Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 01 - Galveston (2 page)

He took a deep drag from his cigarette. The smoke drifted lazily upward from his parted lips. “Throwbacks. Neanderthals. The 1930’s déjà vu. Sam Maranzano out of Chicago and ‘Mustache Pete’ Abbandando from LA.”

 I whistled softly. I’d heard the names, but never figured they were in this part of the country. “Hard to believe.”

Ben shrugged. “Yeah. Abbandando settled in here five, six years ago so I’ve been told. Stevedoring operation. Perfectly legit, but an ideal front for a smuggling operation. Last year, Maranzano showed up in Houston.”

“And that’s when the trouble started?”

He shook his head and took a big gulp of beer. “Not really. No trouble at all, but there’s a tension in the air, like electricity searching for a ground. Something is going on, but I can’t get a hand on it.”

He grew silent, staring at his plate.

After a few strained moments, I cleared my throat. “Ready to leave, Ben?”

He looked up and blinked, as if seeing me for the first time. “Huh? Oh.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Sorry. Yeah, let’s get out of here. Let me show you our fair city.”

We paused on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. Ben looked up and down the Strand, then nodded in the direction of the Galveston docks. “Let’s take a walk.”

“Sure.” I fell into step with him as we headed down the damp sidewalk toward the wharves. It was late, and the streets and sidewalks away from the Strand had little traffic.

Ten minutes later, the gunfire broke out.

Half-a-dozen uniforms were standing in two small groups in the ICU waiting room when I arrived next morning. They eyed me malevolently. I forced a grin. “What’s the word on Ben Howard?”

A pot-bellied sergeant stepped forward. His gray hair was thinning everywhere except on his eyebrows and top of his ears. His silver nametag read ‘Sgt. J. Wilson.’  “In a coma.”

I frowned, surprised. “Coma?”

A younger uniform elbowed this way through the wall of scowling lawmen. “You got a lucky break there, buddy.”

Somewhere I lost the thread of conversation. “What do you mean?”

He grunted and grinned knowingly at his friends. “You know what I mean. As long as Howard’s unconscious, he can’t dispute your claim that you killed Frank Cheshire in self-defense.”

His words rocked me back on my heels. For a moment, I thought I was hearing things. I looked from one face to the other. The expression on their faces left no doubt in my mind that they believed I wasted Frank Cheshire deliberately.

The next remark convinced me of that fact. “Yeah,” added another cop. “As far as we know, you could have done Howard and Cheshire both.”

A flush of anger burned my ears. I glared at the cop who had made the last remark. As usual, I spoke before I thought. “Before you run off at the mouth too much, Buster, you better get your facts straight, or I’ll poke them down your throat.”

A rumble of murmurs greeted my threat. As one, they stepped forward. From the anger on their twisted faces, there was no question in my mind they were ready to put me in ICU. I clenched my teeth and doubled my fists, wondering how many I could kick in the groin before they ripped my arms off and stuffed them down my throat.

A young cop with more muscles in his head than on his brawny arms stepped forward. “Let me have him, Sarge.”

Sergeant James Wilson said nothing, but from the gleam in his eyes, I knew he was considering the request.

A clipped voice behind me stayed them. “That’s enough, men. Get out of here. Get back on the job. You too, Sergeant.”

For a moment, they hesitated, a pack of dumb gorillas with the collective IQ of a refrigerator bulb. The sergeant eyed me a few more seconds, then waddled away, and the others followed.

I turned and eyed the slender man in a three-piece suit facing me. His chin was narrow, but his eyes were steady. His short hair was parted on one side. To say he was neat would be an understatement. Not a hair was out of place, not a wrinkle in his suit. The knot of his tie nestled exactly in the middle of his collar. His shirt cuffs extended the socially accepted three quarters of an inch beyond the cuffs of his coat.

“Thanks, Mister.” I started to say more, but the hostility burning in his eyes made me pause.

“You Tony Boudreaux?” He wasn’t native to the coast or Southeast Texas for he pronounced the X in my name instead of the leaving it silent.

“Yeah. Boudreaux. No X.”

He sneered. “Oh, now you’re a smart guy, huh?”

