by Bill Crider
I had the Mauser in my hand when I climbed the stairs, but this time there was no one in the building at all. I turned on the light and checked the floors near the walls, looking for pieces of flattened lead. I found one and pocketed it.
What I didn't find was shell casings. If whoever shot at me had been using an automatic, he'd come back himself and picked them up. I tried to remember how many shots had been fired and whether the shooter would have had time to reload a revolver. I found I couldn't really recall. Then I remembered that the pistol had been silenced. Had to be an automatic.
I fingered the lead in my pocket. It was most likely too flat to do even an expert at ballistics much good. It would be next to impossible to check the lines and grooves. But I kept it anyway.
I searched the building even more thoroughly than I had before, looking for any proof that Harry had been there. I didn't find anything new. It was time to move on.
It was much too early to try getting into the Retreat, so I thought I'd talk to Dino. He was watching Larry King on CNN. Larry's guest was an actor I'd never heard of and he was plugging a movie I had no plans to see. Dino would never see it either, but that didn't keep him from watching the interview.
He wasn't much interested in Alex Minor, but he did turn the set off when I asked him about Lawrence Hobart.
"The Hammer? I hadn't thought of him in years. That was some fight he had with Braddy Macklin, though." When he mentioned the fight, he caught on. "You think he's mixed up in this?"
"Why not? Everyone else is. Do you know where he's living these days?"
"I don't even know if he's still alive. You want some Big Red?"
"Why not?"
Dino went to the kitchen, and I sat on the floral couch. When he came back in with the drinks, I asked if he could find out about Hobart.
"I've been thinking about that. There are still a few people around who'd know. I'll give 'em a call while you drink that stuff."
He handed me the glass and left the room. I drank it all before he got back.
"What did you find out?" I asked, setting the glass on a coaster on the coffee table.
"I found out that Hobart's still around. And he's been acting funny lately, too."
"Funny? He's doing comedy now?"
"No, and I don't think you oughta try it either, if that's your idea of a joke."
"Sorry. What's he been up to?"
"He's been talking to a lot of movers and shakers around town about the time when he worked for my uncles. Seems he's really interested in what the feeling is about having gambling come back to the Island."
"A hot topic," I said.
"Yeah. But he's against it."
That was interesting, but maybe Hobart had learned his lesson from the time he'd gotten in so much trouble with the uncles.
"Anyway," Dino went on, "Hobart can get into a lot of offices and homes because of his reputation. People remember him, and they'll listen to him whether they pay any attention or not. Macklin was working for the other side. Maybe they tangled over that."
"Could be. So where's Hobart living these days?"
"Same place he's lived for the last thirty years. In one of those old houses on Avenue O." He gave me the address. "You oughta talk to him."
I wasn't eager to search the Retreat, and while I didn't think I'd enjoy talking to Hobart, he was a reasonable alternative.
"You want to come?" I asked as I got up from the couch.
"No thanks. You're the one getting paid for doing the work." He turned the TV back on.
I was almost out the door when the phone rang. Dino muted the TV and answered it, and I waited while he talked. I thought it might be some more information about Hobart, but I was wrong.
"That was Jody, from the bait shop," Dino said when he hung up.
"I thought the bait shop would be closed by now."
"It is. He's not there. He was calling from a pay phone at some place on Broadway."
"What did he want?"
"He says he saw Ro-Jo. He thought you'd want to know."
"Where is he?"
"Jody didn't know where he was heading. But he saw him walking along down by the cotton warehouses at the end of Broadway. Jody says Ro-Jo looked nervous, kept glancing all around him like he was being followed or something."
"Maybe he was just checking to see if the cops were around. Those warehouses might be a good place to get out of the weather. Maybe Ro-Jo was going inside."
"It might be hard to get over those fences."
"That's what makes it a good place," I said.
"You think maybe Harry could be there?"
"He could be anywhere. Or nowhere."
"What're you gonna do?"
I had a lot of choices. I could go to the Retreat, I could pay Hobart a visit, or I could scout out the warehouses. I didn't want to do any of those things, but at that moment going after Ro-Jo seemed to be the most likely way to get a lead on Harry's whereabouts. Besides, Ro-Jo had lied to me. I wanted to talk to him.
"I'm going to the warehouses," I said. "You want to come?"
"I didn't even want to go see Hobart," Dino said. "And that's legal. I'm sure not going in those warehouses."
"You'll miss all the fun."
Dino smiled. "I hope so," he said.
Eighteen
The cotton warehouses at the bottom of Broadway had once been jammed with bale after bale of cotton to be shipped all over the world. The warehouses went on for blocks and extended far back from the street. There were probably miles of them, but they were all empty now.
Cotton was no longer the state's big cash crop. When I was a kid you could drive along the highways and see cotton growing in field after field, but these days it's not that way. You hardly ever see it, and whatever gets shipped must go out of Houston.
There were signs hanging on the gates of some of the warehouses, signs identical to the one I'd seen on the gates at the marine lab:
KEEP OUT
U. S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
I was beginning to think that the government was the biggest property owner in Galveston.
