When Old Men Die Read online

  Lake Charles already had riverboat gambling, and I'd heard that interests in Houston were looking into something similar. Maybe gambling did have a chance to make a comeback in Galveston after all.

  "Did your realtor friend say who was interested in the Retreat?" I asked.

  "Heavy hitters, he said. That could mean anything. One group has a couple of big-name baseball players in it. Retired players, he said."

  "Let's get back to the heavy hitters. He probably didn't mean that they had a .300 average. You have any thoughts on that?"

  "You can probably guess."

  I could, of course. As long as the uncles were in power, Galveston had never worried about organized crime getting involved in the gambling. The uncles didn't count. They were local boys, and local boys weren't considered to be organized crime because they had no connections to the mob. The uncles were criminals, or at least they were involved in highly illegal activities, but they were hometown boys and that made everything all right.

  The respectable locals, the rich families who traced their ancestry back to the previous century and their fortunes back to shipping, banking, and insurance, were comfortable with the uncles. They brought in big-name Hollywood entertainers, they kept the town's secrets, and they avoided messy situations that would bring bad publicity to themselves or the community.

  There were scandals of course. The gambling and prostitution were an open secret all over the state. But most Texans regard themselves as independent thinkers who don't mind a little illegality as long as it's under control. They were willing to leave Galveston alone to go its own way, or most of them were.

  It was a fine situation for the old families, who regarded themselves as the real rulers of the city. The uncles were keeping the Island alive. Houston had taken over most of the shipping, and while the banking and insurance money was still in town, it wasn't flashy and didn't provide many jobs. Gambling did, though of course the patriarchs avoided any involvement in it. It wouldn't have been seemly. In fact, it would have been downright disastrous for their standing in the community.

  So everyone was happy with the way things were, except of course for a few preachers and do-gooders and others opposed to gambling on moral grounds and the big boys in the East, who weren't getting any cut of the action. But the uncles had the muscle to keep out any and all competition.

  The uncles couldn't keep the Texas Rangers out forever, though, and when the state eventually got an attorney general who listened to the do-gooders and took his office seriously enough to include cleaning up the Island in his duties, the uncles reluctantly went out of business.

  Now it appeared that gambling might make a return, and if it did, there would be huge sums of money involved, money that would attract a lot of types that the uncles had kept well away from Galveston during their watch. Unfortunately the uncles had been gone for a long time.

  "First Harry and now Braddy," Dino said. "What's going on here, Tru?"

  "I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me, but you say you don't know any more than I do."

  "It's the truth, damn it. I was just worried about Harry. I didn't know anybody was going to get killed, much less Braddy Macklin. What are you going to do about it?"

  "You told me this was going to be easy," I said, feeling a little sorry for myself.

  Dino didn't sympathize. "OK, so I lied. But I didn't know I was lying at the time I asked you to look for Harry. Are you gonna help me out here or not?"

  I wanted to say no. I wanted to go home and read my book and listen to old songs on the CD player.

  Instead, I said, "I'll keep looking for Harry."

  "Great. Maybe you oughta talk to Cathy Macklin, too."

  "Braddy's daughter?"

  "Yeah. If there's some connection between Harry's going missing and Braddy getting shot, maybe she knows something."

  Maybe she did, but I didn't think this was the time to talk to her.

  "You can pay a sympathy call," Dino said.

  "She's probably at the funeral home, making arrangements. I don't want to bother her now. Anyway, you seem to know her. Why don't you go see her?"

  Dino looked around the room, at his TV set, his VCR, his new Super Nintendo system. He didn't look at the curtained windows or the door.

  "I don't get out much," he said.

  "You found me on the pier yesterday," I pointed out.

  "Yeah, and I went out to the house and fed your cat."

  "Quite a day, all right," I said. "You should try it more often. I bet Evelyn would like to see you more than she does. Maybe even eat at Gaido's or some place like that."

  Dino squirmed on the couch. He wasn't like me. He didn't eat out, not even without Ray there to fix his meals for him. He ate a lot of TV dinners and canned chili.

  "I don't think she'd like that," he said finally. "People would talk about us."

  "Nobody knows where she used to work," I said.

  "Somebody might. Nobody ever forgets anything on this Island."

  "Why don't you ask her if it would bother her to be seen in public with you?"

  Dino stood up. "How'd we get on this subject?"

  "We were talking about you going to see the Macklin woman. What was her name?"

  "Cathy. I don't want to go."

  "It would be the right thing to do. Braddy Macklin was a friend of yours. He worked for your uncles."

  He sucked in a breath and let it out very slowly. "All right. I'll go. But you gotta go with me."

  I decided to humor him. "All right."

  "But not until after the game," he said, reaching down for a remote.

  He punched a button and the TV set came to life. The Cowboys were lined up on somebody's forty yard line, and a little digital clock in the lower right corner was ticking off the seconds left in the half.

  "I'm going to look for Ro-Jo some more," I said. "I left your number with someone who might see him. If he calls, get the information."

  Dino was watching the TV intently. It was almost as if he'd forgotten that I was there.

