Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 12 - Murder Among Friends (11 page)

Danny was his usual amiable self. With his red hair and
freckled face, he reminded me of a mischievous leprechaun.
During the drive to the restaurant, he regaled me with one
joke after another.

I mentioned earlier that I’m not so naive that I believe
there’s no gambling in Texas, with the exception of a few
legal tracks and the Texas lottery and its spinoffs.

There are betting pots for everything and, in the subterranean world of big-time gambling, there are bookies who’ll
gladly take your money on everything from who hits the first
triple in a ball game to which jockey spits on the ground first.

But, as we sat over a platter of juicy ribs, I wasn’t prepared for the view that Danny opened for me.

“For your information, there are half a dozen “safe”
casinos within thirty minutes of city limits. You name
the game, and they have it: roulette, blackjack, craps-I
could go on and on, but you get the idea. For a nice fee,
chartered jets haul customers to Vegas, New Orleans, Lake
Charles” He paused to tear a chunk of juicy pork from
the rib bone he held delicately in his fingers. “You name
it, we provide it”

A hundred questions bounced about in my head, but all
I could manage was “That’s hard to believe”

Danny chuckled. “Maybe so for straight arrows like you, but not everyone is on the up and up” He jabbed the pork
rib at the door. “You’d be surprised how many sinners live
out there”

“You’re telling me if I wanted to go to a casino around
here, I wouldn’t have any problem”

He laughed. “You bet you’d have a problem. The only
way you get in is by referral. Most get it from legit casinos
run by the same people who run the shady ones”

“How does that work?”

With a shrug, he replied, “Word of mouth. The house gets
a regular player in there; they find out all about them. Over
a period of time, they pass word to the suckers where they
can find action closer to home” He took a bite of pork. “The
marks like it because it saves them travel expenses, money
they can sink in the slots or card games”

All I could say was “Live and learn”

Dabbing at the barbecue sauce on his lips, he replied,
“Along those lines, I found out more about that Busby guy”

He went on to inform me that Marvin Busby, in addition
to owing eight thousand to Frank Trimunti at a local game,
had lost close to seventy thousand in the last six months.

I paused, barbecue sauce dripping from my chin, staring at
Danny in disbelief. “Seventy thousand? How? And where?”

He laughed, the freckles on his face blending into a single red blotch. “There are ways. Any sucker bitten by the
gambling bug will always find ways to lose money”

All I could do was shake my head and reach for another
rib. “So, any luck on Acne Face?”

“Yep. Hymie Weinshank. Been around this part of the
country a year or so, down from New Jersey. Does odd jobs
for a price”

He didn’t have to tell me what he meant by “odd jobs”
“What about his partner?”

Pausing to swallow a bite of pork, Danny replied, “No
one in particular. He hangs with Maury Erickson and Alex
White down at the Zuider Zee on the river.” He took a gulp
of beer. “We’ve had no run-ins with them”

I parked the information in the back of my head.
“Thanks” I’d worry later just how I would handle this last
bit of news.

After I left Danny’s parking garage, I pulled onto Sixth
Street and headed for the Tri-District Credit Union. Behind me, overheads flashed. I pulled to the curb, puzzled.
All my lights were working, and I hadn’t run any signals. I
rolled down the window. A uniform stepped up to the door.
“Boudreaux? Tony Boudreaux?”

“Yeah” I nodded.

“Chief Pachuca wants to see you”

I didn’t argue. “I’ll go right over.”

He grinned and touched a finger to his forehead.

Pachuca looked up from his desk when I entered, a frown
knitting his brow. His dark eyes glanced at my forehead
and black eye. “Boudreaux!”

“Chief”

I started to sit, but he barked, “Don’t sit. You won’t be
here that long.”

My pulse skipped a beat. I racked my brain trying to figure what I had done wrong. “What’s up?”

“We got an anonymous call that you were sticking your
nose in our business.”

