Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 01 - Galveston (6 page)

I thought about how easily I had taken Virgil out at the stairway. “Well, hey, thanks, Ernie. That makes me feel real good. You hear anything from the D.A. today?”

“Naw. Takes them old boys awhile. Even if Briggs pushes the case against you, it’ll take him two or three weeks before he can take it to the Grand Jury. By then, Ben Howard will be awake.”

“You hope.”

“He will be. Trust me.”

Trust me! That’s probably what Delilah said to Samson when she gave him the knockout drops. “Yeah. Right.” I replaced the receiver. Sorry, Ernie, I told myself. I don’t trust anyone except my mother’s son. I gave Virgil a crooked grin. “Ernie speaks highly of you.”

Virgil grinned shyly. “Thanks.” He plopped in a chair and removed his shoe so he could massage his injured foot. “He’s my cousin.”

With a rueful grin, I shook my head. Now, why hadn’t I guessed that? My boss, Marty, sends me to his lawyer cousin, Ernie, who in turn gives me his muscle-bound cousin for a bodyguard. A classic example of good old American nepotism, and with all the attendant tax breaks.

With a sigh of resignation, I plopped on the bed, trying to figure out why someone would take a shot at me. A rank odor curled under my nose. I ignored it, concentrating on who might have tied to waste me-—if they indeed had. I needed to talk to Pete about both the alleged attempt on my life and my Significant Other’s cousin, Ted Morrison. But first, I wanted to get into Cheshire’s place before anyone else. With Virgil, at least I’d have someone to keep an eye out.

The rank, horsy odor grew stronger. Was there a dead rat in the walls? I wrinkled my nose. Sitting up, I saw Virgil massaging his bare foot. That was no dead rat.

He looked up as I headed for the door. “Let’s go, Virgil. We got some business to tend.” I opened the door so fresh air could blow inside.

In the pickup, I glanced at Virgil. “ You know where 23
^rd
Street is?”

He nodded.

“The Tradewinds. An apartment complex.”

He gave me a sappy grin. “My cousin owns the place.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “Another cousin?”

“We’re a big family.” He grinned.

A big smile popped out on my face. I’d been trying to figure how we could get into Cheshire’s room, and now all my worries were over.

I waited in the lobby while Virgil went into the office. Moments later, he returned with the key. “Any problems?”

He shook his head. “No trouble, but the police just left. Plainclothes guys.”

“Police?”

“That’s what Willard said.” When I frowned, he explained. “Willard. My cousin.”

Cheshire’s apartment was middle-of-the-line rental property, about five or six hundred a month. A snack bar separated the living area from a small kitchen. A bedroom opened off one wall. The bath opened into the bedroom. In general, the apartment was fairly neat, something of a surprise since Cheshire was a confirmed bachelor.

Standing in the open doorway and surveying the apartment, I said. “Your cousin said the police were here?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“No reason.” I shrugged and stepped inside. Against one wall sat a yellow vinyl couch with a claw-footed coffee table in front. Two occasional chairs that didn’t match were on either side of the coffee table. Against another wall was a cheap desk on which sat a computer.

I didn’t doubt someone had searched the room, but I would have given staggering odds it wasn’t the police. I have yet to see a search scene that didn’t look like a bomb had exploded when the police completed their search. Cheshire’s place looked like he’d just stepped out for a pizza.

Which led me to another puzzling conclusion. If the cops had not searched the place, then who? Abbandando? Maranzano? Or Morrison?

The reason was obvious even if the identity of the previous searcher wasn’t. Cheshire had information about the smuggled diamonds and someone wanted that information.

I locked the door behind us, then hesitated. Other than Eddie Dyson’s report, I had no substance, no solid foundation for any of my theories. All I was doing was guessing.

“What do you want me to do?”

Virgil’s question jerked me back to the present. “You start in the kitchen. Look for anything, notes, pictures, anything. If it’s got writing on it, I want to see it.”

He looked at me like I was simple. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

I started in the living room, searching for telephone numbers, names, dates, any information I could find. Later I would winnow through the chaff and keep the wheat.

