When Old Men Die (8 page)

"Let's get back to the heavy hitters.
 
He probably didn't mean that they had a .300 average.
 
You have any thoughts on that?"

"You can probably guess."

I could, of course.
 
As long as the uncles were in power, Galveston had never worried about organized crime getting involved in the gambling.
 
The uncles didn't count.
 
They were local boys, and local boys weren't considered to be organized crime because they had no connections to the mob.
 
The uncles were criminals, or at least they were involved in highly illegal activities, but they were hometown boys and that made everything all right.

The respectable locals, the rich families who traced their ancestry back to the previous century and their fortunes back to shipping, banking, and insurance, were comfortable with the uncles.
 
They brought in big-name Hollywood entertainers, they kept the town's secrets, and they avoided messy situations that would bring bad publicity to themselves or the community.

There were scandals of course.
 
The gambling and prostitution were an open secret all over the state.
 
But most Texans regard themselves as independent thinkers who don't mind a little illegality as long as it's under control.
 
They were willing to leave Galveston alone to go its own way, or most of them were.

It was a fine situation for the old families, who regarded themselves as the real rulers of the city.
 
The uncles were keeping the Island alive.
 
Houston had taken over most of the shipping, and while the banking and insurance money was still in town, it wasn't flashy and didn't provide many jobs.
 
Gambling did, though of course the patriarchs avoided any involvement in it.
 
It wouldn't have been seemly.
 
In fact, it would have been downright disastrous for their standing in the community.

So everyone was happy with the way things were, except of course for a few preachers and do-gooders and others opposed to gambling on moral grounds and the big boys in the East, who weren't getting any cut of the action.
 
But the uncles had the muscle to keep out any and all competition.
 

The uncles couldn't keep the Texas Rangers out forever, though, and when the state eventually got an attorney general who listened to the do-gooders and took his office seriously enough to include cleaning up the Island in his duties, the uncles reluctantly went out of business.

Now it appeared that gambling might make a return, and if it did, there would be huge sums of money involved, money that would attract a lot of types that the uncles had kept well away from Galveston during their watch.
 
Unfortunately the uncles had been gone for a long time.

"First Harry and now
Braddy
," Dino said.
 
"What's going on here, Tru?"

"I don't know.
 
I was hoping you could tell me, but you say you don't know any more than I do."

"It's the truth, damn it.
 
I was just worried about Harry.
 
I didn't know anybody was going to get killed, much less
Braddy
Macklin.
 
What are you going to do about it?"

"You told me this was going to be easy," I said, feeling a little sorry for myself.

Dino didn't sympathize.
 
"OK, so I lied.
 
But I didn't know I was lying at the time I asked you to look for Harry.
 
Are you gonna help me out here or not?"

I wanted to say no.
 
I wanted to go home and read my book and listen to old songs on the CD player.

Instead, I said, "I'll keep looking for Harry."

"Great.
 
Maybe you
oughta
talk to Cathy Macklin, too."

"
Braddy's
daughter?"

"Yeah.
 
If there's some connection between Harry's going missing and
Braddy
getting shot, maybe she knows something."

Maybe she did, but I didn't think this was the time to talk to her.

"You can pay a sympathy call," Dino said.

"She's probably at the funeral home, making arrangements.
 
I don't want to bother her now.
 
Anyway, you seem to know her.
 
Why don't you go see her?"

Dino looked around the room, at his TV set, his VCR, his new Super Nintendo system.
 
He didn't look at the curtained windows or the door.

"I don't get out much," he said.

"You found me on the pier yesterday," I pointed out.

"Yeah, and I went out to the house and fed your cat."

"Quite a day, all right," I said.
 
"You should try it more often.
 
I bet Evelyn would like to see you more than she does.
 
Maybe even eat at Gaido's or
some place
like that."

Dino squirmed on the couch.
 
He wasn't like me.
 
He didn't eat out, not even without Ray there to fix his meals for him.
 
He ate a lot of TV dinners and canned chili.

"I don't think she'd like that," he said finally.
 
"People would talk about us."

"Nobody knows where she used to work," I said.

"Somebody might.
 
Nobody ever forgets anything on this Island."

"Why don't you ask her if it would bother her to be seen in public with you?"

Dino stood up.
 
"How'd we get on this subject?"

"We were talking about you going to see the Macklin woman.
 
What was her name?"

"Cathy.
 
I don't want to go."

"It would be the right thing to do.
 
Braddy
Macklin was a friend of yours.
 
He worked for your uncles."

He sucked in a breath and let it out very slowly.
 
"All right.
 
I'll go.
 
But you gotta go with me."

I decided to humor him.
 
"All right."

"But not until after the game," he said, reaching down for a remote.

He punched a button and the TV set came to life.
 
The Cowboys were lined up on somebody's forty yard line, and a little digital clock in the lower right corner was ticking off the seconds left in the half.

"I'm going to look for Ro-Jo some more," I said.
 
"I left your number with someone who might see him.
 
If he calls, get the information."

Dino was watching the TV intently.
 
It was almost as if he'd forgotten that I was there.

"Yeah," he said.
 
"I'll do that."

