Murder Takes a Break Page 5

  Goddamn that Dino.

  "I'm surprised you found anyone who even might know something," I said.

  "So am I," Barnes admitted. "But we don't have much. We found a couple of kids who didn't know any better, and they said they thought that maybe they'd seen Kirbo and Davis at the party, but they couldn't say whether they were together or not. And the next time we talked to them, they didn't even remember that much."

  "Big Al had a little talk with them," I suggested.

  "I doubt it. Big Al doesn't talk to anybody, not that way, not these days. I figure it was Henry J."

  I wasn't sure what the exact relationship between Henry J. and Big Al was. They might have been partners, or Henry J. might have been just an employee. If anything, Henry J. was bigger and meaner than Al. If that was possible.

  "None of that was in the police report Randall Kirbo's father had."

  Barnes didn't say anything. He tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. Well, the report had been only a copy, not anything official.

  "What can you give me?" I asked.

  He thought about that for a while, then opened a desk drawer and pulled out a folder a lot like the one Tack Kirbo had given me.

  "I'm going to take a walk outside," he said. "Get a little fresh air. If you copy anything out of that report, I won't know about it."

  That was fine with me. He had a pencil and paper lying on his otherwise clean desk, and I started writing almost before he had taken ten steps. I got the names of the two people who'd said they might have seen Kirbo and Davis at the party and the phone number and address of Davis' parents, who lived in San Antonio.

  It wasn't much, and Barnes was back as soon as I finished. He took the folder and slid it back into the desk drawer.

  "You knew I was coming," I said, folding the paper I'd written on and slipping it in the back pocket of my jeans. "You had the folder ready."

  "I thought you might drop by."

  "I wasn't invited."

  "I told Lattner not to give anything away. I wanted to see if you'd put it together. You did it a lot faster than I thought you would. I wasn't expecting you for a couple of days."

  "People like you and Lattner always tend to underrate us expert detectives."

  "Maybe. I don't think so."

  "I have one other question. Why was Lattner so hostile to me? If you told him you were going to cooperate with me eventually, he didn't have to act like a jerk. Was that part of the test?"

  Barnes shook his head. "No. There's something else, something that's not in the report."

  I had a feeling I wasn't going to like what he told me, but I asked anyway.

  "What?"

  "Lattner's related to Kelly Davis. She was his niece."

  I thought about that for a while. Then I thought about what might happen if I killed Dino. I figured that no jury in the world would convict me.

  10

  By the time I got to Dino's house, I'd decided not to kill him.

  I had something worse in mind.

  He lived out of sight of the water in a subdivision that might just as well have been in some old neighborhood in Dallas or Ft. Worth. The houses had all been built of light-colored brick fifty or sixty years earlier in a pseudo-English style, and some of them even had ivy growing on the walls. Not Dino's, however. He'd had a little trouble with termites at some time in the past, and the exterminator had advised him to eliminate the ivy, which he'd done immediately.

  I had to knock a couple of times before he came to the door.

  "Sorry, Tru," he said as I walked past him into the house. "I didn't hear you at first. I was watching this great infomercial with Mark Wilson. Remember him?"

  "The magician?"

  "That's the guy. He was on TV when we were kids. Now he's selling magic tricks."

  "Have you ordered them?"

  "Nah. I figure I'm too old to learn something like that. It might be fun, though."

  "Not as much fun as what we're about to do right now."

  He gave me a puzzled look. "We're going to do something?"

  "That's right. We're going fishing. Get your gear together."

  "Huh?"

  "Your gear. Fishing gear. We're going fishing. Hop to it."

  He didn't hop. He just stood there and gawked at me stupidly.

  I gawked back. I can look just as stupid as the next guy.

  He looked away, and his eyes swept over the room, lingering on the oversized TV set, where Mark Wilson was showing some balding huckster a dollar bill that folded itself. Wilson didn't look much older than he had thirty years earlier. Maybe he knew more magic than he was selling.

