menu, and dropped everything in the suitcase open on the floor. Tunafish made them a couple of scotch and Coca-Cola drinks. Virgil had to jimmy open Mr. Perez’s locked attachй case. Right on top was a Beretta three-eighty, nice little mean-looking piece. Virgil slipped it into his jacket. He dumped the papers and file folders, lists of names and addresses, in the suitcase and went looking for more, finding a telephone-address book and a note pad with some writing on it in the bedroom and copies of The Wall Street Journal and Business Week in the bathroom. Virgil said, Shit, grinning, and took the roll of toilet paper. He took the Gideon Bible, some more magazines, and the folded laundry bags in the closet, and topped off the load in the suitcase with a painting on the wall he liked of a cat out in a sailboat with the mast broken off and this terrible motherfucker storm coming at him. Virgil sat down and had his scotch and Coke drink, wondering if the cat made it, then wondering where the cat had got the sailboat, if it was his or if he’d stolen it someplace and was trying to get away, shit, when the storm got him.

Coming out of the elevator, the first thing they saw was a bellman coming right at them. Tunafish hung back, letting Virgil get ahead of him with the suitcase.

Reaching for it, the bellman said, “Can I get you a cab?”

“No, we got a car.” Virgil let him have the suitcase, the bellman almost dropping it as he took the grip.

“It’s a heavy one.”

“Full of money.” Virgil grinned.

The bellman laughed.

About the time Virgil got home to his apartment on Seward, on the near west side, and began going through the papers, wondering what he had, Ryan was trying to stay alive.

Raymond Gidre had said, “His place, huh?” And Mr. Perez had said, “No, her place.” Raymond had said, “How do you know he won’t go home?” Mr. Perez had said, “Take my word for it.” In the restaurant before Ryan had joined them.

Now Raymond was sitting in the Hertz car in front of the Leary woman’s apartment building in Rochester. There were lights in windows, but he wasn’t sure if any were hers or if she was home. Mr. Perez had said not to go to her apartment. It would be good to sit up there and wait for him, watch the look on the Leary woman’s face. It was cold in the Hertz car, sitting there with the motor and the lights turned off. “Wait there,” Mr. Perez had said. “He comes, you don’t have to say a word to him.”

Raymond was looking forward to it. He had a 9 mm. Mauser Parabellum, official eight-shot German Luger, under his coat and a twelve-gauge Weatherby pump gun leaning against the seat with the walnut stock on the floor.

But, damn, it was cold.

The vestibule of the apartment building, through the glass door, looked warm. Except it was lit up. He doubted he’d be able to take the Weatherby in there.

After a few minutes the idea of a warm place won out over the shotgun. Then don’t take it. What would he need it for if he’s standing there as Ryan walked in? He got out of the Hertz car, leaving the Weatherby inside with the door unlocked, and crossed the parking area to the front entrance of the apartment wing. Maybe there was a light switch.

There wasn’t, though. It was probably inside the door that had to be buzzed to let you in. Raymond turned around. He couldn’t see much outside through his reflection on the glass door, just the shapes of cars, some highlights in the darkness. He’d be seen from out there, though, for sure. He looked up at the light fixture. Hell, it was only about a foot out of reach. He got out his German Luger, pointed it up there at arm’s length, rose to his toes as he shoved the six-inch barrel through the opening in the fixture and poked it against the light bulb. Hardly made a sound as the vestibule went dark. There. Raymond leaned against the wall to wait. It was a little warmer in here, but not much.

Ryan was anxious to get to Denise’s. Careful, but in a hurry, waiting for traffic lights to change, going through an amber-turning-red in the middle of Rochester and finally coming to the street that climbed the rise to the apartment buildings, looking for a light in Denise’s window as he turned into the parking area in the middle of the complex. Ryan got out and angled through the rows of parked cars toward the entrance. It was here, coming to open pavement, he sensed something wrong, something different. If there had been only one apartment building here he might not have noticed the light out in the vestibule. But he looked around at the other entrances, five of them in the U-shaped complex, and there was a light in every entrance but this one.

Ryan had stopped before he saw the glass door swing into the darkness of the vestibule and the figure appear-somebody coming out, pointing at him, pointing something-and he was moving, running back to the protection of the car rows, as Raymond began firing the German Luger at him.

Son of a bitch, something had spooked him. Raymond came out to the pavement and paused, listening, before he crossed to the first row of cars. He’d fired three rounds, louder than hell in the closed-in area between the buildings. Now the only thing Raymond could hear, standing between two cars, was his own slow breathing, in and out of his nose. Some lights were going on in the building opposite him. Probably in all the buildings. He wondered if Ryan was going to run over to one of those lit-up entrances and start pushing buzzers. Raymond hoped he would. Get him in there banging at the inside door, screaming for help, and shoot him through the glass.

Raymond moved out into the open toward the next row of cars and that flushed him, hearing his quick running steps first, and there he was, going for daylight, running past the cars to the little street that led down the hill to the main road. Raymond held his German Luger straight out in front of him with both hands and squeezed off three rounds, shit, seeing Ryan still on his feet and hearing the glass pop in a car windshield.

He needed the Weatherby pump gun. He also needed to get the Hertz car the hell out of here, before the flashing lights appeared, or he might never get back to it. He’d be giving Ryan an extra half-minute start, but that was all right, he’d be in the open for a time, anyway, if he was running for town, spooked good now, in a panic, running to find a policeman or somebody to help him.

