“I’m the one,” Ryan said. “Are you Robert Leary, Jr.?”

“I don’t know you,” the voice said.

“No, I don’t know you either,” Ryan said. “Are you Robert Leary?”

“Yeah. What do you want?”

“You mind I ask you when you were born?”

There was a silence as the man waited, still on the line.

“I want to be sure I’m talking to the right party,” Ryan said. “If you are, all I need to know is where I can get in touch with you, or where you live.”

The second Robert Leary, Jr., hung up.

Shit.

Ryan waited around until eight-fifteen. There were no more calls.

Dick Speed returned his call at eleven-thirty that evening.

“I’ve been trying to get you for a couple of hours.”

“I had to go down to the bus station.”

“The bus station?”

“It’s a long, boring story.”

“Well, this Robert Leary, Jr., I hope to shit you don’t have to serve him papers.”

“Why?”

“The guy’s a fucking beauty.”

Ryan listened then for several uninterrupted minutes while Dick Speed read the sheets on Leary. Ryan listened and said, reverently, when he finished, “Jesus Christ.”

Ryan didn’t get hold of Jay Walt until the next morning. He said over the phone, “I don’t think twenty bucks an hour is going to make it. The three hundred for openers, okay, you’ve spent that. But now, what I’ve found out so far, I think it’s possible I could get killed if I keep at it. But not for any twenty bucks an hour. We make another deal and you tell me what’s going on before I tell you anything.”

Jay Walt got back to Ryan within fifteen minutes. He said he had to do a little talking, but finally arranged a meeting. Ryan was to go to the Pontchartrain Hotel and ask for a Mr. Perez.

“Aren’t you going to be there?”

“Well, not right away. He said he wanted to see you alone.”

Jay Walt didn’t sound too happy about it.