  "Yeah," he said. "I'll do that."

  "I'll be back in a couple of hours," I said.

  "Right. I'll be ready."

  I wondered if he really would.

  Ten

  There was a strong breeze blowing in off the Gulf, and I could smell the strong seaweed odor of the beach. The clouds were still thick and gray. I drove the Jeep through the Sunday traffic along Broadway. Most of the tourists would be going to The Strand, headed for the Island's restored nineteenth-century buildings filled with dress shops, antique stores, and restaurants. Or maybe they'd go to Pier 21 and watch the slide show about the Great Storm of 1900.

  I kept an eye out for Ro-Jo. He wasn't anywhere in sight. I drove along the seawall and checked out the alleys behind the motels, but he wasn't there either, and he wasn't behind any of the supermarkets or the smaller mom and pop grocery stores.

  There were a few people on the beach, but most of them looked cold and miserable. The waves were white capping and slamming into the marble jetties. The only happy creatures were a dog who was chasing an inflated ball that was bobbing in the rough surf, a kid who was throwing corn chips in the air to some screaming gulls, and the gulls who were getting fed.

  I wondered about the cats. It wasn't high tide yet, but there hadn't been any sign of them at the 61st Street Pier.

  There was no sign of Ro-Jo, either. He had disappeared just as effectively as Harry had, and I wondered if it might be for the same reason. There were plenty of places either of them could be, but I was sure now that The Island Retreat wasn't one of them. I'd give a lot to know why Ro-Jo had mentioned it to me, but I'd have to find him before I could get the answer to that one.

  I drove out toward the house where I was living. It was surprising how soon after leaving the seawall I was surrounded by reminders of the Island's past. Where once there had been ranches there were now small pastures, but cattle still grazed there. Every now and then you could even see
a corral full of horses and someone riding.

  I thought that Ro-Jo might have found someone to take him in. He might even have had straight friends with whom he could live for weeks. I didn't know. He was just someone I saw and talked to occasionally.

  Locating people who live an average existence is a lot easier that finding someone like Ro-Jo. Most of us leave traces. We use credit cards or the telephone. We have employers and pay taxes. We use the services of the state, the city, and the county. We engage in all sorts of transactions that are recorded in one place or another.

  But not people like Ro-Jo. He might have gone to school at one time or another, but I couldn't find him through academic records because I didn't know what his real first name was, and as far as I knew he didn't even have a last name. If he'd ever paid taxes, which I doubted, it had been a long time ago. He didn't use the homeless shelters, and he didn't have credit cards. He didn't use the phone. Who would he call? In some ways it was as if he didn't even exist. Harry was the same way, only worse, because he was even farther removed from the system than Ro-Jo.

  When it was time to go back to Dino's I was no farther along than I had been when I left, but it occurred to me that there was something else I could do.

  I could go to the police.

  I knew that Dino would blow up if I suggested that idea to him. He had his contacts on the force, but he didn't deal with the cops officially. He used me for that.

  Not so long ago, Evelyn had gotten mixed up in a murder by being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and Dino had asked me to look into it. I'd talked to a cop named Gerald Barnes, who knew me from the case involving Dino's daughter. Barnes wasn't especially fond of me, but I'd helped him out a little, so he'd probably talk to me if he was on duty.

  Dino wouldn't mind waiting a little longer. In fact, he'd probably be glad for the delay.

  The Galveston Police Department is located behind the city hall in a square, unattractive building with a lot of glass and a few scrawny oaks in front. All the lower limbs have been trimmed off the oaks, maybe so that no one can climb them and peek into the second floor, which is solid with windows. The building is on 26th and Avenue H. Or Ball Street. Quite a few Galveston streets have more than one name.

  There's a stop sign on Avenue H that has another sign under it, white with black letters:

  LOOK BOTH WAYS

  I'd never been sure whether the sign was there to remind the cops or the average driver, though it didn't say much for the mentality of either. Maybe it was there because the fire station was right on the other side of the police department and the city was trying to reduce its liability if someone got flattened by a fire truck.

  I would have parked in the lot by the police department, but all the places are reserved for the people who work there. Of course most of the spots were vacant because it was Sunday, but I wouldn't have been surprised if the cops had come out and ticketed the Jeep had I been so bold as to park it where it didn't belong. I parked on the street.

  The inside of the building smelled of cigarette smoke. Two cops were in the hall smoking and looked at me but didn't say anything. Barnes was at his desk fiddling with some papers when I walked in. There weren't a lot of papers to fiddle with, since Barnes kept his desk a lot neater than most cops. The top was nearly bare. There wasn't even an ashtray, and there were no cigarette burns along the edges. Unlike most cops, Barnes didn't smoke, and apparently he didn't allow the alleged lawbreakers to smoke at his desk. There was a half-full coffee cup, a couple of chewed yellow pencils, a few papers. That was it.

  He glanced up when he saw me standing there. He didn't look much like a cop. His brown hair was getting thin on top, and his brown eyes were mild behind his glasses. He might have been an insurance salesman or a teacher for all the clues his appearance gave.

  His eyes hardened when he saw me, however. "I should've known," he said.

