When Old Men Die (19 page)

"Were you talking to people about gambling because you oppose it on moral grounds, or were you working for someone?"

"That's none of your business, is it."

It wasn't a question, and I didn't feel like arguing the point.
 
My head hurt too much.
 
I stood up.

"I can find out," I said.
 
"I can find out if you've seen Macklin, too."

He sat in his chair and looked at me.
 
"Go ahead and find out.
 
I don't give a damn."

Maybe he didn't.
 
I left him sitting there, another old man who hadn't escaped the past.
 
He could call it ancient history, but it still meant something to him, just like it meant something to most of us in one way or another.
 
I was pretty sure I had a lot to do with Harry and Mercer and what had happened to both of them.

But Hobart was still a tough old buzzard, and he wasn't going to tell me any more than he already had, not without some powerful coercion.
 
I didn't feel like coercing anyone.
 
I just felt like going home and taking a long, hot shower and getting into bed.

I let Hobart's screen door slam behind me as I left.
 
I walked down his steps to the Jeep and drove home.

O
f course I couldn't go home and take a shower and go to bed.
 
Or I could have, but that wasn't on the program yet.
 
I had something else to do first.
 
I had to go to The Island Retreat.

I'd entered two different deserted buildings in the last two nights, and I'd been beaten up and shot at both times.
 
As a result, I'd developed terrific headaches.
 
The one I had now had switched from "Teen Beat" to the intro to "Pipeline" by the
Chantays
.

I stopped at a convenience store and bought a bottle of ibuprofen and a can of Big Red to wash a couple of the tablets down with.
 
I sat in the parking lot for a while after I'd finished the Big Red, and my head eventually began to feel better.
 
I wasn't sure whether to credit the ibuprofen or the soft drink.
 
I've often thought that Big Red might have secret curative powers.
 
Maybe there had been an article on the subject in
Weekly World News
.
 
If there hadn't been, there probably would be.

I drove to the seawall and parked the Jeep well down the street from the Retreat.
 
I walked past a restaurant and a gift shop, both closed.
 
The gift shop had piles of conch shells wired on either side of its entrance.
 
No one had ever found shells like that around Galveston.

Near the gift shop there was a set of concrete steps built into the seawall. I went down the steps and walked along the narrow strip of beach to the Retreat.

Third pole on the west side, was what Ro-Jo had said.
 
I'd have to wade a little, but not much.

Thinking about what Ro-Jo had said to me reminded me that he was dead.
 
Maybe because of the bump on my head, I hadn't really accepted that fact before, in spite of seeing his body on the warehouse floor.

If there was ever anyone who didn't deserve to die like that, Ro-Jo was the one.
 
He was just a simple guy who liked to keep to himself.
 
Maybe he lived what politically correct people liked to call an "alternative lifestyle," but he didn't bother anyone.
 
He just pushed his shopping cart and kept out of the way.
 
I hoped I'd be able to find the person who'd killed him.
 
Maybe I should have tried harder to shoot him while I had the chance.

I waded out into the Gulf until it was lapping around my calves.
 
I could feel it sucking at my shoes as it pulled back from the shore.
 
The water was cold, but not so cold that I couldn't stand it.

I didn't feel a lot like trying to climb up the pier leg that Ro-Jo had recommended, but there were cross braces at easy intervals.
 
If Harry could climb it, so could I.

Of course, I didn't have any proof that Harry had climbed it.
 
I was just taking Ro-Jo's word for that.

I grabbed the first crosspiece and pulled myself up.
 
My wet jeans stuck clammily to my leg, and the breeze from the Gulf turned everything below my knee into an icicle.
 
Luckily, it didn't take me long to get to the top of the pier.

I could see the lights of the occasional car that passed along Seawall Boulevard, but no one could see me.
 
I was just a part of the pier.
 
Or so I hoped.

I wrapped one arm around the pole I was hanging onto and pounded on the floor of the Retreat with my right hand.
 
At first I thought that I was going to have to climb right back down, but then I felt something give.

I pushed upward and a section of floorboard moved.
 
After that it was easy.
 
I shoved the board aside and pulled myself through the space that I'd made.
 
In a couple of seconds I was sitting on the floor of the Retreat, my legs dangling down underneath.

It was even darker in the Retreat than it had been in the warehouse, if that was possible.
 
I wished I had the Mag-
Lite
.

I pulled the Mauser out of my waistband, and for a few minutes I just sat and listened.
 
I could hear the Gulf swirling under the pier, the wind blowing around the old building, and the cars on the street.
 
That was all.

Of course I hadn't heard the guy in the warehouse either, but somehow the Retreat
felt
empty.
 
It was an almost spooky feeling, as if I were alone with the ghosts of the uncles and their laughing customers.
 
I could imagine the spinning roulette wheel, the clang of the old slots, the rattling of dice.
 
Or maybe that was just my headache.
 
I pulled my feet inside the building and stood up.

I tried feeling my way around.
 
There was nothing in the room with me, no furniture of any kind.
 
That wasn't surprising. This would have been the main entrance.
 
The tables would be farther back.
 
