Unknown Man #89 (jr-3) by ELMORE LEONARD

Author:ELMORE LEONARD [LEONARD, ELMORE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: det_crime

16

“I’M TICKLED TO death I’m talking to you,” Mr. Perez said. He was hunched over the papers and folders that covered the desk, smiling into the telephone.

Ryan, on the couch, was trying to listen while Raymond Gidre was telling him how he got along with niggers, how he didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother him.

“I know it must be a surprise, yes indeed.” He was giving it his Nice Mr. Perez tone. “I’m just happy I was able to locate you… No, I’m pretty sure. Miz Robert Leary, Jr., is that correct?”

“Matter of fact I had a good friend was a nigger,” Raymond Gidre said to Ryan, across the coffee table. “Boy name of Old Jim, we called him. Me and Old Jim’d go crabbin’ down to Grand Isle.”

“No, I’m afraid, Miz Leary, I can’t tell you much more than I have on the telephone. What I’d like to do is come out and see you, explain this in detail… No, it’s a property… No, not necessarily, Miz Leary. Tell me something. When would be convenient for you?”

“You ever go crabbin’?”

Ryan said yes, to shut him up. Raymond told him about it anyway, how you put the meat in the crab net, rotten meat if you had some, and how the sides of the net collapsed when it was laying on the bottom, then, see, the sides raised up again when you lifted out the net.

“Yes, ma’am, I can come out this evening, or I can meet you somewhere if you’d rather. Whatever’s convenient.”

“Drop them suckers in the boiling water, watch ’em turn red. First, though, you want to put in your bay leaf and your Tabasco, also some thyme.”

“That’d be fine, Miz Leary. It was nice talking to you and I’m looking forward to seeing you… Yes, ma’am, five o’clock. Bye-bye.”

“I generally eat five, six. Shit, they go down good.”

“What’s that, Raymond?” Mr. Perez was off the phone.

“Gulf crabs.”

“What’d she say?” Ryan asked.

Mr. Perez was grinning at Raymond. “Now you talking. Leave this meat and potato country and get back to cooking.”

“How’d she sound?” Ryan said.

“Surprised… though not too excited.” Mr. Perez got up and walked around to his bookcase bar next to the window. He began making himself a drink. “She seemed vague, like she just woke up.”

“Well, I doubt she’d be expecting anybody even to call her,” Ryan said. “You think?”

Mr. Perez came over with his drink. Raymond got up quickly and Mr. Perez sat down in his deep chair.

“You talked to her, did you?”

“I had to. Find out where she lives.”

“How’d she sound? I’m wondering if the booze has made her soft in the head any.”

“She’s not drinking,” Ryan said. “She quit.”

“She tell you that?”

“She was sober. You could see she hadn’t had anything in a while.”

“How do you tell that?”

“Her appearance. She looks like a different person now,” Ryan said. “It couldn’t have just happened overnight.”

Mr. Perez nodded, accepting that, but still curious. “You say you hung around this place, Uncle Ben’s. She came in to get her driver’s license and you started talking to her.

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