cord.
“How was he killed?”
“With a shotgun. Dead center, twice. Also, yesterday evening out in Pontiac,” Speed said, “you remember the faggy-looking guy was with Tunafish? At the methadone clinic. Lonnie, the drug snitch with the hair and the shoes. Same thing, with a shotgun. Twice.”
“So you think it’s the same guy.”
“I’d bet on it,” Speed said. “Get a match of the buckshot, the gauge, we’ll know.”
The autopsy assistant was at the opposite end of the tray table now. He replaced the skull section and-as Ryan watched-carefully pulled the hair and scalp up over the skull, revealing the face a little at a time, a man appearing, features forming, as though the assistant were fitting the lifeless skull with a Robert Leary mask.
Ryan stared at the face, the mustache, the closed eyes, the round cap of coarse black hair.
He said, “Jesus… look. The guy’s
“He’s black all right,” Speed said. “That’s what colored guys are, they’re black.”
“Jesus,” Ryan said.
“You didn’t know that? You’re looking for a guy, you don’t know what
“I don’t know why,” Ryan said. “I guess I should’ve, the people he hung around with, at least some of them. But the thing is-you see, his wife is
Dick Speed waited. “Yeah?”
“I mean she’s
“You mean very white, uh?” Dick Speed said. “Is that it?”
Ryan wasn’t sure what he meant.
It was nearly ten by the time he got to her apartment, with the vitamins and the milk and stuff. He’d see how she was, talk to her, and then give Dick a call.
The place was really bad. The hallway dingy with dirt and soot, the linoleum worn out, peeling. He knocked on her door twice and waited, listening in the silence. She was probably still asleep. He hoped so, as he turned the knob quietly and walked in.
The daybed was empty. The bathroom door was open. The light was still on in the kitchenette.
Denise Leann Leary was gone.
10
“SNOWING,” MR. PEREZ SAID. “Nearly the middle of April, it’s still snowing.”
“It’s just flurries,” Ryan said. “That kind of snow, it doesn’t stick to the ground at all. It’s a wet snow.”
“I remember, coming in from the airport there was still some snow, very dirty-looking snow, patches of it along the highway, with all the rain you’ve had.” Mr. Perez stood in the alcove of the floor-to-ceiling window looking out at the gray mass of sky and the light snow swirling in the wind. “You certainly have a long winter,” he said.
“Or you can look at it as kind of an asshole spring,” Ryan said. He didn’t believe it-sitting here talking about the weather. “It’s great for the skiers, though. Up north, I heard on the radio, they’ve still got a fifteen- to twenty- inch base,” Ryan said-if the guy really wanted to talk about it.
Maybe he was finished. Mr. Perez came away from the window and sank into his favorite chair-the Spanish governor of a colony, member of an old, titled family, who’d been sent out here and was pissed off about it, but kept it locked up inside. Ryan was here to give his report.
He was sitting on the couch this time instead of a straight chair, figuring they would have quite a bit to discuss. It was one-thirty in the afternoon. Near the door was a room-service table pushed out of the way. So Mr. Perez had eaten his noon dinner. Everything on the menu, it looked like, the way the table was cluttered with dishes, empty wineglasses, those silver dish covers and messed-up napkins. The man had a noon dinner, he had a dinner. He still seemed too skinny to be a big eater. Or else the white shirt, the collar, was a couple sizes too large.
“You find out he’s colored,” Mr. Perez said. “How does that change anything?”
“Didn’t you think he was white?”
Mr. Perez nodded. “Yeah, I guess I did, judging from his name. It wasn’t Amos Washington or…Thurgood Marshall, one of those. But now Mr. Leary’s deceased and we know he has a wife.
What’s her name?”
“Denise. Denise Leann. But she goes by Lee.”
“And you talked to her.”
“Yeah, but not knowing, as I mentioned, she was his wife. The way I got it, she was like an ex- girlfriend.”
“An ex-something, huh? Well, now we contact the wife, who we’ll presume is his legal heir, and deal with her. You say she’s gone. But she doesn’t have any reason to hide, does she?”
“Not that I know of.”
“And you know what she looks like.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So you shouldn’t have any trouble locating her. Do you see a problem?”
“There’s a couple of things,” Ryan said. “More than a couple. Something I didn’t tell you. He’s black, but the wife, Lee, is white.”
“Up here, I’m not too surprised,” Mr. Perez said.
“The other thing, she’s an alcoholic.”
Mr. Perez thought about that a moment.
“I like alcoholics. I’ve had a few. They’re very easy to deal with, very cooperative. What kind of an alcoholic is she?”
“What do you mean, what kind? What does she drink?”
“I mean, how far along is she? Does she work? Or does she sit home and hide bottles around the house?”
“I don’t think she works. No, she couldn’t. But it’s not that kind of a setup either, hiding bottles. They’re right there on the sink.”
“See,” Mr. Perez said, “a white woman marries somebody like Robert Leary, what we’ve learned about him, she’s pretty hard up, scraping bottom. A woman like that, her nose stuck in the bottle, no income, she’s going to take anything she can get.”
Ryan kept quiet. He’d listen and let the man tell him about alcoholics, what they were like.
“We make an offer, this kind of deal, the alcoholic woman isn’t going to see money, unh-unh. She’s going to see visions of gin bottles dancing in her head. She’ll sign the agreement in blood if she has to.”
“She’s a wine drinker,” Ryan said.
“Cheap dago red, huh?”
“Chilled Sauterne.”
He could see the dirty glass on the bar and the empty half-gallon jugs in her kitchen. He realized he was trying to upgrade her and he didn’t know why.
“The other thing, or one more to add to it,” Ryan said, “the police are looking for her, too.”
Mr. Perez raised his eyebrows. “They suspect she might’ve killed him?”
“Well, they’ll question her, there’s no doubt about that,” Ryan said. “As my friend was saying, it’s a homicide and they’ll give it the full treatment. It doesn’t matter, the fact they’re glad the guy’s dead. Somebody killed him and it’s their job to find out who.”
“You have any ideas about that? You seemed to’ve been getting in there pretty close,” Mr. Perez said.
“Well, I ran into a guy, yes, and I know he found out where Leary was staying. The same night it happened, in fact. This guy, I don’t know what his name is, knows Leary’s wife. I told the police about it already, gave them a half-assed description of the guy-his clothes, his hat, you know-but I don’t know what’s going to come of that. What
