Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 01 - Galveston (4 page)

And my most important question. Am I starting in the right place?

I knew ‘Mustache Pete’ wouldn’t give me any information about why Albert was tailing Cheshire. So that was eliminated. I could wait for Eddie’s reply, or I could contact the Houston or Galveston newspaper, or I could seize the moment and march into the Galveston Police Department. Maybe I could find some help there.

Before leaving for the police department, I called the hospital. No change with Ben.

At the police station, I hoped the duty sergeant would call Sergeant J. Wilson to the front desk, but instead, he sent me back into the squad room. I grimaced, crossing my fingers that the uniforms I had run into at the hospital earlier were either off or out on beat.

Hesitating at the door to the squad room, I looked around, spotting two or three familiar faces. Then I saw Sergeant Wilson. He looked up from the papers on his desk and stared hard at me. I marched across the room, ignoring the whispers.

I stopped at his desk. “Sergeant.”

His light blue eyes made me think of ice cubes. “What do you want?”

“Ben Howard is still in a coma.”

“So? What does that have to do with you? I asked what you wanted.”

“Talk. I want to talk.”

“Yeah? What about?”

I glanced about the squad room. Every set of eyes was on us. I was getting in deeper and deeper. “Frank Cheshire.”

He eyed me narrowly, then cut his eyes down at the papers on his desk. “I got nothing to say.”

“Look, Sergeant. Regardless of what you think, I shot in self-defense. I just need the answer to a few questions, that’s all. I want to find out just what was going on out there last night.”

He snorted. “You know what was going on out there last night.”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be here.”

“You ain’t getting no help from me,” he replied, keeping his eyes fixed on the paperwork before him.

I slammed the palm of my hand in the middle of his paperwork. “Why not? I’d like to know why.”

Half-a-dozen uniforms rushed toward me as Wilson jumped to his feet and glared at me. “Because you murdered Frank Cheshire and maybe Ben Howard. There ain’t no way I’m going to help no one who kills one of us. No way. You can rot in perdition for all I care.” He waved the uniforms back. “Hold it, Boys. Don’t give this jerk-off no reason to claim police brutality.”

My ears burned. I had a belly full of Sergeant Wilson. “So that’s how Galveston boys operate, huh? Let’s find a poor slob to pin it on and then throw the book at him. You ever hear of the Gestapo, Sergeant?”

Excited murmurs broke out. I kept my eyes on Sergeant Wilson. For a moment, indecision flickered in his eyes, but quickly exploded into a blaze. He held up his hand. He drew a deep breath and studied me for a moment. Keeping his eyes on me, he said. “Sit back down, Boys. I’ll take care of this.” He paused. “Call it what you want, but no one here is going to talk to you about Frank Cheshire. No one. So, Mister Boudreaux, if you’re smart, you’ll get out of here and not come back.”

Deliberately, I looked around the room, fixing my eyes on each uniform staring at me. Then I turned back to Sergeant Wilson. “Sergeant, I’ll be back when I want, and you’d better not be hiding anything from me.”

I don’t know why I made that last threat. It just seemed the thing to do.

I headed back to the motel, wondering why I ever thought I might get some help from Galveston PD.

The phone was ringing in my room when I opened the door. I picked it up. “Yeah. This is Boudreaux.”

A guarded voice mumbled. “Cheshire was fooling around with some kind of smuggling deal for Sam Maranzano.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Who is this?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“Okay. I don’t need to know. Now, what about … ”

“No more. The Blue Wall is too strong to fight.” 

A dial tone sounded before I could ask my next question. I replaced the receiver. The Blue Wall. Cop togetherness. One for all, and all for one.

Truth was, I couldn’t blame them. They had a dirty, thankless job, constantly walking a tightrope of life and death. And at the most unexpected moment, a twist of fate could topple them in one direction or the other.

Still, I couldn’t help wondering who made the call. One fact was certain, however. The anonymous caller was not Sergeant J. Wilson.

Maybe I’d been wrong about the Galveston PD. At least there was one who hated dirty cops. Unless—Unless I was being set up to take another fall.

At least, Abbandando’s allegation that Cheshire worked for Maranzano had some support. Maybe I needed to pay another visit to ‘Mustache Pete’ Abbandando.

