Unknown Man #89

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 fuck 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 Beretta. 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 7Up 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 bat 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.”

The two Seventh Squad detectives moved in. One of them put his foot on the wrist of Raymond’s outstretched arm and pulled the Luger out of his hand. The other one ran inside the bar. Within the next half minute there were uniformed policemen all around them. One of them, Ryan realized, was staring at him and seemed about to say something or make a grab for him. But it was Dick Speed, getting up from Raymond, who spoke.

“What’s that?”

“What?” Ryan said.

“In your hand.”

“Oh.” He stuck the .38 back in his raincoat pocket.

“You recognize this man?”

“It’s Raymond.”

Dick Speed continued to give him the look, relaying a no-bullshit warning to stay out of it, until he turned abruptly, spoke to one of the uniformed cops, then went into the bar.

Ryan heard the Seventh Squad detective, kneeling over Raymond, say, “He’s dead. Or else he’s holding his breath.” Ryan stared at Raymond, at the suitcase partly under him.

“What happened to him?”

The Seventh Squad detective looked up at him. “He’s been shot. What do you think happened to him?” He pushed Raymond off the suitcase, rolling him onto his back on the wet pavement. Raymond’s eyes were closed. His hand still gripped the suitcase until the detective pried his fingers loose.

The suitcase was free, lying on its side in the street. Ryan could take two steps and touch it with his foot. He got a cigarette out and lit it. There were sirens coming, getting louder. He saw black people on the sidewalk edging in to get a look past the parked cars. The suitcase lay there. None of the cops touched it. They’d come over and look down at Raymond and say something or shake their heads. Pick it up, Ryan kept thinking.

But maybe there wasn’t anything in it and that’s what started the shooting.

No, Raymond wouldn’t have come out with it. Mr. Perez’s papers were in there. A sheet with Denise’s name on it and the name of the stock.

Nobody paid any attention to the suitcase. Ryan drew on his cigarette. For a moment he wondered about Virgil and Tunafish, if they were all right. He wanted to go inside and find out, but he didn’t want to leave the suitcase. He felt responsible for it. What if somebody walked off with it? He stooped down and set it upright as he rose, then stepped away from it, chickening out with the cops standing around him. There was more noise and confusion than before. Good. But he wished the cops would turn around or walk away for a minute. A van-type ambulance, an Emergency Medical Service unit, was rolling toward them now, its dome lights revolving, siren dying. The van edged past to bring the rear end to Raymond’s body. Ryan picked up the suitcase again, as if to get it out of the way. A cop glanced at him, but didn’t say anything, the cop not sure who he was. Ryan set the suitcase down at his side. The cigarette had burned almost to the filter. He had to do it now or forget it. Open the suitcase and give it a quick look. Not out here, Christ no. He couldn’t walk down the street with it, get on a bus. There was only one place. He picked up the suitcase, not looking at the cops or the medical attendants now and walked around the EMS unit to Dick Speed’s car.

Ryan got in the back seat with the suitcase, jammed himself in there with it, half-turned with his back to the EMS unit outside, feeling hidden and for the moment safe. It passed through his mind the suitcase might be locked and the key in Raymond’s pocket-being loaded into the ambulance-but it wasn’t locked, it clicked open and there were Mr. Perez’s files and letters and legal documents, and a flattened roll of toilet paper, all in a jumbled pile the way they’d been thrown in. Going through the papers at random, without a plan, he found several sheets bearing Mr. Perez’s letterhead, F. X. Perez and Associates, Investment Consultants, his name on agreements and letters to corporations, and blank sheets of hotel stationery. Ryan set aside, on his lap, the letterhead sheets he took out, and dug into the loose papers, hoping to see Denise’s name or Robert Leary’s underlined or circled in red. There were files labeled with names of corporations and others marked Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Chicago, Detroit… a list of maybe a dozen names in the Detroit file… there, Robert Leary, Jr., and the address on Arden Park. There were handwritten notes and initials next to the names that Ryan couldn’t make out. There were notebook sheets with names and addresses: Jay Walt’s, Ryan’s, Denise’s address and phone number in Rochester. He didn’t know what to look for. He needed time to start at the top and go through each sheet of paper if he had to-before they gave it back to Mr. Perez. Would they?

Sure, once he proved it was his. Why not?

Ryan wasn’t sure about that or what Mr. Perez would do now; but he began folding Mr. Perez’s letterhead and the agreement forms with his name on them, and the Hotel Pontchartrain stationery, and sticking them in the inside pocket of his sportcoat. They were bulky in there but flat underneath the raincoat. The siren made him jump, going off right outside as the EMS unit pulled away. He didn’t look around, though. He didn’t turn until somebody opened the door behind him.

“Is that your property?”

Dick Speed was standing there with one of the Seventh Squad detectives.

“I was just looking through it.”

“I can see that. I asked you was it yours.”

“No, not really.”

“Not really. What’s that mean?”

“You know whose it is, for Christ’s sake.” That was a mistake, he shouldn’t have said it.

“You can identify it as who it belongs to?”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“So what you’re doing,” Dick Speed said, being an official smartass now with his hair and leather packet and big gun, “you’re going through somebody’s property that doesn’t belong to you.”

“I guess so,” Ryan said. Act nice. Then when they were alone, driving downtown, he’d talk his friend into letting him go through the papers. Just while they were in the car.

“Detective Olsen here’ll take it in his custody,” Dick Speed said, and Ryan’s hopes died.

He got in the front seat and they took off. He didn’t say anything for several blocks, until they were turning off Livernois onto the Lodge Freeway.

“How come all of a sudden, all the help you’ve given me on this, you want to act like a prick?”

“How come you haven’t asked about your friend Virgil?” Dick Speed said. “You got him into this, don’t you want to know how he is?”

He’d forgot about Virgil. “You saw him-is he okay?”

“He’s dead.”

“Virgil? Come on-”

“You want to know about Tunafish? He’s dead too. Raymond Gidre, from New Iberia, Louisiana. Three guys dead by gunshot over a suitcase, you want to know how come I’m acting like a prick.”

They didn’t talk after that. Ryan thought about Virgil, about the times he’d been with him and the time he’d met Tunafish. He couldn’t picture them dead and was glad he hadn’t gone in to see them. Most of the way downtown, though, Ryan thought about the suitcase, wondering what would happen to it.