ELMORE LEONARD: Unknown Man #89

Shooting Lonnie.

Following the man. Getting nothing for it.

Stealing the other man’s papers.

Add stealing the panel truck for shooting Lonnie.

Stealing the papers. What else?

Having the man’s gun in his pocket.

Now some other shit going down.

Virgil said, “Yeah, 1705, please.”

Add what the police didn’t know about him, Tunafish was thinking, to what they did know. Right now, extortion, Bonzie’s idea, making the phone calls to the mamas: bring money to save their little girls. Tunafish saw himself in shit up to his chin with the chance of it covering his head any day now. The police kept worrying him about the extortion, telling him what Jackson would be like for the next three to five. Asking him which mamas was it he had called and which Bonzie had called, asking him what did he want to hang around with Bonzie for, asking him how Virgil was doing, slipping Virgil in, asking if he’d seen Virgil lately. Asking did he want to tell them anything was bothering his mind.

“Line’s busy,” Virgil said, his hand over the phone. He straightened in his chair then, getting ready. “No, she can ring now.” Virgil waited, then seemed to smile. “Who am I speaking to, please?”

“Who do you want?”

Tunafish, sitting in his leather coat, deep in a chair, could hear the man’s voice.

“You the man lost something this evening?”

There was a pause. “Yes, I lost something.”

“Well, I’m selling scrap paper,” Virgil said. “Paper that’s gonna get scrapped if nobody wants to buy it. You dig?”

Mr. Perez placed a call to the Elmwood Motel in Windsor, Room 115.

“Me again, Raymond. You in bed?”

“Almost. I been looking out the window, I don’t see a thing to do. You know, coming here”-Raymond laughed-“I seen a sign, you know what it said?”

“What’d it say, Raymond?”

“It said ‘Chinese and Canadian Food.’”

“You’ll have something to do tomorrow,” Mr. Perez said. “One of our nigger friends in the paper business called up.”

“You don’t tell me.”

“Wants to sell my own property back to me. I asked him how much. He said he already had a bid of ten thousand. I said all right, I’d give him fifteen. He said if I could pay fifteen I could pay twenty.”

“What he had in mind, huh?”

“To him, all the money in the world. I said all right, twenty.”

“He believe you?”

“He wants to, so he does.”

“You ask him if he’d take a check?”

“They don’t think about how a person goes about getting twenty thousand dollars together. They think anybody staying here must be rich and rich people have money in their pockets.”

“He’s coming tomorrow?”

“No, says he’d soon as not walk in the hotel carrying my suitcase. I said you walked out with it, it didn’t bother you none. He wants to meet us two o’clock a place called the Watts Club Mozambique.”

“The what?”

Mr. Perez repeated the name. “On a street called Fenkell. Look it up in your directory.”

“No problem.”

“You go look at the place in the morning, then we’ll meet and talk about it.”

“That sounds good,” Raymond said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Mr. Perez hung up.

Less than a minute later the phone rang. When Mr. Perez answered, Raymond said, “I forgot to ask you, what do you think they mean, Canadian food?”

There had been time to think during the night and time to think after waking up with Denise and finally getting out of bed to shower and get dressed. They didn’t talk about Virgil or Mr. Perez or any of it until they were sitting at the counter with juice and coffee and Ryan told her he was going to call the police.

“Good,” Denise said. “I’ll get the number.”

Ryan was stirring his coffee. “I don’t mean the cops here. I’ve been thinking, maybe the best thing would be to call Dick Speed first. Tell him what’s happened, you know, get him in on it instead of going right to the local cops and trying to explain why a guy was shooting at me. You see what I mean? It’s pretty involved.”

“Whatever way you want to do it,” Denise said, “as long as we get it over with.”

“He knows about most of it. I’ll ask him what he thinks we should do, if we’ve got a chance of involving Mr. Perez-” Ryan stopped. “Shit, I can’t tell him the whole thing. How do I explain I sent a guy to burglarize a hotel room?”

“Don’t tell him that part,” Denise said, “just tell him about Raymond. All we want is for them to leave us alone. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with Virgil… does it?”

“I don’t know. Once I open it up…”

“Call him.” Denise reached for the phone on the counter and moved it closer to Ryan. “You know you’ll have to sooner or later.”

Ryan lit a cigarette first, getting ready, before dialing the number. He asked for Dick Speed and could hear sounds, voices in the Squad Six offices as he waited. Then Speed was on the line. They said hello and how’s it going, fine, and Ryan got to it, saying, “I want to talk to you about something. A guy tried to kill me.”

“I believe it,” Dick Speed said. “Which one?”

“You remember the two guys from Louisiana you looked up for me, Perez and a Raymond Gidre?”

“Hold on a second.”

Ryan could hear voices again, Dick Speed asking someone for a file, saying it was right there on the desk. Denise was watching him expectantly. He looked at her and shrugged. “He told me to hold on.”

“Okay,” Dick Speed said. “Perez and Gidre tried to kill you.”

“No, it was just Raymond… Gidre.”

“With what?”

“A shotgun.” Ryan told him about it briefly, the high points, the breaking glass. He didn’t mention shooting at Raymond; he’d save that.

“You reported it to the police?”

“That’s what I’m doing. Aren’t you the police?”

“The Rochester police,” Dick Speed said. “Outside Detroit I don’t give a shit who tries to kill you.”

“Look, I’m calling you because it’s kind of an involved situation,” Ryan said, “if you know what I mean. I’m not sure what all I should tell them.”

“You mean if you should tell them about the papers were stolen from room 1705, the Pontchartrain Hotel, at approximately eight-fifteen last night?”

“Jesus,” Ryan said. There was a silence.

“You still there?”

“I’m here.”

“How’d you like to go someplace with me this afternoon?” Dick Speed said. “Maybe eyeball the guy tried to shoot you. How’s that sound?”

“I don’t believe it,” Ryan said. “How could you know all that, I mean about the papers?”

“How come you know they were stolen?” Dick Speed said. “You want to answer that?”

“I told you it was complicated.”

“Isn’t it, though,” Dick Speed said. “You want to go with me or not?”

Ryan felt tired, like he hadn’t gotten enough sleep.

“I’ll go.”

He listened, nodding, then hung up the phone. Denise was waiting.

“Well?”

“Well, I talked to the police,” Ryan said.

“YOU MENTIONED, TALKabout 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.”