But since the government was the people, that meant I was free to enter and do as I pleased. That's what I told myself, and it sounded just as false and hokey as it had when I'd tried it earlier.
But what the hell. I had to tell myself something to justify what I was about to do, which was climb the fence and start searching the warehouses.
I parked the Jeep on the lot of a convenience store and hoped they wouldn't have it towed. Maybe I'd be out before they even noticed the Jeep was there, though that didn't seem likely. There were a lot of warehouses to go through.
I didn't try the fence on Broadway, of course. There was far too much traffic and someone would have seen me for sure. They might not have reported me; in fact, I was pretty sure no one would even care. But I didn't want to take that chance.
Next to one group of warehouses there was a boarded up building fronted by a large unlit parking lot with weeds growing up through the cracks in the concrete. I walked along the fence until I was at the back of the building, standing in the shadows it cast. It didn't take me long to get over the fence.
When I was on the other side, I pulled the Mauser from my waistband and took the flashlight from my back pocket. There was no need to turn it on just yet.
The first warehouse wasn't exactly a "house." It was long, empty, and open on both sides. I could see from one end of it to the other. There was no one there. I stepped up on the floor and turned on the light, sweeping it along to see if I'd missed anything. I hadn't.
I stood there for a minute, listening. All I could hear was the wind and the cars whishing along Broadway. I wondered how many bales of cotton this place might have held, and I thought about hot green fields, about the cotton pickers bent over as they moved along the rows, dragging the long white cotton sacks behind them.
I walked across the floor and stepped down,
then crossed a narrow, weed-filled area. The next warehouse was also completely open, and I found it as deserted as the previous one. The floor had been swept clean by the Gulf breezes; there wasn't even a sign that a rat or a mouse had ever been there.
I walked through another open warehouse just like the first two before I came to one that was partially enclosed. One end was open, but the other was protected by sheet metal walls.
I didn't announce my presence. I'd learned my lesson at the marine lab, not that it made any difference this time. There was no one hiding in the enclosed end of the warehouse. I was beginning to think that I was wasting my time, but there were plenty of warehouses left. I kept going.
Four or five warehouses later, I found Ro-Jo.
He was lying on the floor, and I knew he was dead as soon as I saw him.
The warehouse I was in was almost completely enclosed, and Ro-Jo was lying at the end nearest Broadway, where there were several cubicles that had probably served as offices of some kind, though they appeared to be completely empty now. Shadows jumped all around as I shone the flashlight through the openings in their walls.
Ro-Jo was lying just outside the door of one of the cubicles, and his head was twisted unnaturally on his shoulders. I shined the light in his face. His lips were cut and swollen. Someone had hit him hard, and I wondered how much more damage would have shown up if he hadn't died before he had time to develop bruises.
His supermarket shopping basket wasn't far away. Somehow he'd managed to get it through the fence. The beam from my Mag-Lite sparkled off its silvery wires. I didn't bother going through it. It didn't appear to have been disturbed. Whoever had killed Ro-Jo wasn't interested in the basket.
And whoever had killed him hadn't used a pistol. He'd been beaten and his neck was broken. I wondered if he'd told his killer how to find Harry or whether he'd lied as he'd lied to me.
Or maybe he hadn't lied to me. Not exactly. Maybe he'd wanted me to go to the marine lab because that was where he'd told the others to go. Maybe he'd hoped I could stop them.
If that was true, he'd been very wrong. They hadn't found Harry, but they'd found Ro-Jo again. And this time they'd killed him.
I tried not to feel guilty about that, but feeling guilt is one of the things that I do best. If only I'd done better at the lab, Ro-Jo might still be alive.
On the other hand, he might still be alive if he'd told me the truth in the first place. It was too bad that he hadn't trusted me enough to do that. He wasn't going to get a second chance, and I was more convinced than ever that if I didn't find Harry before the other lookers did, Harry wasn't going to survive for long.
I didn't know whether to tell Barnes about Ro-Jo or not, but I supposed I had to. I couldn't just let the body stay where it was until someone else stumbled across it.
I turned to leave, and I'd taken two steps when I heard a noise behind me. I started to turn, but I wasn't fast enough. There was a step behind me and something hit me hard, square in the right kidney.
I dropped both the flashlight and the Mauser. The light went skittering across the floor, and the Mauser flew about six feet through the air, hit, and bounced twice. I landed on my knees, which didn't do either one of them any good.
I was hit again, in the head this time, before I had a chance to react. I pitched forward, rolled, and tried to come to my feet. I might have made it if my right knee hadn't collapsed underneath me.
When I struck the floor this time, I rolled to my right and kept on rolling on the pitted wooden floor. I was hoping I could get to the Mauser, but my attacker was quicker than I was. He kicked it out of the way and then aimed a kick at my head.
He was not only bigger than I was, he was a lot quicker, and that was all I could tell. I couldn't see what he looked like because he had on a ski mask. I could see his foot, though. It looked like an aircraft carrier as it flew toward my head.
I tried to grab it, like hotshot private eyes do in the movies, but it was coming too fast. I barely managed to deflect it, so that it missed most of my head, though it nearly took off my ear. I also felt a popping in my left little finger and then a sharp pain, as if the finger had been dislocated.