My mind raced. I fell back on that timeworn technique
of deny, deny, deny. “I don’t know what you mean, Chief.”

He eyed me narrowly. “You haven’t been suggesting to
anyone out at the credit union that Carl Edwards was not the perpetrator of the armored car robbery?” He framed it
as a question, but I knew it was an accusation.

I shook my head, my face beaming with innocence. “No.
Not one word. You know how people are, Chief. Now, I’m not
saying that someone might have misinterpreted what I asked,
but all I tried to learn is if any of them had an idea where he
might have gone.” I paused. “You know I’d never do anything
to cause problems for you, Chief. You’ve helped me too many
times for me to jeopardize our working relationship.”

He snorted. “We don’t have a working relationship,
Boudreaux. You do. And I’d better not find out you’re lying
to me, you hear?”

“I understand. Now, let me ask you something about the
heist.”

His eyes narrowed. “Like what?”

“Edwards’ accomplices. Any lead on them?” I caught
myself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. What I meant was-”

He interrupted. “I know what you meant. We figure when
we find Edwards, we’ll find them. Now, are you satisfied?
Anything else?”

I started to tell him what Butcherman had told me about
Weinshank, Erickson, and White, thinking it would help
my old man. Then I reminded myself I had no proof other
than what I’d witnessed, and that was not sufficient to even
warrant hauling in Weinshank or the others. “No, Chief.
Nothing else. Nothing else at all, thanks.”

Later, pushing aside the nagging feeling of guilt for
not telling Pachuca about Weinshank and his partners, I sat
in the pickup staring blankly at the brick and glass facade of
the credit union as I tried to sort the disconnected ideas
tumbling through my head.

Carl Edwards’ motive for hitting the armored car was weaker than a newborn kitten. There were half a dozen employees at the credit union who had more of a motive, although, according to Frank Cooper’s story, only two of them
might have passed for Edwards beneath the mask.

Rita Johnson was larger than Edwards, and from the
glimpses I’d had of Busby and Athens, so were they.

Unless, I suddenly told myself, the stress and excitement
of the robbery so confused Cooper that he saw what he
wanted to see. Or hear, I reminded myself, remembering
that he swore the voice behind the mask belonged to
Edwards.

And then one of the lessons I learned from Al Grogan,
our resident Sherlock Holmes back at Blevins’ Security,
kicked in. What if Cooper were not confused? What if he
were lying?

Climbing from the pickup, I headed for the side door of
the credit union, anxious to get the last two interviews over
so I could get back to my computer to see what Eddie Dyson
had found about Frank Cooper.

At about six feet two, Larry Athens was pushing sixty, but
it was a trim sixty that many a thirty-year-old would envy.
He paused at the door and threw up his hands when he spotted my black eye. “Whoa! Must’ve been a dandy fight”

I grinned. “Guess who lost”

A convivial man, he laughed and strode across the room.
He shook my hand exuberantly and plopped down across
the desk. “You’ve been asking about Carl, I hear.” Before I
could reply, he continued. “Nice guy.” He went on to praise
Edwards, just as all the others had, and to express his own
surprise at hearing the news.

And no, Athens had no idea as to where he might have
disappeared.

I probed. “None at all, huh? He never mentioned a trip,
maybe a fishing trip? I hear he was an avid fly-fisherman”

The announcement surprised Athens. “I didn’t know
that. If I had, I would have taken Carl along with me on a
couple of my trips back northeast. They got excellent trout
fishing out there”

“Oh? You fly-fish?”

He shook his head and glanced over his shoulder. In a
conspiratorial tone, he whispered, “I gamble” He paused
for his announcement’s effect on me. When he saw no reaction, he laughed and nodded in the direction of Raiford
Lindsey’s office. “Everybody here knows I gamble. That’s
my hobby. I’m divorced, no kids, and I like to gamble, so I
go all over. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone along just
for the company. Old Carl could have fished while I gambled” He lifted an eyebrow and shrugged. “Might have
been a good combination”

A frown knit my brows. “How’s that?”