Whoever had been in here earlier must have heard about the impressions left on telephone pads for the pad was slick as the gumbo mud back home. Still, I gave it a shot, but the pencil marks revealed nothing.

I searched the desk for bills or scribblings, but found none. I booted the computer and went to the history file. It was clean. I nodded in appreciation at someone’s thoroughness. “But, let’s see just how thorough,” I muttered, going five or six steps deep into the operating system.

Bingo! Someone hadn’t gone far enough back to clean up the files. Back in the temporary Internet files under Windows, there were hundreds of addresses. 

Quickly scrolling through those for the last six months, I jotted down all the transportation addresses. The fact they were all maritime struck me immediately. I also recorded addresses for several stevedoring firms and two buoy manufacturers. 

Then I searched the bedroom.

Seagulls didn’t pick fish bones any cleaner than the bedroom. Several suits, slacks, and sport coats hung on the rack. A pair of running shoes and three pairs of shoes, two loafers and one slipper hung upside down on shoetrees.

I picked up one of the loafers, a brown Brioni with a leather tassel. Size eleven and a half with a ribbed sole. I stared at the shoe, remembering the footprint I had spotted in the fresh cement back at the wharf. If I weren’t mistaken, the print was the same as the sole of the Brioni.

I checked the other shoes. All Brioni. Well, Cheshire had taste in shoes at least.

“Find something?”

Virgil’s question jerked me around. I kept everything close to the vest. “Nope. Not here. What about you?”

“Nothing.”

I wandered back into the kitchen.

A telephone directory lay on the snack bar. Several numbers were scribbled on the cover. I copied them. Probably pizza or hamburger delivery joints. One had the word, Allied, beside it.

I glanced under the cabinets. The usual bug sprays, overflowing trash beginning to ripen, a couple cans of paint—one with ribbons of red paint dried on the side, the other unopened, a yellow background with a green paintbrush as a logo, and a collection of dollar store pots and pans. Nothing out of the ordinary.

As an afterthought, I flipped to maritime shipping in the yellow pages. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to find, perhaps a circle drawn around a shipping line with a note stating ‘this is the one’ or perhaps a shipping line corresponding with one I found on Cheshire’s computer. No such luck.

Except for the Internet files and the phone numbers, the place was clean as a freshly scrubbed floor.

Outside, stars sparkled in a black sky. We stopped off at a hamburger joint along the seawall and picked up a bag of double-deckers along with fries. During the remainder of the ride back to the motel, I planned the next couple steps. I wasn’t crazy about Virgil tagging after me the rest of the evening, listening to what I said, learning what I learned. I didn’t trust him—not completely, not yet. Whatever I found, I wanted to keep it to myself.

After we ate, I’d get rid of Virgil. Then I could follow up on the websites, call the numbers we found, visit Pete, and check the shoe print in the fresh concrete at the wharf.

At the thought of the fresh concrete, a tiny idea formed in the back of my head, so nebulous I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was there, nagging at me. I remembered the unsettling feeling I had earlier that I knew more about that night than I thought.

Virgil didn’t argue when I told him I was going to hit the sack early. He nodded and left. I watched from the window as he descended the stairs and crossed the parking lot to the front of the motel.

He seemed like a nice guy. I felt a twinge of guilt, but I didn’t know him well enough to trust him. As far as I knew, he might be the kind to hit the nearest bar and blabber his head off.

No, what I had to do tonight, I could best do alone.

Chapter Seven

Leaving my .38 behind, I grabbed my coat and jumped in my pickup. I didn’t know if ‘Mustache Pete’ were still at his office or not. If I missed him, at least I could assure myself the footprint in the cement had the same configuration as the Brioni in Cheshire’s apartment.

I checked the flashlight in my glove apartment.

From time to time during the short drive the docks, I glanced in my rearview, wondering if the police were still tagging after me. I didn’t spot anything unusual.

Augie stopped me at the warehouse door. By now, the fog had settled in. He grinned. “Not a good night to be out, Friend. This stuff will be too thick to drive in.”

“I’ll make it. Pete around?”

He shook his head. “Left an hour ago.”

“My lawyer called me. Said Pete told him the slug that shattered the window today was meant for me.”