My attempt at self-defense did throw my attacker off balance, and he stumbled forward and almost tripped over me. I tried to help him along with a friendly shot to the groin.
Neither one of us had made much noise up until that point, but when I connected with his crotch, he let out a loud moan and went flailing into the shopping basket, which rolled into the wall of one of the cubicles before he was able to dislodge himself. There was a ringing noise as he kicked the cart away from him.
Meanwhile, I was looking for the Mauser. I saw a dark lump on the floor and made a dive for it. My fingers closed around the butt, and I brought it up to fire, but my assailant was gone.
The shopping basket was lying on its side near the doorway to one of the cubicles, and Ro-Jo's possessions were scattered on the floor. I was pretty sure that Ro-Jo's killer was inside the cubicle where he'd been hiding when I entered. Now he was just waiting for me to make a move.
I decided to oblige him. I fired a shot at the wall.
The Mauser isn't a .45, but its cartridges have enough power to send a bullet through a wall if the wood isn't too thick. This wood wasn't. The bullet whacked through, and the echo of the shot rattled off the sheet metal walls.
The man inside the cubicle had a gun. I'd been hoping that he was unarmed, but apparently he'd just been trying to keep things quiet. Now that I'd started the shooting, he was no longer shy.
I saw the dark outline of his head and then he fired off two quick shots, both of which missed me. One of them hit the flashlight, however. It hit the lens instead of the barrel, and the warehouse was plunged into darkness.
Nineteen
I was moving almost before the light went out, and I assumed that the man in the cubicle was doing the same. I popped off a round in that direction just to keep him awake, but I wasn't sure that I hit even the wall. It was so dark that I had no idea what was in front of me.
He fired back at my muzzle flash, but I was five feet away by that time and able to return his fire. I missed again and the bullet pinged through one of the sheet metal walls of the warehouse.
Then there was a sound like rattling thunder, and I thought for a second that a storm had hit, but it was only my big friend, who had crashed into the wall my last bullet went through.
He was blundering around in the dark like a bull rhino. I decided to join him.
My knee held up long enough for me to stand, and I started toward where I thought the killer might be. Sure enough, we ran together, and each of us made a grab for the other.
He won. He got both arms around me and started to squeeze. I still had the Mauser in my right hand, and while I couldn't direct it at a vital spot, I could still pull the trigger.
The pistol was pointed straight down at the floor, and it was very close to the killer's leg. The muzzle flash burned him, as the bullet buried itself in the floor, and he relaxed his grip long enough for me to bend my knees and spring upward, banging the top of my head into his chin.
His teeth clicked together and he let me go, stumbling backward into the wall again. I thought of shooting, but I was afraid I might actually hit him, not that I would have minded wounding him. I didn't want to be responsible for his death, however, no matter what he'd done to Ro-Jo. That kind of rough justice wasn't in my job description.
He rebounded from the wall, and either by accident or design ran right into me like a blitzing linebacker running into the opposing quarterback.
I hit the floor hard, the air whooshing out of my lungs. My head bounced once, and there was a bright flash behind my eyelids. For a second I thought that the lights had come on. They hadn't, of course. I lay there limp as a string and waited for whatever was coming next, a foot in the face or a bullet in the brain. Whatever it was to be, there wasn't a thing I could do about it.
What happe
ned was that a door opened and shut, leaving me alone in the warehouse with the body of Ro-Jo lying not six feet from me. I knew that the killer was getting away, and I wished there was something I could do besides lie there on the floor, but I couldn't think of a thing.
My head didn't feel as if it were attached to my body, and I wondered if that was a bad sign. I didn't want to think about it, so I thought about fishing and how good it felt to hook a flounder in the bay or a speck from the dock. My head began to hurt a little less.
I kept on thinking for a while about fishing, about Cathy Macklin, about Harry, and eventually I discovered that there was something I could do besides just lie there and think.
I discovered that I could go to sleep. So I did.
I don't know how much time passed before I woke up. Probably not long, maybe fifteen minutes, maybe a little more. I was feeling much better. My head was feeling attached to the rest of me again, which was good in one way, but bad in another It made me aware that I was feeling pain in a lot of places that I had never felt pain before, from my hair to my toenails. I told myself that the pain would pass.
Most of it did pass after another fifteen minutes or so, and I was able to sit up. I was even able to find the Mauser, which I stuck back in my waistband.
After that I crawled around the wall, trying to find the door. I was slow, but I was careful, and I finally found it. I pulled myself up on the frame, opened the door, and stepped outside.
I stood in the cold air and took stock of myself.
There was a knot on the back of my head, but it was hard, not soft. I took that as a good sign.
My head was pounding sort of like the drumbeats in "Peggy Sue." That wasn't a good sign, but it wasn't a bad one.
My ear was painful to the touch and seemed to have fever. That wasn't so bad either. At least it was still attached to my head.
My little finger looked like a cup handle. I grabbed the end and pulled as hard as I could. It popped back into place with no more pain than I might have felt if someone had hit it with a hammer.