Augie of the red hair and freckled complexion and another of Pete’s buttonmen who bore a striking resemblance to Godzilla stopped me as I reached the private elevator for Pete’s private office. “I need to see him,” I said.

Pursing his freckled lips, Augie studied me, then nodded to Godzilla. “I’ll see.”

He picked up the wall phone and spoke into it. I couldn’t tell what was going on. He’d nod, then shake his head, then nod.

I cleared my throat. “Tell him I know about the smuggling.”

It was a wild stab, but it hit the mark. Stunned disbelief flickered across Augie’s face for a brief instant before a frown erased it. “Ah … hey, yeah, Boss. He says … ” He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered. He tried to keep his eyes on the telephone, but they kept cutting nervously back to me. He nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Okay, Boss.”

So far, so good, I told myself as I took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The smuggling angle must have some substance. Augie reacted, and obviously Pete had, or else I wouldn’t be going up to see him.

Pete’s earlier conviviality had gone south. He didn’t even offer me a chair. He sat. I stood. Two of his men stepped between me and the elevator at my back. “Smuggling is against the law,” Pete said and then remained silent.

“Yeah. Last I heard, it was.” I remained quiet. Two could play this game.

After several moments, he cleared his throat. “Why are you here, Tony?”

I glanced around at his boys. If he wanted me dead, I was dead, so I shrugged and replied. “Here’s the situation, Pete. I’m accused of murdering Frank Cheshire and shooting Ben Howard. Now, if Ben pulls through, I’m off the hook, but—“

Pete finished my sentence for me. “He croaks, you croak.”

With a chuckle, I said. “I might not have put it as colorfully, but that’s it. If I can figure out why Cheshire was out there, maybe that will tell me why he shot at us. He had to believe we were someone else. The fog was so thick, you couldn’t make out who they were until you were right in their face. You said Albert was following him.”

He arched an eyebrow and nodded briefly.

“All I had this afternoon was a number of disconnected incidents. Then I got an anonymous call less than an hour ago. The caller said Frank Cheshire was involved in a smuggling deal with Sam Maranzano.”

I paused, then added. “Now, maybe I’m wrong, Pete, but when I add one and one, I come up with two. When I add my anonymous call, you telling me Cheshire and Maranzano worked together, Albert following Cheshire, Albert disappearing, Cheshire shooting blindly at two figures in the fog, I could come up with someone trying to hide a smuggling operation. Now, if Cheshire is trying to cover up something, and Albert is following him on your orders, then any way you slice the bread, you’re involved with the caper.”

A foot shuffled behind me, but Pete shook his head almost imperceptibly and the shuffling ceased. Keeping his fat hand curled in his lap, he straightened a thick finger in my direction. “You think I smuggle?”

I shook my head. “I don’t care about the smuggling. I got my neck to look after. I’ve worked too long and too hard to have everything blow up in my face because of someone like Frank Cheshire. I’m going to prove he was dirty, that he was involved with Sam Maranzano, and that he shot at us because he believed we were following him.”

He dragged his tongue over his fat lips as he studied me. Finally he said, “What do you want from me?”

“Why was Albert following Cheshire?”

‘Mustache Pete’ drew a deep breath. “Our sources gave us information that Maranzano had hired him to pick up a lead on one of our South American operations.” He paused and reached for a cigarette from the open case on the table at his side.

South American? That could spell out dope.

“Why would he cross an operation like yours? He’d have to know he was playing with dynamite.” Then I remembered Ben Howard’s alluding to a possible gang war.

With a shrug of his rounded shoulders, Pete grunted. “Who knows the mind of another. I say to Albert, ‘Albert, you follow Cheshire. Do not contact him. See where he goes.’ That is all I say to Albert. We know nothing of this smuggling.”

The story rang false.

Why should Maranzano and Cheshire risk trouble by stealing drugs from an established operator when there were enough fly-by-nights out there for him to put together his own shipment of anything from Wild Cat to Magic Smoke.

I had the distinct feeling Pete was putting out a false trail. Why? Obviously, the shipment was even more valuable than a truckload of Johnny Go Fast and Lady Snow. I didn’t figure to learn anymore from Pete, but I gave it a shot.