I wasn't sure whether Macklin had been shot here, but I thought not.
 
And that was why the cops hadn't found the loose floorboard.

I'd found it, but I don't know what else I had expected to find, except maybe Harry.

He wasn't there, however.
 

No one was.

I fumbled and stumbled through a couple of the other rooms, but I found nothing of importance.
 
I couldn't see well enough, though there was a little light coming in through cracks around the boards that covered the windows.

Before I left, I sat on a chair that was covered with a plastic drop cloth and tried to make some sense of everything that had happened and that I'd learned since Dino found me on the fishing pier.

Nothing came of the effort.
 
My head was throbbing too hard.
 
Preston Epps was doing "Bongo Rock."

I went back to the front of the Retreat, dropped down through the hole, and climbed down to the beach.

Now I could go home.

W
hen I woke up the next morning, Nameless was standing on my chest, looking me straight in the eyes.
 
He'd probably sneaked up there to suck my breath, as cats are reputed to do, but I'd cleverly foiled him by waking up.

"I'm onto you," I said.

He started purring.
 
He'd always been good at playing innocent, though he'd never managed to
look
that way.
 
I shoved him off my chest and got up.

That was my first mistake of the day.
 
When my feet touched the floor, a shock ran through my legs, up my torso, through my neck, and right to the top of my head.
 
I touched the knot on the back.
 
It didn't feel any bigger than it had the night before; it didn't feel any smaller, either.
 
My ear wasn't quite as tender, however.

I fed Nameless, which caused even more purring, and I decided he would never suck my breath.
 
If he killed me, who'd feed him?
 
Dino might, but Nameless couldn't count on that.

I hoped Nameless could reason that out for himself.
 
I'd read somewhere that a cat had a brain the size of a marble.
 
That didn't allow a lot of room for reasoning capabilities.

I cleaned up and went for a run.
 
It was going to be a nice day.
 
The rain was gone, the sun was bright, and the gulls were sailing overhead, hoping that I might have couple of
Cheetoes
or something equally wonderful to toss them.
 
I didn't, but they occasionally glided down close to me just to make sure, begging and squalling.

I liked the sun and the gulls, so it was too bad that every other step I took threatened to cause the top of my head to go flying off.
 
I ran only a couple of miles and went back to the house.
 
There was no need to torture myself.

I ate some cereal and read the newspaper.
 
There was no mention of Ro-Jo, but it was a Houston paper.
 
Houston doesn't report much Galveston news.

I went back to the bedroom and set the CD player to shuffling the Elvis discs.
 
Elvis started in on "I Need Your Love Tonight" while I tried to do a better job of sorting things out than I had the previous evening.
 
It was a little like trying to work a fifteen hundred piece jigsaw puzzle with no picture to guide me, but I kept it up until some things began to fall into place.

One thing was certain:
 
Harry had disappeared.
 
Ro-Jo, who was now dead, had told me a couple of places where Harry might be, but Harry wasn't there.
 
I'd probably never know, now, whether Ro-Jo had steered me to those places because he really believed Harry might be there, or because he'd steered someone else there and he thought it might be fun if the two of us got together.
 
I guess it didn't matter much.

The next thing I knew for sure was that someone else was looking for Harry.
 
The question was why.
 
Had Harry witnessed the murder of
Braddy
Macklin?
 
If that was true, and it seemed to be at least a good possibility, then my question was answered.

But that brought up another couple of questions.
 
Who had killed Macklin?
 
And why?

And how was Patrick Lytle mixed up in all this?
 
He said he wanted to find Harry, but his reasons didn't impress me.
 
What about his wife and her gambling winnings?

And then there was Lawrence Hobart.
 
The Hammer.
 
Working to keep gambling from returning to the Island.
 
Who was he working for?
 
As Macklin's old enemy, he had a good enough reason to kill him, but had he?
 
He seemed mean enough.

Alex Minor was another question mark.
 
I suspected that he represented the interests that Dino's uncles had successfully kept off the Island while they were running things, but what if I was wrong about him?
 
What if he was really what he said he was?
 
Stranger things had happened.
 
Not to me, however.

I had watched for him last night, but I'd never had the sense that I was being followed.
 
Of course, it could have been Minor in the warehouse.
 
He might have gotten there ahead of me.
 
Ro-Jo's killer was big enough to be Minor, but for some reason I didn't think Minor was the man I'd fought.

What really worried me was the question of whether Dino was being straight with me.
 
Wouldn't he be the logical person to bring back gambling?
 
Surely he must now and then feel a little stirring of memory and desire when he thought about what his uncles had meant to the Island.
 
Was he the one who'd been backing
Braddy
Macklin?

Added to all that there was the nagging feeling that somewhere in all of that there was something that I'd missed, some connection that would clear things up a little if I could just pin it down and look at it.

Naturally, I couldn't.

All that thinking made my head hurt even more.
 
Even Elvis singing "Don't" wasn't helping.
 
I turned off the CD player and went back into the kitchen.
 
I hadn't read the comics yet.
 
Maybe "Calvin and Hobbes" would inspire me.