Dead on the Island (21 page)

"I still can't believe it," Dino said.
"Ray."

"Ray," I said. "Good old Ray."

"So," Dino said. "Where does all this leave
us?"

I looked at Evelyn.

"He sounded strange, very upset," she said.
"At first I couldn't make out what he was saying. He was . . . sort
of choked up, or . . . I don't really know." She shook her head.
"Anyway, he wants us--all of us--to meet him somewhere. He didn't
say where. He just said, 'Tell Dino. He knows.'"

"Do you?" I said.

Dino looked puzzled. "You said he sounded
weird, Evelyn, but this is really weird. How should I know where he
wants us to meet him?"

"I don't know," she said. "But that's what
he said. 'Tell Dino.'"

"Think about it," I said. "It can't be far,
or he wouldn't be able to get there easily. He had those tough guys
stashed practically in your front yard."

"I just can't figure it," Dino said. "You
think he's at the house?"

"No," I said. "He's had Sharon somewhere
right here on the Island all along, and she isn't at your
house."

"Well, I have another house--'

"Where?"

"It's a place I bought a few years ago, when
I was thinking of moving out of town. But I couldn't do it, not
after I thought about it. Too much beach and water."

Just like a native
, I thought.
Wouldn't want to live in sight of the Gulf
. "Where?" I said
again.

"Down past the west beach," Dino said.

"Many other houses around?"

"I haven't been there in at least a year. I
was thinking about putting it on the market. But no, there weren't
many houses around last time I saw it."

That didn't necessarily mean there weren't
any by now, but there was a good chance that Ray might have seen
the place as a good hideaway.

"Ray know about this place?" I said.

"Yeah. He was with me the whole time I was
looking."

"That's our best bet then." I turned to
Evelyn. "Did he give any instructions?"

"Yes. We're all to arrive in one car. Yours.
He says he'd know it anywhere."

"That's it?"

"Yes."

"What about Sharon?"

"She sounded scared. Really scared."

"She has a right to be," I said. "So am
I."

The Gulf breeze never really stops blowing.
It hit us in the face as we stepped out the front door, cool and
damp in the early February morning. The sky was clouded over almost
entirely, but that could change at any minute. As it was, we were
going to be operating mainly in the darkness.

Evelyn got in the back seat of the Subaru.
She was so small that she could almost be comfortable. Dino sat in
the bucket seat opposite me.

I was carrying extra bullets for the Mauser
in the pocket of my jeans, and before I started the car I reloaded
the clip.

"You steal that gun off a dead Nazi?" Dino
said.

I didn't answer. If he was trying to be
funny, he wasn't making it. I stuck the pistol back in the back
waistband of my jeans. It would rub my back as I drove, but I
didn't want to chance trying to get to it if I put it under the
seat.

We drove down Seawall Boulevard, past the
pier where Dino's uncles had once had their biggest casino; past
the huge Flagship hotel, also built on a pier, which had showered
huge panes of glass during Hurricane Alicia; through the old Fort
Crockett area, where Dino had once gotten a speeding ticket when we
were teenagers; past the San Luis and the Holiday Inn. The Gulf was
only a few yards to our left, but none of us noticed it.

Then we slipped down off the seawall, down
to the level of the old Island itself. The area behind the seawall
was not actually at sea level. After the famous 1900 storm, the
level of the entire city had been raised. Sand was dredged out of
the channel and distributed all over the Island. Those houses
already on stilts just had sand stashed under them; others were
actually jacked up until the job was done. For months, people got
around the town on rickety elevated walkways. It was quite an
engineering feat, not to mention an inconvenience, but everyone
thought it would be worth the trouble if it would guarantee that
the Island would never be completely underwater again.

Because it lacked the protection of a
seawall, and because it was exactly at sea level, the west end of
the Island had been slow to develop. In fact, only in recent years
had there been a building boom of any sort there. Now, if you drove
to Jamaica Beach, or Indian Beach, or Karankawa Beach, or Sea Isle,
or any of the other little areas scattered down the length of the
Island you could see hundreds of quiet expensive beach houses, all
of them built on stilts, all of them ten or twelve feet or more off
the ground. The Island is very narrow there, and in any of the
houses you happen to choose you can see the Gulf from one side and
the West Bay from the other. Unless, of course, another house is in
the way.