I fought to control my temper, which was fraying badly. “Look, Buddy. I don’t know what you or your friends’ problem is, but leave me out of it. I’ve known Ben Howard for several years, and I just came by to see how he was.”

The sneer on his angular face deepened. “He’s in a coma. That’s how he is, and I’m not about to leave you out of our problem because you are our problem.”

I stuck my face in his. “And who are you?”

A smug gleam of satisfaction filled his eyes. “George Briggs. The District Attorney, and I’m going the guy who’s going to strip you of your license and indict you for the murder of a cop.” Before I could reply, he continued. “Of a cop you swore to kill.”

His assertion stunned me. How did Briggs find out about a threat I made when I was young, ignorant, and unable to handle the booze? Then I realized I had an arrest record in Galveston even though it occurred more than fifteen years ago. The charges were dismissed, but the arrest record, like fallen arches, remained.

“You deny that?” He eyed me steadily.

I kept my eyes on his. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of looking away. “I don’t deny it. But that was years ago. A bunch of us were at the beach. Spring break from college. I’d had too much to drink, and I just ran off at the mouth.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Yeah. That’s what you say now. We’ll let the Grand Jury decide, Boudreaux.” He deliberately pronounced the X, then leered at me.

“You got nothing to go on, Briggs. You’re going to have to prove intent. My weapon was back in the motel. It was Howard’s piece I used on Cheshire. Now you tell me how you’re going to get intent out of that.” I was growing angry again.

His thin lips spread into a smug grin. “You and Howard struggled for the gun. You got it and shot him, then used his piece on Cheshire when he tried to stop you. Simple.”

I stared in disbelief. “You’ll never make that stick.”

“No? Just watch. I can do anything I set my mind on. You got my promise on that.”

I remembered then what it was about Frank Cheshire that had set me off at the beach that day at the Galveston beach. His arrogant sneering. The Galvestonian mindset that cops were gods, and all the rest of us were peons for them to treat as they saw fit. Briggs was the same.

Back at the motel, I called my boss in Austin. Needless to say, Marty Blevins of Blevins Investigation was none too pleased to hear of the mess I’d managed to get myself in.

“Once Ben Howard comes out of his coma, he can tell them what happened,” I explained.

Marty snorted. “If he comes out. I’ve seen ’em lay there for years. And then croak. Jeez, Tony. You really fouled up this time.”

I shook my head. Good old Marty. He had a knack for lifting a guy’s spirits. “Listen, Marty. This D.A. down here has me worried. He came on awful strong. I can’t leave town, but I can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

“No problem. I know a good lawyer down there. My cousin, Ernie—Ernest Blevins.  Get in touch with him. He’ll do what he can.”

I replaced the receiver and plopped down on the bed. With a grimace, I realized I’d forgotten to call Janice Coffman-Morrison, my Significant Other and heiress to one of the largest fortunes in Texas, the Chalk Hills Distillery. We had made plans for tonight, but since I had no Starship Enterprise transporter chamber to beam me up, there was no way I was going to be in Austin at 9:00 p.m.

Chapter Three

Needless to say, Janice was disappointed, but she understood. We really had a perfect relationship. She understood when she wanted to understand, and I understood when she wanted me to understand. Simple and uncomplicated, like us. And neither of us wanted to complicate things with marriage.

She and I met a few years back when I helped her out of an insurance jam. Because of her money, she had no interest in a  serious  relationship and believe it or not, despite her money, nor did I. We had fun together even though I quickly realized I was simply a dependable escort, an occasional lover (at her whim), and a frequent confidant.

Ergo, a tool to satisfy her needs. And she was the same for me. Like the novel,
Separate Peace,
we had reconciled our positions in our relationship. And both were fairly content.

Inexplicably, despite the skewed relationship, we were very good friends who enjoyed each other’s company. Personally, I’d never been able to figure out ‘our relationship’, as Janice referred to it, but then, I really never worried about it. I seldom paid serious attention to those psychological or personal relationship things. I let the women worry about that sort of thing. I just said ‘yes’ or ‘no’ at what I considered the appropriate occasions. That usually kept me out of trouble and warded off any worries.

