Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 12 - Murder Among Friends (17 page)

Hymie Weinshank!

Suddenly, I remembered earlier that day when the Peterbilt ran us off the road. Maybe that driver wasn’t just careless. Maybe he was trying to kill us.

I left the old man in Neon Larry’s office and slipped onto
a barstool out front. Larry gave me his gap-toothed grin and
brushed his long black hair out of his eyes. “Beer?”

“No” I nodded to the coffeepot behind the counter.
“Some of that”

“Leaded or unleaded?”

“Leaded”

“Here you go,” he said, sliding a thick white mug filled
with steaming coffee in front of me. “On the house”

“What do I owe for Goofyfoot?”

He shrugged. “Forget it”

For the next few minutes, I sipped my coffee and sorted
through my thoughts.

If Hymie and his boys were the goons who croaked
Sal, then they must believe that John Roney could identify
them. The only way they could have known about him is if
they saw him, which meant he could not have been passed
out like Butcherman said, at least not at the time Sal was
killed.

I shook my head. The whole scheme didn’t make sense.
Sure, if Hymie had wasted a public figure, he would have
been forced to take care of any witnesses, but a transient, a
hobo who drifted from place to place with no attachments?
It was a cold fact I always hated to admit, but the death of a
transient wasn’t accorded much more concern than a dog
struck by a car.

Sure, lip service was given and detectives were assigned,
but the daily intensity of crime on American streets kept
the good guys too busy to worry over a homeless person.

So why go out of their way with my old man? There had
to be more at stake than the testimony of an unreliable
drunk for Hymie to take a chance on another killing.

I remembered the wild idea that had popped into my head
after I spoke with the guards Eddie Borke and Jack Ramsey
at Quad-County Armored Car Services, the crazy idea that
perhaps Carl Edwards was the one knocked unconscious at
the heist, and it was his body Salinas Sal saw being transferred from one car to another that night at Barton Springs.

That, I told myself, would be motive enough to get rid
of any eyewitnesses.

On impulse, I pulled out my three-by-five cards and
thumbed through them. When I found what I was looking
for, I waved Neon Larry over. I shouted above the roar of
the crowd. “Telephone directory?”

He pointed to his office.

Goofyfoot was gone, so I slid behind Larry’s desk and
spread my cards on the desk pad before me. Next to Eddie
and Jack’s interview, I laid out the cards covering the interview with Frank Cooper.

I wanted to be sure I had not imagined anything.

After rereading the cards, I grinned and looked up the
number for Jack Ramsey and Eddie Borke. I had a question
for them.

Ramsey didn’t answer, but Borke caught it on the third
ring. I identified myself. “Sorry to bother you, but I wanted
to make sure I understood what happened that day”

“No problem. What do you want to know?”

“Let me read it to you. Here’s what I jotted down after
our conversation. `We did hear someone else come in. Jack
and me here have talked about it. Someone came in and said
something like `what’ or something, and then there was a
thud and someone fell to the floor. For a couple of minutes,
you could hear them coming and going, and then there was a
gunshot, and the door slammed shut” I paused. “That sound
right?”

“Yeah. Sure”

“Now let me ask you this question, Eddie”

“Shoot” He hesitated, and then sheepishly added, “No
pun intended”

I laughed. “No problem. Now, when you and Jack were lying on the floor, did you hear one of the-no, anyone shout,
lay down or I’ll shoot?”

He pondered the question a moment. “No. We could
hardly make out what they were saying. We heard a groan
and something or somebody fall to the floor, and then a
minute or two later, the shot” He hesitated. “I ain’t saying
them words weren’t said, but I sure don’t remember them”

After hanging up, I sat staring at the receiver while the
wheels in my brain whirled. I’d come up with the most
cockamamy theory in my entire career. One that might get
me fired or killed, or both.

I glanced at my watch. It was late, almost 11:00. I wanted
to bounce my ideas off Marty, but no telling where he was.
I knew one place he wasn’t, and that was home, which was
the last place I would call for him.

Climbing back in my Chevy Silverado, I drove around
aimlessly for a few minutes, doing my best to find some
sort of sanity in my thoughts.

The overwhelming belief that someone other than Carl
Edwards masterminded the heist swept over me, too strong
for me to ignore.

But, I told myself, if I truly believed that theory, then I
had to believe that Frank Cooper was lying.

I pulled up to a red light and stopped. I asked myself,
why would he lie?

Simple, you dummy. He was the architect of the scheme.
But why? What was his motive? I shook my head, unwilling
to commit myself to such preposterous conjecture and, at
the same time, cursing the cyberspace snafu that had cut
me off from Eddie Dyson.

I had to be certain, but how?

Cooper had been shot, close range as he said. His shirt
was powder-burned. On the other hand, I told myself, he was
the only witness. The entire case hinged on his credibility,
which I had to admit appeared to be beyond question.

So far!

Then I remembered my interview with Rita Johnson,
which threw cold water on my cockamamy theory. Maybe
that was all it was, a half-baked idea, for Rita told me Carl
Edwards had spoken of a fishing trip to New Mexico and of
a small village named Lost Lake.

Could he be there? It was too early in the season for trout.
The only reason he would be there was if he were hiding out.
And if he were, then that was the ball game. One, two, three
strikes, and he was out.

But, if he weren’t-

Behind me a horn blared. I jerked back to the present
and saw the green light before me. I sped away, at the same
time knowing I had to take a trip to Lost Lake, wherever it
was in the rugged mountains of New Mexico.

But first, I needed to make suitable arrangements for my
old man. If the little ideas bubbling in the back of my head
all came together, John Roney Boudreaux might very well
need protection.

And there was no one to whom I would turn other than
Danny O’Banion.

