Murder Takes a Break (5 page)

"Twelve o'clock?" I asked.

"Make it eleven-thirty," he said.
 

He had a hard voice that sounded as if he'd practiced it on felons for years.
 
It probably didn't have any more effect on them than it had on me, however; most of them were used to harder voices than his.
 
So was I.

"And good luck finding a parking spot," he added before hanging up.

I wondered what he meant by that, and then it dawned on me:
 
Dickens on the Strand.
 
The east end of the Island would be a foot lower in the water, thanks to the weight of all the extra tourists.

I killed the hours until eleven-thirty by doing a few background checks and by searching some of the electronic databases I had access to for any information on Randall Kirbo.
 
I didn't find a thing, but I wasn't disappointed.
 
I hadn't really expected to find anything, to tell the truth.

At a little after eleven I got in my little blue and white Chevy S-10 truck and drove to town.
 
I wasn't worried about parking.
 
I was pretty sure I knew where there would be a few vacant spots, and I was right.
 

I parked in the police station lot.
 
There were cars lining the streets and parked everywhere there was anything resembling a spot for them, but no one was willing to take a chance on parking in a cop's place.
 
All the places in the lot were reserved for employees, and I wouldn't have parked there myself under ordinary circumstances.
 
But today I was willing to take a chance.

 
I got out of the Chevy and walked to the drugstore.
 
It was only a couple of blocks, but the sidewalks were jammed.
 
I must have passed a thousand people on their way to The Strand.
 
Only a few of them were dressed in costume.
 
I spotted a chimney sweep, a Tiny Tim wearing headphones and carrying a disc player, and a couple of guys who might have been trying to pass as David Copperfield.
 
I suspected that they were awfully warm in their Victorian attire.
 
The fog was long gone, and the sun was bearing down.
 
It must have been nearly eighty degrees, and the humidity was so high that I could feel moisture accumulating under my sweatshirt.
 
It was more like spring than the middle of the winter, but I wasn't complaining.

I walked past a used-book store where two men sat over a chessboard.
 
A very large black dog was asleep in the window.
 
The drugstore was next door, and I went inside.
 
It was a relief to get away from the crowd.
 
Lattner was already there, sitting on a red vinyl-topped stool at the counter that formed a square in the middle of the floor.
 

The drugstore consisted of one large, high-ceilinged room.
 
The counter took up most of it, but there were display cases that held souvenirs and collectibles like old magazines and movie star photos.
 
The walls were covered with advertising signs, most of them as old as the magazines.
 
A woman with brown hair and wise eyes was behind the counter, and a man with eyes just a little less wise was sweeping the floor with a push broom.

"Crowded out there?" the woman asked me.

"Just a little," I said.

"I wouldn't go out there for a hundred bucks.
 
I just stay in here till it's time to go home, and then I leave.
 
I don't want anything to do with a crowd like that."

I knew what she meant.
 
The crowd would be so thick on The Strand that you couldn't walk where you wanted to.
 
You'd just have to go wherever the ebb and flow of the herd took you.

"I don't blame you," I said.
 
"How's the barbecue plate today?"

"It's good," she said.
 
"But then it's good every day."

I sat down by Lattner.
 
He was snake-skinny and his belt size must have been about 28.
 
He had a hatchet face, black hair that he combed straight back, and black eyes that looked right at you.
 
His sport coat must have been ten years old, and it was about one size too big for him.
 
Maybe he'd lost weight some time during the last decade.

"Barbecue all right with you?" I asked him.

"That's what I came for," he said in that hard voice of his.
 
"That and the potato salad."

"Make it two," I said, and the woman turned away to fix the plates.
 
The sweeper disappeared somewhere into the back.
 
Maybe there was another room after all.

Lattner didn't seem inclined to talk, but I figured that since I was buying the lunch he might as well earn it.

"About the Kirbo case," I said.

"Nothing to it," Lattner said.
 
"The kid came down here, and he never went home.
 
No evidence of foul play.
 
He was probably tired of college and didn't want to face the folks at home.
 
Case closed."

The woman set two glasses of water in front of us.
 
"Get you anything else to drink?"

"Water's just fine with me," I said, but Lattner wanted iced tea.
 
Probably because I was paying.

"The case isn't really closed," I said.
 
"Kirbo's still missing."

Lattner tilted back his head and took a drink of water.
 
His Adam's apple was the size of a golf ball.

"Just a manner of speaking," he said, setting his glass on the counter.
 
"It's an open case, sure, technically open.
 
But it might as well be closed.
 
No one's going to find that kid.
 
I've talked to his friends; they don't know where he went or what happened to him.
 
I've talked to his parents; they don't know either.
 
He hasn't used his credit cards, he hasn't phoned home, and he hasn't turned up on
America's Most Wanted
.
 
He doesn't want to be found, and no one's going to find him."

"I am," I said, and immediately regretted giving Lattner an opening.

He didn't hesitate to take it.
 
"Bullshit.
 
You couldn't find your fanny with a flashlight.
 
