Dead on the Island (10 page)

At any rate, he came in low, sailing through
the air, and he was coming fast. When his helmet hit my knee, it
sounded like a baseball bat hitting a watermelon. I've heard at
least one guy who was sitting in the top row of the stadium say he
was sickened by the sound.

Mainly what I remember after that is rolling
around on the grass--there was real grass in Memorial Stadium
then--and thinking that I'd been shot or something. I remember
seeing Dino standing above me, his helmet off. I think he was
crying, but he's never mentioned it, and neither have I.

A couple of operations and lots of rehab
later, I could walk just fine. But I never played football
again.

I tried. It took nearly two years to get
ready, but in my senior year I went out for practice. The coaches
gave me every chance. But it was no use. I was slow. I couldn't
cut. And worst of all, I knew that if anyone hit me on that knee
again, especially if they hit me as hard as Dino had, I'd be
hobbling for the rest of my life. If I was lucky. If I wasn't, I'd
be a cripple.

I was bitter about it for a while. Who
wouldn't be? I wasn't cut out to be one of those sunshiney guys who
talks about how everything happened for the best in this best of
all possible worlds.

At least they let me keep my scholarship. I
took all the right courses and graduated with my class, which was
more than I could say for most of the guys I'd played with.

I started law school, and then dropped out,
but a lawyer I'd gotten to know asked me to do a few jobs for him.
It turned out that I was pretty good at investigations, especially
finding people, a job that paid pretty well in the run-away days of
the early '70s.

Dino and I had lost touch, until I finally
came back to Galveston to look for Jan. He'd been there all along,
joined by Ray after his brief fling with the pros (two weeks of
training camp was as long as he lasted), and there they still
were.

Jan had been in the stands the day my knee
had been ruined. She was just a kid then, and she and I had laughed
about it in the hospital afterward, about how I'd have to stop
being a dumb jock and learn a useful trade. I'd learned a trade,
all right, but it hadn't been useful to her. I wondered if I'd ever
see her again, or if I'd ever stop wondering what had happened to
her. Now that I'd become involved in the search for Sharon
Matthews, my mind was off my own problems for a change; the job was
good for me. As long as I managed to stay in one piece.

Since I wasn't going to be doing any
running, I stayed in bed until I got bored, about nine o'clock.
Then I got up and hopped over to the chiffonnier. The cane was
leaning up against one side of it, the same cane I'd bought when I
got out of the hospital in Austin.

I'd been young and romantic, so I bought a
romantic cane, hand-carved in Mexico, with a peacock and his long,
colorful tail taking up most of the space, the design cut into the
black varnished wood. What I'd liked best was the fact that the
brass tip and the brass handle could be screwed off, the center of
the cane removed, and the whole thing assembled into a pool cue.
I'd never used the cue, but I liked the idea of having it.

With the help of the cane, I walked over to
the window nearest my bed. There were windows on every wall, the
house having been built to take advantage of the Gulf breezes in a
time when air-conditioning wasn't even a dream in the mind of some
crazed inventor.

The sill of the window looked like the sill
of every other window in the room, but it wasn't. There was a
little catch under the front lip. I pressed the catch, and the sill
lifted up and folded back on hidden hinges.

In the hollow underneath was my pistol.

As a young, romantic investigator who had
once bought a cane that could be made into a pool cue, I'd decided
that I should have an appropriate weapon. I'd finally found one I
liked, a Mauser parabellum. You might call it a Luger, but when
Mauser began to make the gun again they discovered that somehow
they didn't own the rights to that name, which doesn't appear on
the pistol at all. It looks just like the original, though, except
that it has a slimmer, longer barrel. The one I have uses 7.65 mm
cartridges, but I never intended to shoot water buffalo with it. A
7.65 will bring a man down if you shoot him in the right place.

Of course I never intended to shoot
anyone.

I took the leather sheepskin-lined case out
of its hiding place and lowered the sill, pressing down until I
heard the catch click. I took the case over to the bed, sat down,
and opened the zipper. The Mauser looked just as deadly as
ever.