“I have a system,” he announced. “I never gamble at
night, only between ten and six. Those are my lucky hours.
Never after dark. It’s unlucky for me. In fact, after daylight
savings time is over, some days I finish at five-thirty. Then
I go to shows or something like that. It’d be nice to have
someone to pal around with, you know?”

I nodded perfunctorily.

He grinned sheepishly at me. “To tell you the truth, I
could have put that half million to good use” He roared with
laughter.

I couldn’t help smiling at his candor. “The day of the
robbery. Did you see Edwards?”

His laughter faded as he concentrated. He grimaced. “I’d
see him just about every day. Sometimes not. It’s hard to
remember.”

“I think he had a bad cold that day.”

His face lit. “Yeah. Now I remember. I tried to talk him
into going home and climbing into bed, but he said he
couldn’t. He said-” He hesitated, his face growing grim. In
a lowered voice, he continued, “He said he had an important
job to do that day” He stared up at me, his eyes filled with
sudden confusion. The slender man chewed on his bottom
lip. “I still can’t believe it”

While I didn’t completely mark Larry Athens off my
list, I put him close to the bottom, noting that once again, as
with most of the others, he did not fit the basic description
given by Frank Cooper.

I jotted a few notes on one of my three-by-five cards.
When I looked up, Marvin Busby stood in the open door.
“Boudreaux?” Before I could nod, he added, “I’m Busby.
Raiford said you wanted to talk to me about Carl Edwards” He ignored my black eye.

One thing was obvious. If Cooper’s description of the
man behind the mask was accurate, Marvin Busby could in
no way fit that portrayal.

I remembered Judith Perry’s slurred remark that Marvin
Busby was a louse. I hadn’t known what to expect, but when
Busby entered, I tended to agree with her.

His complexion had a greasy sheen, and his black hair
was slicked straight back, hanging almost to his unbuttoned
collar, under which lay a loosened tie.

While he was not morbidly obese, Busby looked about
forty or fifty pounds overweight. The pleats in his brown
slacks were pleats in name only, for they were pulled tight
across his abdomen, and his wrinkled shirt was working
out from around his waist.

I gestured to the chair across the desk. “Sorry to take you away from your work, but this will only take a few
minutes”

He shrugged. “No problem. The work isn’t going away”
He laughed.

“Yeah, I know”

I expected him to respond as the others when I asked if
he had any idea where Carl Edwards might have vanished.

“Find the nearest country with no extradition agreement
with the U.S.,” he replied, a smirk on his puffy face.

“Oh? Such as?”

“Beats me, but if I’d pulled off what he did, that’s where
I would go”

He seemed awfully sure of himself. “Did he say that?”

Busby laughed. “He didn’t have to. If I’d lost everything
I’d invested, I’d take that half million and find me a snug
little place somewhere down in South America”

I shook my head. “I don’t follow. What do you mean,
lost everything?”

A crooked grin played over his face. “Carl Edwards invested in a gold mining scheme in Ghana and the whole
thing blew up in his face when a coup overthrew the government and took over.”

All I could do was stare at him in stunned disbelief.

I had just been handed one heck of a motive.

Collecting my thoughts, I asked, “So, you really believe
Edwards was the brains behind the job, huh?”

He pursed his thick lips and nodded. “Who else?”

Even though I knew it was probably a mistake on my
part, his smug attitude irritated me, and I couldn’t resist the
opening. “You,” I said simply.

My words knocked the breath out of him. His eyes grew
wide, and his jaw hit the floor. He sputtered, “W-What-?”

With a faint smile, I explained. “No offense intended, Mr.
Busby. I know you weren’t involved, but you do owe various
shady characters a great deal of money. Isn’t that right?”

He glared at me, his face frozen in suppressed fury.
“That’s a lie”