Unknown Man #89

4

“THERE’S NOTHING MYSTERIOUS about it,” Mr. Perez said with his soft accent. “My business is finding lost stockholders. People who own stock in a company but don’t know it.”

“Why don’t they know it?” Ryan asked him.

“We’ll get to that if you’re interested.” Mr. Perez uncrossed his legs and pulled himself out of the deep chair. “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask you what you drink.” He picked up a glass from the coffee table and moved away.

“Nothing, thanks,” Ryan said.

“Too early, huh? I have my dinner at noon. So I start anytime a half hour before.” The way he said “my dinner” with the soft drawl sounded good, something he enjoyed, though he didn’t look like a big eater. He was bony, in fact, with a long, bony nose that was discolored with broken blood vessels. He looked more like a drinker than an eater.

“Where’s your home?” Ryan asked him.

“Baton Rouge, when I’m not somewhere else. I also have a home at Pass Christian, on the Gulf. But I haven’t seen much of it lately, been spending most of my time up this way.”

Ryan sat in a straight chair with arms, his damp raincoat across his lap. He was having a hard time typing Mr. Perez. Light-skinned Cuban or old Louisiana Spanish maybe, with a halo of hair that had receded to the top of his head and an air of relaxed self-confidence. The man knew who he was. It didn’t bother him that his white shirt was rumpled or his necktie had slipped and was off-center. Ryan watched him go over to a low bookcase that was set up with several bottles of liquor and glasses and a silver ice bucket. Next to the bar, an alcove window of tinted glass reached to the floor, framing a view of the Detroit River and the Ambassador Bridge to Canada. It was still raining, coming down out of a washed-out gray sky that had been hanging over the city for days.

Ryan wondered how much the hotel suite cost. There was a desk piled with folders and papers and a thick briefcase on the chair next to it. Beyond the desk, through an open doorway, he saw twin beds with gold spreads and gold headboards. He bet it was costing the guy a hundred a day, at least. He wondered if the guy was a lawyer. He looked like one: not the corporate lawyer, but the downtown city-hall lawyer.

“What do you call what you do?”

Mr. Perez was coming back with his whiskey over ice, taking his time.

“My title? Well, my card says I’m an investment consultant. How’s that sound?” Mr. Perez smiled easily.

“I suppose you’re a lawyer, too.”

“Why do you suppose that?” He lowered himself carefully, holding the lowball glass in front of him, and sank down in the chair.

“I guess I just assumed you were.”

“You hire lawyers,” Mr. Perez said. “You don’t have to be one. Thank God.”

“Can I ask you, how do you happen to know Jay Walt?”

“I don’t know him. Least I didn’t,” Mr. Perez said. “I used him once before, he was all right. You see, locating people, a very good way to find out about them is through their credit rating. So I generally use somebody in the business. I believe he was the first or second one in the Yellow Pages, Allied Credit something or other. Let me ask you, are you a friend of his?”

“No,” Ryan said.

“You don’t care too much for him either.”

Ryan didn’t say anything.

“I have kind of a negative feeling myself,” Mr. Perez said. “Man talks out loud in elevators. I was thinking, there’s not much reason to keep him around. That’s if you’ve got something to tell me.”

“A few things,” Ryan said. “But I don’t know what I’m into yet. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“You’re trying to locate a lost stockholder who, I hope, doesn’t know he’s lost,” Mr. Perez said. “See, the way I go about it, I pick out a company that was around during the depression, when the value of their stock was quite low or maybe worthless. I go to the company and I say, ‘If you give me the names of any stockholders you’ve lost track of, I’ll see if I can locate them for you, at my own expense. Get the dead wood out of your stockholder list and bring it up to date.’ See, what happens from time to time, the company will get back a dividend check they sent out. Or their annual report comes back. Maybe the person died and the company wasn’t notified. Or moved and didn’t leave a forwarding address. The company usually doesn’t make much of an effort to find the person. They go through the motions, then after a while, if they still haven’t located the party, they put the name on their list of lost stockholders.”

“What I was wondering before,” Ryan said, “the stockholder, I mean if he’s alive, he knows he owns the stock, doesn’t he?”

“You’d be surprised,” Mr. Perez said. “He might’ve put it away thirty years ago and forgot about it. Or he thought the company went broke during the depression. Or, what happens, he inherits the stock but never looks at it to see what it is. Now it’s buried under some old papers in the bottom of a desk. So, I get the list from the company and go to work.”

“They just give it to you?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Mr. Perez stared, interested in Ryan’s answer.

