Unknown Man #89

“Hey, I don’t believe nobody’s home,” he said, and reached in his coat pocket for his ring of keys and was going through them when Tunafish touched his arm.

“Somebody coming.”

Virgil looked past him, his hatbrim brushing the door frame. A chambermaid had appeared from somewhere and was coming down the hall pushing a linen cart. Virgil slipped the ring of keys back into his pocket. His hand moved inside his jacket and remained there.

Approaching them, the maid said, “Good evening,” with the trace of an accent.

“How you doing?” Virgil said, looking over his shoulder as she moved past them with the cart, a heavyset woman in a white uniform, white anklets, and black crepe-soled shoes. Virgil kept watching her. When she stopped at the next door and took a sheet of paper out of her pocket, he said, “Hey, mama?” She looked up. “Yeah, come here, will you? I wonder you could open this door for us. My friend forget the key.”

“Uh-oh, shit,” Tunafish said. He didn’t like the look on the fat ugly woman’s face, puzzled, frowning a little. She came over to them, though, her hand in her pocket, probably holding on to the passkey.

“You stay with Mr. Perez?” she said.

“Yeah, I’m his brother come to visit him,” Virgil said. “Open the door, Mama.” He brought out from under his jacket Bobby Lear’s gleaming nickel-plated .38. The maid didn’t see it right away.

She said, “You his brother?” Then she saw it. “Oh, my God,” and her hand went up to her mouth.

“Open the door, please,” Virgil said. “Nobody want to hurt you.” Getting the key out and putting it in the door, she looked like she was going to cry. Virgil patted her shoulder gently. “Come on, Mama, it’s cool,” assuring her again as they entered the suite and Virgil steered her into the front closet, asking why would anybody want to hurt a pretty woman like her.

As Virgil closed the door to the closet, Tunafish walked over close to it and said, “You make a sound, we come in there, we both of us gonna rape the ass off you. You hear?”

“Get a suitcase,” Virgil said, going to the desk. “Look in the bedroom.”

They used Mr. Perez’s black Samsonite two-suiter. Virgil cleared off the desk, taking loose papers, folders, and notebooks, scratchpads, and everything in the desk, including hotel stationery and the room-service menu, and dropped everything in the suitcase open on the floor. Tunafish made them a couple of scotch and Coca-Cola drinks. Virgil had to jimmy open Mr. Perez’s locked attachй case. Right on top was a Beretta three-eighty, nice little mean- looking piece. Virgil slipped it into his jacket. He dumped the papers and file folders, lists of names and addresses, in the suitcase and went looking for more, finding a telephone-address book and a note pad with some writing on it in the bedroom and copies of The Wall Street Journal and Business Week in the bathroom. Virgil said, Shit, grinning, and took the roll of toilet paper. He took the Gideon Bible, some more magazines, and the folded laundry bags in the closet, and topped off the load in the suitcase with a painting on the wall he liked of a cat out in a sailboat with the mast broken off and this terrible motherfucker storm coming at him. Virgil sat down and had his scotch and Coke drink, wondering if the cat made it, then wondering where the cat had got the sailboat, if it was his or if he’d stolen it someplace and was trying to get away, shit, when the storm got him.

Coming out of the elevator, the first thing they saw was a bellman coming right at them. Tunafish hung back, letting Virgil get ahead of him with the suitcase.

Reaching for it, the bellman said, “Can I get you a cab?”

“No, we got a car.” Virgil let him have the suitcase, the bellman almost dropping it as he took the grip.

“It’s a heavy one.”

“Full of money.” Virgil grinned.

The bellman laughed.

About the time Virgil got home to his apartment on Seward, on the near west side, and began going through the papers, wondering what he had, Ryan was trying to stay alive.

Raymond Gidre had said, “His place, huh?” And Mr. Perez had said, “No, her place.” Raymond had said, “How do you know he won’t go home?” Mr. Perez had said, “Take my word for it.” In the restaurant before Ryan had joined them.

