Unknown Man #89

6

THE GIRL WITH the stringy blond hair over her shoulders and the trading beads and the black turtleneck and Levi’s and the half-filled water glass of domestic wine in front of her on the bar said, “Do you like sex?”

Ryan hesitated. He said, “Sure.”

The girl said, “You like to travel?”

Ryan said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

The girl said, “Then why don’t you fuck off?”

She was drunk-two o’clock in the afternoon-but didn’t show it, sitting on the bar stool with her denim legs crossed. Maybe when she got up, if she ever did. She looked washed out and needed some sun, or makeup. Her blond hair was dirty, dull, flat to her head and showed dark roots. She was still a good-looking girl, in her late twenties or maybe thirty. She drank her Sauterne and smoked cigarettes and stayed somewhere inside herself.

“You do know him though, huh?”

“Who?”

“Bobby Lear.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You just said a minute ago, I asked you, you said-you called him something.”

“I called him a cocksucker.”

“So you don’t think too highly of him. But you do know him,” Ryan said. “Didn’t you use to go around with him? I don’t know, maybe you still do. That’s what somebody told me.”

“Who?”

“This guy that knows him.”

“Who? Hoo, hoo. I sound like a fucking owl.”

Ryan was patient. He knew he had no choice; he was talking to a drunk. He could resign himself to it, sip his Tab, or get up and leave.

An old man, a bum, had come out as Ryan approached the place-the Good Times Bar-walked across the sidewalk, leaned against the trunk lid of a car, and begun throwing up in the gutter. The old man was back inside, sitting at the bar with a bottle of beer. A black guy, in a maroon outfit, was at the end of the bar, near the door. The black guy was stylish, like a pro athlete, and didn’t look as though he belonged here. Everyone else was drab, their clothes, their expressions. There were a few others, a man at the bar with a hacking cough, two men and a woman at a table. The woman had a high, irritating laugh. Everybody having a good time at the Good Times Bar, with its stale beer smell and afternoon sunlight showing through the venetian blinds. It was the first sunny day in a week, not a trace of smoke haze, and Ryan was sitting in a Cass Avenue bar drinking a can of Tab.

The girl, Lee, was on the fourth double Sauterne that Ryan had counted, the third one he had paid for. She would finish one with six good sips and two cigarettes. When the level was two-thirds of the way down the glass she’d be thinking of the next one.

“I’ve been looking for you for two days,” Ryan said. “You know that? I started down there a few blocks, near Wayne, went in every bar on Cass. Then today, I came in here, I saw you and I had a hunch, I don’t know why. I said to the bartender, hey, isn’t that Lee down there?”

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“You know Bobby Lear, though. Robert Leary, Jr. What do you call him?”

“Shithead.”

“You seen him lately?”

She finished the wine and brought the glass down hard on the bar.

“Innkeeper!”

The bartender with the bony shoulders took his hand off his thigh and his foot down from something behind the bar and came toward them.

“Same way?”

Ryan nodded. He let the bartender take her glass and walk away before he said, “Lee… you’re not worried I might be a cop, are you?” Ryan waited as she got out a cigarette. He held a match for her. “Believe me, I’m not a cop… You want to know what I am?”

“I know what you are,” the girl said. “I don’t know who-hoo, hoo-but I know what you are. You’re a fucking pervert, aren’t you? You carry that raincoat-that’s how you tell-bright sunny day, you got a raincoat.”

“I didn’t know when I left home it was going to be nice.”

“Bullshit. You take your wang out and put the raincoat on, you see a little kid, little girl, you say, ‘Hi, honey’”-her voice turned oily-“‘want to see the big snake I got in here?’”

“Except on cold days,” Ryan said, “I describe myself.”

She turned and looked at him with sleepy eyes. “You want to show it to me? Go ahead, take it out. Nobody gives a shit, it’s a very friendly place. Art? You don’t care if he takes his wang out, do you?”

“If it makes him happy,” the bartender said. He put down the wine and can of Tab and took a dollar and a quarter from Ryan’s change on the bar.

“I’ll show it to you some other time,” Ryan said. “Okay? Right now I got to find this guy and I don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”

“Hi, honey”-with the oily voice again-“you want to see my snake?”

“It’s sleeping, gone nigh’-nigh’.”

“Wake him up. Come on, I want to see what you’ve got.”

“How about Leary’s wife, Denise?” Ryan said. “You know her?”

The girl stopped, about to say something, and looked up at his face, staring at him.

“Do you know her?”

“Not very well.”

“Do you know where she lives?” He waited.

But the girl’s face turned away and she went back into herself. He watched her, after a moment, take another sip of wine.

“You want to get there, what’re you fooling around with wine for?”

She didn’t answer him.

