by Bill Crider
When Old Men Die
A Truman Smith Mystery
By Bill Crider
First Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Copyright 2011 by Bill Crider
Copy-edited by Kurt Criscione
Cover Design by David Dodd
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ALSO FROM BILL CRIDER & CROSSROAD PRESS:
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Blood Dreams
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Just Before Dark
Keepers of the Beast
Rest in Peace
AS BILL CRIDER:
A Time for Hanging
Medicine Show
Ryan Rides Back
Nighttime is the Right Time
Dead on the Island
One
In the winter, the Gulf Coast Pier closes at five in the afternoon, so I figured I had another half hour to fish before I started gathering up my gear. I wouldn't have to worry about taking home any fish, since I hadn't even gotten a nibble. That was all right. I hadn't really expected to.
It was a beautiful January day on Galveston Island, a Saturday, fifty degrees and sunny, with a cloudless sky the color of that soft light blue that General Motors used on a lot of 1957 Buicks. But in spite of the nice weather, there was only one other person on the pier with me, a weather-beaten old man who'd probably been fishing somewhere along the seawall every day for the past thirty years.
The reason the pier was practically deserted was simple: the fish just weren't biting, in spite of the weather.
I got up off the bench where I'd been sitting for most of the afternoon and reading a hardback copy of Look Homeward, Angel while occasionally glancing at the tips of my rods in case there was any activity. I asked the old man if he wanted the rest of the bait shrimp in my blue plastic bucket, but he didn't. I poured them over the side of the pier and started reeling in one of my lines.
That was when I looked down toward the entrance to the pier and saw Dino walking toward me. I might have been more surprised to see Jimmy Hoffa, but not much. Dino didn't get out often. And he especially didn't get out over the water. He might have seen the Gulf from his car window recently, but I would've bet he hadn't been on a pier in twenty years. A lot of the natives of the Island like to pretend that they never see the Gulf. Maybe they never do.
"Jesus Christ, Tru," Dino said when he got to my bench. "I had to pay three bucks just to walk out here to talk to you. Why don't you just fish off one of the rock jetties?"
"They don't have benches," I said.
"Yeah. And besides that, I'm missing Geraldo. Don't you ever watch TV?"
I stopped reeling and looked at him. "Not as much as you do."
I have my escapes from reality, and Dino has his. For a long time, his involved watching soap operas, but lately he's given them up for talk shows. He watches Sally, Phil, Geraldo, Jerry, Montel, Rolanda, Ricki, Vicki, and some others that I don't even know about. I think he even watches one in Spanish. But he's not watching as much as he's used to. He gets out of the house more.
I reeled in the rest of the line, took the beat-up shrimp off the hook, and tossed it in the Gulf. I wiped my hands on my sweatshirt and started reeling in the other line. Dino didn't mention TV again; he just sat on the bench and watched me.
"Not much luck, huh?" he said when I was finished.
"I threw them all back," I said. "I like to catch 'em, but I don't like to clean 'em."
"Bullshit," the old man said from the next bench. He was reeling in too. "Ain't either one of us caught so much as a little old hardhead all day."
A truthful fisherman. That was all I needed. I ignored him and looked at the seawall to see if I could spot Dino's car. I did, and I thought I could see someone sitting behind the wheel.
"Did Evelyn drive you out here?" I asked.
Evelyn was the mother of Dino's daughter, Sharon. I'd helped him out with a problem involving Sharon a year or so back. Some people had gotten killed, which was too bad. They weren't very good people, maybe, but I'd done some of the killing, and I hadn't liked it. At least Dino and Evelyn had gotten together again as a result. And Sharon was doing better.
Dino pointed toward the seawall. "Evelyn's in the car. I sure as hell wasn't going to pay six bucks to talk to you."
I sat down beside him on the bench. "You could've waited until the pier closed."
"This is an emergency," he said, looking out over the Gulf. The gray-green swells were gentle, barely white capping as they rolled to such beach as there was. There wasn't much, just a narrow strip of sand in front of the granite blocks that had been put in front of the seawall to keep the Gulf from undercutting it.
"You can tell him what it is," the old man said, gathering up his rods in one hand and his bucket in the other. "I won't be listenin'. I'm goin' home and fix me a big fish dinner. Tuna fish."
He laughed at his own little joke as he walked past us, and we watched him until he went through the gate at the snack bar.
"What's the emergency?" I asked then.
Dino looked back at the Gulf. "Outside Harry's disappeared," he said.
I hadn't met Outside Harry until a year or so ago when I came back to Galveston to find my sister, Jan. That was my specialty, finding people, but I hadn't found Jan. I never did, not exactly, but in the course of the looking I'd met Harry.