The expression on Augie’s face didn’t change. He shrugged deeper into his coat as a chilling blast of air swirled around us.  He glanced past me, then opened the door wider to the dark warehouse. “Come on in out of the cold.”

“Thanks.”

“Over here,” he said, indicating a lonely circle of light under a glowing radiant heater mounted to a steel ceiling joist. He stopped beneath the heater. “This is better.”

I nodded, savoring the sudden heat dispelling the chill. “Yeah.”

He studied me a moment, his hands still jammed in the pockets of his topcoat and the collar turned up about his neck despite the warm air blowing over us.  “I like you, Boudreaux. I don’t want to see nothing happen to you. Pete don’t either.”

“How’d Pete know those bozos were shooting at me?”

A crooked grin curled his lips. “Our boys met the boat across the bay. By the time they finished with those two, the shooter was spilling everything he knew.”

“Who paid them?”

Augie shook his head. “Contract. Five G’s in an envelope with your John Hancock inside.”

I blew out through my lips. “Short and to the point, huh?”

“Business is business.”

“Any guess who might have paid them?”

“Wasn’t Pete.” Augie pursed his lips. “Might’ve been Sam Maranzano, but there’s no proof. If that smuggling business you was talking about is on the level, maybe one of those players. Hard to say.”

At least, I had the answer to one question, how Pete knew the slug was meant for me.  That didn’t help with Cheshire or Morrison.

Back in the pickup, I stared at the warehouse. I was gathering quite an eclectic collection of facts. I grimaced in frustration. When were they going to start making sense? Or were they? Maybe like my old beagle, Bat, I was waiting at the wrong hole for the rabbit. He never once caught a rabbit, but he was always waiting at a hole.

With a soft curse, I started my truck and eased cautiously across the dock to the freshly poured concrete next to the dumpster. Visibility was zero. Suddenly, the orange ribbon cordoning off the fresh cement leaped out at me. I slammed on the brakes. Climbing out, I left the lights on dim.

I knelt by the footprint. The headlight beams shattered on the tiny beads of moisture filling the air, blurring details of the imprint, but when I ran my finger over the impression, I felt the ribbed imprint of Cheshire’s shoe. “Well, well, well, what do you know.” Maybe this rabbit is in the hole.

Footsteps sounded behind me.

Instinctively, I ducked, and a sharp blow struck the back of my shoulder. I hit the wet concrete and rolled through the standing water to my right, out of the glare of the headlights into the darkness. The footsteps hurried toward me. Still on my back, I kicked out with my feet and slammed into a couple knees.

There was a grunt and a curse. A body bounced off the fender of my truck. I rolled to my feet just in time to see my assailant lift his arm once again. I did what any all-American boy would do. I kicked him where it hurt most.

He froze in mid-swing. A groan of agony hissed through his lips just before I slammed a knotted fist into the blur that was his face. I felt something give, and when he staggered backward, a dark film covered his chin. I hoped I busted his nose.

In the next instant, he spun and still holding himself, waddled to the edge of the wharf and leaped into the darkness.

Breathing hard, I stood on the dock watching the white foam his leap had created fade away. I heard him swimming somewhere in the darkness below. A dull throb pounded in my shoulder. Clenching my teeth, I rubbed it. At least nothing was broken.

I didn’t have time to gloat about my good luck for another voice broke the silence of the night. “You took care of him, Buddy. Let’s see what you do with us.”

Spinning, I saw two hulking blurs less than six feet from me. Their hands were in the shadows of their bodies, but I had the feeling that they weren’t just clutching fog.

“Yeah,” said a second, guttural voice. “It’s time for you to take a long, long swim, all underwater.”

I made a promise to myself right then. If I ever made it back to Austin, first thing I would do is enroll in one of those karate or tae wong courses that teaches a guy had to beat up on a dozen bad guys at the same time.

Suddenly, a shadow appeared from the darkness around the dumpster. It was nebulous, vague, but whoever or whatever it was, it held something over its head.

With a shout, the shadow leaped forward and swung.

One of the goons facing me screamed and dropped to his knees. The second spun as the shadow swung again. The second thug squealed like a pig and grabbed his arm. The shadow swung again, driving both thugs toward the bay.