When Old Men Die (26 page)

"I'll tell you what," I said.
 
"Why don't you let me take you to dinner tonight?
 
You could use a break.
 
Call your friend Barbara and tell her to look after the place."

Cathy smiled.
 
"You seem pretty sure she'll be willing to do that."

"Hey, you said she liked me."

"All right.
 
I'll see.
 
Call me later."

"You can count on it," I said.

W
ally
Zintner
wasn't glad to see me.
 
Neither was Dale Becker.
 
They were crowded into
Zintner's
little office, probably going over their strategy for finding Harry.

"You locate him yet?"
Zintner
asked.

"No.
 
Have you ever talked to Patrick Lytle about Harry?"

"Lytle?
 
Hell, no.
 
Dale and I are thinking of getting out of this whole damn mess.
 
We've wasted too much time on it already.
 
Let the dead bury their dead, I always say."

I'd never heard him say that, but that didn't mean he hadn't always said it to a lot of other people.
 
It wasn't like
Zintner
just to drop something, though.
 
He was a real bulldog when he got his teeth into something.

"What about your deal for the Retreat?" I asked.

"Hell, Smith, I wasn't cut out to be a big-time casino owner.
 
I'll leave that stuff to Donald Trump and stick to what I know.
 
I've got a pretty good business here."

"What about you, Dale?" I asked.

He gave me his best scowl.
 
"I got
nothin
' to say to you."

That was just fine with me.
 
And I thought I knew what was going on now.

"Minor got to you, didn't he?" I said.

Zintner
started to deny it, then changed his mind.

"Got to
us
," he said.
 
"I wasn't the whole show in this thing.
 
There were other investors."

I took it that the "other investors" didn't refer to Becker.
 
Zintner
would never have cut Dale in on something as big as the deal for the Retreat.

"How much did Minor pay you?" I asked.

"Enough,"
Zintner
said.

If he wasn't going to talk about it, that was all right with me.
 
I'd already found out more than I'd hoped to.
 
I knew now why Minor hadn't been following me.
 
He'd been too busy working out a deal between
Zintner
and his principals.
 
That didn't mean that Minor couldn't have killed Ro-Jo.
 
It might even mean that he'd already found Harry.

"What about Harry?" I asked.

"We can't find him,"
Zintner
said, and Becker nodded.

"And you don't care?"

"That was part of the deal,"
Zintner
said.
 
"Besides, I don't give a damn about Macklin now.
 
I don't have any point to make with Minor.
 
He and I are pals.
 
So if Harry's got a secret, let him keep it."

"Just tell me one thing.
 
Did Minor get Harry?"

Zintner's
voice was flat.
 
"He didn't say.
 
I didn't ask.
 
None of my business."

Becker nodded vigorously in agreement.
 
He obviously didn't like the idea of having to deal with Minor.
 
I wondered why.

"What about Ro-Jo?" I asked.

Zintner
lit a Camel.
 
Becker wrinkled his nose.
 
He wasn't a smoker; I'd forgotten that he had one good quality.

"I don't know anything about Ro-Jo,"
Zintner
said, a thin cloud of smoke floating in front of his eyes.

For some reason I didn't believe him.
 
Maybe it was because he wasn't a very good liar.
 
Dale was looking at the floor and fiddling with his earring.

I thought it was time to change the subject.
 
"I want to get into some bank records," I said.

"That's illegal,"
Zintner
told me, as if that was news.
 
"Unless you've got a court order."

"Yeah," Becker said.
 
"That's illegal."

I liked him better when he wasn't talking to me, but I didn't tell him that.

"Now that we all know it's illegal for me to get into the bank records, who do I talk to?" I said.
 
"And forget the court order.
 
I don't want to bring the police in on it.
 
I need a name."

"Johnny Bates,"
Zintner
said.

Another sign that I was slowing down.
 
I should have thought of Johnny myself.

K
ing Vidor, so I've been told, was a famous director in the early days of Hollywood, and for all I know it's true.
 
You couldn't prove it by me, though.
 
The only movie of his that I've ever seen was something called
Solomon and Sheba
, way back when I was a kid.
 
It was made long after Vidor's glory days, and what I mainly remember is Gina
Lollobrigida
.
 
She made quite an impression on me, but it wasn't a result of the way she took direction.

Anyway, Hollywood nostalgia aside, Vidor was born in Galveston, and his house is still here on the corner of 17th and Winnie.
 
Johnny Bates lives less than a block away.

Bates is a strange guy, even for a city like Galveston, which has its share of strange guys.
 
He's about my age, but he looks as if he went to sleep in 1968 and just woke up -- shaggy black hair and beard, going gray now, with a hat to cover his bald spot, bell bottom jeans, and usually a paisley shirt.
 

He was wearing one of the shirts when he came to the door.
 
I don't know where he gets them.
 
