Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 01 - Galveston (5 page)

There was a strained pause.

“You hear me, Eddie?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Tony. I hear.”

I sensed the reluctance in his voice. “What is it, Eddie? What’s going on?”

“Well, I … you see, Tony, I … ah … ”

Something was wrong. Eddie was as glib and garrulous as a sideshow huckster, unabashedly pushing his wares and beating his chest. He wasn’t the kind to stammer and stutter.

I grew impatient. “What are you trying to tell me, Eddie? Spit it out.”

Behind me, a car honked. I jumped and looked around.

An older woman with a disgusted look on her face stared at me from behind the windshield of a new Mercedes. Here we were in the middle of an empty parking lot a hundred feet wide, and I’m in her way? I stepped aside, and with a sharp sweep of my arm, waved her by. She squealed past, thanking me an obscene gesture.

Eyeing the Mercedes malevolently, I continued my conversation with my stoolie. I was growing more impatient. “Come on, Eddie. What’s wrong?”

“You ain’t going to like it, Tony.”

I shouted. “Let me decide. Now who is it?”

“Okay, okay. Take it easy. The name belongs to a guy who is a member of the Morrison family. He’s your girl friend’s cousin.”

“Janice’s cousin? But she doesn’t have … ” Then, with a groan, I remembered. Theodore Morrison, the long lost cousin from the black sheep side of the family. He had popped up a few months earlier.

 Eddie’s voice was apologetic. “Sorry, Tony. I hated to spring it on you. It’s a bummer.”

I nodded slowly. “You’re sure. Positive?”

“Hey, for the kind of jack I charged you, I’d sign in blood. This Morrison guy met with the gentleman in Philadelphia. The old boy’s got no reason to lie about it.”

“Is the fence going to deal with Morrison and Cheshire?”

“Too risky. He wouldn’t say why, but I got the feeling some big guns were involved.”

“What about an address for Morrison?”

“Can’t find one. This Morrison bird stays outta sight.”

“See if you can find one. He’s supposed to be working for some law firm. At least, that’s what he told Janice and her aunt. Maybe it’s in Galveston or Houston.”

For a moment, Eddie didn’t reply. Finally—“I’ll give it a shot.”

I should have been tickled to have another lead, and such an important one. Maybe I would have been had the news not made me sick to my stomach.

Back in my motel room, I added to my initial notes. There is one unequivocal, indisputable, incontestable fact. Evidence does not lie. It cannot be intimidated. It does not forget. It doesn’t get excited. It simply sits and waits to be detected, evaluated, and explained.

Witnesses may lie, lawyers may lie, judges may lie, but not evidence. And since it doesn’t, then enough must be gathered to make a logical interpretation.

That was what I was attempting to do, gather enough evidence and hope I interpreted it correctly, and before Ben Howard died.

Other than my Significant Other’s cousin being involved, I felt better about the case I was building against Cheshire. I had no idea the extent of Ted Morrison’s role in the caper, but he was the proof I needed that Cheshire was mixed up with the smuggling caper. I had to find him.

Morrison wasn’t listed in the Galveston or Houston directory, nor in the white pages on the Internet. I hadn’t expected to find him, so I wasn’t disappointed.

I called my boss, Marty Blevins, in Austin and put him onto Morrison. “Get me anything you can find, Marty. Address especially.”

“Theodore Morrison? He kin to the old lady that owns Chalk Hills Distillery.”

“Long lost cousin.”

Marty snorted. “Jeez, bet that ticked off that little gal of yours when he showed up. Wasn’t she the only heir?”

I could hear Marty chortling. He got his rocks off on other peoples’ back luck. “Yeah.”

“Where’d this guy come from?”

I knew all the details, but I didn’t figure it was any of his business. Just give him something else to jeer at. “Beats me. Just see what you can find.”

“You bet, Kid. Ben still in the coma?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you know what they say. Let’s all hang in there together, or they’ll hang us all.” He laughed so hard at his joke that he started choking. Ben Franklin probably rolled over in his grave when he heard his famous remark butchered so.

I hung up. For several moments, I stared at the silent receiver in my hand. Morrison’s sudden appearance a few months earlier had rocked the entire Morrison family. Beatrice Morrison, matriarch of the clan of two, had more money than the Bank of England, and she spent a bundle checking Ted Morrison’s claims. All the paper work was in order. Even DNA.

