her voice rose-“and I can’t see out!”
Ryan stroked her hair. Her forehead was cold, clammy. “You’re going to be all right,” he said. “Where is he, Lee? Where’d he call from?”
The creaking sound stopped again.
“I said what’s it like, man-all that
“What’d you say to him?”
“I said what’s it like, have it fucking turned around for a change?” She started to push up. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Here.” Ryan held her. Her head drooped, nodding, staring at the floor. He felt her pull away and let her sink back to the bed.
“Save it till morning,” she said. “No, what I need-you don’t happen to have a chill bottle of Pully, Poo-yee, shit, or even a warm bottle nigger strawberry pop wine. God, I don’t care.
Ryan waited. She let her breath out slowly, her head settling against the pillow.
“Where is he, Lee?”
“He’s at a place, the Mont… something. It’s down, you know, it’s down there by-the Mont
“A hotel?”
“Yeah, for whores and people like-I can’t, I don’t want to see him, Jesus, please.”
“You want to take your clothes off? Get under the covers?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Lee, I’ll be back in the morning. Don’t leave here, okay? And don’t have anything to drink. Promise me. If you feel the urge like you got to have something, call me. Anytime you wake up and feel it, call, okay? You got my number.” What else? He knelt there looking at her, trying to think. He’d stop by a drugstore in the morning and get some B-12 tablets, load her up with it, stay close, and help her through the bad time. Check the refrigerator. Check her purse for the Librium. He felt like a cigarette. What else? Ryan was aware of the silence then. He looked around at the empty rocking chair.
Virgil was at the end of the hall, his hat shadowed on the wall in the raw orange light over the stairway.
“Wait a second.”
Ryan got to him as he started down the stairs.
“You know that girl in there?”
Virgil looked up at him past the stair railing. “Do I know her?”
“Do you know who she is?”
Virgil seemed puzzled. “Don’t you?”
“Lee somebody. That’s all.”
“Say you don’t know who she is?”
“I was talking to her this afternoon, the first time,” Ryan said. “We got on drinking, I saw she had a problem.”
“Yeah, she got a problem all right.” Virgil squinted at Ryan then, suspicious. “You honest to shit don’t know who she is?”
Ryan tightened up a little. “If I knew, for Christ’s sake, I wouldn’t be asking you.”
“That’s Bobby Lear’s wife,” Virgil said.
Ryan stared at him. “But her name-that’s not his wife’s name. Lee?”
“I don’t know about her name,” Virgil said, “but that’s Bobby’s wife.” In the orange light he looked up at Ryan with an amused expression, almost a grin. “Shit, you don’t know
Virgil started down the stairs.
“Wait a minute,” Ryan said. “Do you know him? I want to talk to him.”
“I do too,” Virgil said, his hat disappearing into shadow. The sound of the man’s steps, receding, came back to Ryan from the stairwell. The guy looked familiar. Like seeing somebody who played for the Lions in regular clothes. A black athlete, the outfit. The hat.
That’s what he had seen, the hat sitting on a bar. A colored guy with a cowboy hat. Not a cowboy hat, but like one. The guy sitting there had been wearing a maroon outfit, maybe like a leisure suit. He thought of Jay Walt. No, the maroon outfit had looked good on the black guy. Light-colored shirt with the collar out. And a tight strand of beads showing. The guy sitting near the end of the bar this afternoon when he left the place.
She had called from there an hour ago.
The guy could’ve still been sitting there. If it was the same guy. No, but he could’ve come back and been there when she phoned. And heard what she said. And then waited for him to come.
Why?
Because he’s the one who’s looking for Bobby Lear. Hanging around the man’s wife, waiting. Sitting in the rocker while he talked to her and hearing her say it. The Montcalm.
Shit, handing it to him.
Ryan went back into the apartment and found the Librium, two capsules, in the girl’s purse and put them in his pocket. He’d give them back to her tomorrow, if she wasn’t drinking. And bring some milk and a can of juice and a couple of eggs, which she’d gag on and refuse to eat. He looked through the room again to make sure there wasn’t another jug of wine hidden somewhere. Then looked at her, asleep, at peace for a little while. Mrs. Denise Leann Leary…
Leann. Lee. It had never occurred to him to look at the wife’s name and fool with it and see what else she might be called. He wondered if she had always been called Lee. When she was a little girl. Before she knew what wine tasted like. She had probably never looked this bad in her life. Her face puffy, blemished, her hair a mess. He didn’t remember the color of her eyes. Dark eyebrows, a nice nose and mouth. She could clean up and be a winner, if she wanted to. And he could stand here looking at her all night, what was left of it, and it wouldn’t do either of them any good.
Driving home, he planned his day.
Get up at eight, stop by a drugstore for some B-12 and be back at the girl’s place a little after nine. Try to get her squared away, in the right frame of mind and something in her stomach. Or if she was in too much pain, with her nerves screaming at her, see about getting her into a hospital. Then stop by the Montcalm Hotel and ask for a Robert Leary, Jr. No, Leary would be using another name. All right, he’d start knocking on doors, and if a man in his mid-thirties appeared, if he opened the door, he’d say how you doing? If you’re Robert Leary, Jr., we’ve got a whole lot of money for you, buddy. See if the real Robert Leary, Jr., could resist something like that. He’d have to make sure Leary was there. It wouldn’t do Mr. Perez any good to have just the address.
He was getting close now, but God, it was a lot of work. He was tired of thinking. He was tired of driving, being in the car. Tired of waiting around. But more tired of thinking than anything else.
It was after four by the time Ryan got to bed.
When the phone rang at ten to seven he opened his eyes and immediately thought of the girl, Lee, crying for a drink.
But it was Dick Speed’s voice with a pleasant good morning and how would he like to come down to the morgue and meet somebody.
9
IT WAS NEARLY EIGHT by the time Ryan got downtown.
The Wayne County Morgue-the exterior of the building as well as the lobby with its long polished-wood counter-reminded him of a bank. A uniformed police officer was waiting and seemed to know who he was. He said, “Dick’s inside there, in the autopsy room.”
Ryan was thinking he wasn’t ready for this. It was too sudden, with no time to prepare. Unless he’d be looking through a window. They probably wouldn’t let him in the room. Or it would be like an operation and he
