ELMORE LEONARD: Unknown Man #89

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.