“You’re right there, it’s up to me,” Mr. Perez said. “It’s always been up to me. I could be dining at Commander’s Palace this evening instead of this place. I’m here because this is my business. Now you come along, try and fuck up things-it’s like you’re telling me I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I’ve got a feeling,” Ryan said, “I could go back to Probate Court, look up the guy who left the stock in the first place, Anderson, dig around, locate his heirs. I find out what the stock is, all the talking’s over, isn’t it?”
“Or, I could have Raymond drop by and see you,” Mr. Perez said. “How does that sound?”
“Throw me out the window? I’m on the first floor.”
Mr. Perez shrugged. “Or we could wrap it up tonight. Meet with the lady, she signs an agreement that we split it down the middle. Then it’s just a matter of some paperwork. Everybody’s happy, we shake hands and go home.”
Some paperwork. Something occurred to Ryan he hadn’t thought of before. He said, “First, before anything’s done, the stock’s got to be transferred to her name, through probate.”
“It does, huh? What stock? Transferred by whom?”
The waitress said, “Red snapper. I was able to get your tail piece.”
“I went ahead and ordered,” Mr. Perez said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“And your cottage fries and vegetable.” Making room for them on the table, the waitress said to Ryan, “Are you gonna order, hon?”
Mr. Perez looked at her for the first time.
“Not right now,” Ryan said. He wanted her to finish and move off.
Mr. Perez gave him a put-on surprised look. “You’re not going to eat? I thought this was the best restaurant in town.”
“I’ll let you know,” Ryan said to the waitress. He felt awkward, unsure of himself, and didn’t know why. Mr. Perez, with his dinner in front of him, squeezing lemon on his snapper, was in control again. The man was practiced, good at it. He made a little ceremony of tasting the fish and again acting surprised.
“Not bad, not bad at all.” He did the same thing with the escarole. “Yeah, you might be right for once.”
“If we go to court,” Ryan began, “get it into probate…” He hoped that was enough; he wasn’t sure how to make an explicit threat out of it.
“My friend,” Mr. Perez said, “there is no stock until the lady signs the agreement. There is no way you or the court can find out what it is. If I’m subpoenaed, I’ll say it again in court, ‘What stock? What stock is it you want transferred to her name? Your honor, I don’t know what they’re talking about.’ You understand?”
“Yeah, but I guess we’re not communicating,” Ryan said. He pushed his chair back and got up. “I hope you don’t mind eating alone.”
“Not at all,” Mr. Perez said. “In fact, I enjoy it. We’re through, anyway, aren’t we?”
Shit, Ryan was standing there with his hand on the back of the chair and couldn’t think of anything to say. He wanted to give the guy a good parting shot and walk away with the words hanging in the air.
“Well, call if you want the ten grand. Otherwise, let’s forget the whole thing.” That seemed about right. He was walking away from the table.
“Fine,” Mr. Perez said, “I’ll call if I need you for anything.”
Ryan kept going, along the bar to the front and past the reservation desk to the foyer. The son of a bitch, he’d call if he needed him. What’d he mean, if he needed him? He got his raincoat from the checkroom lady and a couple of mints from the dish on the tobacco counter.
It was cold outside, misty. Almost eight-thirty. It was too early to call Virgil. He started along the sidewalk to the restaurant’s parking lot, getting a buck out of his pocket.
If I need you for anything.
Like nothing Ryan said had impressed him or changed his way of thinking. Business as usual. Sitting there eating his dinner. Sends Raymond off to a hockey game. Ryan stopped.
He turned and ran back into the foyer of the restaurant. There were magazines on the tobacco counter, Host of the Town, what to do in Detroit, if anything, but no newspaper. Sorry, the checkroom lady said. In the phone booth Ryan got Olympia’s number from information and dialed it.
“Hi, what time’s the game start, eight-thirty?”
The Wings were on the road, the voice told him. At Montreal tonight.
He dialed Denise’s number and listened to it ring. He said, Come on, answer it. Forget what I said and answer it. The phone continued to ring.
21
“IT’S A HOTEL LOBBY,” Virgil said. “You never seen one before?”
Tunafish brought his gaze back and looked straight ahead, toward the bank of elevators. “I never seen this one before. It’s the first time I been here.”
It was Virgil’s first time in the Pontchartrain, too, but he didn’t bother to mention it. He said to Tunafish, “Yeah, we here.” Like what was the big deal? “Anybody ask, we going up to see a man. See if he want his walk shoveled.”
They got off the elevator on 17 and walked down the hall looking at room numbers, Tunafish saying them out loud, beginning with 1725.
“Oh-five,” Virgil said and stopped by the door. He knocked, giving the door panel three light taps, and waited. “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.