“Well, I’d think it would be privileged information. I can’t see the company taking the chance, exposing their stockholders to, well, they don’t know what, do they?”

Mr. Perez smiled. “You were going to say exposing them to some kind of con. Believe me, Mr. Ryan, there’s nothing questionable or suspicious about what I do. You’re right, though. Some companies are hesitant. They feel they have to consider my proposition very carefully, discuss it, get approval from the board, all that. Well, in those cases, what I do, I get on friendly terms with one of the third- or fourth-level executives of the company and ask him to let me have the list-he knows I’m not going to do anything illegal-and avoid a lot of red tape and confusion.”

“What’s that cost you?”

“Not a thing. Oh, I may send him a case of scotch, something like that.” Mr. Perez paused, but Ryan didn’t say anything. “It’s done all the time.”

“So then you try to find the lost stockholder.”

“That’s right. I locate the individual and I tell him I have knowledge of a certain property in his name that’s of some value.”

“You don’t tell him it’s stock.”

“No, that might be telling too much. I ask him to sign an agreement first, giving me a percent of the value as a finder’s fee. He does that, then I tell him what it is.”

“Can I ask you, what percent do you get?”

“Well, it depends. Sometimes, if there’s a lot of work involved, as much as half.” Mr. Perez took a sip of his whiskey and lit a cigarette. He was comfortable in the deep chair, at ease talking about himself. “So now the guy scratches his head and tries to think of what it is he owns or if something could have been left to him or what. Or he might want to talk to a lawyer first. That’s fine. Sometimes they’ll dig around and find the stock or remember it from years and years ago and I’m out of luck. I say thank you, I’ll be on my way. But if he doesn’t know what it is, then he signs the agreement and gives me power of attorney to handle the transaction. We sell the stock back to the company or on the open market, I take my percent, and everybody’s satisfied.”

“What if he doesn’t want to sell it?”

“That’s all right, he can pay me the equivalent of my percent.”

Ryan was trying to picture it. He said, “I can’t imagine the stockholder being too happy, splitting something he owns with a guy walks in off the street.”

“You get different reactions,” Mr. Perez said. “Most people are very grateful. I’ve found something that’s been lost and they look on it as paying a reward for its return.”

“I suppose, if you look at it that way,” Ryan said. Like Mr. Perez was doing them a favor. Maybe he was. But there was something about it, something about warm, friendly Mr. Perez that bothered Ryan. He wondered about other sides of the man; what he was like when he was pissed off, or when a deal fell through, or when he didn’t like somebody. Mr. Perez had already, no trouble at all, crossed off Jay Walt.

“Now tell me what you’ve got,” Mr. Perez said, “that’s worth more than two hundred dollars a day.”

“I told Jay Walt a hundred and fifty,” Ryan said. “Not two hundred.”

“Well, I guess he added on a commission, then.” It didn’t seem to bother Mr. Perez. “What you got?”

Ryan told him that Robert Leary, Jr., first of all, was thirty-five, not sixty; had gone to school in Detroit, briefly, and had married a Denise Leann Watson a few years ago.

“You see,” Mr. Perez said, “I assumed he was an adult back in 1941 when the stock was listed in his name. But he would’ve just been born then, wouldn’t he?”

“We’re getting to that,” Ryan said. He told Mr. Perez that Robert Leary, Jr., was never listed as a resident of 146 Arden Park. But Probate records showed the owner and resident, a man by the name of Allen Anderson, died in 1941 and left his entire estate to his wife and children, with the exception of fifteen hundred shares of common stock, with a value at the time of a dollar a share, that was left to a Robert Leary, a household employee of the Andersons for some twenty years.

“Did the record say what the stock is?”

“I don’t think so. It said other considerations, including stock certificates.”

Mr. Perez nodded. “So it was his father. The stock’s left to him, his son’s born about the time and he reassigns the stock in his son’s name. Pay for his college education, so he won’t have to be a servant like his father. That must be what happened.”

“Well, I don’t know about college,” Ryan said, “but the man you want has spent some time in institutions.” He took folded sheets of paper out of his inside coat pocket and looked at Mr. Perez as he opened them. “I have a friend, he’s with the Detroit police.”

“That’s a good place to have one,” Mr. Perez said.

“I stopped off this morning, made these notes. You ready?”

“I can’t wait,” Mr. Perez said.

“Robert Leary, Jr., also known as Bobby Lear,” Ryan began…

Born in Detroit. Both parents deceased by the time he was ten. Raised in foster homes…

“I can get the names if I need them.”

