Dead on the Island (16 page)

There was no rug on this floor, and as soon
as the man's head came into contact with the floor I slithered out
from under the bed and on top of him. He was surprised and stunned,
but not out. He caught me under the chin with a forearm that
snapped my head back and shivered my timbers.

Before I knew what was happening, he was up
and aiming a kick at my head. I rolled away and tried to grab his
foot, but I missed. I got a grip on his pants leg, but he jerked
away.

Then the chair was coming at me again. He
must have picked it up, though I don't remember seeing him do it.
He didn't miss this time.

In the movies when someone gets hit with a
chair, the chair splinters satisfactorily, and pieces of it fly all
over the room. This was not a movie chair. It stayed in one piece,
one leg hitting my head while the others hit my shoulders and ribs.
I tried to get up, but I felt like the two-thousand-year-old
man.

He swung the chair again. I somehow got my
hands up and grabbed one of the legs. The man was so strong that he
picked me the rest of the way up on the follow-through.

I was shaky, but I held onto the chair for
all I was worth. Through all of this, neither of us had said a
word. I was groaning and he was snorting, but that was it. Now I
started yelling. Maybe someone would hear me and call the cops. I
wasn't eager to be caught in Shelton's house, but it was better
than being beaten to death with a bentwood chair.

We continued to struggle for the chair, with
me yelling "Fire!" and "Murder!" and "Rape!" at the top of my
lungs. I didn't really think anyone would rush to my aid, but maybe
I could distract the gorilla.

He was far stronger than I was, but I wasn't
about to let go of the chair. Then I noticed where we were. We had
struggled away from the bed and were very close to the curtained
windows.

I put everything I had into pulling the
chair in my direction, my arms straining and burning with the
effort. He had the top of the chair, and he applied an equal and
opposite force. OK, more than equal.

Suddenly I relaxed, not only giving way but
aiding him by leaning in his direction. He was surprised and went
backward very quickly, stumbling when the back of his calves hit
the low windowsill. I pushed as hard as I could then, and his back
hit the curtain. The window shattered, and he went through it,
still holding onto the chair. I had let it go. I didn't want it
anymore.

I sat on the bed to catch my breath. When it
was more or less back to normal, I walked over to the window and
looked out. The curtains were hanging with their bottoms outside
the sill now, and I pulled them back inside.

The ground in back of the house was not as
low as it was in front, only about six feet from the windowsill.
There was no one lying there. The chair lay harmlessly on the
scruffy grass.

I locked the bedroom door. If he came after
me again, he was going to have to kick it in, not that I thought
he'd hesitate to do it. I sat on the bed and waited. Nothing
happened for fifteen minutes. Maybe I'd hurt him at least a
little.

I went into the bathroom and bathed my face.
There was a lump forming on the left side of my head, just above
the ear, but there were no other marks, though my ribs hadn't been
improved any. I didn't even have a bloody nose.

While I was in the bathroom I looked around.
There was a bottle of Old Spice, a can of Noxema shaving cream,
half a package of Bic disposable razors, aspirin, and a box of
Puffs. A bar of Ivory soap on the rim of the tub. There was nothing
unusual in the other bedroom, either.

Somehow, though, I was convinced that Sharon
had been there, and I was equally certain that the guy who'd jumped
me had been left there or sent there by someone just in case I
happened by. I didn't know who he was or who had sent him, but I
was more determined than ever to find out.

It was getting on toward late afternoon when
I drove into the River Oaks section of Houston. My little Subaru
looked as much out of place there as Dumbo at a mastodon
convention. River Oaks was Money, some of the million-dollar homes
sitting boldly on their lots so that the underprivileged could
drive by and see what they were missing, while other houses, just
as expensive if not more so, were hidden from the gawkers behind
high walls or dense foliage or both and shaded by the enormous
expanses of trees that gave the area its name.

Jimmie Hargis lived in one of those houses.
I doubted that his neighbors knew how he'd made his money, or
cared, as long as he kept to himself, didn't bother anyone, and
didn't try to attend their bridge parties, or whatever kind of
parties people with that much money had. I'd never been invited to
one any more than Hargis had.

