ELMORE LEONARD - Unknown Man #89

“He’s a good friend of yours, huh?”

“Pretty good.”

“You see him much?”

“Yeah, you know. I see him around different places, sometimes the methadone center.”

“How you doing with your habit?”

“I’m making it.”

Virgil grinned. “Lavera stays right on your ass, don’t she? She was a little girl she was always serious, like a little mama.”

“She not worried no more,” Tunafish said. “Lonnie, shit, he still doing both, couple of dimes and the meth. Fucked up good but he don’t know it.”

“What’s he dealing?”

“Lonnie? Mostly he deal grass. Get this low-grade weed and sell it to the people out the V.A. hospital, tell them it’s Tia-wanna gold, some bullshit name he make up. The stuff, man grow it in Pontiac.” Tunafish started to grin, seeing Virgil grinning. “Assholes out the V.A., they go oooh, aaah, Tia-wanna gold, hey, shit, man, get us some more this stuff. Lonnie shake his head, he say he don’t know but he try.”

Virgil slid out of the booth, still grinning a little. “You want something now?”

“You gonna have one?”

“Yeah, something. I don’t know yet.”

“Give me aaaaah… vodka orange juice,” Tunafish said.

He watched Virgil go over to the bar and wait for the bartender, down at the end, to notice him. The man had changed. Standing there waiting. Talking to the bartender now. Four years ago he would have called the bartender over here to the booth. It looked like Virgil because of the hat, but it didn’t look like him, coming back, carrying two orange vodka drinks.

“I’d like you to call up Lonnie,” Virgil said, seated again, looking right at him.

Tunafish didn’t move. It was coming now, and for some reason he hadn’t expected it to be about Lonnie. He thought that had been warming-up talk, bullshit talk, and Lonnie had happened into it.

“Tell him you want to see him,” Virgil said. “Say you got a deal on some good weed he’d like to have.”

“I don’t know his number,” Tunafish said. He was holding on to his drink. “Or he’s got a phone or where the man lives. I don ’ t. ”

“I give you two hundreds and two tens,” Virgil said. “His phone number’s on one of the hundreds.” Virgil kept looking at him.

Tunafish was trying to think and act calm at the same time. He didn’t want to ask any questions if he didn’t have to.

“He might not be home.”

“I bet right now he is,” Virgil said. “Still in the bed with his little girl. What’s her name? Marcella Lindsey. Two eight three two Edison. Upstairs. Tell him you be over six, six-thirty, if he wants a sample. None of that Tia-wanna shit, top-grade stuff. If he don’t want to see it, you show it to somebody else.”

Tunafish was listening carefully, nodding. He still hadn’t moved.

“Go on, call him. Tell him that,” Virgil said. Tunafish got up from the booth. “Hey-he say he can’t see you, then you say you call him back later. Dig?”

Virgil watched him go over to the wall phone, taking the folded bills out to look at the number-narrow hunched shoulders and round afro shape, skinny kid in a leather coat too big for him. His head moving a little with the George Benson sound coming out of the hi-fi. Showing how he could set his friend up for his brother-in-law and not ask why. Knowing, whatever the reason, it had to be. Yeah, Tunafish knew what was happening. He didn’t know all of it yet, but he knew enough.

Tunafish came back and slid into the booth.

“Say he can’t make it at six, he has to be someplace.”

Virgil grinned and relaxed against the cushion. Tunafish waited, but Virgil didn’t say anything.

“When do I call him back?”

“Uh-uh, all I wanted to know, was he going to make his appointment.”

“‘Pointment for what?”

“The beauty parlor,” Virgil said. “Get his super-fly hair fixed up. Every Friday, six-thirty, Lonnie comes in after the ladies have gone.”

“Ladies’ beauty parlor, huh,” Tunafish said. “Man, he never told nobody that.”

“Place called the Hairhouse, in Pontiac,” Virgil said. “Little white boy name of Sal does his hair, Lonnie gives him a couple of baggies.”

“You knew all that, what’d I call him for?”

“Make sure Lonnie’s going to be there this evening,” Virgil said. “Isn’t having his period or something.”

“Hey, shit.” Tunafish shook his head, grinning, feeling pretty good now because his part of it was over. “Lonnie going to the beauty parlor. Got his red silk suit on, his red golf gloves he wears, his red high-heel shoes. I can see him.”

“You might,” Virgil said, “since you gonna be there. Come on, what you think I paid you for, making a phone call? Man, you my driver.”

Virgil felt good the way things were going. Seeing his patience being rewarded. This afternoon seeing the ofay man who drove the light-blue Pontiac-in the bar talking to Lee-same man who wanted Bobby Lear and had showed up at the bus station and stood there by the men’s room, looking around like he didn’t know what he was doing. After this was done he’d go back to the Good Times and talk to Lee some more about the ofay man.

Virgil was feeling so good, maybe he’d give his brother-in-law another hundred.

He liked the dry cleaner’s panel truck Tunafish was driving. Nobody’d be looking for it till tomorrow. He liked the rain that had begun to come down in a cold drizzle about five. He could wear the raincoat and look natural walking down the street. Around the corner and partway down a block of store windows to the place with the orange drapes and the cute sign that said:

THE HAIRHOUSE

Mr. Sal

Virgil left his good hat in the panel truck with Tunafish and put on a tan crocheted cap that came down snug over his forehead. His right hand, extended through the slit opening in the pocket, held the twelve-gauge Hi-Standard pointing down his leg beneath the raincoat. About six pounds of gun with the barrel and most of the stock cut off. A little bell jingled when he opened the door.

Nobody heard him. Nobody was in the part where the empty desk and the couches were. Or in the section with the stools and the lit-up vanity mirrors. They were in the back part by the hair dryers: a short little dark-haired man in an open white swordfighter shirt and Lonnie in his red silk pants and a towel over his shoulders, bare skin beneath. Virgil walked toward them.

And a hairnet-Lonnie had on a hairnet holding the waves of his superfly in place.

Tight little red silk can sticking out, hand on his hip and gold chains and ornaments against his bare chicken-breast chest. Maybe the beauty-parlor man played with his titties. The beauty-parlor man looked like a little guinea or a Greek. They were both talking and giggling, Lonnie ducking down to get under a hair dryer. The beauty-parlor man was adjusting it, lowering the polished chrome thing down over Lonnie’s finger waves.

Lonnie looked up and saw Virgil. He stopped talking. The little beauty-parlor man saw Lonnie’s expression and turned around. It was quiet in the place. Both of them seemed helpless and afraid, like they might hold each other for protection. Maybe Lonnie knew him, maybe not. It didn’t matter.

A funny thing happened.

Virgil was pulling down the zipper of the raincoat with his left hand. The little guinea or Greek beauty-parlor man seemed to realize something then. He said, “Oh, my God, it’s a holdup.”

Virgil hadn’t thought of that. He didn’t have to say anything. The beauty-parlor man was telling him he had already emptied the cash register in front. The day’s receipts were in that little room, the closet, and he’d go in and get them if Virgil wanted. All right? Honest to gosh, but it was mostly checks. He didn’t want checks, did he? Virgil said no, he didn’t want checks. The beauty-parlor man went into the closet room. He came back out right away putting a stack of bills in an envelope that said Hairhouse in the corner and handed it to Virgil. Virgil said thank you.