So then it was Virgil’s turn, when he got out and went to see Bobby, knowing what a sweet man he was, what would Bobby do? Would he say, Hey, baby, and put his arm around him, and buy him his dinner? Shit. Bobby’d sandbag him on sight. Or talk nice and get him relaxed first, it was the same thing. Bobby Lear killed people. That’s why Virgil learned to be cool at Jackson.
The trouble was, by the time he got out and had bought the twelve-gauge Hi-Standard, Bobby Lear had been busted again and sent to a state hospital and Virgil had to use some more of the patience he’d learned and wait for him to get out. Then wait for him to show himself. Then use a little more of his running-out patience following Bobby’s wine-head woman around.
Five minutes to eleven in the morning in an empty cocktail lounge and Bad George Benson coming out of the hi-fi system, Virgil was still waiting.
Tunafish came out of the sunlight into night darkness, looked over at the reflection of the bar mirrors and the empty stools, then at the booths on the other side of the lounge, and walked over that way. He knew it was Virgil because of his hat. Nobody had a hat like Virgil Royal’s.
It had been a cowboy hat one time and was seasoned now and had a look of its own, with a brim that was almost flat except for a nice free-form curve to it, slightly up on one side, and a down-sloping dent in the narrow-blocked crown. The hat was part of Virgil, and the way he wore it-with his bandit mustache and usually sunglasses-down a little on his left eye, almost straight but down, you knew you had better not touch it.
Virgil said, “Two hundred and ten dollars.”
Tunafish, sliding into the booth, looked at his watch. “Hey, shit. Two hundred and… twenty.”
“Two hundred and twenty, then,” Virgil said. “You want something to drink?”
“I ain’t had no breakfast yet.”
“You want some coffee, milk?”
“You don’t have nothing.” Tunafish wanted to keep his voice calm, like Virgil’s, but it was Virgil’s calm that made him jumpy and suspicious. Virgil was different since he got out, quieter, like he knew a secret.
“I must have got you out of bed,” Virgil said. He took a fold of bills from his shirt pocket, beneath the maroon jacket, and peeled off two hundreds and two tens. “Here. So you feel better.”
Tunafish took the bills, all of them brand-new. He felt good, folding them and sticking them in his pants.
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“How you and Lavera doing?”
“Fine. We making it.”
“Long as she working, huh?”
“I bring home money,” Tunafish said. “You think I don’t?” Virgil’s tone was getting to him again. Virgil didn’t seem to notice, though. He was looking away, like he was thinking about something else.
“I don’t get no complaints from her.”
Virgil’s hat came back to face him. Virgil’s expression was calm.
“You remember a boy name of Lonnie? Used to work for Sportree?”
Tunafish straightened, looking across the empty lounge. “Yeah, he was a bartender, at night. But he don’t work here no more.”
“I said used to. You know where he work now?”
Tunafish had an idea he’d short-cut Virgil, show him something. He said, “Lonnie don’t know Bobby Lear. They was some dudes in a place talking about him one time, Bobby. I remember Lonnie say he don’t know him.”
Virgil waited, in no hurry. “What did I ask you?”
“What?”
“I said you know where he work?”
“Shit, Lonnie? He’s dealing. What he always done. He was working here he was dealing.”
“He’s a good friend of yours, huh?”
“Pretty good.”
“You see him much?”
“Yeah, you know. I see him around different places, sometimes the methadone center.”
“How you doing with your habit?”
“I’m making it.”
Virgil grinned. “Lavera stays right on your ass, don’t she? She was a little girl she was always serious, like a little mama.”
“She not worried no more,” Tunafish said. “Lonnie, shit, he still doing both, couple of dimes and the meth. Fucked up good but he don’t know it.”
“What’s he dealing?”
“Lonnie? Mostly he deal grass. Get this low-grade weed and sell it to the people out the V.A. hospital, tell them it’s Tia-wanna gold, some bullshit name he make up. The stuff, man grow it in Pontiac.” Tunafish started to grin, seeing Virgil grinning. “Assholes out the V.A., they go oooh, aaah, Tia-wanna gold, hey, shit, man, get us some more this stuff. Lonnie shake his head, he say he don’t know but he try.”
Virgil slid out of the booth, still grinning a little. “You want something now?”
“You gonna have one?”
“Yeah, something. I don’t know yet.”
“Give me aaaaah… vodka orange juice,” Tunafish said.
He watched Virgil go over to the bar and wait for the bartender, down at the end, to notice him. The man had changed. Standing there waiting. Talking to the bartender now. Four years ago he would have called the bartender over here to the booth. It looked like Virgil because of the hat, but it didn’t look like him, coming back, carrying two orange vodka drinks.
“I’d like you to call up Lonnie,” Virgil said, seated again, looking right at him.
Tunafish didn’t move. It was coming now, and for some reason he hadn’t expected it to be about Lonnie. He thought that had been warming-up talk, bullshit talk, and Lonnie had happened into it.
“Tell him you want to see him,” Virgil said. “Say you got a deal on some good weed he’d like to have.”
“I don’t know his number,” Tunafish said. He was holding on to his drink. “Or he’s got a phone or where the man lives. I don’t.”
“I give you two hundreds and two tens,” Virgil said. “His phone number’s on one of the hundreds.” Virgil kept looking at him.
Tunafish was trying to think and act calm at the same time. He didn’t want to ask any questions if he didn’t have to.
“He might not be home.”
“I bet right now he is,” Virgil said. “Still in the bed with his little girl. What’s her name? Marcella Lindsey. Two eight three two Edison. Upstairs. Tell him you be over six, six-thirty, if he wants a sample. None of that Tia-wanna shit, top-grade stuff. If he don’t want to see it, you show it to somebody else.”
Tunafish was listening carefully, nodding. He still hadn’t moved.
“Go on, call him. Tell him that,” Virgil said. Tunafish got up from the booth. “Hey-he say he can’t see you, then you say you call him back later. Dig?”
Virgil watched him go over to the wall phone, taking the folded bills out to look at the number-narrow hunched shoulders and round afro shape, skinny kid in a leather coat too big for him. His head moving a little with the George Benson sound coming out of the hi-fi. Showing how he could set his friend up for his brother-in-law and not ask why. Knowing, whatever the reason, it had to be. Yeah, Tunafish knew what was happening. He didn’t know all of it yet, but he knew enough.
Tunafish came back and slid into the booth.
“Say he can’t make it at six, he has to be someplace.”
Virgil grinned and relaxed against the cushion. Tunafish waited, but Virgil didn’t say anything.
“When do I call him back?”
“Uh-uh, all I wanted to know, was he going to make his appointment.”
“‘Pointment for what?”
“The beauty parlor,” Virgil said. “Get his super-fly hair fixed up. Every Friday, six-thirty, Lonnie comes in after the ladies have gone.”
“Ladies’ beauty parlor, huh,” Tunafish said. “Man, he never told nobody that.”
“Place called the Hairhouse, in Pontiac,” Virgil said. “Little white boy name of Sal does his hair, Lonnie gives him a couple of baggies.”
“You knew all that, what’d I call him for?”
“Make sure Lonnie’s going to be there this evening,” Virgil said. “Isn’t having his period or something.”