I drove down a tree-lined street to the
address that Dino had given me and pulled off at a wrought-iron
gate, painted black. An asphalt drive curved off into the trees,
and I could see parts of the house through the limbs and
foliage.

By the time I got my window rolled down, a
voice was speaking to me out of a metal speaker grille set in the
stone gatepost. I gave my name and, thanks to a phone call that
Dino had made earlier, the gate split down the middle and began to
swing slowly inward. When it was open all the way, I drove
through.

I parked in front of the house, an
impressive Spanish-style number that appeared to sit on about half
a block of expensive acreage. It was all white, with a red tile
roof. There was black grille-work on all the windows. It would be a
hard place to get into, or out of. There were frequent stories in
the Houston papers about people who had died in fires in their
homes, trapped by burglar bars as the flames raged through the
dwellings. I figured that Hargis was safe enough. He could no doubt
afford a good sprinkler system.

The front door was heavy wood, about the
size of the front door of the Alamo. There was no knocker, but I
didn't need one. By the time I got there, the door was already
opening.

I have to admit that I was surprised by the
man who stood there. He was a butler. There's no other way to
describe him. He looked like a picture of Jeeves on the cover of a
P. G. Wodehouse novel, starched white front and all. I'd read that
there was a training school for real British butlers in Houston,
but I'd never really given it much thought. Now I knew it was true.
I expected him to say, "Right this way, Sir."

He didn't, but what he did say was almost as
good. "Come in, Mr. Smith. Mr. Hargis is expecting you."

I followed him down a tiled hallway. We must
have looked like two players in a drawing-room comedy lost in a
cathedral as we walked beneath the house's high, vaulted ceiling
and beside its thick white walls.

Hargis met me in a room that I suppose he
called his study. The butler stood aside, and I walked in. The
walls were paneled in dark wood, and there was a thick wool carpet,
also dark, on the floor. In the center of the room was a huge
wooded desk, and the wall behind it was covered with book shelves.
Shiny leather-bound volumes crowded the shelves, as if Hargis had
bought every reprint the Franklin Mint issued. I wouldn't be
surprised if he had even read some of them.

Hargis stood behind the desk, looking
nothing like I'd expected. From his reputation, I'd thought of him
as being a large, tough-looking man. Instead, he was small and
delicate, not over five-four, with small bones; he couldn't have
weighed over a hundred and ten. I'd never seen a picture of him, of
course. He wasn't a man given to having his photo taken.

In the normal course of things Hargis would
never have agreed to talk to me, much less to see me in his house.
But this wasn't the normal course of things.

I'd gone by to see Dino after my little
adventure on Bolivar and told him what happened. Now that the shock
of being shot had worn off, he was feeling rotten, but he was alert
enough to see that things were getting out of hand. Ferguson was
dead, Sharon was still missing, Shelton was murdered, and someone
had made a try at Dino. None of it made any sense, and the only
link we had left to any of it was Hargis. Dino could pull enough
strings to get him to talk to me. He'd arranged it by phone, called
me, and here I was.

Hargis motioned me to a seat in one of the
brown leather chairs in front of his desk, and then sat down
himself. His chair must have been custom made, or maybe it just had
a thick cushion in it. He looked to be taller than he was as he sat
there, leaning slightly forward, his elbows on the desk, his arms
crossed.

"Dino told me most of the story," Hargis
said. He had a mellow, pleasantly modulated voice. "He did say that
I should listen to you relate one other bit of the puzzle,
however."

"I'm sure he told you about the three men
who jumped me outside The Sidepocket," I said. "I can describe one
of them pretty well. He's about thirty-five, at least six-three,
and goes around two-fifty. Maybe he was a fighter once, or a
football player. His nose has been broken a couple of times at
least. Dark hair, wears a crew cut. Has a pretty bad scar on his
forehead, above the right eye." I knew it was a bad one, or I
wouldn't have been able to see it so well in the dim light of the
room where we had fought.