Now I was more worried about the D.A. His threats had me jumpy as a three-tailed cat at the local daycare center. Meeting Marty’s lawyer cousin, Ernest Blevins, didn’t help. In fact, after talking to good old boy Ernie a few minutes, I began wondering just how many dots you had to connect to pass the Texas’ bar exam. By the time I left his office around mid-morning, next to slashing my wrists, I figured throwing myself on the mercy of the court might be my best option.

To sort my thoughts, I took a walk when I left his office and ended up at the docks. The sun shone brightly out of a clear winter sky.

Despite the cutting wind howling out of the north across Galveston Bay, forklifts zipped across the docks; great shore cranes swung massive loads from cargo holds to waiting flatbeds; conveyor belts whined and strained, transporting goods from the darkened caverns of great ships into cave-like warehouses. Stevedores scurried in every direction across the dock, over the ships, into the warehouse, like ants on a wedge of chocolate cake.

I retraced our steps of the night before across the wharf. Stains, smeared now by footsteps and rubber tires, remained where Ben had fallen. I crossed to where Cheshire had gone down, then backtracked to the giant shore crane from around which he had emerged the night before.

Beyond the crane, a small section of the wharf had been cordoned off, the portion that had been poured the night before.  I paused at the bright orange ribbon and studied the bustling activity about me.

Powerful trucks belching black diesel fumes and loaded with bulging bags of rice waited in line to be off-loaded for distant countries in the Far East. Thick streams of wood chips from the timber mills in East Texas spewed from great spouts into the holds of giant ships headed for the Orient.

The freshly poured cement, a patch about twenty by twenty, appeared to be curing well. I noticed a footprint in the cement and grinned, remembering the times I wrote my name and left a footprint or handprint in every piece of fresh cement I ran across.

Slowly, I made my way along the orange ribbon, idly looking out over the newly constructed loading dock. The last patch of cement appeared to be the final piece of the construction.

I had no idea what I was looking for. I was just looking, hoping for an answer to fall out of a tree and land at my feet.

One end of the orange ribbon was tied to an industrial dumpster. The dock at the base of the dumpster was littered with trash that had fallen from the front-end loaders when they dumped their loads.

There were broken TV’s from Taiwan, crushed boxes of computer chips from Mongolia, stained and ripped clothing from Thailand. To add to the mix was a conglomeration of detritus such as shattered wooden pallets, broken furniture, a bent and twisted stove, a refrigerator with the door ripped off, and the toe of a wing-tip slipper protruding from beneath a pile of  seed corn spilled from a ripped bag.

At that moment, the piercing beep-beep of an approaching front-end loader caught my attention. I waved and stepped from his path. Immediately, the driver dropped the bucket and scooped up the trash by the dumpster, quickly depositing it just in time for a Kenilworth tractor to back up to the dumpster, hook a two-inch cable to it, and winch it onto his rig.

“Some operation, huh?”

I jerked around at the voice behind me. “What?”

A freckle-faced redhead who appeared to be in his mid-thirties nodded to the disappearing Kenilworth. “The way these guys operate. They don’t waste no time.” The wind ruffled his hair.

I looked around as the Kenilworth disappeared around the corner of a warehouse. “It’s a big operation here.”

He shrugged down into his topcoat. “Yeah. I like to come down and eyeball them ever so often.”

For several moments, we watched the activity on the docks. Finally, he cleared his throat. “You the guy who shot the cop last night?”

For a moment, his words didn’t register. When they did, I frowned at him, surprised. “What?”

Keeping his eyes on a cluster of stevedores unloading a truck, he replied. “The guy what shot the cop last night. That you?”

I grew wary. “Why?”

He shrugged. “If you are, Mister Abbandando would like to see you. My name’s Augie.”

Abbandando? I frowned, then I remembered what Ben Howard had said. Abbandando was the alleged crime boss who settled into Galveston several years earlier and set up what appeared to be a legitimate stevedoring operation.

What did he want with me? “Were you out here last night?”

Augie shook his head. “No.”

“How did you know I was?”

He shrugged again. “Mister Abbandando knows. He told me to bring you to him.”

I studied Augie several moments. So ‘Mustache Pete’ Abbandando wanted to see me. I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to see one of Galveston’s finest observing our little conversation. To my way of thinking, such a meeting would be poor judgment on my part. Extra fodder for the D.A.’s pitch to the Grand Jury.