Now Raymond was sitting in the Hertz car in front of the Leary woman’s apartment building in Rochester. There were lights in windows, but he wasn’t sure if any were hers or if she was home. Mr. Perez had said not to go to her apartment. It would be good to sit up there and wait for him, watch the look on the Leary woman’s face. It was cold in the Hertz car, sitting there with the motor and the lights turned off. “Wait there,” Mr. Perez had said. “He comes, you don’t have to say a word to him.”

Raymond was looking forward to it. He had a 9 mm. Mauser Parabellum, official eight-shot German Luger, under his coat and a twelve-gauge Weatherby pump gun leaning against the seat with the walnut stock on the floor.

But, damn, it was cold.

The vestibule of the apartment building, through the glass door, looked warm. Except it was lit up. He doubted he’d be able to take the Weatherby in there.

After a few minutes the idea of a warm place won out over the shotgun. Then don’t take it. What would he need it for if he’s standing there as Ryan walked in? He got out of the Hertz car, leaving the Weatherby inside with the door unlocked, and crossed the parking area to the front entrance of the apartment wing. Maybe there was a light switch.

There wasn’t, though. It was probably inside the door that had to be buzzed to let you in. Raymond turned around. He couldn’t see much outside through his reflection on the glass door, just the shapes of cars, some highlights in the darkness. He’d be seen from out there, though, for sure. He looked up at the light fixture. Hell, it was only about a foot out of reach. He got out his German Luger, pointed it up there at arm’s length, rose to his toes as he shoved the six-inch barrel through the opening in the fixture and poked it against the light bulb. Hardly made a sound as the vestibule went dark. There. Raymond leaned against the wall to wait. It was a little warmer in here, but not much.

Ryan was anxious to get to Denise’s. Careful, but in a hurry, waiting for traffic lights to change, going through an amber-turning-red in the middle of Rochester and finally coming to the street that climbed the rise to the apartment buildings, looking for a light in Denise’s window as he turned into the parking area in the middle of the complex. Ryan got out and angled through the rows of parked cars toward the entrance. It was here, coming to open pavement, he sensed something wrong, something different. If there had been only one apartment building here he might not have noticed the light out in the vestibule. But he looked around at the other entrances, five of them in the U-shaped complex, and there was a light in every entrance but this one.

Ryan had stopped before he saw the glass door swing into the darkness of the vestibule and the figure appear-somebody coming out, pointing at him, pointing something-and he was moving, running back to the protection of the car rows, as Raymond began firing the German Luger at him.

Son of a bitch, something had spooked him. Raymond came out to the pavement and paused, listening, before he crossed to the first row of cars. He’d fired three rounds, louder than hell in the closed-in area between the buildings. Now the only thing Raymond could hear, standing between two cars, was his own slow breathing, in and out of his nose. Some lights were going on in the building opposite him. Probably in all the buildings. He wondered if Ryan was going to run over to one of those lit-up entrances and start pushing buzzers. Raymond hoped he would. Get him in there banging at the inside door, screaming for help, and shoot him through the glass.

Raymond moved out into the open toward the next row of cars and that flushed him, hearing his quick running steps first, and there he was, going for daylight, running past the cars to the little street that led down the hill to the main road. Raymond held his German Luger straight out in front of him with both hands and squeezed off three rounds, shit, seeing Ryan still on his feet and hearing the glass pop in a car windshield.

He needed the Weatherby pump gun. He also needed to get the Hertz car the hell out of here, before the flashing lights appeared, or he might never get back to it. He’d be giving Ryan an extra half-minute start, but that was all right, he’d be in the open for a time, anyway, if he was running for town, spooked good now, in a panic, running to find a policeman or somebody to help him.

Raymond got on him in less than a half minute, more like twenty seconds, flying out of there in the Hertz car with the lights off, down the little street and squealing the tires in a hard left onto the main road and across the railroad tracks, heading for the streetlights and neon signs a block away, and there he was on the left-hand side,