“I used to drink mostly bourbon, over crushed ice, fill up a lowball glass. I also drank beer, wine, gin, vodka, Cuba Libres, Diet-Rite and scotch, and rye with red pop, but I preferred bourbon. Early Times. I knew a guy who drank only Fresca and chartreuse. I took a sip one time, I said to him, ‘Jesus, this is the worst drink I ever tasted in my life.’ He said, ‘I know it is. It’s so bad you can’t drink very many of them.’ A real alcoholic, though, can drink anything, right?… What time you start in the morning?”

Without looking at him the girl said, “Fuck off.”

There was a silence. He watched her raise the glass.

“Okay, then, how much you drink a day?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “What do you think would be about right?”

“If you’re not working, have the time, I’d say a gallon, gallon and a half. Depends what time you start.”

“Early,” the girl said.

“Right after you throw up?”

“Before,” the girl said, looking directly at him now. “Before I get out of bed. Then I might throw up or I might piss in the bed, whichever comes first. You want to come home with me? You’re so fucking interested, I’ll show you what I did this morning.”

“I’ve seen it,” Ryan said. “I’ve been there. And you know what? I don’t ever want to go back.”

The girl turned to her glass of wine, subdued. She stared at it for a while before saying, “I’m not ready for you yet.”

“Why put it off? Because you’re having so much fun?”

“I’m not ready.”

“You’re close enough,” Ryan said. “Every day you put it off you’re going to hit harder when you quit. Maybe you want to crash and burn first, end up in detox. It’s your choice, I’m not going to argue with you, try and convince you of anything. But listen”-he took one of his business cards out of his wallet and placed it on the bar next to her glass- “you’ve got to have a very good reason to want to kill yourself. Have you got one?”

The girl, staring at her glass, didn’t answer. Ryan got up from the bar and left.

The black guy in the maroon suit stroked the corners of his bandit mustache. He picked up a wide-brimmed, Stetson-looking hat from the bar and went down to where the girl was hunched over the glass of wine. The tall, good-looking black guy lifted a hip onto the stool next to her.

He said, “Hey, Lee, what’s happening?”

She looked at him sleepily, uninterested, and turned back to the bar.

“That man bothering you?”

“He wanted to show me his thing.”

“Hey, no shit. He do it?”

The girl didn’t answer him.

“He was looking for Bobby, wasn’t he?… Lee?”

“Hey, Virgil,” the girl said then. “You like sex?”

“What kind?”

“What?”

“I said what kind of sex you talking about? With a woman?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said. She seemed to have lost interest. “Forget it.”

“Where’s the key?” Rita said.

“In my coat pocket. Over there on the chair.”

“You sure you want Chinese?”

“That’s fine with me,” Ryan said. “You better get another bottle of wine, too. I think that’s about it.”

Her glass, half full of rosй, was on the footlocker coffee table.

“It’s not that I don’t like your cooking, Ryan. I’m just in the mood for Chinese.”

“You need some money? Here-”

“No, I’ve got it. Wait’ll you’re rich.” Rita got the car keys from his sport coat and went out.

That was one of the good things about her, he didn’t have to wait on her or always buy. She was used to working and knew what things cost. She’d run out and get the Chinese-eager to do it-because he was expecting a call and didn’t want to take a chance with the answering service, have to call back and find out Dick Speed had left. He was anxious to hear from him.

A lot was going on. But he also had to rest once in a while and get his mind somewhere else.

He looked at Rita’s glass on the footlocker and thought of the girl in the Good Times Bar. He’d picked Rita up at five, served a couple of writs, it was ten after seven now. They’d been here a half hour, Rita hadn’t finished the glass yet. The girl in the bar, Lee, she’d have knocked off two doubles and be reaching for the third. Rita didn’t have a problem. Maybe in twenty years, but she’d have to work at it, get into the morning routine. Vodka sitting on the toilet tank while you took a shower, something to hold you till the bars opened at seven. He couldn’t see Rita doing that.

She was all right. She tried a little too hard-like someone who didn’t have an ear or a sense of timing trying to be funny-but there was a lot of girl there in Rita.

He was a little horny, was what he was.

When Rita got back he’d pour her some more rosй and sit close to her on the fake-leather couch, not serious at first but saying funny things as he started to fool around. What he said wasn’t that funny, but Rita always laughed and let him do whatever he wanted. He told her she had centerfold breasts. Actually she had heavy white peasant breasts with big brown nipples. She had a round belly and the trace of a Florida tan line below the navel. He was horny all right. Her pubic hair grew wild and scraggly and reminded him of Che Guevara’s beard. She said, Why do you keep looking at it? He said, Why do you think little boys like pictures of bare-naked ladies? They were all the same, basically, and they were all different. That was amazing and what made them so interesting and fun to look at. They were all different. The phone rang.

Dick Speed said, “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Not yet,” Ryan said. “What’d you find out?”

