The wail of the police car lifted Ryan and he stopped to listen-Christ, saved-he could see it swerving after Raymond, running him down, the pair of young, alert Rochester police officers out of the car with drawn revolvers-
Yeah?
Bullshit, the police car was still going, the nice sound trailing after it, stretching thin and not doing him one bit of good, what those guys were paid to do, for Christ’s sake-and Ryan was moving again, running past the back-street shops, the once-Victorian houses that now had artsy paint jobs and craftsy signs. All closed, silent, dark. No place to go in and hide and tell somebody to quick, call the police. The guy was crazy, running down the fucking main street firing a shotgun, Christ, people watching him.
You’re doing it all wrong, Ryan told himself, much too late. From the beginning, running. He was still running and didn’t have time to stop and think. Coming to a corner, the cross street lined with old trees, he wished to God he knew what he should do, keep going, cut left or right, what? He wanted to hide somewhere, but he didn’t want to get trapped. His side ached and his stomach hurt. He ran toward the house on the corner with the sign in front, Objects & Images. Quick decision, he’d break in if he had to, use the phone and wait there in the dark. But not in time. The twelve-gauge sound hit the air flat and heavy and the shot ripped against the side of the house directly behind Ryan, jerking his head around to see the crazy bastard on him again, one house away, coming in mean, hard prison-farm condition, mind made up nothing was going to stop him. It scared the shit out of Ryan, fear slugging him to pump his legs faster. Christ, how’d he get here, doing it all fucking wrong, an ex-con with a slide-action shotgun coming down on him. His stomach hurt, something hard pressing on his intestines. He put his hand on his stomach, still running, and felt the grip of the .38 Smith that he had absolutely forgot all about.
Cutting across the front lawn of the corner house, he wanted to get behind something, but was afraid to stop, so he kept running, down the cross street lined with trees now. He wished he knew what he was doing, instinctively knew the way to take the guy. Get behind something. Get behind a tree and hit him going by. Except what if he missed and there was crazy Raymond swinging around with the shotgun? The shotgun made an awful noise and tore out whole plate-glass windows and ripped shingles off houses and could take the top of your head right off, like the man at the Wayne County Morgue who’d killed himself with a shotgun. He remembered the smell of the morgue and remembered, in that moment, what the smell was like. Bad breath. A sick person’s breath. A whole tiled room full of it. He didn’t want to get there, end up on a metal-tray table naked, lying in the cold-room with fifty naked people, his clothes in a paper bag between his legs.
Ryan stopped in the middle of the tree-lined street, pulled out the .38 Smith and turned around, extended it with both hands, like the cops on TV did, and when he saw Raymond, coming across the lawn, coming out of the line of trees to the pavement, Raymond charging directly up the street at him, three houses away, Ryan fired. He started to turn, to run, and saw Raymond stop. Ryan fired again, he fired four times again as fast as he could pull the trigger, the revolver alive, jumping in his hand. The sound died away. Raymond stood there. He wouldn’t fall down. Ryan squeezed the trigger again, hard, and heard the hammer click on an empty chamber.
Less than three houses away, less than a hundred feet, Raymond said, “That all you got?”
22
THE DOOR TO suite 1705 stood open. The chambermaid was there, a man from Security, and the hotel’s first assistant manager, who stood in the middle of the room staring at the wall above the sofa. Mr. Perez came out of the bedroom, finally taking off his topcoat and throwing it over a chair. He went to the bookcase bar and began making himself a drink.
“They took one of the paintings,” the assistant manager said. He seemed mildly surprised as he realized it.
Mr. Perez came away from the bar with his drink. “They did, huh? That’s the first indication of genuine concern I’ve heard from you. As I recall, it was a print of a Winslow Homer. A photographic reprint.”
“Mr. Perez, I just noticed it. That’s all. I didn’t mean to imply-”
Mr. Perez wasn’t finished. “Two men, two nigger men, come in here and steal valuable documents and you’re worried about a picture you can get in a ten-cents store.”
“I wasn’t worried about it.”
“You let anybody you want come in your hotel?”
“Well,” the assistant manager said, “the problem, we can’t actually screen everyone who comes in. You can understand that.”
“I understand I’ve been robbed,” Mr. Perez said. “That’s what I understand. What I’d like to know is what you’re gonna do about it.”
“Well, we’ll call the police, of course. If you can give them a list of what was stolen-”
“A list? My friend, they stole”-Mr. Perez almost said, “my whole goddamn business,” but stopped in time-“papers, documents, beyond commercial value in themselves.”
The assistant manager didn’t understand. “Not notes then, or stock certificates?”
“I mean records and proposals that can’t be duplicated and are worth, conservatively… several million. That’s why, sir, I hope you don’t mind my asking what you’re gonna do about it. Or do I have to sue your ass for some kind of negligence?”
“Mr. Perez,” the assistant manager said, “you know the hotel can’t be responsible for anything left in the room. That’s why we have safe deposit boxes.”
“That’s a sign,” Mr. Perez said. “You can bring it to court with you and show it to the judge.”
It was not the assistant manager’s hotel. When Mr. Perez moved out, someone else would move in. He said, “As I mentioned, we’ll call the police, and it’s possible your… documents will be recovered. If you’ll give me a list of what was taken-I know they’ll also want to question you.”
Mr. Perez knew it, too. He wanted to threaten and kick ass, impress and intimidate the assistant manager; but he didn’t want to talk to the police just yet, or perhaps ever, for that matter. He knew who’d taken the papers, or had them taken; that wasn’t hard to figure, though it did surprise him. But now, what would the two niggers do if they read in the paper tomorrow about Jack C. Ryan, Process Server, Found Shot to Death? Better wait and see.
“I’ll let you know,” Mr. Perez said to the assistant manager. “Good night.”
“You’ll give me the list of items?”
“That’s right. Then you can call the police. But not before I tell you.”
“If you prefer to do it that way,” the assistant manager said.
“I prefer everybody out,” Mr. Perez said.
Jesus, he’d no sooner closed the door and walked over to his chair when somebody started knocking and he had to walk all the way back to open the door.
“Now what?”
Raymond Gidre came in.
Driving back to Detroit in the Hertz car, once he’d slipped past the blue flashers that were all over the place and screaming up the Interstate toward Rochester, Raymond kept telling himself, You hit him. You must’ve.