“I’ve seen it,” Ryan said. “I’ve been there. And you know what? I don’t ever want to go back.”
The girl turned to her glass of wine, subdued. She stared at it for a while before saying, “I’m not ready for you yet.”
“Why put it off? Because you’re having so much fun?”
“I’m not ready.”
“You’re close enough,” Ryan said. “Every day you put it off you’re going to hit harder when you quit. Maybe you want to crash and burn first, end up in detox. It’s your choice, I’m not going to argue with you, try and convince you of anything. But listen”-he took one of his business cards out of his wallet and placed it on the bar next to her glass- “you’ve got to have a very good reason to want to kill yourself. Have you got one?”
The girl, staring at her glass, didn’t answer. Ryan got up from the bar and left.
The black guy in the maroon suit stroked the corners of his bandit mustache. He picked up a wide-brimmed, Stetson-looking hat from the bar and went down to where the girl was hunched over the glass of wine. The tall, good-looking black guy lifted a hip onto the stool next to her.
He said, “Hey, Lee, what’s happening?”
She looked at him sleepily, uninterested, and turned back to the bar.
“That man bothering you?”
“He wanted to show me his thing.”
“Hey, no shit. He do it?”
The girl didn’t answer him.
“He was looking for Bobby, wasn’t he?… Lee?”
“Hey, Virgil,” the girl said then. “You like sex?”
“What kind?”
“What?”
“I said what kind of sex you talking about? With a woman?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said. She seemed to have lost interest. “Forget it.”
“Where’s the key?” Rita said.
“In my coat pocket. Over there on the chair.”
“You sure you want Chinese?”
“That’s fine with me,” Ryan said. “You better get another bottle of wine, too. I think that’s about it.”
Her glass, half full of rosй, was on the footlocker coffee table.
“It’s not that I don’t like your cooking, Ryan. I’m just in the mood for Chinese.”
“You need some money? Here-”
“No, I’ve got it. Wait’ll you’re rich.” Rita got the car keys from his sport coat and went out.
That was one of the good things about her, he didn’t have to wait on her or always buy. She was used to working and knew what things cost. She’d run out and get the Chinese-eager to do it-because he was expecting a call and didn’t want to take a chance with the answering service, have to call back and find out Dick Speed had left. He was anxious to hear from him.
A lot was going on. But he also had to rest once in a while and get his mind somewhere else.
He looked at Rita’s glass on the footlocker and thought of the girl in the Good Times Bar. He’d picked Rita up at five, served a couple of writs, it was ten after seven now. They’d been here a half hour, Rita hadn’t finished the glass yet. The girl in the bar, Lee, she’d have knocked off two doubles and be reaching for the third. Rita didn’t have a problem. Maybe in twenty years, but she’d have to work at it, get into the morning routine. Vodka sitting on the toilet tank while you took a shower, something to hold you till the bars opened at seven. He couldn’t see Rita doing that.
She was all right. She tried a little too hard-like someone who didn’t have an ear or a sense of timing trying to be funny-but there was a lot of girl there in Rita.
He was a little horny, was what he was.
When Rita got back he’d pour her some more rosй and sit close to her on the fake-leather couch, not serious at first but saying funny things as he started to fool around. What he said wasn’t that funny, but Rita always laughed and let him do whatever he wanted. He told her she had centerfold breasts. Actually she had heavy white peasant breasts with big brown nipples. She had a round belly and the trace of a Florida tan line below the navel. He was horny all right. Her pubic hair grew wild and scraggly and reminded him of Che Guevara’s beard. She said, Why do you keep looking at it? He said, Why do you think little boys like pictures of bare-naked ladies? They were all the same, basically, and they were all different. That was amazing and what made them so interesting and fun to look at. They were all different. The phone rang.
Dick Speed said, “Am I interrupting anything?”
“Not yet,” Ryan said. “What’d you find out?”
“I just want to say, your new friends are certainly interesting people. Take Mr. Francis X. Perez. Sixty-eight to seventy-two, he served four and a half years at Angola.”
“That’s a prison down there?”
“You bet it is. Louisiana.”
Ryan felt pretty smart for a moment. “Embezzlement, or some kind of con, right?”
“Wrong. Accessory to murder. He was convicted of paying a man by the name of Raymond Gidre, a part-time employee, to shoot another man in the chest five times. Raymond Gidre was brought to trial, but they had to settle for second degree, I don’t know why, and he got off with eight years hard time… released, let’s see… just a couple of weeks ago. You know him, too? Raymond Gidre?”
“No, I never heard of him. But how’d they get him as an accessory? Perez.”
“He was doing some kind of business with the guy who was killed and they tied Perez in with Gidre, checks or something, and I think the three of them were seen together. It sounded circumstantial. In fact, it looks to me like hearsay, but they convicted them. Perez appealed and lost it.”
“Can I get the details from you?”
“What I have. Would you like to tell me what’s going on?”
“I told you. Perez hired me to find Robert Leary. And the stock part of it. I’ve told you everything I know.”
“Buddy, you want some advice. Get back to serving papers as fast as you can.”
“I am,” Ryan said, “as soon as I find the guy. I’m not involved in this. I give him an address and I’m done, I don’t even have to talk to Leary.”
“But you have to talk to Perez,” Dick Speed said, “you’re dealing with the man.”
“I’m working for him. How does that look on my rйsumй? Shit, I don’t like it at all, but I could be right next to fifteen grand.”
“Okay, but remember,” Dick Speed said, “nobody hands you money for nothing, unless you’re giving a lot more than you think.”
“Wait a minute,” Ryan said, “I want to write that down.”
They would talk and not say anything for a few minutes, exchange a few words and lapse into silence, and Ryan would concentrate on picking at his egg roll and chop suey.
When he looked at Rita again he said, “You know how long it takes me to make fifteen thousand? About eight or nine months. I’ve got a chance, I could make it in one day.”
“What’re you arguing with me for?” Rita said. “You’re going to do what you want.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“Then you’re talking to yourself. What do you want me to say, go ahead? I’ve already told you what I think.”
“What about if I give it a week? If I don’t find the guy within one week, I forget the whole thing.”
“Darling boy, I’m not your wife. Are you asking me for permission?”
“I’m laying it out,” Ryan said, “so I can look at it.”
“Why?” Rita said. “You’ve already made up your mind.”
Maybe she was smarter than he thought. Or maybe he was dumber. What was he doing? Rationalizing. Like finding an excuse to have a drink. In this case it wasn’t a drink, it was fifteen thousand. Maybe he did want permission, someone to tell him it was all right. Then if he messed up, got into something over his head, it wouldn’t be entirely his fault. Someone else had said sure, go ahead. But it wasn’t that way at all, was it? Rita was right, he had already made up his mind. So why keep talking about it? Do it. It was his decision, his responsibility for whatever happened to him.