… attended Cass Technical High School, dropped out, was drafted and sent to Vietnam, where, according to U.S. Army psychiatrists, he suffered a severe nervous breakdown during a mortar barrage near Chu Lai. Leary was hospitalized and returned to duty on a “maintenance dosage” of Thorazine. Evacuated again for treatment and hospitalized for psychiatric disorders in Japan, in Hawaii, and finally at Valley Forge General, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, from which he was discharged as one hundred percent psychiatrically disabled. Leary was given an honorable discharge, and a guaranteed income for life, and returned to Detroit to begin killing people.

“My,” Mr. Perez said. He was holding his glass, about to take a drink. “That’s what it says?”

“That’s the way I put it down,” Ryan said.

He beat a woman to death with his fists. Her name was Thelma Simpson and she was said to be his girl friend.

Ryan looked up. “Leary was married at the time, but none of the police reports mention his wife.”

Two days later he shot and killed Eugene Bailey, a known dope dealer who Leary believed was fooling around with Thelma Simpson. Leary’s attorney, at the trial, called in V.A. hospital psychiatrists to testify. Leary was declared insane and sent to the state hospital at Northville. Within six months he was judged to be normal and released.

Leary was arrested for armed robbery-charged, along with two others, with the holdup of a savings and loan company-then acquitted when the witnesses, in court, changed their previous testimony and could not make a positive identification of Leary.

Leary was arrested for the attempted murder of Ronnie J. Hughes in a dope pad on Orchestra Place and released on bond. A week later Ronnie J. Hughes was killed in front of a bar on Twelfth Street by an unknown assailant. Three days later the two men who had witnessed the dope-pad shooting were found at the foot of Twenty-third Street near the river; both had been bound and shot through the head at close range.

Leary walked into the Veterans Administration Hospital in Allen Park claiming to be the President of the United States. A week later he checked into the Battle Creek V.A. hospital and remained under observation five days.

Leary shot and severely wounded a man in a bar on Cass Avenue over a ten-dollar gambling debt. The charge was reduced to felonious assault, and Leary was sent to Jackson to serve a three and a half to four. His lawyer appealed, basing his case on Leary’s history of mental illness, and he was transferred to the Ionia State Hospital. Three months later he was released.

Leary shot and killed a man by the name of Teddy “Too Much” Smith in his white Eldorado while Teddy Smith’s three-year-old son, sitting in the front seat, watched.

A police informant who knew Leary said, “Bobby told me one time he never had to worry about going to jail for very long on account he had a act he put on.” The man pointed to his head.

Leary told a state psychiatrist he had probably killed twenty people. Following the shooting of Teddy Smith, he gave the police the names of ten victims after he was promised immunity from prosecution. The police believed he was telling the truth about eight of the victims and closed those cases. Most of the victims lived in Leary’s neighborhood and were involved commercially in narcotics. Few, if anybody, would miss them; especially the police. Leary was brought to trial for the murder of Teddy Smith, was again judged insane, and was committed to the state’s Center for Forensic Psychiatry at Ypsilanti.

In five years of arrests, convictions, plea bargaining, and insanity judgments, shuttling between Jackson and several different state hospitals, Leary spent only a few months at a time in prison. Psychiatrists from Valley Forge General, Jackson, Ionia, Northville, Battle Creek, and the forensic center came to Leary’s trials and hearings during the five-year period and testified repeatedly, unequivocally, that Robert Leary was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, an essentially incurable mental illness. Finally, making his most recent appeal from the forensic center, Leary insisted he had lied to the psychiatrists in an attempt to make them believe he was insane. He then made a statement that he was, as of now, sane and, in a probate hearing, demanded his release. The jury believed Robert Leary and he was allowed to return to the street. That had been two months ago.

“Mmmm, that’s not so good, is it?” Mr. Perez said. “Sounds like a mean bugger, doesn’t he? Hard to talk to.”

“I’ll tell you something else that’s not so good,” Ryan said. “Somebody’s looking for him besides me. I put an ad in the personals. Robert Leary, Jr., urgent, and a number, phone number. Two different guys called, both saying they’re Robert Leary, Jr., and what do I want to see him about. One of them says he’ll meet me at the Greyhound station nine o’clock. Nobody showed up. At least that I know of. Maybe he did, whoever it is, and got a look at me, my car, and now I’m being watched. I don’t know. One, let’s say, is the real Robert Leary. The other one, I’ve got a feeling he’s looking for Robert Leary, too, and he thinks maybe I can help him.”

“How about his parole officer? You talk to him?”