  I sat in the straight-backed chair beside his desk. "Known what?"

  "That you'd show up. If I'd thought about it, I would have known."

  He picked up one of the pencils from the desk top and rolled it around between the fingers of his right hand.

  "I can tell you're glad to see me," I said.

  "I'm not glad to see you. I don't want you messing around in this."

  I tried to pretend ignorance. "Messing around in what?"

  He pointed the pencil at me. "Don't give me that crap. You know what I mean. One of Dino's old buddies gets whacked, and the next thing I know, here you are. I should've known."

  "Which one of Dino's old buddies are we talking about? I didn't even know Dino had any buddies except for me."

  "He had Ray," Barnes said.

  I didn't want to talk about that. I said, "I didn't expect to find you here on a Sunday."

  He laid the pencil back on the desk. "Don't give me that crap, Smith. You knew I'd be working on the Macklin case or you wouldn't be here."

  "Macklin?"

  "Oh, for God's sake. You know who I'm talking about. I'm just surprised you didn't show up sooner."

  I didn't string him along any longer. He wasn't having as much fun as I was.

  "All right," I said. "I know about Macklin. But Dino didn't send me. He doesn't even know I'm here."

  "Yeah, I'll bet he doesn't."

  "Look, Barnes, I know you don't like me much, but I solved that case for you back on Mother's Day. Maybe I can help you with this one."

  "You didn't solve that case," he said. "I did."

  "OK, you solved it. But I don't think you could have done it without my help."

  He picked up the pencil and doodled on the back of one of the pieces of paper for a second or two. Then he put the pencil down and looked at me.

  "All right. So you made a suggestion that helped me crack that one. That doesn't mean I like civilians fooling around with murder cases."

  "I'm not fooling around in a murder case. I'm working on something entirely different. I just wondered if the two were connected."

  I went on to tell him about Harry. When I came to the part about getting shot at, he nearly jumped out of his chair.

  "Dammit, Smith, you should've come to us last night!"

  I admitted that he might have a point. "But I don't see what you could have done," I added.

  "We could get the slugs, run some tests. See if they're from the same gun that shot Macklin."

  I reminded him that I didn't know about Macklin when I was dodging bullets. And then I mentioned that the slugs were on government property.

  "How many forms would you have to fill out before they let you get close to that old building?" I asked.

  He leaned back in his chair. "Too damn many."

  "But I might be able to get them," I said. "Unofficially."

  He wasn't comfortable with that idea. "We couldn't use them as evidence."

  "You wouldn't need them for that. But it might be nice to know if they came from the same gun."

  "I'm not saying you should get them," he told me. "I don't encourage trespassing. But if you just happened to have one, and if you left it with me, I might get it tested."

  That was all that needed saying on that topic. Now that I'd softened him up, I asked about Macklin.

  "How'd he get into The Island Retreat? I thought that place was locked up tight."

  "That's a good question," Barnes said. "The place is locked up tight, and the windows are boarded up. If you find out how he got in, let me know."

  "There's not a hole in the floor? That you can climb up to on the pilings?"

  Barnes looked at me as if I might be crazy. "Now you're yanking my chain. You think a guy in his seventies or older climbed up the pilings and through a hole in the floor? I'm not sure I could climb those pilings, and I'm in a lot better shape than some guy that age."

  "So there's not a hole in the floor?"

  "Hell, no. There's no hole in the floor or the roof or the walls. Where'd you get an idea like that?"

  Another black mark f
or Ro-Jo. "I just thought there had to be a way and that might be it. Maybe the person who shot Macklin had a key."

  "Very clever, Sherlock. Now tell me how he got it."

  I couldn't do that, so I changed the subject by asking how long Macklin had been dead.

  "I can't tell you that until after the autopsy."

  "You've been involved with homicides before, though. You could guess."

  "I don't like guessing."

  "I don't blame you. Call it an estimate."

  He still didn't like the idea, but he said, "He'd been there for a while. A week or more. He wasn't fresh."

  "How was he killed?"

  That was the kind of question Barnes was comfortable with. "Shot twice in the chest with a nine-millimeter pistol. I'd guess a Glock, but we'll know for sure after the ballistics tests come back. He was armed, had a gun in his hand, but it hadn't been fired."

  "What was he doing in The Island Retreat?"

  "I thought that since we're working together now, you might tell me the answer to that one."

  "I wouldn't be asking if I knew."

  "Right. You're telling me that a guy who was as tight as Macklin was with the uncles winds up dead in the Retreat and Dino doesn't know a thing about it. My ass."

  I didn't think a discussion of his anatomy would serve any useful purpose.

  "It's the truth," I said. "He's as much in the dark on this as I am."

  "Right. He's just trying to find his old friend Harry."

  "That's what he told me."

  "Then he's yanking your chain."

  I didn't want to admit that the same thing had occurred to me. And that I hadn't entirely discounted it. So I didn't.

  "I think he's telling the truth," I said. "I was there when he got the news about Macklin. He was as surprised as I was." I paused. "Have you talked to Macklin's daughter?"