I'd known who he was ever since I was a kid. Practically everyone knew about him. He 'd been on the Island for as long as most people could remember, though as far as anyone knew he didn't have a place to live. Harry had been homeless before homelessness had been cool, living out of the garbage cans behind grocery stores or on whatever money he could beg or borrow from the people he met, wearing several layers of clothing all year round and hauling his worldly goods in a shopping cart.
I'd found that Harry was a surprisingly good source of information about what went on in Galveston. He overheard a lot of things in his wanderings because no one paid him any attention. Often they didn't even notice him, and if they thought of him at all, they thought he was stupid. But they were wrong. He remembered most of what he heard and could repeat it with surprising accuracy.
"How do you know he's missing?" I asked Dino. "I didn't know you kept up with him."
Dino shrugged. "I don't. Not exactly."
The man who ran the snack bar and took up the admissions money was walking in our direction. I figured he wanted to go home. I didn't blame him. He hadn't made much money that day.
"Let's go," I told Dino. "You can tell me the rest in the car."
Dino looked at his watch. "It's not five o'clock yet. I paid three bucks to sit here on this damn bench, and I'm going to get my money's worth."
"We'll be leaving in a minute," I told the man when he reached us. "We have a little business to discuss."
The man was tall and lanky, with a head of thick black hair. "Just as long as you're off by five," he said.
I promised him that we would be gone by then.
Dino waited until the man had walked back to the snack
bar. "I been helping Harry out a little now and then ever since that business with Sharon."
That was Dino's way. You help him out, as Harry had done, though only in a small way, and Dino would help you out. That was the way it had been with Dino's uncles, back when Galveston was the leader in illegal gambling on the Gulf Coast and the uncles had practically been running the city, and that was the way it was with Dino now. It was the only way he knew.
"Helping him out how?" I asked.
Dino shrugged. "Giving him a hand-out now and then when he comes by the back door. Giving him a few bucks, too. Hell, Tru, he eats dog food. Did you know that?"
I nodded. "He likes it," I said.
Dino didn't appear convinced. "Yeah. Maybe. Anyway, he wouldn't take much from me. I just gave him as much as I could."
"And now he's missing?"
"That's right. He hasn't been by the house in a couple of weeks, which is longer than usual. So I asked around."
Dino hadn't been a part of the family business, but he still had connections. And while he'd tried to put the past behind him, the past is never behind you on the Island. To some people, the past is more important, and more real, than the present. So everyone remembered the uncles. When Dino "asked around," people responded.
"So what do you want me to do about it?" I asked, though I was afraid that I already knew the answer.
Dino looked at me. "What the hell do you think I want you to do? I want you to find him."
I stood up and gathered up my rods and bucket. "It's five o'clock," I said. "You can carry the book."
Two
The thing is, I don't try to find people anymore. I still have my P.I. license, but I gave up on finding people when I couldn't find Jan. Someone else did that, and they didn't find her, not really. They just found what was left.
I decided that if I couldn't even find my own sister, couldn't save her from her own death, then I couldn't find anybody, and for a while I was as bad as Dino, more or less hiding out from any real involvement with the world.
I painted houses for a few months, and then Dino asked me to find his daughter. I did that, and while it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, it did get me out of my self-absorption temporarily. Then someone hired me to find out who'd murdered an alligator. I took that job against my better judgment, but at least it hadn't involved finding anyone. And it had helped get me out of my shell a little more. I quit painting houses, and a month or so ago I'd gotten a real job, if you count working for a bail bondsman as being a real job.
But I still don't try to find anyone. I'm not a bounty hunter. I just answer the phones and check up on people. If someone jumps bond, I do a little skip-tracing by phone, but the heavy-duty stuff is up to someone else.
When we got to the seawall, I waved to Evelyn and waited until two rollerbladers in helmets and pads swooshed by. Then I pitched the fishing rods and the bait bucket in the back of my Jeep, which was parked just in front of Dino's car, one of the last big Pontiacs they made before Detroit started downsizing. Dino didn't like small cars, and he hadn't bought a new one since the early '80s.
I, on the other hand, was driving what the former owner swore to me was a genuine World War II-vintage Jeep. I didn't really believe it was really that old, though it certainly looked it.
"You need a new ride," Dino said. "You find Harry, I'll get you one."
"You're already doing enough for me," I told him. "You're letting me live in that house of yours."
"Yeah. Maybe I should start charging you some rent."
"It's not that great a house," I said, and it wasn't.
The house was old and run down. It was located out past the western end of the seawall off Stewart Road, and it was nearly covered with bushes and vines. If you didn't know there was a house under there, you might think it was just a briar patch. And if we got a hurricane with a strong storm surge, God forbid, water would probably go right over the top of it.
"I fed your cat for you when you were trying to solve the murder of that alligator," Dino said.
I nodded. "He appreciated it. Me too." I started to climb in the Jeep.
Dino put a hand on my arm. "You can find Harry if you'll look. You're good at that stuff. I wish you'd stop this moping around."
