ELMORE LEONARD - Unknown Man #89

“Shit, I don’t even want to see the guy.”

“Well, I promise you this, buddy,” Dick Speed said. “Make you feel better. If he kills you, I promise I’ll get the son of a bitch if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Thanks,” Ryan said. “What I’d really like is if you could find out something about Mr. Francis X. Perez. How would you do that? Teletype Baton Rouge? New Orleans maybe?”

“I’d pick up the phone. You know, they think I’m working, all this shit I’m doing for you.”

“I appreciate it. Don’t think I don’t.”

“When do I get this big dinner?”

“You name it. Whenever you’re free.”

“I can see it,” Dick Speed said. “You call up say come on over, I got this tomato surprise shit.” He crept along the inside lane, his gaze on the storefronts and the people on the sidewalk. Most of them were black. “Tomato and fucking cornflakes or something.”

“I never tried that. Where’s the place?”

“Few blocks. He could be walking. I’ve never seen him drive.”

“How do you know he’ll be there?”

“I called. They said he’d probably be in. He’s due for his fix.”

Ryan said, “Listen, I don’t want to be taking up all your time.”

“Then what’re you doing it for?”

“I said I’d talk to the guy. You don’t have to come.”

“You talk to him, but he won’t talk to you,” Dick Speed said. “Not alone. Be looking over his shoulder all the time. Ask him what it’s like, being a police snitch. You’ll see him trying to act cool, but he’s scared shitless. There it is, next to the drugstore.”

Dick Speed coasted past the storefronts, the drugstore and the one with the show windows painted white and the posters Ryan couldn’t read from the car, and pulled into a parking place on the street, a few stores down in the block of fifty-year-old two-story buildings that were scarred and worn out before their time, some of them with collapsible iron grating over the display windows.

“I expected a sign,” Ryan said. “Methadone center.”

Dick Speed was watching the sidewalk, turning to look through the rear window at the painted storefront.

“They know where it is. The ones that need it.”

“This guy was a junkie?”

“He was everything, if you believe him. You got to weed out the bullshit.”

“What’s the guy’s name?”

“Tunafish.”

“That’s all, just Tunafish?”

“You got a name like that, what else you need?”

Ryan kept looking at his watch. When they’d been there thirty minutes he said, “Doesn’t look like he’s going to show, does it? Maybe we ought to come back.” He was antsy; he could never stand sitting around very long.

“You want to talk to the guy or not?” Dick Speed said. “I could be at the Athens instead of out in the fucking rain so I can get invited to the big dinner.”

Ryan told him not to think he didn’t appreciate it, and looked at his watch again.

An hour and ten minutes passed.

“There he is,” Dick Speed said. “See, you’re patient, God rewards you. The skinny jig with the afro.”

Ryan ducked his head to look through the rear window. There were two black guys in front of the place, moving away from each other but still talking.

“They both got afros.”

“No, the finger waves, that’s a superfly,” Dick Speed said. “Don’t you know your hairstyles? That’s our boy in the leather coat. Turning his collar up. Ahhh, coming this way now, finished their chitchat. The other one’s name is Lonnie. He talks to the narcs, tells them interesting stories, and they let him deal a little grass. How do you like the fucking shoes? He’s about five-foot nothing in his socks.”

“He’s coming,” Ryan said. “Tunafish.”

“Don’t worry. I got him.”

Tunafish was almost even with the unmarked car, his head turned against the misty rain. Dick Speed opened the door and stood up outside. He said over the top of the car, “Get in the back.”

The skinny black guy didn’t say anything. He looked back over his shoulder as he got in. Dick Speed pulled out, turned the corner at the first side street, and parked in front of a vacant lot. There were old frame houses farther down. Dick Speed switched off the ignition. The sound of the engine and the windshield wipers stopped. It was quiet in the car. Tunafish sat on the right side of the back seat, his hands folded in his lap. His hair glistened with drops of moisture.

“My associate here,” Dick Speed said, “wants to get hold of Robert Leary… Bobby Lear. Where does he go to find him?”

“Bobby Lear,” Tunafish said, as if trying to picture him.

“Let’s cut the shit, okay?” Dick Speed said. “Bobby Lear.”

Ryan had the twenty in his raincoat pocket. His hand came out with the bill, folded twice, and reached over the backrest with it.

Tunafish took it and looked at it, then looked at Ryan as he put the twenty in his shirt pocket, under the leather coat. His expression didn’t say if he was happy with it or not; his expression didn’t say anything. His eyes moved from Ryan and he seemed to be staring straight ahead, at the rain filming the windshield.

“Nobody know where he is,” Tunafish said. “Nobody seen him.”

“He’s out,” Dick Speed said. “Why should he hide?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he heard something.”

“People talking about him?”

“They say some friends of his. They get together and decide somebody should put a gun next to Bobby Lear’s head.”

“Kill him?” Ryan said.

“For the sake of humanity and everybody’s ass,” Tunafish said. “Nobody feel safe with him anymore.”

“Who’re the friends?” Dick Speed asked him.

“Man, that’s a hard one.”

Dick Speed looked at Ryan.

Ryan reached into his pocket and came out with another twenty. Tunafish took it.

“You’re doing all right,” Dick Speed said, “for a relatively shitty afternoon. Who’d you say these friends are?”

“See, most of them talking big, bullshitting each other, saying how they gonna burn that motherfucker, put him out of his misery. But only one might do it, get out of bed in the morning pure, not on any high, and do it. You know who I mean?”

“Tell us,” Dick Speed said.

“Bobby Lear, only armed robbery bust he ever had. You remember it? About four years ago.”

“Wyandotte Savings and Loan,” Dick Speed said.

Tunafish nodded. “That’s the one. Bobby Lear and two others. Bobby Lear got off, no positive I.D. Wendell Haines is dead. That leaves one more. Look on your job sheet.”

“Virgil Royal,” Dick Speed said. “He went to Jackson.”

“He went and he come back.”

“So what’s the talk?”

“That Virgil have a private reason to see him. Besides helping humanity, help Virgil Royal, too. You dig?”

Ryan had a question. He waited, listening to them talking about Virgil Royal. He didn’t understand most of it. When Tunafish paused, Ryan said, “How about his wife? You know where I can find her?”

Tunafish was thoughtful again, shaking his head.

Dick Speed said, “Come on, you been paid.”

“No, man,” Tunafish said, “I didn’t know that, the man had a wife. There was a lady I used to see him with-I can’t think of her name.”

“Thelma Simpson,” Dick Speed said.

“No, Thelma-he got her in the closet, she couldn’t move, and beat on her till she was dead. No, I mean another lady, before he went to the hospital. Had real long hair, blond color, you know? I’d see them once in a while, the lady have on these beads, fake African shit, was always drinking wine.”

“What’s her name?” Ryan asked him.

“Let’s see-I believe it was Lee.” Tunafish thought about it. “Yeah, he call her Lee.”