  Dino watched the infomercial for a couple of seconds, and then he looked back at me. He said, "I don't like fishing, Tru."

  He didn't like getting out of the house, either, and, like a lot of people who're born on the Island, he didn't like being around the water.

  "I like fishing," I said.

  "Yeah, well, you just go ahead without me. I don't even have a fishing rod."

  "I have a spare you can use. Let's go."

  He walked over to his couch and sat down. Then he reached out and got his remote control, which looked only a little more complicated than the control panel in a state-of-the-art recording studio, and muted the TV set.

  "You're really chapped about something, Tru. You want to talk about it?"

  "I guess maybe I do," I said. So I sat down and told him about how I'd spent my day so far.

  When I was done, Dino said, "I don't much like dealing with cops."

  "I don't much care what you like," I said. "This Kirbo business has turned out to be a lot worse than you made it out to be, and I have to get information where I can. You sure aren't giving it to me."

  "You don't think I knew any of that stuff when I asked you to help Tack, do you?"

  "I don't know what you knew. All I know is that every single time you ask me to do you a favor, things start getting awfully complicated."

  His eyes drifted to the TV set. Mark Wilson was gone, replaced by a couple of men with ties on, sitting at a desk and talking. I had no idea what they might be selling.

  "This guy's amazing," Dino said, pointing at the chubbier of the two. "He can read a book in about five seconds and tell you everything that's in it."

  "I'm sure that's a useful skill. But you're changing the subject."

  "Yeah, I know. That's because you hurt my feelings."

  I couldn't believe it. "What the hell are you talking about? I'm the injured party here."

  "No, you're not. You don't trust me. That hurts my feelings."

  "I trust you, all right. I trust you to get me into more trouble than I can get out of by myself. But this time you're going to help."

  "How?"

  "By going fishing. Come on."

  He punched the remote, and the TV went blank. "OK. If that's the way you want it."

  We drove out to the house and picked up my fishing tackle, which didn't take long. I don't have a lot of gear, just a couple of old Penn reels, two rods, a bait bucket, and a tackle box full of miscellaneous junk that might come in handy — pliers, weights, leaders, hooks, extra line, a few battered lures.

  After I tossed everything in the back of the S-10, we drove to Jody's bait shop on Offat's Bayou, which is where I usually buy my bait. Jody has squid and mullet and bait shrimp, and he even sells tackle, though not very often, judging by the dust on the few lure boxes on his shelves.

  "Are we going to fish here?" Dino asked when I parked in front of Jody's shop.

  It wouldn't have been a bad idea if fishing had been all I was interested in. The wind wasn't kicking up the water in the bayou much, and several people were fishing nearby and enjoying the mild day.

  "No, we're going somewhere else," I said. "We're going to buy some bait here. You can come in with me."

  "You don't need me."

  "It's part of the deal. You have to come in."

  He was a better sport than I might h
ave been under similar circumstances. He got out, I got the bait bucket, and we went inside, where the smell of mullet and shrimp was thick enough to cut with a knife.

  "Hello, Jody," I said.

  Because I'd once forced Jody to tell me something he didn't want to tell, he didn't trust me any more than I trusted Dino. But he was still a businessman. He never refused to sell bait to me, though it was obvious he wasn't overwhelmed with joy to see us walk in.

  "You know Dino, I think," I said.

  "Haven't seen him for years," Jody said. "How you doin', Mr. D?"

  Dino looked around unhappily. "I'm doing all right. How about you, Jody?"

  "Just fine." He looked at me. "I think."

  "We just came by for some bait," I said. "Dino wants me to take him to Pelican Island. Anything biting over there?"

  "Haven't heard. Nice day for it, though. Little windy, but nice and warm."

  "Maybe we can catch us a nice flounder or two," I said, setting the bait bucket on the counter. "How about a couple of dozen shrimp?"

