He could work two hours a day or twenty-four; and because he liked it, he usually put in at least twelve. He didn’t mind being in the car most of the day. He liked to drive around and listen to music or, about a hundred days a year, a Detroit Tigers baseball game. It didn’t matter what place they were in. Ryan’s ambition, up until the time he was twenty, was to be a major league third baseman. He’d looked good enough to get a tryout with the Red Sox; but he couldn’t hit a breaking ball if the guy hung it up there in front of him. They told him he’d never make it. He had connected with that Chicano crew chief, though: hit him with a baseball bat on the hardpacked clearing in the cucumber fields when the guy came at him with a knife. Ryan had learned early that in street fighting, if there was no way to get out of it, you hit first and made it count and usually it was over. It was a good thing to know and keep with you.

The only problem he anticipated in his work was taking shit from people who didn’t want to be served: people who’d give him a hard time, like he was the one taking them to court. But he handled it in a way that surprised him. He just didn’t let these people bother him. He realized they were frightened or reacting without thinking. They were so pissed off at the first party, the plaintiff, they had to take it out on somebody and he was standing there, responsible. He realized they didn’t mean it personally, so why get mad or upset?

He was told process serving was a dangerous occupation and that most process servers carried a gun. But Ryan never packed. A friend of his-not the cop, Dick Speed, another one-said, “But look, this guy sees you come in, he knows if he gets served he’s going to lose his ass maybe. What if he’s got a gun? The guy’s scared shitless, he sees you come in, bam, you’re dead.”

Ryan had been threatened with getting his head taken off. He had had guns pointed at him and waved in his face. He had served a guy, in a child-custody case, who had beaten up a couple of policemen. He had walked into the headquarters of a blacks-against-the-world group and had gotten all the looks and the bullshit and had walked out with an adding machine, a repossession.