I got dressed then, jeans and sweatshirt,
and took the pistol into the kitchen where I laid it on a small
wooden table. I had some gun oil in the cabinet, along with some
rags and a swab. I got them out and went back to the table, leaned
the cane against it, and sat in a chair.

The pistol was easy to disassemble. It took
about a minute and a half. I cleaned it carefully, oiled it, and
then put it back together.

Parabellum. The word meant
for war
.
Well, if I met those guys from the parking lot again, it was going
to be war, all right.

I stuck the gun in the waistband of my jeans
and went back into the bedroom. There was a box of cartridges in
the hiding place, too. I got them out and loaded the clip with
seven of them, thought about it for a minute, jacked one into the
chamber, and put the eighth into the clip. I didn't like to store
them in the clip. I had a theory that it weakened the spring.

After I'd done all that, naturally I felt
like a fool. I'd never shot anyone, and I really didn't think I was
going to start now. I'd been to the firing range often enough,
though not in the last year or so, and I was really pretty good
with the Mauser; but I hoped I wouldn't have to use it.

Nevertheless, I felt better just having it
around.

As I was stumping around the brass bed,
trying to get the covers in some kind of order, I realized that I'd
slept better last night than I had in quite some time.

Maybe I should go out and get beaten up more
often.

Or maybe it was just that getting my mind
off Jan was improving my sleep.

After the bed was made I went and sat on the
sagging couch and tried to think about what to do next. The logical
thing seemed to be to find out a little more about Chuck Ferguson.
So I called Dino.

Ray answered, and then put Dino on. I could
hear the Donahue Show in the background. "Phil got any weird ones
on today?" I said.

"Just a bunch of people that claim they've
been kidnapped by funny-looking guys in UFOs. Nothing new in that."
His voice sounded a little ragged. "But you didn't call to talk
about what's on TV, did you?"

"I went to The Sidepocket last night," I
said. "Talked to Ferguson. I'd like to know a little more about
him."

"Why? He know something?"

It could have been my imagination, but I
thought there was an edge of real curiosity in his questions. "Says
he doesn't know a thing," I said. "But you never can tell. Can you
find out anything about him?"

"Gimme an hour. I'll call you."

"No, I'll call you. I'm looking into some
other stuff, too.”

I didn't say what the other stuff was, and I
didn't mention the little scuffle of the previous evening. It
wasn't that I didn't trust Dino, exactly; it was just that nothing
was making sense and I didn't think it would be to my advantage to
tell him everything right then. Even if it did mean putting off
asking for that raise.

"What about Sharon?" Dino said. The edge was
still there, even more pronounced if anything.

"I'll let you know as soon as I find out
anything concrete. Right now, I'm just poking sticks in holes,
seeing if anything jumps out at me."

"Call me back anytime after an hour,
then."

"Right," I said. We hung up.

I realized then that I'd forgotten about
Nameless. I went downstairs to let him in. It was easier going down
than I thought it would be. The cane was much better than the
board. I opened the door, and Nameless fell in as if his head had
been pressed against it.

"Sorry," I said.

He looked at me reproachfully while I got
his food.

I stood and watched him eat. Then we went
upstairs, where he proceeded to jump up on the couch and groom
himself, licking himself all over, and then biting himself between
the toes. Watching him made my tongue feel nasty.

I put some old 45s on the Voice of Music and
listened to Creedence, the Beatles, and Buddy Holly while I tried
to read a few more pages in the Faulkner book. I didn't accomplish
much. The problems of Quentin Compson and Rosa Coldfield seemed
pretty much far removed from what I was working on.

I put the book down. By then Nameless was
sound asleep, stretched out full length against the back of the
couch.

Having called Dino and put him onto
Ferguson, I had several new options. I could try talking to Julie
Gregg again. I could call Vicky Bryan and try to find out more
about Terry Shelton. That was an attractive idea, but it involved
prying into the murder case. I definitely liked the thought of
Vicky, but I definitely disliked the idea of tangling with Barnes.
I could call Evelyn Matthews, but she would see me only after she
got off work, and it was much too early.