  Jody caught the shrimp, I paid him, and Dino and I went back to the truck. When he'd slammed the door, Dino said, "Pelican Island?"

  "That's right. You heard what Jody said. It's a nice day for it."

  "There has to be a better reason than that. I know you're mad at me, but you wouldn't be dragging me to Pelican Island just to punish me, would you?"

  "Why not?"

  "Because nobody's that big an asshole, not even you."

  "I wouldn't be too sure of that," I said.

  Dino started to say something, then shut his mouth. Maybe he was revising his opinion of me.

  Pelican Island is a small island just to the north of Galveston. The Texas legislature, in a fit of unaccustomed generosity, gave it to the city sometime around the middle of the nineteenth century, and no one since that time has been quite sure what to do with it. There have been several businesses located there, but none of them has been a raging success. Now it's the home of the maritime branch of Texas A & M University. The campus is the first thing you see after you cross the drawbridge, unless you happen to glance at the ship the school uses for some of its classes.

  We weren't on Pelican Island to enroll in school or take an educational trip on an ocean-going vessel, however. We were there to fish at the island's other attraction, Seawolf Park, which is located a couple of miles past the campus. The park is named for a World War II submarine that you can tour there anytime you feel the need to induce a little claustrophobia in yourself.

  There's also a destroyer to tour, and out in the channel to the north there's a concrete battleship that was deliberately sunk there. Part of it is clear of the water, and you can get a good look at it if you have a pair of binoculars.

  As far as I know, it was the only concrete battleship ever built, and it might have worked out very well if it had ever been used in battle. Unfortunately, we'll never know, since World War II ended the day it was commissioned. It was used for a while as a tanker instead, until it was damaged in a storm, brought to Galveston for repairs, and eventually sunk in the channel when the repairs didn't work out. People have tried for years to figure constructive ways to use it, from making it into an oyster farm to using it as a resort hotel, but so far nothing has ever been done.

  The best fishing is on the side of the island that faces The Strand. I paid the park attendant, parked the truck, and told Dino to get the tackle out of the truck while I looked for a good spot to set up.

  Dino didn't move. "I still don't know why the hell you brought me out here. I haven't been on Pelican Island in twenty years, and I don't want to be here now."

  "Didn't I tell you? Sally Western says you need to get out of the house more."

  "I don't care what Sally Western thinks." He looked around at the park, the people fishing, the ferries plying the water between Galveston and the Bolivar peninsula, the ships out in the Gulf. "I think I'll just sit here in the truck and wait for you."

  "That wouldn't be a very good idea," I said. "I might need your help."

  "You won't need my help just to catch a fish."

  "Well, maybe not. But I might need your help with someone who's fishing here."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You remember where that party was, the one where Randall Kirbo and Kelly Davis were seen?"

  "At some beach house."

  "Very good. And who owned the beach house?"

  "Big Al Pugh," Dino said. And then his eyes widened just a little. "Oh. I get it."

  "I thought you might. Now get the tackle while I look around."

  "What if you're wrong."

  "Then it wouldn't be the first time, would it?"

  "No."

  He still didn't want to get out, so I said, "Look at it this way: at least I didn't drag you to The Strand."

  He looked across the choppy water of the West Bay to The Island. He couldn't really see The Strand from where we were. There were buildings in the way. But it was easy to imagine the swarms of people there.

  "I guess you do like me, after all," Dino said. "Either that, or you really must think you need protection."

  "I like you," I said. "I really like you."

  "Sally Field. You remember the year she made that speech at the Academy Awards?"

  "No," I said. "Now you get the tackle, and I'll go look for Big Al."

  11

  Everyone knew that Big Al Pugh liked to mingle with the common folk by fishing on Pelican Island, and since today was such a good day for fishing, I was hoping that I'd get lucky. Of course if Big Al was there, Henry J. would be there too, which is why I'd brought Dino along. There was no use in my getting beaten to a pulp by myself.