“No sweat, Tony, boy. We’ll look after your old man,”
Danny said. He hooked a thumb at a couple of his soldiers.
One nodded. “They’ll pick him up now and bring him back”

“Thanks” I gave him Jack Edney’s address.

He grew serious. “You want me to send someone with
you? That’s lonesome country up there in New Mexico, I
hear.”

I grinned and shook my head. “Thanks, but no thanks.
You and your boys will have your hands full with my old
man. I’ll stop by the D.A.‘s before I leave and tell Mark
he’ll be with you” I paused and grinned. “That is, unless you don’t want to rub shoulders with the District Attorney’s
office”

He laughed, all the freckles on his face running into one
big splotch. “Hey, why should I mind? I’m as legit as there
is in this town” He grew serious. “You sure about this, Tony?
You’re not stretching it, are you?”

With a groan, I closed my eyes and squeezed my nose
and mouth with one hand. “I hope not. This whole thing is
like a spiderweb. It could fall apart. If I find Carl Edwards
in New Mexico, I’ll know my little theories were just that,
theories not worth the paper they were written on” I drew a
deep breath. “To be honest, Danny, I trust that man as much
as I trust you. I can’t imagine he would pull a heist like that.
That’s why I’m crossing my fingers that I don’t find him at
Lost Lake”

After touching base with Marty, I called the District
Attorney’s office. Investigator Mark Swain’s answering
machine picked up my call. I told him where my old man
would be. Then I called Janice to tell her I would be out of
town the next day instead of at the auto show.

While she assured me she understood the situation, the
cool snippiness in her responses told me I’d be forced to do
a great deal of groveling when I returned.

Finally, at 2:00 A.M., after locating the village of Lost
Lake some fifty miles northeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico,
I caught a flight that touched down in Dallas/Fort Worth,
and then made a two-hour layover in Amarillo before continuing to Santa Fe.

In an almost deserted coffee shop with online facilities
at Rick Husband Amarillo International, I sat hunched over
a cup of lukewarm coffee studying my notes.

I’m not the sharpest knife in the PI business, but I’ve
learned that perseverance and attention to detail pay off in
the long run. It seemed as if every time I reread my notes, I
noticed a link I had failed to recognize earlier.

I reread the notes of my first interview with Margaret
Edwards. When I asked her if her husband had ever mentioned a fishing trip to Falcon Reservoir, “Not a word” was
her response.

After studying the card another moment, I started to put
it away, but then a thought hit me.

Quickly I thumbed through the notes until I found my interview with Frank Cooper. I skimmed the notes when I
saw that my memory had served me well, for I had mentioned Falcon to him.

A tiny bell rang in the back of my mind. I closed my
eyes, trying to force the tenuous thought into a firm idea.
Then I remembered. Rita Johnson had mentioned Falcon.
Lake Falcon, she called it.

I leaned back and stared, unseeing, out the expansive
windows at the taxiing jets. How did she know about Falcon? Edwards had not even mentioned it to his wife. And
other than her and Debbie, the only one I’d told was Frank
Cooper. Could there be some kind of connection between
Cooper and Johnson?

Pulling out my laptop, I connected to the airport’s Wi-Fi
and tried to e-mail Eddie Dyson again. To my disgust, cyberspace still refused to give up his address.

Shaking my head, I logged off and returned to my note
cards. Moments later, my flight was announced.

By now the sun was rising over the flat Texas prairie that
stretched farther to the west than the eye could see. As the
thirty-seat Embraer 120 Brasilia jet climbed into the cloudless sky, I leaned back and gazed out the window, grateful that I was sitting by myself. I would have made a lousy
traveling companion, for I was too busy trying to fit pieces
into my little theory that Frank Cooper was behind the
heist.

Of course, I had no motive. There was opportunity and
means, but half of the credit union employees had opportunity and means.

Shuffling my note cards, I studied his interview, hoping
to find something that would bring into question his credibility. Anyone could have worn a herringbone jacket, and
at least two or three of those I had questioned were of his
stature.

At the next words I’d written, my heart leaped into my
throat. I recognized his voice.

Pulse racing, I riffled through the cards to my notes for
the interview with Eddie Borke and Jack Ramsey, the QuadCounty Armored Car Service’s guards. To one of my questions, Eddie had replied, “One thing I remember about the
voice, though, is that it sounded kind of raspy.”

I had prompted him. “Like laryngitis, maybe?”

And then the two guards had looked at each other and nodded simultaneously. “Yeah, like laryngitis,” replied Eddie.

Staring up at the overhead, I concentrated. Someone else
had mentioned laryngitis, someone at the credit union.
Romero? Elizabeth Romero?

I was so excited, I spilled the note cards in my lap. Agitated at my own clumsiness, I gathered them and fumbled
for the interview with Elizabeth Romero, Raiford Lindsey’s executive secretary.

A young flight attendant with a concerned look on her
face stopped at my side. “Are you all right, sir?” She glanced
at the cards strewn over my lap and on the floor. “Can I
help?”

I forced a laugh. “No, thanks. I can do it. Just clumsy.
Serves me right”

Finally, after what seemed like hours, I found the card I
was searching for. I skimmed it. There it is, I shouted to
myself as I read her remark. “He could barely talk with
laryngitis that day because he was wheezing and hacking
from a bad cold”

Leaning back, I stared out the window, wondering what
to do next. I had two witnesses with contradictory testimony regarding Edwards’ voice that day. Or did I?

Muttering to myself, I realized that Cooper could very
well have recognized Edwards’ raspy voice. And perhaps in
his fear, he thought Edwards was shouting.

I shook my head and groaned, hoping I was not permitting my personal feelings to interfere with my investigation.

My thoughts drifted back to Rita Johnson and Lake
Falcon. Perhaps Edwards had mentioned it to her. Maybe
this was another instance of where I was giving in to my
personal feelings.