When Old Men Die (4 page)

It's nice to be optimistic, but I'd put my money on that part of the beach being as clean the day after the storm as if it had been swept by a broom.
 
Of course I've been wrong before.

At the far end of the Island was
Apffel
Park, which at the right time of the year would be covered with tourists and day trippers from Houston.
 
There probably wouldn't be many people there now, especially at this time of day.
 
After passing
Apffel
Park, you came to the Bolivar Roads; there was no more island left.

The place I was looking for was on the town side of East Beach and within sight of the high-rise condos, but then so is everything else on that end of the Island.

The building was about a hundred yards off the street, right on the edge of a lagoon.
 
There was an oyster shell road running down toward it through the tall sea oats, but the road was blocked by a rusty gate.
 
There was a sign hanging on the gate.
 
The sign was white with black letters and spotted with rust.
 
It said:

KEEP OUT

U. S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

If I went past the gates, would I be considered a trespasser?
 
I didn't see how.
 
After all, the government is the people, isn't it?
 
And I was one of the people.
 
So this was
my
property, wasn't it?
 
My tax dollars at work, and all that.

I had a strong feeling that if I were caught, no judge in the country would buy that line of reasoning, but I didn't think I'd be caught.
 
There certainly wouldn't be a guard.
 
No one cared about that crumbling old hunk of concrete.
 
Someone had probably put the sign up because a lawyer had given a speech about liability in case of accident, but I didn't intend to hurt myself and sue.

I looked around for a place to park the Jeep.
 
Parking right in front of the gate seemed a little too obvious.
 
Someone was sure to see the Jeep and wonder what it was doing there.
 
I could have driven to one of the condos, but their parking places were probably guarded a lot more tightly than the building was.

There was a paved road leading down to the condos located not too far from the old lab building, and just off the road there was a small pool.
 
Ruts led through the sea oats to the pool, where someone had driven down to it, maybe to cast a net for bait.

There was no gate across these ruts, so I could drive down to the pool and leave the Jeep, hoping that anyone who saw the Jeep would assume that a fisherman was somewhere around, even if I wasn't in sight.
 
It was nearly dark now, and I didn't think anyone would see the Jeep down there anyway.

A big heron flew up off the pool when I drove up and sailed off gracefully, looking startlingly white against the darkening sky.
 
I sat and watched him for a minute before taking my Mag-
Lite
from under the passenger seat and getting out of the Jeep.

As I walked through the nearly head-high sea oats toward where I hoped Harry was hiding out, I wondered who besides me was looking for him.

And I wondered why.

I also wondered if Dino had leveled with me.
 
If he'd been lying, it wouldn't have been the first time.
 
When he'd asked me to look for Sharon, he'd told me that she was the daughter of "a friend."
 
Which was true, if you considered that Evelyn was his friend.
 
Still, he should have told me that Sharon was his daughter as well.
 
Eventually he did, of course, but he'd held back in the beginning.

It was a shame that a man couldn't trust even an old friend to be truthful.

Harry must have known someone was looking for him.
 
That was no doubt why he had disappeared in the first place.
 
I just couldn't imagine what anyone would want with him.
 
He didn't have any money, at least not that I knew about.
 
For that matter, he didn't have anything, not unless he'd found something in the dumpsters or in the alleys.
 
If he'd done that, he hadn't told Ro-Jo about it.

Or maybe he had.
 
Maybe Ro-Jo had taken it from him and quietly disposed of him.
 
That was possible, but not very likely.
 
Ro-Jo was a peaceable sort.
 
He would take money from me for information, but he wasn't aggressive.
 
He didn't like to confront people.
 
He wouldn't even kick a cat.

The oats slapped against my jeans, and I could hear the gentle sound of the surf on the beach.
 
It was soothing and peaceful, a little like listening to a New Age relaxation tape.

There was still a faint glow of the sunset in the west, but the sky overhead was dark and a few stars were breaking through.
 
The dark gray bulk of the building loomed high on its concrete stilts in front of me.

When I reached it, I could see what Ro-Jo meant when he said it wasn't much of a place.
 
Whatever purpose the building had once served, it was now only a skeleton.
 
There was enough light for me to see that the outside walls were solid, but the windows had quite a few missing panes, and a lot of the ones that weren't missing were broken.
 
There were a couple of tall antennas sticking up from the roof, but I suspected that there was no receiving or sending equipment inside.

The place certainly didn't look very inviting, but maybe that was just the kind of place that Harry would look for if he wanted to hole up from the weather.
 
He probably wouldn't have much company.

I turned on the flashlight and shined it around the stilts.
 
Most of them were in the shallow water of the lagoon, though a couple in front were on relatively dry land. There was no sign of Harry's shopping cart, but he would probably have stowed that elsewhere.
 
Maybe he had even managed to get it inside the building somehow.

On the side of the building there was a rickety wooden stairway leading upward.
 