It had to be Julie Gregg, though I certainly
hadn't ruled Vicky out. I would get back to her later. I grabbed up
Nameless, who clearly didn't appreciate it, held him in one arm,
and made my way down the stairs to the car. I put Nameless down and
thought about the gun.

Texas gun laws are a little strange. I'm
sure most New Yorkers think that armed Texans walk the streets of
every city and town in the state, but that's just not true. Only
the cops can carry a pistol. Legally. You can't even carry one in
your car unless you lock it in the trunk, and you certainly can't
carry one on your person. Legally.

Now what good a pistol would do me if it
were locked in the trunk of my car, I couldn't imagine. So I wasn't
going to put it there. At the same time, I wasn't going to carry it
tucked into my jeans.

I compromised by wrapping it in an old towel
that I carry around to wipe the dew off my windshield on days when
the humidity is bad--nearly every day, in other words. If I was
stopped and the car was searched, I was going to be in big trouble.
It was a risk I'd just have to take. And I was pretty sure that if
I went back to The Sidepocket, the pistol would be stuck in the
waistband. I wasn't eager to meet Ferguson's little pals again
unless I was armed.

I started the car and headed for the
college.

I stopped for a Schlotsky's sandwich on the
way. I was either going to have to buy some groceries or get all my
vital nutrients from fast food. I thought for a second about buying
some vitamin pills, but it was only a thought.

I got lucky again. Julie Gregg was in the
same office, stapling some more papers. It was almost as if no time
at all had passed in her world.

She looked up at me, then back down at the
papers. I could tell that she wasn't pleased to see me.

"Hi," I said, leaning on my cane. I hoped it
gave me a rakish look.

She stared at me with her wide blue eyes,
but she didn't speak.

"Look," I said. "I'm not really any more
thrilled about this than you are, but I have to talk to you again.
Sharon is still missing."

"So?"

It wasn't much, but it was a start. "So a
boy she knew, Terry Shelton, turned up dead yesterday. Maybe you
heard about it. He was murdered."

The wide eyes got even wider. She hadn't
heard. "I found out that he and Sharon used to go to Houston, to a
club called The Sidepocket, but that's all I found out. Sharon
could be in real trouble, Julie. You may be able to help her."

"I really don't know very much," she said.
The defiance was gone out of her. Death sometimes has a way of
affecting the young like that, especially when it's someone young
who's died, and especially when the death is sudden and unexpected.
And violent.

"You know more than I do," I said. "Anything
at all might help."

She thought about it. "OK. I don't know who
told her about her mother, if that's what you want. She came in one
day, really upset, and we talked about it. But she didn't say how
she knew."

"When was that?"

"About two weeks ago, I guess."

"And just how upset did she seem?"

Julie shook her head. "That's what I don't
understand. She was upset, like I said, but she wasn't crazy or
anything. I mean it wasn't like she was thinking of suicide or
something like that. She was mostly just mad that her mother hadn't
told her before."

"But she didn't say how she found out?"

"No."

"Then we won't worry about it. What about
this Terry Shelton?"

"I met him once. He didn't go to school. He
worked down on The Strand somewhere, but he came up here on his
lunch hour one day to visit Sharon."

"What was your impression of him?"

She tried not to look disapproving, and
failed. "He wasn't very mature. He thought he could just manage to
get by on his salary, which I bet wasn't very much, until someday
his big opportunity came along. I don't know where he thought he
was going to get a big opportunity in this place." She looked
around the room, but that wasn't the place she meant. She meant the
Island, or maybe the whole Gulf Coast.

"Did you find out anything about him? His
family, where he lived?"

"I got the impression that he's not BOI,"
she said. "I think he's from Houston, but his parents have a place
over on Bolivar. That's where he's staying." She caught herself.
"Where he
was
staying."