I've heard about you, Smith."

I didn't ask what he'd heard or where he'd heard it.
 
Galveston is a small town.
 
Word gets around.
 
What interested me was why he wanted to make me angry.

"That's pretty funny, that flashlight bit," I said.
 
"I remember laughing a lot when I heard it the first time.
 
About thirty years ago."

"I know you're a smart-ass, too, so you don't have to waste your time proving it.
 
And I know one other thing.
 
I know you have a habit of messing around in things that aren't any of your business.
 
I don't really care about that, not unless you start messing around in something I'm involved with, like the Kirbo case.
 
If you do that, you're really going to piss me off."

Our barbecue arrived about that time, and Lattner had worked himself up to such a state of self-righteous dudgeon that I figured he'd just get off the stool and leave.
 
I was wrong, though.
 
He turned his attention to the food and started to eat with a dedication to the job that even Nameless would have admired.

I didn't watch him for long.
 
I ate my own barbecue.
 
The sauce was just tangy enough, and the potato salad wasn't too sweet.
 
I took my time.
 
Lattner was finished long before I was, but for some reason he didn't leave.
 
He got up and walked around the drugstore, looking in all the display cases as if he might actually be interested in buying a black and white glossy of James Dean.

When I'd finished sopping up the last of the barbecue sauce with a piece of bread, Lattner came back over to the counter and sat beside me again.

"If that kid could have been found, I'd have found him," he said.
 
"And I'm twice the investigator that you are.
 
So why don't you just go back and sit in your little house and listen to your records and keep your nose where it belongs."

"Compact discs," I said.

That bothered him.
 
"Huh?"

"Compact discs, not records.
 
I don't play records; I play compact discs."

"I don't care if you play goddamn tiddlywinks.
 
I don't want you messing in my cases."

"You don't like me much, do you Lattner?"

"I don't like you at all."
 
He slid off the stool and started for the door.
 
Just before he got there, he turned back and said, "Thanks for the lunch."

I had to laugh at that.
 
The counter woman was picking up our plates, and she said, "Swell guy.
 
He a good friend of yours?"

"Not yet," I said.
 
"But he will be.
 
I have a way of winning people over."

She stacked my plate on top of Lattner's.
 
"I'll just bet you do," she said.

I
was pretty sure who Lattner had been talking to about me, a cop named Gerald Barnes.
 
He'd probably checked with Barnes after I'd called, knowing that I'd had dealings with Barnes on a couple of other cases, something that wasn't any big secret around the cop shop.
 
I'd thought Barnes had begun to develop a sort of grudging respect for me because of some of the work I'd done.
 
Obviously I'd been wrong, however, and I didn't think it would do me any good to try to get anything more out of Lattner.
 
He appeared to be the kind of cop who had no regard for people he considered amateurs, meaning anyone who didn't carry a badge.
 
I wasn't going to be able to impress him with a list of my successes.
 
All he was interested in were my failures, and there were more than enough of those.

I stood outside the drug store and thought for about a tenth of a second about walking down to The Strand and looking things over.
 
I could hear a band, and I knew that there was a parade every day about this time.
 
With an elephant or two, even.
 
Then I thought again about the crowds and started toward my car.
 

I passed a boy about ten gnawing on a giant turkey leg.
 
His father and mother walked along beside him, and their turkey legs were even bigger than his.
 
I wasn't quite sure exactly what the connection between Dickens and turkey legs was supposed to be, but they seemed to be enjoying them.
 
I've never been tempted to try one.

When I got to my truck, I saw that I was in luck.
 
No vindictive city employee had ticketed me.
 
I decided that since I was in the neighborhood, more or less, I'd drive by Sally Western's house and pay her a visit.
 
Sally had been around for a long time, and she knew as much as anyone in Galveston about what happened on the Island.
 
Also she enjoyed talking.
 
Maybe she'd heard something about Randall Kirbo.
 
There weren't many people who paid Sally a visit these days, and she was usually glad to see me, even if the only times I dropped by were when I needed information from her.

I stopped off at a liquor store and picked up a bottle of Sally's favorite wine — Mogen David.
 
Sally's family was among the Island's elite, and her personal fortune was somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty million dollars, but she had simple tastes, which was just as well for me.
 
I couldn't afford the kind of wine that most multi-millionaires no doubt preferred, and I wasn't even sure that the stores I went to would have it in stock.

When I got to Sally's house, I parked in the street and climbed the steps to her front door.
 
Almost as soon as I knocked the door was opened by John, the old black man who'd been working for Sally for as long as I remembered.
 
He wasn't as old as she was, however.
 
Hardly anyone was as old as Sally, who must have been getting close to a hundred.

"Hello, Mr. Truman," John said.

"Hello, John."
 
I handed him the wine.
 
"Is Miss Sally in today?"

"Yes, sir, she is.
 
She's in the parlor, and I know she'd be glad to see you."

He moved back to let me in, and I followed him to the parlor.
 
He always announced visitors, no matter how well Sally knew them.