"I'm not moping around. I fish, I go to work."
"Fishing. Yeah, right." He tossed Look Homeward, Angel into what was left of the passenger seat of the Jeep. "And you read books."
"Nothing wrong with reading," I said. "It improves the mind."
"Sure it does. So does helping people out, doing a little favor now and then."
"And I run," I added.
Dino glanced down at my right knee. "But not very fast," he said.
He should know. In college, we both played football, and we were both pretty good. We weren't on the same teams, though, and it was a collision between Dino's helmet and my knee that had left me with permanent ligament damage. I could still run, even if I couldn't go very fast, but I could never be sure when my right knee would collapse and send me sprawling. I had to take it easy when I jogged along the seawall or the beach.
"Look, Dino," I said, "Harry's probably around somewhere. Maybe he's just taking a few days off."
"Off what? It's not like he has a job or anything. If he was around, I'd know about it."
He was right, so I just shrugged and started to get in the Jeep. If I'd been faster I might have made it, but before I could get it started, Evelyn got out of Dino's car. She was a little older than Dino, but not too much. Her dark hair had hardly any gray in it, and it was tied back with a red ribbon.
She had to be careful getting out. There was a steady stream of pickup trucks and cars passing by on the wide street, their tires shushing along the pavement.
"Are you going to help him, Tru?" she asked. She was a head shorter than me, so she had to look up to catch my eyes.
I sighed and looked at the miniature golf course across the street. There was a giant turtle with a purple shell, something that looked like an anorexic dinosaur, and a small wrecked boat. There was no one playing golf that I could see.
I looked back down at Evelyn. "You know I don't like to do that kind of thing," I told her.
"Harry's your friend," she said.
Well, that wasn't really true. Harry was someone I knew, someone I talked to now and then, not a friend.
"Besides," Evelyn went on, "if you don't look for him, nobody will. Nobody cares what happens to an old man like that."
I should have said, "Why don't you and Dino look for him," but of course I didn't. Instead I said, "All right. You win. But I have to go in to work on Monday."
"So what does that mean?" Dino wanted to know.
"That means that I'll look for him tomorrow, but if he doesn't turn up, I have a real job that I have to report to."
"This is a real job," Dino said. "I'll pay you. What're your rates?"
"I'm not doing it for money."
He reached in the back pocket of his cotton pants and pulled out a leather billfold. "You'll have expenses. Gas, food, maybe you'll even have to give somebody a few bucks for information."
He took out some bills and tried to hand them to me, but I didn't take them.
He was going to say something else, but we had to step into the street between the Jeep and the car to let a couple of joggers go by. There weren't as many people out as you might expect on such a nice day, but that was because it wasn't the tourist season. The BOIs, the people who were Born on the Island, were all at home. The exercisers had probably driven down from Houston, or maybe they were newcomers who worked at one of the hospitals or taught at the medical school.
Dino tried again to give me the money. I didn't take it that time either.
"It's just for one day," I said. "I won't need any gas, and I have to eat anyway."
He shoved the money into my hand. "You're a professional. Don't you want to be paid?"
He had a point there. I closed my hand on the money.
"Anyway," he said, "I don't want you to wait until tomorrow. I want you to start today."
"It won't be today much longer," I pointed out.
"I don't care about that. I want you to start now."
"You must like Harry a lot," I said.
"It's not that," Evelyn said. "He's an old man, and nobody cares what happens to him. Somebody should care."
I began to wonder just whose idea this whole thing was, but I knew better than to ask.
"All right," I said. "Can I go home and feed Nameless first?" Nameless is my cat.
Dino walked to his car and opened the front passenger door. He reached inside and came out with an unopened box of Tender Vittles.
"Seafood Supper," he said, holding it up for me to see. "We'll take care of the cat."
I shook my head. "You were pretty sure of me, weren't you?"
"You're a sucker for a sob story, all right," Dino said.
"I'm a sucker, period. Well, since the two of you have talked me into this, have you got any ideas about where I should begin?"
Dino grinned. "You're the detective."
"Great," I said. "Just great."
He punched me in the biceps with his free hand. "Don't be a sore loser."
I opened my hand and looked down at the bills. "I hope there's a lot of money here."
"'The workman is worthy of his hire,'" Dino said. "That's what they used to tell me in Sunday School."
"You never went to Sunday School in your life."
"Maybe I heard it on Postoffice Street, then."
"Hush, Dino," Evelyn said.
She probably didn't like to be reminded of Postoffice Street, which is where Galveston's red light district was located for a long, long time. Evelyn knew. She had worked there.
She didn't work there now, however. She was a receptionist in the Ashbell Smith Building, built in 1890 and better known as Old Red, the first building of the Texas Medical College, now The University of Texas Medical Branch. She didn't want anyone there to know about her past, and I didn't blame her.