  The concrete walk that had been built along the side of the island facing the West Bay was crowded with fisherpersons of all shapes and sizes. As I looked around for Big Al, a kid of about twelve was nearly jerked off the walk and his rod bent double. His father grabbed him by the belt as the kid started cranking on his reel. It took him a few minutes, but the two of them finally got a hubcap-sized flounder close enough to shore for everyone to see it. The father got a dip net and leaned down toward the water to scoop up their catch.

  I didn't hang around to see if he landed the fish. By that time I'd spotted Big Al sitting in a sagging aluminum lawn chair about thirty yards farther along the walk. There was no sign of Henry J., however, which I thought was unusual but encouraging. I went back to the truck to get Dino.

  He was standing there with the rods and the tackle box in one hand and the bait bucket in the other, looking as if he wished he were back at home with his big-screen TV and his complicated remote control.

  "Well?" he said.

  "We're in luck?"

  "You mean Big Al's not here?"

  "No, I mean Big Al is here. Not only that, but the fish are biting."

  For some reason, neither bit of news seemed at all exciting to Dino. He just looked even more depressed, if that was possible.

  "What's the matter?" I asked. "Don't you like fish?"

  "I like fish just fine if they're in the water. But I don't like catching them, I don't like cleaning them, and I don't like cooking them. If I want to eat fish, I'll go to a restaurant."

  I thought about asking him when he'd last been to a restaurant, but there was no use in that. He'd been whenever I'd last forced him out of the house to go with me somewhere.

  "Maybe we won't catch anything," I said.

  He looked hopeful. "Maybe. What about Henry J.?"

  "I didn't see him."

  "That doesn't mean he's not here."

  "I know it. Come on. We can't stand around like this all day."

  I led the way, and Dino followed. I didn't have to look back to know that he wasn't happy about it. Not only were we out of his house, we were right on the water. In a few seconds, we were going to be within about a foot of it. I don't think Dino had been this close to Galveston Bay in years. A lot of years. No wonder he was uncomfortable.<
br />
  And of course the meeting with Big Al wasn't going to be as much fun as a lot of other things we could have been doing.

  Having elective hernia surgery, for instance.

  There was a strong breeze, and the water had slopped up on the concrete, making it slick. I had on my running shoes, so I didn't think I was in much danger of slipping. Dino was also wearing running shoes, though I don't think he ever went running. Free weights, an ab machine, and a treadmill were more his style.

  Although the walk was crowded, there was plenty of space around Big Al. People were showing their respect, or it might have been fear.

  I wasn't afraid, or if I was, I wasn't going to show it. I walked to within a couple of yards of the sagging chair and said, "This looks like a good spot, Dino."

  Big Al, who had been staring out at the water, turned to look at me.

  "Well, well. Truman Smith. And Dino. I'd heard you were into fishing lately, Tru, but I didn't know Dino cared for water sports."

  It was easy to see where Big Al got her nickname. She was nothing if not big. And impressive. I don't know whether she'd ever entered competitive body-building contests, but she certainly could have. The muscles of her arms and legs looked like they were composed of bricks with the edges rounded off, and she looked strong enough to bend a crowbar the way I might bend a paperclip.

  She was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a tight white T-shirt with a picture of a black automatic pistol held in a two-handed grip. Under the pistol were the words "I Don't Dial 9-1-1." To tell the truth, I didn't think she'd need the pistol. Bare hands would be enough defense for her.

  She was wearing a white visor that allowed a view of her unnaturally curly hair, cut short and clinging close to her head in tight, graying ringlets. She had a weathered face with watery gray eyes, and a nose that had been broken at least once. She'd probably run into a door.

  Her full first name was Alice, but probably no one had called her that in thirty years. Well, no one but Henry J. I wondered where he was. I had been sure from the first that Big Al hadn't come alone, and the empty chair beside her proved that I was right.