Almost as soon as we dropped down to sea
level, the name of the road changed from Seawall Boulevard to
Termini Road. I didn't like it. It sounded too much like
terminal
to suit me.

I turned on the radio, but I couldn't pick
up an AM station. I listened to the static for a minute and turned
it off.

"Remember when we used to drive around the
Island when we were kids?" Dino said. "We'd listen to that station
that had its studios in Ft. Worth and its transmitter in Coahuila,
Mexico."

"XEG," I said.

Dino smiled at the memory. "That's the one.
Remember those guys we used to listen to? Don and Earl, your
Christian gospel singers? Brother J. Charles Jessup?"

I remembered. "Who was it that had the magic
picture of Jesus Christ? The one where you stared at the picture
and then looked up at the sky. The picture was supposed to appear
in the sky."

"I don't know," Dino said. "Don and Earl,
maybe?"

"You two are kidding me," Evelyn said from
the back seat.

"Not us," I said. "You don't think Jimmy
Swaggart and Jim Bakker just
happened
, do you?"

"I guess I never gave it much thought one
way or the other," she said.

On our left now as we drove was mostly
undeveloped land, flat and featureless in the darkness. It wasn't
much different in the daylight. The sand was covered with a few
low-growing plants, but that was all. The big-money developing was
down the beach.

"We used to think they'd sneak over the
border after sundown and crank that transmitter up to about a
million watts," Dino said. "You could pick up that station anywhere
in the world."

"Magic pictures of Jesus just for sending a
little donation," I said. "I wonder what the Laplanders thought
about that?"

Dino didn't answer. "We're coming up on Ten
Mile Road," he said. "Turn right and get on Stewart Road
there."

Stewart parallels Termini, more or less, but
it's a lot different. Any houses on Termini are likely to be new,
expensive, and well-cared for. A lot of the houses on Stewart, and
there aren't many, are likely to be the opposite.

"Your house is on Stewart Road?" I said.

"That's right," Dino said. He shrugged. I
didn't know whether the shrug was an apology or whether his bandage
was itching.

At Ten Mile Road I turned right. Almost at
once I turned left again, this time on Stewart. Now the land on
both the left and right was undeveloped. Every now and then we
passed a dilapidated corral, and I could see the dark shapes of
cattle lying in the scrubby grass.

"You'd better stop here," Dino said.

There weren't any houses nearby, but about a
quarter of a mile down the road there was one that looked like a
geodesic dome on stilts. If it had started walking toward us, it
would have looked like one of the Martian machines in the old
War of the Worlds
.

"Is that it?" I said, pointing.

"No," Dino said. "It's the one a little
farther along."

I looked but I didn't see anything that
looked like a beach house. "Where?"

Dino pointed with his good arm. I still
didn't see anything except what I took to be a large clump of
brush. "I'm not sure I know which one you're talking about," I
said.

"Look," Dino said. "I hate those things
sticking up twelve feet into the air. I'd get a nosebleed just
climbing up to the living room. I bought an old ranch house."

"I guess you can't see the water from it,
either."

"You can't see a damn thing from it. It's
like covered up with bushes and stuff. It's an old house, and it's
been flooded a time or two, but it was something I thought I might
be able to live in. But when it came right down to it, I couldn't
leave town."

"So that's where Ray is."

"Got to be, if he said I'd know where he
was. There's no place else except the whorehouse, and that's long
gone."

"OK. So why are we stopped?"

"I thought you might not want to go in cold.
You might want to know a little about the layout."

Dino was thinking better than I was, but
then I never claimed to be an assault tactician. "You're right," I
said.

"I'm getting nervous," Evelyn said. "Is it
all right if I smoke?"

