backing away.
Virgil stared at him, frowning at the painful sound, until he lowered the blunt end of the shotgun and zipped the raincoat over it. The beauty-parlor man stopped screaming. Virgil continued to frown, though now it was more an expression of concern.
He said, “Man, get hold of yourself.” And walked out.
8
THIS END OF the hallway was dark. On the wall, near the door, was a light fixture shaped like dripping candlesticks, but there were no bulbs in it. Ryan had to strike a match to read the room number. Two-oh-four.
He listened a moment before trying the door. The knob was loose, it jiggled, but wouldn’t turn either way. He knocked lightly on the door panel and waited.
“Lee?… You in there?”
He had driven past the Good Times Bar and the place was empty. If she wasn’t here…
He knocked again, giving it a little more but still holding back, and waited again. There was no sound. Silence. Then a creaking sound. But not from inside the apartment.
The figure approached from the far end of the hall where a dull orange glow showed the stairwell: a dark figure wearing a hat, coming into the darkness toward him.
“You locked out?” Virgil said.
A black guy who was bigger than he was-three o’clock in the morning in a dark hallway. Ryan did not have to decide anything. If the guy was armed he could have anything he wanted. The nice tone didn’t mean a thing.
“There’s supposed to be somebody in there,” Ryan said. “She’s expecting me, but I think she might’ve passed out.”
“Let me see,” Virgil said.
Ryan stepped out of the way. Virgil moved in. He tried the knob, then took a handful of keys on a ring from his jacket pocket. Ryan thought at first he had a passkey. No, he was feeling through the keys, trying different ones in the lock.
“Are you the manager?”
“I seen you, I wondered if you locked out.” Like he happened to be standing in the hall, three o’clock in the morning.
“You live here?” Ryan asked him.
Virgil didn’t answer. He said, “Think I got it. Yeah…” He pushed the door open gently, took a moment to look in, and stepped out of the way.
“Your friend laying on the bed.”
A dim light from somewhere showed the girl’s legs, still in the Levi’s, at one end of the narrow daybed. Ryan tried to move quietly across the linoleum floor. He could hear her breathing now, lying on her back in a twisted, uncomfortable-looking position, her hips turned as though she had tried to roll over and had given up. The place smelled musty. The only light, a bare fifty-watt bulb, hung from the ceiling in the kitchenette part of the room. The faucet was dripping in the sink. There were dirty dishes, a milk carton, an open loaf of bread on the counter. A jar of peanut butter with the top off. Three half-gallon wine bottles, empty, on the floor. The only window in the room, next to the bed, showed a bare, dark-wood frame, no curtains. A shade with brown stains was pulled below the sill. He could see her in here during the day, on a good day, the room dim, silent, the shade drawn against the sunlight and whatever was outside that frightened her. Alone with her wine bottle, feeling secure as long as there was wine in it, sitting in the rocking chair smoking cigarettes and forgetting them and burning stains in the wooden table.
She could use three weeks at Brighton Hospital. If she had the money, or Blue Cross. She probably didn’t have either one. It would cost about nine hundred. He had almost three thousand in the bank drawing 5 1/2 percent. How much did he want to help her?
Ryan went into the bathroom, felt for the light switch, and turned it on. They all looked alike. The rust stain in the washbasin. The dirty towel on the floor, from some hotel. The hissing toilet tank. A comb with matted strands of hair. One toothbrush. One twisted tube of toothpaste. He looked in the medicine cabinet. No prescriptions, no tranquilizers. Good. An almost empty bottle of Excedrin. He’d check the refrigerator before he left.
He had forgotten about the black guy and didn’t look for him in the room or by the open door. But as he knelt down next to the daybed, looking at the girl, he was aware of the rocking chair creaking with a faint, steady sound.
The black guy was sitting there watching him, the hat slanting down over one eye.
He turned to the girl again and brushed the hair away from her cheek. Her eyes were open and she was looking at him.
“You all right?”
“Fine.” Her eyes closed and opened again. She was a long way from fine, whatever that meant to her.
“I want to ask you a couple of questions before you go to sleep,” Ryan said. “You have any Valium? Anything like that?”
“I have some… Librium, I think.”
“Where? It’s not in the bathroom.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was drowsy; she barely moved her mouth.
“Come on, Lee? Where do you keep it?”
“I don’t know. Someplace.”
“Don’t take any,” Ryan said. “You hear me? You’ll probably wake up, you won’t be able to sleep, but don’t take any pills, any kind, except the Excedrin’s all right. Lee?” He touched her shoulder and waited for her eyes to open. “You have any family here? How about your mother and dad, where’re they?”
“No, I don’t have-they don’t live around here. They’re home.”
“Where’s home, Lee?”
“Christ, you tell me. Home… shit, I don’t know.”
“How about friends?”
“What?”
“You know some people, don’t you? You have friends?”
“Fuck no, I don’t have any fucking friends. My friends disappeared.” She seemed awake now.
“You know people who live here, don’t you? In Detroit, around here somewhere?”
But she wasn’t awake. She was here and she was spinning around somewhere in her mind. Ryan remembered it, like falling backward and looking up at nothing, feeling a dizziness. He could hear the faint sound of the rocking chair creaking.
“Lee, try to think of somebody. People you used to know.”
“I don’t know any-no, hey, I know Art.”
“Who’s Art?”
“He’s a prick. No, he’s all right, he can’t help it.”
“Who’s Art, Lee?”
“The
“How about Bobby Lear?” Ryan said. “You know him, don’t you?”
There was a silence. The creaking sound of the rocker stopped, then started again, slowly.
“You said he called you. Lee, what’d he call you for? Tell me.”
She laughed then. “Man, that’s great. I said now you’re asking
“What’d he want you to do?”
“He wanted