"I'll be back in a couple of hours," I said.

"Right.
 
I'll be ready."

I wondered if he really would.

T
here was a strong breeze blowing in off the Gulf, and I could smell the strong seaweed odor of the beach.
 
The clouds were still thick and gray.
 
I drove the Jeep through the Sunday traffic along Broadway.
 
Most of the tourists would be going to The Strand, headed for the Island's restored nineteenth-century buildings filled with dress shops, antique stores, and restaurants.
 
Or maybe they'd go to Pier 21 and watch the slide show about the Great Storm of 1900.

I kept an eye out for Ro-Jo.
 
He wasn't anywhere in sight.
 
I drove along the seawall and checked out the alleys behind the motels, but he wasn't there either, and he wasn't behind any of the supermarkets or the smaller mom and pop grocery stores.

There were a few people on the beach, but most of them looked cold and miserable.
 
The waves were white capping and slamming into the marble jetties.
 
The only happy creatures were a dog who was chasing an inflated ball that was bobbing in the rough surf, a kid who was throwing corn chips in the air to some screaming gulls, and the gulls who were getting fed.

I wondered about the cats.
 
It wasn't high tide yet, but there hadn't been any sign of them at the 61st Street Pier.

There was no sign of Ro-Jo, either.
 
He had disappeared just as effectively as Harry had, and I wondered if it might be for the same reason.
 
There were plenty of places either of them could be, but I was sure now that The Island Retreat wasn't one of them.
 
I'd give a lot to know why Ro-Jo had mentioned it to me, but I'd have to find him before I could get the answer to that one.

I drove out toward the house where I was living.
 
It was surprising how soon after leaving the seawall I was surrounded by reminders of the Island's past.
 
Where once there had been ranches there were
now
small pastures, but cattle still grazed there.
 
Every now and then you could even see a corral full of horses and someone riding.

I thought that Ro-Jo might have found someone to take him in.
 
He might even have had straight friends with whom he could live for weeks.
 
I didn't know.
 
He was just someone I saw and talked to occasionally.
 

Locating people who live an average existence is a lot easier that finding someone like Ro-Jo.
 
Most of us leave traces.
 
We use credit cards or the telephone.
 
We have employers and pay taxes.
 
We use the services of the state, the city, and the county.
 
We engage in all sorts of transactions that are recorded in one place or another.

But not people like Ro-Jo.
 
He might have gone to school at one time or another, but I couldn't find him through academic records because I didn't know what his real first name was, and as far as I knew he didn't even
have
a last name.
 
If he'd ever paid taxes, which I doubted, it had been a long time ago.
 
He didn't use the homeless shelters, and he didn't have credit cards.
 
He didn't use the phone.
 
Who would he call?
 
In some ways it was as if he didn't even exist.
 
Harry was the same way, only worse, because he was even farther removed from the system than Ro-Jo.

When it was time to go back to Dino's I was no farther along than I had been when I left, but it occurred to me that there was something else I could do.

I could go to the police.

I knew that Dino would blow up if I suggested that idea to him.
 
He had his contacts on the force, but he didn't deal with the cops officially.
 
He used me for that.

Not so long ago, Evelyn had gotten mixed up in a murder by being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and Dino had asked me to look into it.
 
I'd talked to a cop named Gerald Barnes, who knew me from the case involving Dino's daughter.
 
Barnes wasn't especially fond of me, but I'd helped him out a little, so he'd probably talk to me if he was on duty.
 

Dino wouldn't mind waiting a little longer.
 
In fact, he'd probably be glad for the delay.

T
he Galveston Police Department is located behind the city hall in a square, unattractive building with a lot of glass and a few scrawny oaks in front.
 
All the lower limbs have been trimmed off the oaks, maybe so that no one can climb them and peek into the second floor, which is solid with windows.
 
The building is on 26th and Avenue H.
 
Or Ball Street.
 
Quite a few Galveston streets have more than one name.

There's a stop sign on Avenue H that has another sign under it, white with black letters:

LOOK BOTH WAYS

I'd never been sure whether the sign was there to remind the cops or the average driver, though it didn't say much for the mentality of either.
 
Maybe it was there because the fire station was right on the other side of the police department and the city was trying to reduce its liability if someone got flattened by a fire truck.

I would have parked in the lot by the police department, but all the places are reserved for the people who work there.
 
Of course most of the spots were vacant because it was Sunday, but I wouldn't have been surprised if the cops had come out and ticketed the Jeep had I been so bold as to park it where it didn't belong.
 
I parked on the street.

The inside of the building smelled of cigarette smoke.
 
Two cops were in the hall smoking and looked at me but didn't say anything.
 
Barnes was at his desk fiddling with some papers when I walked in.
 
There weren't a lot of papers to fiddle with, since Barnes kept his desk a lot neater than most cops.
 
The top was nearly bare.
 
There wasn't even an ashtray, and there were no cigarette burns along the edges.
 
Unlike most cops, Barnes didn't smoke, and apparently he didn't allow the alleged lawbreakers to smoke at his desk.
 
There was a half-full coffee cup, a couple of chewed yellow pencils, a few papers.
 
That was it.