Unknown Man #89

believe or do anything I say. But I’m going to ask you to listen to me. After that, if you want us to be friends again, fine. If you don’t, okay, that’s that. But you’re not allowed to think of something else while I’m talking, or what you’d like to say, or interrupt with some smartass remark. All right?”

Denise shrugged. She didn’t seem to care.

She didn’t want Ryan to look at her. She was tired and felt sick. She stood at the counter smoking cigarettes and sipped the coffee getting cold, staring at it while he talked to her in a quiet tone. She liked the sound of his voice and at another time would want to believe him, but right now it didn’t matter. She looked awful and felt awful and didn’t want to be here.

Not today but tomorrow she could walk in her mother’s house with a happy-daughter smile and say, “Hi, Mom, I’m home.” Her mother would let Denise kiss her cheek. They would sit down in the kitchen to have a nice cup of coffee with real cream. She would think of all the things she could tell her mother to try to be close to her as a person and not simply a daughter. She could say, “Mom, I’ve been drunk for three years,” saving Bobby Lear till later, and for a moment her mother would stare at her. Then her mother would say, “How could you do that to me?” Or she might say it was impossible because no one in the family drank. Or she might pretend not to have heard. Or she would be saved and protected by an act of God: the telephone or a neighbor at the door, and her mother would come back in the kitchen with a letter from Denise’s brother, Don, who worked for National Cash Register in Dayton, and show her Polaroids of Don and Joanne and their three boys, Scott, Skip, and June Bug doing “soooo big” with his arms raised over his head.

She could give up and let herself melt into her mother’s life and wear a dress on Sunday and sit with her mother’s friends in the maple living room and compare Edison bills and watch TV, the new Oral Roberts who no longer healed people, and, in the evenings, watch Name That Tune and Let’s Make a Deal. She would run into boys on the street she had known in high school. Her mother would say all the nice boys were married and had good positions with State Farm and John Deere and the bank or mixing prescriptions. Two of them would be on the County Board of Commissioners. Her mother would find one, though, who had not married. Harold something, a long German name that was on the Edison Company centennial farm plaque hanging in the new annex of the courthouse.

She could live with her mother and listen to her complaints and make molded salads and never have to think again.

“Are you all right?” Ryan said.

“Fine.”

“You don’t look fine. You listening or trying to hide?”

She stood with her head down, staring at the counter. “I think I’ll go back to bed,” Denise said.

“I’ll tell you something. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Ryan said. “I’m telling you everything, but I could be losing something I want very much.” He waited.

She was aware of the silence and felt him watching her.

“What? The money?”

“Shit. You’re not listening.” Ryan waited again. “Well, it’s up to you. Either you’re not listening or you don’t believe me.”

She did believe him, because she wanted to believe him, but she needed assurance and protection and time; so she said, “Why should I?”

“You know why?” Ryan said. “Because I’m all you’ve got. You want the money, then you’ve got to trust somebody.”

She looked up at him now. “I haven’t said I want it.”

As she started to look away Ryan reached across the counter and raised her face with his hand and held it a moment.

“And you haven’t said you don’t want it. Goddamn it, wake up and listen to me!”

He saw her eyes come alive. When he took his hand away she continued to stare at him. Good. He held her gaze and told her quietly she had three ways to go. She could trust Mr. Perez. She could believe him and sign his papers and end up with nothing. And if she gave him any trouble, it was very likely he would have her killed. Mr. Perez wanted it all. Or she could trust Virgil Royal and ask him to help her, believing Virgil only wanted what was owed him. But if she got past Mr. Perez, Virgil would kill her for the whole prize. Either way, Mr. Perez or Virgil. They killed people or had them killed and didn’t think much of it.

“Or you can trust me,” Ryan said. “I want to help you get it, the whole hundred and fifty thousand if that’s possible, because I owe you something. Look at it another way, I think I owe them something, too.”

“And what would I owe you?” Denise said. Staring at him was not hard now. She was getting back her confidence.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Why not?”

He was uncomfortable again and it made him mad.

“I’m not looking for anything,” Ryan said, “or trying to make a deal with you. I’ve been playing enough games, I want to get this thing done and feel good about it, about myself. You understand? You’ve been to enough meetings, you ought to know what I’m talking about.”

Her eyes were watery, red-looking. He knew she was aware of herself, and the way she kept staring at him, not letting go, surprised him.

She said, “How would we do it?”

“I call Perez, tell him you’re in the bag,” Ryan said. “If he comes over with the papers, I can probably get them signed.”

“Yeah, then what?”

“You can’t even hold on to the pen. I tell him, leave the papers, I’ll get you to sign when you start to come out of it.”

Denise waited.

“If he’s made out the power of attorney paper, that he sends to the company, then we’ll know the name of the stock.”

“He doesn’t seem dumb,” Denise said, “somebody that’d make a mistake.”

Ryan shook his head. “No, he isn’t dumb, but maybe he’s overanxious.”

Mr. Perez sounded calm on the phone, though, the son of a bitch. Polite and in control. He said he and Raymond would be right out.

Raymond was there with him in the hotel suite. Mr. Perez hung up the phone. He said, “You heard the saying, Don’t ever shit a shitter?”

Raymond nodded. “I know it well.”

“I don’t believe our friend does,” Mr. Perez said.

Ryan came back from the A&P with two half gallons and a fifth of Gallo Rhine. He put the fifth on the counter, opened the two half gallons and poured them into the sink.

“Don’t look,” Ryan said.

Denise didn’t say anything. She turned to the paint table, picked up the full ashtray, and reached down for the empty wine jug on the floor.

“No, leave those,” Ryan said. He put the two empty half gallons on the counter. “Dirty dishes, everything. You’re not getting ready for company, you’re on a drunk.”

Denise watched him, holding her arms, cold. “Will I be in bed?”

“Not in it, on top of the covers, with the raincoat, and barefoot. That’s a good touch, the raincoat.”

“It’s what I wear,” Denise said.

Ryan smiled at her. “So it won’t be too hard to fake, will it? Your eyes are great.”

“Thanks,” Denise said.

Ryan opened the door. Mr. Perez came in, followed by Raymond Gidre, who was wearing only a suit coat, his shoulders tightly hunched.

“Cold enough for you?” Ryan said.

“Jes-us,” Raymond said.

Mr. Perez walked over to the counter, laid his attachй case down flat, and snapped it open.

“She called me this morning about five,” Ryan said. “You can see what she’s had.”