He phoned Denise and told her what had happened and what was going on. She told him about having lunch with Mr. Perez and he felt good again. He didn’t have to be down. If he was down it was because he chose to be down, and that was dumb.
Denise said, “If they don’t want to talk to you, what’re you hanging around for? We’ve got better things to do.”
“Right,” Ryan said. “But what exactly did you have in mind?”
Denise said, “Go home and pack your bag, and when you pick me up I’ll tell you.”
That’s what he did. In fact, he got out most of his summer clothes, his jeans, lightweight stuff, and packed them in the twenty-nine-dollar Sears footlocker, reactivating it, no longer a coffee table, something to put his feet on. It was a good feeling.
But then he sat down and got up and walked around the silent apartment and looked out the window. It was after seven, nearly dark outside.
He phoned Dick Speed.
And Speed, with a tone of mild surprise, said, “Where’d you go? I look around, you’re not here.”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to wait.”
“Did I say it was okay for you to go?” Still playing the game, punishing the bad boy.
“You want me to come down and wait some more?”
“You’re too late,” Dick Speed said. “You waited, you’d have seen your friend Mr. Perez.”
“You picked him up?”
“No, he walked in by himself. Had a very interesting discussion-not with me so much, with Olsen. Left a few minutes ago.”
“Can I ask you,” Ryan said, trying hard to sound calm, “did you give him the suitcase?”
“Let’s talk about it in the morning,” Dick Speed said. “I’m about to piss on the fire and head for the ranch.”
“Dick, come on, for Christ’s sake, just tell me, will you?”
“There’re a few things I want to sit down and talk to you about, as I’m sure you know, you rascal. Long as you’re not gonna leave town, there’s no rush.”
A good sign, the light side of the cop beginning to shine through again.
Be calm and show him a little humility. “Dick, if I can ask you to wait just fifteen minutes, okay? Please.”
“Well,” the son of a bitch said, “all right, I’ll be here. But don’t putz around.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“And, Jackie?” Dick Speed said. “Bring the papers you took out of the suitcase.”
It was quiet in the squad rooms this time. The offices that Ryan could see, with their worn, cluttered desks butted against each other, were empty. He didn’t like offices at night with fluorescent lights on. Offices were depressing enough with people in them. He didn’t like waiting in offices either, sitting in a straight chair by the desk; he felt at a disadvantage. “Sit down,” Dick Speed had said, and walked out. Ryan sat with the papers he’d taken from the suitcase, Mr. Perez’s letters and the hotel stationery, in a manila envelope on his lap. He didn’t know where Dick Speed had gone-until he got up, dropped the manila envelope on the desk, and walked out, not to leave, to move around. There was more room in the squad rooms’ outer office where he had waited this afternoon, but there wasn’t anything to look at he hadn’t seen before: the mug shots on the wall, a calendar, the Xerox machine, the coffee maker.
He heard Mr. Perez’s voice.
Ryan turned. He saw Dick Speed through the glass partition of Detective Olsen’s office, where the suitcase had been this afternoon. Dick Speed was alone, looking down at something on the desk.
“Hey, Ryan, come here!”
He called to him before he saw Ryan through the glass, then waved for him to come in.
A tape recorder was on the desk.
Ryan saw it-Dick Speed fooling with it, rewinding, then stopping the tape-but he didn’t see the black Samsonite two-suiter anywhere. He looked around the office again to be sure.
“You want to hear an act,” Dick Speed said, “listen to this.”
“You gave it to him, huh?”
“What?”
“His papers. When he was here.”
“That was part of the act, walking in, showing he’s got nothing to hide.”
“If you didn’t pick him up, how’d he find out?”
“He says he went to the bar to meet his friend Gidre and they told him what happened. He even went to the morgue and identified Gidre before he came here.”
“To see if Raymond had the suitcase,” Ryan said.
“So he walks in and wants to know if we recovered his property. Well, we’ve got a few questions to ask him first, three people getting killed over a suitcase he says is his.” Dick Speed punched a button on the tape recorder.
PEREZ:… that the theft was reported. Naturally I told the hotel management.
“That’s Perez,” Dick Speed said. “The other one’s Olsen, questioning him. You’ll hear me a few times.”
OLSEN: The management. Who’d you tell, exactly?
PEREZ: I don’t know, some assistant. Young fella with slick hair and pointed shoulders in his coat.
OLSEN: Pointed shoulders. You asked him to report the robbery to the police?
PEREZ: I assumed he would, something’s stolen from a room. Wouldn’t you?
SPEED: Did you know Mr. Gidre was carrying a gun?
PEREZ: I told him, I said, “Raymond, I’d just like you to talk to them.” I don’t mind telling you I was afraid to, not knowing anything about them, who they were. I said just talk to them nice, see if we can come to some kind of agreement.
SPEED: You didn’t answer my question. Did you know Mr. Gidre was carrying a gun?
PEREZ: No, I didn’t.
SPEED: Did you know he owned a gun?
PEREZ: I believe he might’ve told me that, yes. But I didn’t know he was carrying it with him today. See, I spoke to him about it last night.
OLSEN: You said you spoke to one of them on the phone. Do you know which one?
PEREZ: I don’t know. They all sound alike to me.
OLSEN: Did he ask you for money?
PEREZ: He said he wanted to meet with me and have a talk. I suppose feel me out, see how much he could get.
OLSEN: Were you willing to pay him?
PEREZ: Within reason.
OLSEN: If it was just to talk, why do you suppose they had the suitcase with them?
PEREZ: That’s what concerns me right now, if it is my suitcase and if my documents and papers are in it. See, I don’t know if they might’ve been trying to pull something.
SPEED: Mr. Gidre apparently took the suitcase from them. He’d know, wouldn’t he, if he was taking the right one?
PEREZ: Well, it was a Samsonite, black. Fairly good size. That the one you have?
OLSEN: Were your initials on it?
PEREZ: No, I don’t believe on that one.
OLSEN: Can you describe the contents?
PEREZ: Well, as I said, there were letters, legal documents, pretty much all of a business nature.
OLSEN: Uh, did any of the letters, or any of the papers, have your name on them?
PEREZ: Of course they did. My name, my business stationery. There might’ve been some hotel stationery in there, too. The Pontchartrain.
Dick Speed looked at Ryan. Ryan kept staring at the tape recorder.
OLSEN: What does your business letterhead say?
PEREZ: What does it say? It says my name, “F.X. Perez and Associates. Investment Consultants.”
OLSEN: You’re sure you had letterhead stationery in the suitcase.
PEREZ: I didn’t keep it in the suitcase, they put it in. If my letters and stationery aren’t in there, then the niggers took ’em out or lost ’em, I don’t know. All I do know is they cleaned out every piece of paper I had in the hotel room.
OLSEN: That seems unusual, doesn’t it? Taking only papers. Was anything of value taken?
Dick Speed looked at Ryan, grinning, anticipating Mr. Perez’s answer.
PEREZ: Of value? Like a wristwatch or something? Christ Almighty, they took my business!
As Olsen began to speak, Dick Speed said, “More of the same.” He punched the rewind button and the tapes raced in reverse. “We asked him to describe his business. He told us. We asked if he had ever contacted a Mrs. Robert Leary. He said yes. Had he ever met Robert Leary? No. Or Virgil Royal? He said he’d never heard of Virgil Royal. Then what did he think happened at Watts Club Mozambique this shitty afternoon at ten after two? He said, ‘It sounds to me like a misunderstanding.’ Do you like that? A misunderstanding.”