Hargis sat and looked at me. He was wearing
a gray pinstripe that must have set him back a thousand dollars,
and a gold cuff link winked at me from one of its sleeves. How long
had it been since I'd owned a shirt with French cuffs? I couldn't
even remember. I felt a little shabby and cheap. I tried to
compensate by feeling morally superior, but it didn't help
much.

After a minute or so, Hargis began talking.
"I agreed to talk to you, Mr. Smith, out of regard for an old
relationship that Dino made a claim on. I must admit that I really
do not see how any of this business affects me, or even how it
touches me in any way."

I started to tell him, but he raised a hand
from the desk to silence me. "I'll be glad to hear your comments in
a moment. For now, allow me to have my say. My connection with
Chuck Ferguson is purely a business one. He was the manager of one
of my clubs, and that was all. It was not a particularly profitable
club, though I must say that business improved slightly when
Ferguson took over. It was his idea to convert it from a topless
club to a place where local bands of dubious ability could display
their talents, such as they are. Certainly the new venue caused
much less trouble with the city.

"At any rate, it developed into a fairly
successful club, but it still wasn't among my top investments. So
when Ferguson came to me with the idea of buying it, I listened
with interest. He had knocked about a bit in the club business, and
I believe that he'd done other kinds of work earlier in his career,
though I never questioned him about that. He wanted a place of his
own, a place where he could make a little money and feel as if he
belonged. It didn't seem too much to ask, and since I had no real
desire to keep The Sidepocket, I sold it to him."

Once again I started to interrupt, and once
again he held up a palm. "Please. Let me tell this. I was not at
all sure of how Ferguson intended to get the money to pay me, but
he insisted that he could get it and that he could pay me in cash."
Hargis allowed himself a thin smile. "For a man of my profession
and inclinations, cash has a certain appeal. And I am not a man to
question another's sources of revenue. Eventually we agreed on a
price, and Ferguson asked for a short time to get the money. The
papers were taken care of, and Ferguson came through with the
money." He smiled again. "People rarely try to cheat me in money
matters, Mr. Smith. I did not ask where he got it.

"Now, as for the . . . ah . . . individual
you have described. I must confess that in my profession I have
from time to time been forced to hire men to do jobs that require a
certain amount of strength and daring."

I thought he had a nice way of putting
things, but I didn't try to interrupt again.

"Often I do not see these individuals
myself, as they are contracted for by others, and I can say with a
fair amount of certainty that I have never seen the person you
describe. That does not mean that he has never worked under my
employ, but it is very unlikely that he is working for me at the
present time."

He paused, and I thought that maybe it was
my turn to talk, but I waited a few more seconds. Which was just as
well.

"Now, Mr. Smith, you see that I have spoken
quite frankly to you. Much more frankly than I would have done
under ordinary circumstances. But these are not ordinary
circumstances. The police have visited me today. I am not fond of
being visited by the police."

"Me either," I said. I couldn't resist, and
he didn't seem to mind. But that was probably because he paid me
absolutely no attention at all.

"Ferguson's murder is causing me trouble,"
he said. "Trouble that I wish to avoid."

Someone had found the body then. "I didn't
report it," I said.

"I didn't mean to imply that you did," he
said impatiently. At least he had heard me that time. "The point is
that the city is on one of its periodic crusades to regulate
businesses of the sort in which I have an interest. Any scandal
connected to me at this time is most irritating and inconvenient. I
certainly had nothing to do with either Ferguson's death or the
attack on Dino. But I would very much like to know who did. I would
like to know even before the police find out, if that could be
arranged, though it is not entirely necessary."

He wasn't smiling now, and as I looked at
his cold eyes I could see why he was sitting on his side of the
desk and I was on the other, why he owned a house in River Oaks and
I was a house-sitter in Galveston. Why he had on an expensive suit
and a shirt with French cuffs and I was wearing a sweatshirt and
jeans.