ELMORE LEONARD: Unknown Man #89

Picking up the suitcase, Raymond was thinking, Shit, them peckerheads’d never make it the night in New Iberia. He knew the four people were watching him as he walked down the length of the bar, turned to the right past the tables, and reached the inner glass door that opened into the vestibule. About twenty paces in twenty seconds.

It took Virgil that long to push himself from the wall to the bar and slide along the rounded edge on the blood coming out of his chest. He thought the man would turn around to make sure. He hoped the man would, seeing him past the nickel-plated barrel extending from his arm. The arm, across the bar, and his free hand, hanging on to the rounded edge, held him up. Somebody would see him, but he wanted the man to see him, ready this time. He hadn’t been ready before. He wished he could do it again, start over, be waiting here, the man comes in-he’d have to have hit the man coming in to beat him. Better than hitting the man going out and that was all the chance he had left in the whole fucking world left to do, shit, when he’d just learned the natural way to do things and had only fucked up this one time, being a little late, a little too patient-the man was almost out. Virgil concentrated and began squeezing the trigger of the nickel-plate, hearing it loud close to him and seeing the man seem to jump like somebody had kicked him in the ass, the man pushing through the door, not stopping or turning, gone, with the glass door swinging back in.

The manager and the lady bartender and the employee back of the coat-check counter still didn’t move or say anything.

There were patrol cars on the side streets at both ends of the block and a Seventh Squad detail in unmarked cars parked within sight of the bar entrance. Officially this was their stakeout, to recover stolen property and apprehend the suspects. With the sound of gunfire it was the Seventh Squad that radioed its units and got the show going.

It took a few moments for Ryan to realize what was happening, hearing the shots and the voice on the radio repeating numbers and saying, “Move in… move in!” He didn’t recognize the sound of the first four shots as gunfire or relate the sound to the sudden static-y words coming over the radio. Dick Speed was already out of the car. Ryan got out his side and slammed the door and heard Dick Speed say, “Stay in there!” But at that moment there were more gunshots from inside the bar, four or five, Ryan counted. He saw the Colt Magnum in Dick Speed’s hand. The door to the bar opened. Raymond was out on the sidewalk with the suitcase. Ryan saw the two Seventh Squad plainclothesmen in the street about twenty yards away, and beyond them a squad car with its flashers spinning blocking the intersection and the cops getting out, hurrying this way.

Dick Speed, the closest one to Raymond, said, “Stand where you are-drop it!”

Raymond was coming out from between two cars parked in front of the place, the suitcase in one hand and the Luger in the other-coming the way Ryan remembered him coming the night before, but staggering, bumping against the trunk lid of a car. Ryan had his .38 out, pointing it at Raymond.

Dick Speed, not ten feet from Raymond now, was holding his Mag extended in both hands. Ryan heard him say, “Drop it, motherfucker, you’re dead!”

Raymond stopped. He took a step, tried to, then buckled, as though dragged down by the weight of the suitcase, and fell on top of it. Ryan could see blood on the back of his suit coat. Dick Speed circled him, moved in, and pressed the Mag against the back of Raymond’s head.

“Let go of the gun.”

The two Seventh Squad detectives moved in. One of them put his foot on the wrist of Raymond’s outstretched arm and pulled the Luger out of his hand. The other one ran inside the bar. Within the next half minute there were uniformed policemen all around them. One of them, Ryan realized, was staring at him and seemed about to say something or make a grab for him. But it was Dick Speed, getting up from Raymond, who spoke.

“What’s that?”

“What?” Ryan said.

“In your hand.”

“Oh.” He stuck the .38 back in his raincoat pocket.

“You recognize this man?”

“It’s Raymond.”

Dick Speed continued to give him the look, relaying a no-bullshit warning to stay out of it, until he turned abruptly, spoke to one of the uniformed cops, then went into the bar.

Ryan heard the Seventh Squad detective, kneeling over Raymond, say, “He’s dead. Or else he’s holding his breath.” Ryan stared at Raymond, at the suitcase partly under him.

“What happened to him?”

The Seventh Squad detective looked up at him. “He’s been shot. What do you think happened to him?” He pushed Raymond off the suitcase, rolling him onto his back on the wet pavement. Raymond’s eyes were closed. His hand still gripped the suitcase until the detective pried his fingers loose.

The suitcase was free, lying on its side in the street. Ryan could take two steps and touch it with his foot. He got a cigarette out and lit it. There were sirens coming, getting louder. He saw black people on the sidewalk edging in to get a look past the parked cars. The suitcase lay there. None of the cops touched it. They’d come over and look down at Raymond and say something or shake their heads. Pick it up, Ryan kept thinking.

But maybe there wasn’t anything in it and that’s what started the shooting.

No, Raymond wouldn’t have come out with it. Mr. Perez’s papers were in there. A sheet with Denise’s name on it and the name of the stock.

Nobody paid any attention to the suitcase. Ryan drew on his cigarette. For a moment he wondered about Virgil and Tunafish, if they were all right. He wanted to go inside and find out, but he didn’t want to leave the suitcase. He felt responsible for it. What if somebody walked off with it? He stooped down and set it upright as he rose, then stepped away from it, chickening out with the cops standing around him. There was more noise and confusion than before. Good. But he wished the cops would turn around or walk away for a minute. A van-type ambulance, an Emergency Medical Service unit, was rolling toward them now, its dome lights revolving, siren dying. The van edged past to bring the rear end to Raymond’s body. Ryan picked up the suitcase again, as if to get it out of the way. A cop glanced at him, but didn’t say anything, the cop not sure who he was. Ryan set the suitcase down at his side. The cigarette had burned almost to the filter. He had to do it now or forget it. Open the suitcase and give it a quick look. Not out here, Christ no. He couldn’t walk down the street with it, get on a bus. There was only one place. He picked up the suitcase, not looking at the cops or the medical attendants now and walked around the EMS unit to Dick Speed’s car.

Ryan got in the back seat with the suitcase, jammed himself in there with it, half-turned with his back to the EMS unit outside, feeling hidden and for the moment safe. It passed through his mind the suitcase might be locked and the key in Raymond’s pocket-being loaded into the ambulance-but it wasn’t locked, it clicked open and there were Mr. Perez’s files and letters and legal documents, and a flattened roll of toilet paper, all in a jumbled pile the way they’d been thrown in. Going through the papers at random, without a plan, he found several sheets bearing Mr. Perez’s letterhead, F. X. Perez and Associates, Investment Consultants, his name on agreements and letters to corporations, and blank sheets of hotel stationery. Ryan set aside, on his lap, the letterhead sheets he took out, and dug into the loose papers, hoping to see Denise’s name or Robert Leary’s underlined or circled in red. There were files labeled with names of corporations and others marked Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Chicago, Detroit… a list of maybe a dozen names in the Detroit file… there, Robert Leary, Jr., and the address on Arden Park. There were handwritten notes and initials next to the names that Ryan couldn’t make out. There were notebook sheets with names and addresses: Jay Walt’s, Ryan’s, Denise’s address and phone number in Rochester. He didn’t know what to look for. He needed time to start at the top and go through each sheet of paper if he had to-before they gave it back to Mr. Perez. Would they?