“I just want to say, your new friends are certainly interesting people. Take Mr. Francis X. Perez. Sixty-eight to seventy-two, he served four and a half years at Angola.”

“That’s a prison down there?”

“You bet it is. Louisiana.”

Ryan felt pretty smart for a moment. “Embezzlement, or some kind of con, right?”

“Wrong. Accessory to murder. He was convicted of paying a man by the name of Raymond Gidre, a part-time employee, to shoot another man in the chest five times. Raymond Gidre was brought to trial, but they had to settle for second degree, I don’t know why, and he got off with eight years hard time… released, let’s see… just a couple of weeks ago. You know him, too? Raymond Gidre?”

“No, I never heard of him. But how’d they get him as an accessory? Perez.”

“He was doing some kind of business with the guy who was killed and they tied Perez in with Gidre, checks or something, and I think the three of them were seen together. It sounded circumstantial. In fact, it looks to me like hearsay, but they convicted them. Perez appealed and lost it.”

“Can I get the details from you?”

“What I have. Would you like to tell me what’s going on?”

“I told you. Perez hired me to find Robert Leary. And the stock part of it. I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Buddy, you want some advice. Get back to serving papers as fast as you can.”

“I am,” Ryan said, “as soon as I find the guy. I’m not involved in this. I give him an address and I’m done, I don’t even have to talk to Leary.”

“But you have to talk to Perez,” Dick Speed said, “you’re dealing with the man.”

“I’m working for him. How does that look on my rйsumй? Shit, I don’t like it at all, but I could be right next to fifteen grand.”

“Okay, but remember,” Dick Speed said, “nobody hands you money for nothing, unless you’re giving a lot more than you think.”

“Wait a minute,” Ryan said, “I want to write that down.”

They would talk and not say anything for a few minutes, exchange a few words and lapse into silence, and Ryan would concentrate on picking at his egg roll and chop suey.

When he looked at Rita again he said, “You know how long it takes me to make fifteen thousand? About eight or nine months. I’ve got a chance, I could make it in one day.”

“What’re you arguing with me for?” Rita said. “You’re going to do what you want.”

“I’m not arguing.”

“Then you’re talking to yourself. What do you want me to say, go ahead? I’ve already told you what I think.”

“What about if I give it a week? If I don’t find the guy within one week, I forget the whole thing.”

“Darling boy, I’m not your wife. Are you asking me for permission?”

“I’m laying it out,” Ryan said, “so I can look at it.”

“Why?” Rita said. “You’ve already made up your mind.”

Maybe she was smarter than he thought. Or maybe he was dumber. What was he doing? Rationalizing. Like finding an excuse to have a drink. In this case it wasn’t a drink, it was fifteen thousand. Maybe he did want permission, someone to tell him it was all right. Then if he messed up, got into something over his head, it wouldn’t be entirely his fault. Someone else had said sure, go ahead. But it wasn’t that way at all, was it? Rita was right, he had already made up his mind. So why keep talking about it? Do it. It was his decision, his responsibility for whatever happened to him.

There.

“Will you do me a favor?”

“If I can,” Rita said.

“Call the News and the Free Press tomorrow. I want to put a message in the personals for the day after.”

“Sure. What do you want to say?”

“I’ll have to think about it, the right words.” He looked at her now and grinned. He could relax again, for a while. He said, “How about if we went in there and laid down, took a little rest? Aren’t you tired?”

Rita stared at him, her expression softening. “Now the little boy comes back. You’re a hard guy to know, Ryan.”

Rita left a little before midnight.

At two-fifteen in the morning, Ryan’s phone rang again.

“I’m fucking up,” the girl said, her voice sounding faint, far away from the phone. “I’m really fucking up good and I don’t want to. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be inside me, but I can’t get out. I don’t know how.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m so tired. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I know,” Ryan said.

“I’m so fucking tired of thinking and being in here and I can’t-goddamn it, I can’t get out.”

“Lee? Where are you?”

“I’m-the place’s closed, I have to go home. Listen, I’m sorry. Let’s forget the whole thing.”

“Give me your address,” Ryan said. He listened closely as she mumbled something and he said, “What? Give it to me again.” He reached for his notebook and wrote down the street and number on Cass. An apartment upstairs. Two-oh-four. Probably within a block or two of the bar.

“Go right home, okay? Go to bed. But listen, Lee? Leave the door unlocked.”

“I told him, I don’t give a shit what happens to him. I don’t give a shit if he exists even. The son of a bitch.”

Ryan waited. “Who’re you talking about?”

“Christ, Bobby. Who do you think?”

“Was he with you?”

“I mean it. I don’t give a shit what happens to him. And do you know what?”

“What?”

“I never did. He wants me to-”

Ryan waited again. “What does he want you to do?”

“I told him he can go fuck himself.”

“Lee, go on home now, okay?… You hear me?”

“I hear.”

“Good,” Ryan said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”