It was almost two. Denise was off at four-thirty.
Get her to sign the agreement and take it to Mr. Perez. There, she signed it. Let’s go ahead the way you originally planned, okay? Get it done. You can keep my ten percent. Really, I’d just as soon not have it or talk about it.
So he could say to himself, See? I didn’t take anything. So I didn’t take advantage of her, did I? Good boy. The game no one else knew about, going on in his head.
He took the escalator to the ground floor and walked outside and thought about Mr. Perez looking out the window bitching about the cold, wet April weather and traces of dirty snow. He began thinking about Florida. He hadn’t had a vacation, a real one, in three years. Play the game on the beach, lying in the sun. Tell himself it had got too complicated. Christ, he didn’t have to get involved in something like this. Take off. Never see any of them again.
It was just too goddamn involved. There was no way to do it without screwing somebody. There was no way to stay in the thing with even a questionable conscience, one you could talk to and bullshit a little.
He could tell the police Mr. Perez was extorting money. Whatever he was doing, whatever it was called, was illegal. Except he’d still be involved. He was a part of it. He could be facing Perez and Raymond Gidre in court, or, shit, he could be sitting with them.
Just take off…
Tell Denise first, everything, then take off.
No, that would be leaving her with it, getting her all fucked-up and running out.
So just leave.
You have an organized mind, he told himself. But you think too much. Look. Go to Florida and lie in the sun and drink a little beer, that’s all, just beer, and find some secretaries on their vacation and smile a lot and get laid every night and forget it.
Or, go along with Mr. Perez. Take the thirty thousand and don’t think about it and go to Florida, shit, go to some place in the Caribbean and do it right.
Who was it had taught him to look at options? Somebody at a meeting had said pre-think your options. Then when something happens you’re ready, you don’t panic and fuck up.
He got his car from the parking lot and drove north on the Lodge Freeway.
Do it and take the money.
Don’t do it. Forget the whole thing.
Go to the police. Call Dick.
Tell Denise everything and leave.
Or-
Christ. He saw it coming. He had seen it in his mind before, glimpses of it, but not as clearly as he saw it now.
– tell Denise everything and don’t leave. Turn the whole fucking thing around. Ace Mr. Perez.
How?
He was beginning to feel excited. Ace the son of a bitch. In his own words-pull it right out from under him.
How? He didn’t know the name of the stock. He’d have to find that out first.
No, first tell Denise. Tell her everything.
She wouldn’t believe him. Why would she? She’d have as much reason to trust Mr. Perez.
But why assume that? How did he know until he told her? What was all this assuming what people were going to think and do?
She’d believe him or she wouldn’t. She’d go along or she wouldn’t. He didn’t have to try to convince her of anything. He’d say, Here it is. What do you want to do?
Simple?
Simple.
He had stopped playing the game with himself, and it was a good feeling.
Virgil lost Tunafish for a few days.
Tunafish was arrested and arraigned on charges of conspiring to commit extortion and great bodily harm and released on a $3,000 bond. He was out, awaiting the examination, but Lavera wouldn’t let him have the car.
Virgil asked him what the fuck was wrong with him? What was this jive five hundred dollars extortion shit? You want five hundred dollars, go to the liquor store.
Tunafish said it was a friend of his, Bonzie, had been doing it, calling ladies at home in the evening and telling them he had their daughter and they were to bring five hundred to room 307 of the Ramada Inn on Telegraph or else he was going to jump on the daughter’s bones. Tunafish said he listened to Bonzie make some calls while they were smoking joints, and Bonzie was laughing and fucking it up. Nobody believed he was serious.
Virgil said a woman would have to be severely retarded in the head to believe shit like that and come with the money. What’s the man doing, sitting in room 307? He say thank you very much, here’s your little girl? Shit. What women? How’d he know them to call?
Tunafish said Bonzie was hanging out in the dormitory lounges at Oakland University, giving his cool-nigger shit to the little white chickies new there, making out some and finding out things. See maybe, Bonzie’s idea, maybe there was some mothers
That’s why Virgil Royal was back on duty, following Ryan to the churches, the hospital, the Pancake House- not having any idea what Ryan was doing-and each day out to the apartment in Rochester.
There was something about the woman Ryan was with all the time. The way she walked? Something. Virgil couldn’t put his finger on it.
The third day back on the job, following Ryan at four-thirty in the afternoon and pretty sure he was going to Rochester, cutting over Big Beaver to I-75, Virgil stopped off at Abercrombie and Fitch in the Somerset Mall and lifted a pair of $400 Steiner binoculars. At six o’clock Ryan and the woman came out of the apartment building. Virgil, in his Grand Prix, maybe two hundred feet away, put the glasses on the woman and adjusted the focus and saw Lee Leary up close with short hair and glasses, close to Ryan and looking at him, but not the way she had looked at him in the bar. A week ago in front of the pancake place, the same one. The man had been with her all the time.
There was no reason to get angry and say things to the man. It was the woman, Bobby’s woman, Virgil wanted to talk to.
The next morning he watched her come out of her place and walk down the drive and across Rochester Road and the big open parking area and go in the A&P. She didn’t come out.
She didn’t come out until a quarter to five in the afternoon. He saw her in there, working a checkout counter.
It was the next day, and Virgil went in at four-twenty. He looked over the wine shelves for a few minutes before picking up two half-gallon jugs of Gallo Chablis Blanc, walked over to the express check-out counter, and placed them on the conveyor.
As Denise took the first bottle to bring it past her and rang up the amount with her other hand, Virgil said, “This is your brand, isn’t it?”
She looked up at him. “Pardon me?”
Virgil said, “How you doing, Lee?” Maybe she recognized him, staring at him; he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. He said, “Let’s drink some wine this evening, have a talk.”