“Leary, Bobby Lear, isn’t out on parole, he was released, clean.”

“So the assignment, you might say, has taken on a different complexion. Might be a little more difficult than it looked at first, uh?”

“It isn’t that it’s more difficult so much as I’m getting mixed up with people who shoot each other,” Ryan said, “and it’s a little different than what I’m used to.”

“Well, maybe if you had more of an incentive,” Mr. Perez said, in his quiet tone. “I don’t want you to feel I’m pushing you or talking you into continuing, you understand. It’s entirely up to you. I can understand why you might be apprehensive, the fact he’s killed people.” Mr. Perez paused, and for a moment his mouth showed the trace of a smile. “He does sound like a mean son of a bitch, doesn’t he? Bobby Lear.” He took a drink before looking at Ryan again. “But I don’t see why it would be necessary for you to confront him or have any conversation with him. All I’d like you to do is locate him for me. Get on his trail and follow it, anywhere he might have gone.”

Ryan waited for him to finish. “You mentioned something about more of an incentive.”

“Yeah… I was thinking maybe a percentage rather than an hourly rate or a per diem,” Mr. Perez said. “That is, if you locate him and I’m able to make a deal. Say, oh… ten percent?”

“Ten percent of what, the stock?”

“Yeah, the whole thing.”

“The stock’s only worth a buck a share, isn’t it?”

“In 1941 it was,” Mr. Perez said. “Its cash value now, I’d say, would be around a hundred and fifty thousand. We’d have to look into the accumulated dividends, so it could be several thousand more.”

Ryan saw the figure in his mind, fifteen grand, a clean round figure. But he wanted to be sure. “I get ten percent of a hundred and fifty thousand?”

“If you find him and if I make a deal, get him to agree.”

“Ten percent of the hundred and fifty,” Ryan said, still wanting to be sure. “Not ten percent of what you get.”

“Say fifteen thousand minimum,” Mr. Perez said. “I’ll draw up an agreement, give it to you in writing.”

“What do you think the chances are? I mean of you getting him to go along with it?”

“Four to one. I sign eighty percent of the people I locate,” Mr. Perez said. “Ah, but locating them, that’s the bugger. It comes down to a question of how much time to allow in relation to the potential gain. I can afford to put a little more time in on this one. I can afford to hire you and sit here and discuss a proposition. Otherwise, Mr. Ryan, I doubt we’d have sufficient reason to be talking to each other about anything.”

Mr. Perez spoke and revealed little glimpses of himself, what the real Mr. Perez thought and felt. That was fine with Ryan. It was a business deal. They weren’t going to the ball game together.

“So now I’ll ask you,” Mr. Perez said, “what you think your chances are of locating him.”

Ryan thought a moment. He almost told the truth and said he didn’t know, that maybe he wouldn’t even come close. But he didn’t.

He said, “I usually hit about ninety percent. As you say, time’s a factor. If I wasn’t concerned with that, I’d probably do better.” Ryan picked up his raincoat from his lap and draped it over one arm. He seemed about to get up, then sank back into the chair again.

“I almost forgot. You said something about a written agreement, didn’t you?”

Mr. Perez picked up the phone to call room service for his noon dinner, then changed his mind and placed a person-to-person call to Mr. Raymond Gidre in New Iberia, Louisiana. He took the phone over to the deep chair and sank down comfortably.

After a moment he said, “Raymond, how you doing, boy? I bet you got a big plate of crawfish in front of you and a glass of cold beer… What?” Mr. Perez laughed. “That’s just as good. You can’t get nothing like that up here… Uh-huh. Listen, Raymond? How’d you like to come to Detroit for a few days?… No, this one’s a little different. Man turns out, he likes to shoot people… I’m telling you the truth.” Mr. Perez listened, then began to grin. “Now you’re talking. We got one here, Raymond, I believe we can go all the way… You bet. You get ready and I’ll call you back, tell you when exactly I need you…. Fine, Raymond. Be good now, I’ll see you.”

Mr. Perez picked up the phone again and asked for room service.

“How you doing?” Mr. Perez said. “You got any crawfish?… No, I don’t want crayfish, I want crawfish… I didn’t think so. How about boiled shrimp?… With the shells on. You peel ’em, dip ’em in hot sauce… What? All right, I’ll call you back.”

Mr. Perez went over to the desk and shuffled through the papers and file folders. He opened the drawer then. There it was. Mr. Perez took the room-service menu back to his chair, looking at it.

Bunch of shit.

About all he could do was get this deal done and hope it didn’t take too long.