“Who could he have been working with? Maybe some friends?”

Pete lit his cigarette. “Frank had no friends.” He arched an eyebrow. “But, we hear Maranzano, like you.”

“Was the shipment coming in by water?”

Pete made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Up and down the coast, there are many bays and inlets. Every night, goods are brought in. If I brought in goods, that is how I would do it. But, I stay legal, Tony. That time of my life is behind me.”

I resisted a grin. I’d have to win the Texas lottery before I’d believe ‘Mustache Pete’ Abbandando had put that life behind him. I took a step back. “Well, thanks anyway, Pete.”

A look of sad remorse settled over his pan-shaped face. “I wish I could tell you more.”

“Me too. Me too.”

My reflection stared back at me from the polished steel wall of the elevator. I grinned at myself. Pete didn’t fool me. He was mixed up in some smuggling deal that Maranzano was trying to horn in on. That was the only explanation for Albert tailing Cheshire—to see just how much Cheshire knew of the caper.

Whatever it was, I’d wager a thousand to one it wasn’t drugs.

I had to have solid evidentiary proof linking Cheshire to the smuggling caper before the police would believe me. That meant I had to find someone who knew that Cheshire was involved in the deal; the goods being smuggled; and when they were due. Three fragments that to me made up a whole. 

It didn’t take a research scientist to know that without the last two fragments of information, the Galveston PD would never believe the word of the first.

As I climbed in my pickup, I spotted ‘Mustache Pete’ looking down from his fourth floor office. My skin crawled.

Emerson once made the remark, ‘Shallow men believe in luck.’ Well, shallow or not, I believed in it. And for once, it smiled on me, because when I got back to the motel room, Eddie Dyson had discovered the answer to two of the questions I had just raised.

Unfortunately, he gave me more than I bargained for.

Chapter Five

Diamonds?

A thousand bucks?

I don’t know which stunned me the most, the goods being smuggled in or the charge Eddie hit me with for digging up the information.

Excited, I reread his message for the tenth time. I had my contact and the goods. Two pieces of evidence. One to go.

According to Eddie, Cheshire used an intermediary to approach a fence named Ho Lui in Philadelphia concerning uncut diamonds. Only once, three weeks earlier.

“Diamonds,” I muttered, staring out the motel window at the surf beating against the seawall along the shoreline of Galveston Island. So much for Abbandando and South America. I figured he was blowing smoke. But why?

On the other hand, diamonds made sense.

A fortune in diamonds, even after fencing, could fit into a coffee can, a size easy to smuggle and hard to discover. Especially in the hold of a cargo vessel. Especially in the hold of a cargo vessel your own stevedores are offloading.

At the end of the message, Eddie enclosed a copy of his bill for the information, a cool grand. I knew he was a genius with the computer, but what kind of hoops did he have to jump through that cost a grand?

I read the message again, this time focusing on the identity of the intermediary, the contact I needed to support my allegation that Cheshire was dirty. There was no name.

I frowned, puzzled that Eddie had forgotten to provide me the identity of the go-between. Usually, he was extremely thorough.

For a thousand bucks, I wanted the name. I had to have the name. Whoever he was, he was the key I needed to prove Cheshire dirty. I reached for the motel phone, then hesitated. It was probably bugged. I grabbed my cell phone and headed for the parking lot where I punched in Eddie’s number.

He picked up on the first ring. His initial affability cooled as soon as he recognized my voice, not too perceptibly, but enough for me to pick up on it.

“You all right, Eddie?”

“Sure, sure, Tony. You get the stuff you ordered?” It came out
“Yougetthestuffyouordered?”
He rushed his words together, giving me the feeling he wasn’t too anxious to talk to me.

I shook my head. Just my imagination. “Yeah. You must have run into some problems from the charge you laid on me.”

He chuckled nervously. “Sophisticated technology today, Tony. Satellites and all that stuff. There ain’t nothing secret anymore.” He seemed to be relaxing somewhat. “You think it was too steep?”

The afternoon traffic began to build on the thoroughfare paralleling the seawall. I turned my back and cupped my hand over the mouthpiece.

“No. Good information. That’s what we pay for. Hey, the guy who approached the old boy up north. You didn’t give me a name. That’s why I called.”