Raymond got on him in less than a half minute, more like twenty seconds, flying out of there in the Hertz car with the lights off, down the little street and squealing the tires in a hard left onto the main road and across the railroad tracks, heading for the streetlights and neon signs a block away, and there he was on the left-hand side, going past Morley’s Drugs. Raymond swung the Hertz car into a filling station that was closed for the night, switched the motor off, and got out with the Weatherby pump gun.

He kept to the right side of the street, hurrying to catch even with Ryan, seeing him now and again past the cars parked on the street. Ryan was moving at a fast walk, looking back over his shoulder, a dark figure over there, in and out of the glow of streetlights and illuminated signs. Raymond didn’t see any people on the street except for some way down, a block away, and a few cars going by. He had the pump gun out in plain sight, not caring if anybody saw him with it. What were they going to do, take it away from him? Near the middle of the block, approaching the center of town, Raymond was ready to make his move.

He waited for a car to come along going south, the direction he was headed, stepped out in the street, and ran along with the car maybe fifteen or twenty yards, using it for cover, then let the car go on and started across the street, timing it just right and seeing the dumb look of surprise on Ryan’s face-Raymond standing out there with a big goddamn Weatherby raised at him. Ryan was moving as Raymond fired. Then Raymond was moving, pumping the shotgun, throwing himself across the hood of a parked car. He fired again and blew the plate-glass window out of a place called Bright Ideas as Ryan kept going.

Within a block and a half, running in the street about a dozen strides behind Ryan on the sidewalk, pumping and throwing down on him with the twelve-gauge, Raymond shot out the windows of Bright Ideas, Mitzelfelds department store, the box office of the Hills movie theater, a couple of car windshields and a pair of headlights before Ryan got around the corner and was out of sight. The son of a bitch was quick, moving and ducking into doorways and behind cars. Maybe he’d grazed him, cut him up some. He’d run him down and find out. People were coming out on the street, standing in front of places now. Raymond stood still on the sidewalk, his back to the streetlight, as a white police car with a gold emblem wailed by north flashing blue lights, probably answering a call from the apartments. With the sound fading, Raymond ducked around the corner after Ryan, digging twelve-gauge shells out of his coat pocket.

The wail of the police car lifted Ryan and he stopped to listen-Christ, saved-he could see it swerving after Raymond, running him down, the pair of young, alert Rochester police officers out of the car with drawn revolvers-

Yeah?

Bullshit, the police car was still going, the nice sound trailing after it, stretching thin and not doing him one bit of good, what those guys were paid to do, for Christ’s sake-and Ryan was moving again, running past the back-street shops, the once-Victorian houses that now had artsy paint jobs and craftsy signs. All closed, silent, dark. No place to go in and hide and tell somebody to quick, call the police. The guy was crazy, running down the fucking main street firing a shotgun, Christ, people watching him.

You’re doing it all wrong, Ryan told himself, much too late. From the beginning, running. He was still running and didn’t have time to stop and think. Coming to a corner, the cross street lined with old trees, he wished to God he knew what he should do, keep going, cut left or right, what? He wanted to hide somewhere, but he didn’t want to get trapped. His side ached and his stomach hurt. He ran toward the house on the corner with the sign in front, Objects & Images. Quick decision, he’d break in if he had to, use the phone and wait there in the dark. But not in time. The twelve-gauge sound hit the air flat and heavy and the shot ripped against the side of the house directly behind Ryan, jerking his head around to see the crazy bastard on him again, one house away, coming in mean, hard prison-farm condition, mind made up nothing was going to stop him. It scared the shit out of Ryan, fear slugging him to pump his legs faster. Christ, how’d he get here, doing it all fucking wrong, an ex-con with a slide-action shotgun coming down on him. His stomach hurt, something hard pressing on his intestines. He put his hand on his stomach, still running, and felt the grip of the .38 Smith that he had absolutely forgot all about.

Cutting across the front lawn of the corner house, he wanted to get behind something, but was afraid to stop, so he kept running, down the cross street lined with trees now. He wished he knew what he was doing, instinctively knew the way to take the guy. Get behind something. Get behind a tree and hit him going by. Except what if he missed and there was crazy Raymond swinging around with the shotgun? The shotgun made an awful noise and tore out whole plate-glass windows and ripped shingles off houses and could take the top of your head right off, like the man at the Wayne County Morgue who’d killed himself with a shotgun. He remembered the smell of the morgue and remembered, in that moment, what the smell was like. Bad breath. A sick person’s breath. A whole tiled room full of it. He didn’t want to get there, end up on a metal-tray table naked, lying in the cold-room with fifty naked people, his clothes in a paper bag between his legs.

Ryan stopped in the middle of the tree-lined street, pulled out the .38 Smith and turned around, extended it with both hands, like the cops on TV did, and when he saw Raymond, coming across the lawn, coming out of the line of trees to the pavement, Raymond charging directly up the street at him, three houses away, Ryan fired. He started to turn, to run, and saw Raymond stop. Ryan fired again, he fired four times again as fast as he could pull the trigger, the revolver alive, jumping in his hand. The sound died away. Raymond stood there. He wouldn’t fall down. Ryan squeezed the trigger again, hard, and heard the hammer click on an empty chamber.

Less than three houses away, less than a hundred feet, Raymond said, “That all you got?”