Theodore Morrison was a third cousin to her dead husband. Best I understood, Theodore was the third generation from a brother of her deceased husband’s father. Something like that. I usually had trouble understanding relationships beyond Mom and Dad.

Being reared an orphan with no family other than her Aunt Beatrice, Janice had enthusiastically welcomed Ted into the family. The fact he would be entitled to an equal amount of her inheritance was not an issue. How could it be when the two of them would share several hundred million?

But, I could imagine her reaction when Janice heard the accusations against him. I could imagine what she would say to me when she learned I was the one who brought them.

Three sharp knocks on my door jerked me back to the present. I frowned. “Who … ” My words trailed off as I rose and headed for the door. The hair on the back of my neck bristled.

Hesitating, I glanced about the darkening room, for some reason taking comfort I had not turned the lights on.

The knocking sounded again, this time more urgent.

Without touching the heavy drape covering the front window, I peered through a tiny crack between the thick material and the wall. A brawny man in an expensive suit and wearing a five o’clock shadow on his square jaw stood at the door. He was one of those guys so muscular, he looked out of place in a suit, regardless of how expensive.

I couldn’t see his right hand, but in my imagination, it was in his coat pocket folded around a cannon the size of a .44 magnum. He knocked again with his left.

I had a bad feeling. I had no idea who he was, but I wasn’t about to open the door.

He twisted the knob and grimaced. Then he retrieved a plastic card from his coat pocket and dropped it in the lock slot. I grew tense, ready to make a dash for the door if it opened.

He twisted the knob again. The door remained locked.

Abruptly, he turned on his heel, slipped the card in his pocket, and strode hastily down the gallery. Moments later, a sweat suit clad couple passed in front of my window.

I studied the parking lot, but my visitor had vanished. He could have been anyone. As far as I knew, maybe he was here to announce that American Publishing had made me the $10,000,000 winner, but to be on the safe side, I strapped my .38 to my belt.

Pushing my visitor from my mind, which was like trying to ignore a 600-pound gorilla banging at the door, I ran back through the snatches of information I had picked up earlier in the day. Cheshire was trying to smuggle diamonds into the country and Morrison was looking for a fence. If Cheshire was working for Maranzano, then in all probability, so was Morrison. I wasn’t sure where Abbandando came in, but he was part of it.

Chances were, Cheshire fired at Ben and me thinking we were some of Abbandando’s buttonmen who had tumbled to his caper.

But what was he doing out on the wharf at midnight? With the fog so thick, no ships were coming in. Even the cement truck crept through the fog. I hesitated, frowning. I suddenly had the eerie feeling I knew more about that night than I thought I did.

Now, I know there are some romantic souls who enjoy strolling in the fog. I had strong doubts, however, that Frank Cheshire was one of them. Whatever reason he had for being on the wharf had to be important, so important, and so secretive that he started shooting before he even knew who was out there.

I knew I could not count on help from Galveston PD anymore than I could from Sam Maranzano. The only move I had left was to break into Frank Cheshire’s apartment. See what I could find.

As soon as I located him, I’d track down Morrison.

And then I’d worry about Janice’s reaction.

Chapter Six

Cheshire’s name was in the telephone directory. “That was simple,” I muttered, jotting down the address and slipping it into my shirt pocket. “Now, if getting into his place is half as easy.”

Throwing on my windbreaker, I opened my door, looked up and down the second floor gallery for the gorilla who had been banging at my door. He was nowhere around, so I headed for the stairs. I rounded the corner and froze, one hand braced against the soft drink machine at the top of the stairs.

My earlier visitor was halfway up the stairway. We stared at each other in surprise for a couple seconds, and then I did the first thing that came into my mind.

I shoved the soft drink machine down the stairs at him.

He yelped and jumped back. I followed the clattering machine as it bounced and scraped down the stairway like the proverbial runaway train.

Showing surprising agility for someone his size, my visitor hit the base of the stairs one step ahead of the soft drink machine and leaped aside, slamming into the brick wall across the walkway. His head bounced off the wall. With a groan, he sank to the concrete.

I was two steps back. Before he could move, I whipped out my .38, grabbed him by his lapels, and jerked him upright, at the same time, sticking the blue muzzle of my revolver into his left nostril.