Maybe at the Goodwill outlet.

His latest toy was a flotation tank, which he showed me after inviting me in.
 
The tank took up most of his living room.

"You really should try it out, Tru," he said.
 
He grew up in Galveston, but he's lost most of his Texas accent.
 
He spent a lot time somewhere in the Northeast.
 
"You just get in it and float."

Though Johnny said that the tank was made of fiberglass and lined with Styrofoam, the thing looked a lot like a coffin to me, and I didn't like it, especially not just after having seen
Braddy
Macklin laid to rest.

"I can float in the Gulf," I said.

"Not like this.
 
No light, no sound, water exactly ninety-three point five degrees.
 
There's nothing like it."

I couldn't disagree with that.
 
"What about sanitation?"

"The water's salt water," he said, slapping the side of the tank with his hand.
 
"There's nearly a thousand pounds of Epsom salts dissolved in there.
 
Look at this."
 
He pulled me around to the side.
 
"Here's the filter and pump, and the water's purified by an ultra-violet process.
 
No sanitation problems at all; I guarantee it.
 
You could float a dead dog in there and then get in yourself without any risk."

A dead dog?
 
"Sounds great," I said.

"It is.
 
It really is.
 
And you look like you could use it, if you don't mind my saying so.
 
You look like you did after the game with Dickinson where you gained nearly two hundred yards before they decided to have the whole team maul you.
 
Why don't you give the tank a try?
 
You'll be so relaxed, you won't believe it."

He was absolutely right.
 
There was no way I could believe lying in hot water in absolute darkness would relax me.
 
I'd probably come screaming out in ten minutes.
 
Or less.

"No thanks," I said.
 
"I need your help with something else, though."

He looked disappointed that I wouldn't try his tank, but he was glad to help out.
 
He told me that we should sit down and talk things over.
 

I didn't really want to sit down.
 
Johnny was the only person I'd ever known who actually had beanbag chairs.
 
But he flopped in one, so I fell into the other.

"So what's up?" he asked when he got comfortable.

"I need to look at some bank records," I said.

He didn't even blink.
 
"Current?" he asked.
 
"Or something older?"

"Both, I think."

"What's the bank?"

I told him that I didn't know.
 
"But it's in Galveston.
 
I'm pretty sure of that."

He shifted in the chair.
 
I wondered if he was as uncomfortable as I was, but he probably wasn't.

"Not knowing the bank makes it a little trickier," he said, "but I can probably manage it.
 
Whose records did you want to see?"

That was what I liked about Johnny.
 
He got right to the point.
 
No complaints about the difficulty of the job, no whining about legality or the impossibility of doing what I asked.
 
And the main thing was that he would produce results.
 
All he asked in return was that you didn't ask how he did it.

He'd been the same way for as long as I'd known him.
 
In high school, if you wanted a copy of Friday's chemistry test, Johnny could get you one.
 
If you needed tickets to see the Rolling Stones, Johnny could get them.
 
If you parked in the wrong place in Houston and your car was impounded, Johnny could get it out.
 
And it wouldn't cost you a cent.
 
If you were his buddy, nothing ever cost you, not even the tickets to see the Stones.

He always insisted that you not inquire into his methods.
 
As far as I know, no one ever did.
 
Everyone was too happy with the results to care how they were obtained.

Later in life, when Johnny went North, or so the stories went, he'd put his skills to work for various organizations on the shady side of the street and made a lot of money doing it.
 
Or possibly he worked for some super-secret government agency.
 
It depended on who you talked to.
 
All of that may have been legend, but no one ever asked Johnny about it.
 
That was always part of the deal.

When he returned to Galveston, he had no visible means of support, but he lived very well indeed.
 
I'd heard all sorts of rumors: that he was living off his ill-gotten gains; that he was running several 900 number hot-lines that specialized in sex talk; that he was still working for the super-secret agency.
 
I don't know that any of those things was true.
 
Maybe they were all true.
 
I didn't really care.
 
All I wanted was information, and Johnny was the one who could get it if anyone could.

Among his many skills was his computer expertise.
 
He was a hacker from way back, and I was pretty sure that with his equipment he could tap into the records of most any bank he wanted to.
 
He got a new computer about every six months, never having been one to let technology get even a half step ahead of him.

Some of the records I wanted might not be on the bank's computer, however.
 
They were probably too old.

"No problem," Johnny said, lifting his hat and running a hand over his bald spot.
 
"They'll be on microfilm or fiche or something like that.
 
All I have to do is locate the right bank.
 
That'll take a little longer, but not much."

What he meant was that he'd have to get to the records in person, but I had no doubt that he could do it.
 
If he chose to, he could look like a bank examiner or an oil millionaire from Odessa depending on what the occasion demanded.
 
And he had the credentials to go along with the look.
 
As the Texas expression has it, he cleaned up real good.