The salty air had just about rotted it away, and I wondered if it would hold my weight or if one of the steps would crumble away to nothing when I put my foot on it.
 
Or maybe it would just break in two.

There was one way to find out.
 
I squished over to the stairs and started climbing.

I got up them with no trouble at all.
 
They were still solid, no matter how bad they looked, but they squealed when I put my weight on them.
 
If Harry was there, he would know I was coming.

Or he would know that someone was coming, though he wouldn't know who it was.
 
I thought I'd better tell him so he wouldn't try to hide and make it harder for me to find him.

"Harry!" I said.
 
"Are you up there?
 
This is Truman Smith."

There was no answer, but I thought I heard something scratching around on the concrete floor.
 
It could have been Harry, or it could have been a cat.
 
It could have been nearly anything.

"Harry?
 
You up there?"

Still no answer, but I was beginning to feel a little uneasy.
 
Maybe Harry wasn't there, but maybe whoever else was looking for him was.
 
I was sorry I'd ever let Dino and Evelyn talk me into this, but I kept on climbing the stair.

When I got to the top, I called out again.
 
"Harry?"

My own voice echoed back off a concrete wall, but aside from that there was no sound at all except the surf and the wind in sea oats.
 
Somewhere along the beach a car horn honked.

I went inside the building and found myself standing in a large open room with two doors leading into the rest of the building.
 
There was some trash over in one corner, and I shined the flashlight on it:
 
some aluminum soft drink cans, a few old newspapers, and what looked like some flat tins that might have held tuna or cat food.
 
Harry's kind of meal.
 
Maybe he was there after all.
 
I turned off the flashlight.

"Harry?" I said.

There was a soft scratching from somewhere farther inside the building.
 
I walked to the far end and went through one of the doors.

The next room was very dark, and there was no one in there either.
 
There was also no trash on the floor.
 
I crossed it and went through another door.

As soon as I stepped through there was a soft
pop
and sparks jumped from the side of the doorway near my head.
 
A sliver of concrete hit me in the ear.

I dived forward and hit the floor, sliding along it, scraping my hands and tearing a hole in the knee of my jeans.
 
I felt a sharp pain in my right knee, which meant that the old football injury hadn't taken the fall too well.
 
Just another thing to thank Dino for the next time I saw him.
 
Assuming that I ever saw him again.

The next shot went over my head and hit the wall behind me.

The good news was that I still had my flashlight, which might have been fine if there had been any use for it.

There was even more good news.
 
It was extremely dark in the room where I was lying, and I was wearing a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans, which would make me very hard to see.

But that was pretty much the end of the good news.
 
The bad news was that I was trapped.

I was also scared.
 
I didn't like being shot at.
 
It made my palms sweat, and it gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.
 
It's pretty depressing to know that someone is trying to kill you and that there's not much you can do about it.

I might have felt a little better about things if I'd been carrying a pistol of my own, but I wasn't.
 
So there wasn't much I could do except lie there on the cold concrete floor and sweat.
 
And wait.

I
t might come as a surprise to a lot of people to know that I wasn't carrying a handgun, but contrary to popular belief, not everyone in Texas goes around armed to the teeth.

In fact, there are laws against that sort of thing, though the state legislature is beginning to make an effort to change that.
 
Sometimes it seems that there are members of that august body who would like to see the citizens all walking down the streets with Colt's Peacemakers in holsters strapped around their waists.

But until that day comes, it's illegal to carry a pistol.
 
You can own one, or a hundred for that matter, which is fairly interesting, since in Texas owning six or more devices defined as "sexual apparatus" is a serious criminal offense.

Ever hear of anyone being killed with a dildo?
 
OK, maybe it's possible, but as far as I know I never heard of a drive-by
dildoing
.

At any rate, in Texas you can own as many pistols as you please, and you can carry a pistol in your car as long as you keep it locked in the trunk or the glove box.
 
But it's illegal take it out of the car and carry it unless you're on your own property.

So, being a law-abiding citizen, I didn't have a pistol.
 
I hadn't thought I'd need one.

I didn't even have a dildo.

I had a flashlight, and maybe I could do something with that, after all.
 
I wondered if it would be a good idea to try explaining the Texas firearms laws to whoever was shooting at me before I tried the thing with the flashlight.

Probably not.

There was another
pop
and another chunk of concrete chip flew out of the wall.
 
This
pop
was louder.
 
The silencer was tearing apart.

Whoever was doing the shooting was in the next room, and he was shooting through what must have once been a window.
 
But it was so dark that I couldn't see a thing, not even a shadow.
 
Just a muzzle flash.

The shooter couldn't see me either, though.
 
He kept shooting high, but I was afraid that sooner or later he'd catch on and aim lower.
 
That made me sweat a little harder.
 
I had to do something before I got shot, and I had to do it now.

The flashlight was all I had, so I turned it on and rolled it across the floor.