“What’s the guy’s name?”
“Tunafish.”
“That’s all, just Tunafish?”
“You got a name like that, what else you need?”
Ryan kept looking at his watch. When they’d been there thirty minutes he said, “Doesn’t look like he’s going to show, does it? Maybe we ought to come back.” He was antsy; he could never stand sitting around very long.
“You want to talk to the guy or not?” Dick Speed said. “I could be at the Athens instead of out in the fucking rain so I can get invited to the big dinner.”
Ryan told him not to think he didn’t appreciate it, and looked at his watch again.
An hour and ten minutes passed.
“There he is,” Dick Speed said. “See, you’re patient, God rewards you. The skinny jig with the afro.”
Ryan ducked his head to look through the rear window. There were two black guys in front of the place, moving away from each other but still talking.
“They both got afros.”
“No, the finger waves, that’s a superfly,” Dick Speed said. “Don’t you know your hairstyles? That’s our boy in the leather coat. Turning his collar up. Ahhh, coming this way now, finished their chitchat. The other one’s name is Lonnie. He talks to the narcs, tells them interesting stories, and they let him deal a little grass. How do you like the fucking shoes? He’s about five-foot nothing in his socks.”
“He’s coming,” Ryan said. “Tunafish.”
“Don’t worry. I got him.”
Tunafish was almost even with the unmarked car, his head turned against the misty rain. Dick Speed opened the door and stood up outside. He said over the top of the car, “Get in the back.”
The skinny black guy didn’t say anything. He looked back over his shoulder as he got in. Dick Speed pulled out, turned the corner at the first side street, and parked in front of a vacant lot. There were old frame houses farther down. Dick Speed switched off the ignition. The sound of the engine and the windshield wipers stopped. It was quiet in the car. Tunafish sat on the right side of the back seat, his hands folded in his lap. His hair glistened with drops of moisture.
“My associate here,” Dick Speed said, “wants to get hold of Robert Leary… Bobby Lear. Where does he go to find him?”
“Bobby Lear,” Tunafish said, as if trying to picture him.
“Let’s cut the shit, okay?” Dick Speed said. “Bobby Lear.”
Ryan had the twenty in his raincoat pocket. His hand came out with the bill, folded twice, and reached over the backrest with it.
Tunafish took it and looked at it, then looked at Ryan as he put the twenty in his shirt pocket, under the leather coat. His expression didn’t say if he was happy with it or not; his expression didn’t say anything. His eyes moved from Ryan and he seemed to be staring straight ahead, at the rain filming the windshield.
“Nobody know where he is,” Tunafish said. “Nobody seen him.”
“He’s out,” Dick Speed said. “Why should he hide?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he heard something.”
“People talking about him?”
“They say some friends of his. They get together and decide somebody should put a gun next to Bobby Lear’s head.”
“Kill him?” Ryan said.
“For the sake of humanity and everybody’s ass,” Tunafish said. “Nobody feel safe with him anymore.”
“Who’re the friends?” Dick Speed asked him.
“Man, that’s a hard one.”
Dick Speed looked at Ryan.
Ryan reached into his pocket and came out with another twenty. Tunafish took it.
“You’re doing all right,” Dick Speed said, “for a relatively shitty afternoon. Who’d you say these friends are?”
“See, most of them talking big, bullshitting each other, saying how they gonna burn that motherfucker, put him out of his misery. But only one might do it, get out of bed in the morning pure, not on any high, and do it. You know who I mean?”
“Tell us,” Dick Speed said.
“Bobby Lear, only armed robbery bust he ever had. You remember it? About four years ago.”
“Wyandotte Savings and Loan,” Dick Speed said.
Tunafish nodded. “That’s the one. Bobby Lear and two others. Bobby Lear got off, no positive I.D. Wendell Haines is dead. That leaves one more. Look on your job sheet.”
“Virgil Royal,” Dick Speed said. “He went to Jackson.”
“He went and he come back.”
“So what’s the talk?”
“That Virgil have a private reason to see him. Besides helping humanity, help Virgil Royal, too. You dig?”
Ryan had a question. He waited, listening to them talking about Virgil Royal. He didn’t understand most of it. When Tunafish paused, Ryan said, “How about his wife? You know where I can find her?”
Tunafish was thoughtful again, shaking his head.
Dick Speed said, “Come on, you been paid.”
“No, man,” Tunafish said, “I didn’t know that, the man had a wife. There was a lady I used to see him with-I can’t think of her name.”
“Thelma Simpson,” Dick Speed said.
“No, Thelma-he got her in the closet, she couldn’t move, and beat on her till she was dead. No, I mean another lady, before he went to the hospital. Had real long hair, blond color, you know? I’d see them once in a while, the lady have on these beads, fake African shit, was always drinking wine.”
“What’s her name?” Ryan asked him.
“Let’s see-I believe it was Lee.” Tunafish thought about it. “Yeah, he call her Lee.”
“Where’d you see them?”
“Different places.” Tunafish paused and his face almost came alive for the first time. “Hey, I seen her a week, two weeks ago. Was in the afternoon, she was alone. She had the blond hair and the beads, drinking wine. I said to myself, Who is that? Then I remember, yeah. But she look different.”
“Where was it?” Ryan said. “A bar?”
“Yeah, on Cass,” Tunafish said. “Shit, I don’t know the name. Down near Masonic Temple.”
“You think she lives around there?”
“I don’t know, she might.” Tunafish nodded then, still picturing her. “Yeah. I don’t see any reason she be in the place unless she live around there. Trashy, man. Six, seven in the morning the bars open.”
“What was different about her?” Ryan asked him. “You said she looked different.”
Tunafish frowned, picturing her. “Yeah, well, not different. It was like she look sick. You know?”
Ryan didn’t say much on the way back to where his car was parked on Beaubien. He thought about the girl named Lee, forming a picture of her in his mind, the blond hair and the beads and the glass of wine. In the picture she came across as a hooker, a flashy broad in a miniskirt and boots, somebody that would go around with a guy like Bobby Lear. Finding Lee would probably be next.
And if he couldn’t find her, then the guy that was mentioned, Virgil something. He said to Dick Speed, “What’s the guy’s name, was in on the robbery with Leary, Virgil?”
“Virgil Royal.”
“I didn’t get that part of it.”
“They held up the Wyandotte Savings and Loan. Virgil did time, Leary got off.”
“Yeah, I understand that.”
“What don’t you get?”
“Why Virgil’s looking for him. Because he got sent away and Leary didn’t?”
“I think there’s more to it than that,” Speed said. “I think Leary made a deal and laid the job on Virgil, but I’m