I didn't like for people to smoke in my car.
You could never get the odor out. But if Ray had his way tonight,
it probably wouldn't make a hell of a lot of difference to me
anyway. "Go ahead," I said. "Open the window, though." No use in
giving up entirely.

There was a brief flare in the back as
Evelyn flicked a lighter; then I could smell the cigarette burning.
She opened the window of the bay side and the smoke drifted
out.

"So what's the house like?" I said.

"You see the roof?" Dino said.

I stared at the clump of trees and bushes
and thought I could make out a roof line, though I wasn't certain.
"I think so."

"OK. Well, the front of the house is more or
less facing us. There's an oyster-shell road leading to the front,
but it doesn't stop at the door. It goes on by, down to a little
turn-around. No garage. Those bushes cover most of the house, even
most of the windows. That's why I liked it, I guess."

Even more of a womb than where he was living
now. I was surprised he hadn't moved in.

"There's an opening for the front, though,"
he said. "It's not on stilts, but the house is up three or so feet
off the ground. There's a front porch, concrete, with banisters,
and there's steps leading up to it. The steps are all clear of
brush and about six feet wide. Then there's the front door, right
on the porch."

I looked toward the house. If there were
lights on, I couldn't see them. It was about as isolated as you
could get on the Island. "How far from the porch to the road?"

Dino thought about it. "I haven't been out
here much lately. I guess about fifty feet. There's a sidewalk up
to the porch."

Fifty feet. I was accurate with a pistol,
and tonight I had been lucky. If killing two men was lucky. But
fifty feet was quite a distance for accuracy with a handgun. To hit
any of us at that range, Ray would have to be very good, and at
sixty feet he'd have to be better than that. Of course if Dino had
underestimated the distance, or if Ray had a rifle, or . . . a
hundred or so other things.

I looked at the dark shape of the house and
bushes again. Somewhere in there was Ray, nursing a grudge created
by his own imagining but one that had been building for years. His
mind wasn't working normally, and he had Sharon Matthews as a
hostage. I hated to start the car and drive down there.

Evelyn tossed her cigarette out the back
window. "I'm ready whenever you are," she said.

I started the car.

"How do we play it?" Dino said.

"By ear," I told him.

~ * ~

We turned right onto the shell road and
drove very slowly toward the house, which sat well off the road, at
least a couple of hundred yards. I still couldn't see any
lights.

When we got near the house, I slowed even
more, taking us down to about five miles an hour. I wasn't
stalling, but I wasn't in any hurry, either.

"I'm going to stop in front," I said, having
just made the decision. "That puts me on the side of the house, and
I'm the one with the gun. Besides, you're the one he wants. That
way you'll have me between you and him."

Dino grunted, which I took to mean that he
thought it was a good plan. Or a rotten one. The tires crunched on
the shell road, and the dark bulk of the house grew in front of us
as we approached. The clouds were breaking up a little now, but
there was hardly any moonlight. The darkness was nearly
complete.

The road curved slightly to take us in front
of the house, and as we rounded the curve the porch light snapped
on. It was only a small bulb, maybe a sixty watt, but it looked
like the sun.

I assumed that the light was my cue to stop
the car, so I did, keeping an eye on the porch. There was a black
screen door, which was suddenly pushed open.

Ray came through the door. There was a girl
with him. It looked like a scene from a bad movie. Ray had his arm
around the girl's throat in a chokehold. In his right hand he held
a revolver that he kept pointed toward the girl's head.

"My God. It's Sharon," Evelyn said.

Dino didn't say anything, and I didn't look
at him. I was looking at Ray.

Ray didn't look so good. His eyes were wild,
and he looked as if he might be sweating despite the breeze that
whipped the bushes and jerked their shadows around.

Sharon looked worse, hardly like the girl in
the photo that Dino had given me. Her face was drawn and her hair
was lank and greasy. She hadn't been giving much attention to her
appearance in the past few days. She looked scared. I didn't blame
her.

I turned off the car's engine and rolled
down my window. "Why don't you let her go, Ray?" I said.