His eyes grew wide. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.”

I jerked his lapel. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

He gulped hard, then stammered. “I … I’m your bodyguard.”

All I could do was stare at him blankly. I pulled him into the light. “You’re what?”

He gulped again. “Yeah. Ernie sent me. I’m your bodyguard.”

“I don’t know any Ernie.” I shook my head, expecting a trick.

“Blevins. Ernest Blevins. Your lawyer.”

At that moment, a figure appeared behind him at the corner of the walkway. He shouted. “Hey! What’s going on here? What are you guys doing to my machine?”

“Your machine?” I shouted back, at the same time slipping the .38 back into my pocket. “You the manager here?”

“What’s going on?” He was growing belligerent. “You’re tearing up my place.”

I always had a knack for lying. Usually I managed to keep the talent under control, but this time I turned it loose on him. “You tell me. My friend here and I were heading up the stairs here when a couple kids shoved the drink machine down on us. We could’ve been hurt bad. You’re lucky we don’t sue you anyway.”

His belligerence vanished. He rushed forward. “You guys hurt anywhere?”

I brushed at my bodyguard’s suit. “I’m fine. How about you, George?”

My bodyguard blinked a couple times. “Huh?”

“I said, ‘are you all right, George?’”

“Oh, yeah.” He flexed his arms. “Yeah. I’m okay.” Then he winced and jerked his foot off the concrete.

The manager gasped. “What? What? Something busted?”

Placing his foot gingerly back on the ground, the heavily muscled man put some weight on it. He grimaced, then gave a faint smile. “No. I think it’s okay.”

The manager breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good.”

I fixed him with a hard stare. “You better find those boys. This was deliberately malicious. We’re just lucky one of us didn’t get hurt bad.”

He nodded emphatically. “Yeah. Yeah. Don’t worry, Mister … ah … ”

“Boudreaux. Tony Boudreaux. I’m in 256.”

“Mister Boudreaux. Don’t worry. I’ll find them.”

“Come on, George. Let’s go on up to my room and take care of business.”

George limped after me.

I closed and locked the door behind my bodyguard, then turned on the light. I kept my hand in my pocket clutching the .38. “Okay, start at the beginning. What’s this all about?”

He shook his head. “My name ain’t George. It’s Virgil.”

I nodded. From his size and bulk, he didn’t looked like a Virgil. Maybe a Derrick or Rocky, but not a Virgil. “Okay, so it’s Virgil. What’s this all about?”

He looked around the room uncomfortably. “All’s I know is that Ernie … I mean Ernest Blevins hired me and told me to stick by your side so nothing would happen to you.” He shrugged. “That’s it.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You didn’t do much of a job out there on the stairs.”

He shrugged and gave me a sheepish grin. “I’m not really a full-time bodyguard. I’m a bodybuilder. Why, last month I competed in the IFBB’s Mr. Olympia contest. Third place,” he added with a broad grin.

A bodybuilder! That I could believe, but a bodyguard? “How’d you get in this bodyguard stuff?”

With the guileless innocence of a child, he explained. “Oh, Ernie lets me do it between competitions. I pick up some cash before I start training for the next competition. Besides, Ernie says it helps his tax return.” He shrugged. “I don’t understand how, but that’s what he says.”

I rolled my eyes. Great. Now I had a part-time bodyguard, part-time bodybuilder at my side. Still, I liked him immediately. I don’t think he could have told a lie if he wanted to, but I had to be sure. I dialed Ernie.

In a snake-oil smooth voice, Ernest Blevins said, “I don’t know all the details, Tony. All I know is that ‘Mustache Pete’ Abbandando sent word to put a shield on you. When I asked him why, he said that someone had shot out one of his windows.”

“Yeah. I was there. So what?”

“So,” Ernest replied. “That slug wasn’t meant for Pete. It was meant for you.”

I remained silent, stunned by the news.

“Tony? You still there?”

“Huh? Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. How did Pete know that? I mean how did he know the bullet was meant for me?”

“He didn’t say, but he has ways of finding that sort of thing. Now listen, Virgil is strong as an ox. He can run his head through a door. He’s got muscle. All you have to do is point him in the right direction. Cousin Marty says you’re a bright guy. You got the brains, Virgil’s got the brawn.”