When Old Men Die

by Bill Crider

  I congratulated myself for not yelling and told myself that I had nothing to complain about, at least not compared to someone in Ro-Jo's condition.

  Thinking of Ro-Jo reminded me of something. Leaving the door open, I went back inside the warehouse. There was enough light coming in from the outside to allow me to locate the Maglite. I pocketed it and left.

  The trip back over the fence was a lot harder than the first one had been, but I was walking more or less normally by the time I got back to the Jeep.

  There was a pay phone beside the convenience store, and I used it to call the police. I didn't ask for Barnes or mention my name. I just reported the body in the warehouse. I could talk to Barnes later. Maybe. Hey, what had he done for me? I certainly didn't have time for him right at the moment. There were places to go and things to do.

  Lawrence Hobart, aka the Hammer, lived in a house that was typical of those in its neighborhood: peeling paint, bad roof, more dirt in the yard than grass. It was up on blocks in case of flooding, and the porch was a good four feet off the ground. I could see a light through one of the front windows, so I supposed Hobart was home.

  If I was lucky, he'd be panting and at least a little bruised, but I didn't think that would be the case. I'd hate to think that a man in his seventies could run over me like that.

  I climbed the tall steps and knocked on the door. It was opened by a man who looked a little like Braddy Macklin must have appeared before he was killed, sort of like Charles Atlas gone slightly to seed and wearing a bad hairpiece. Hobart had less gray in his hair than I did, but at least my hair was my own.

  "What do you want?" he said, looking at me with narrowed eyes.

  "Lawrence Hobart?" I said.

  "Who wants to know?"

  "Truman Smith. I have to talk to you."

  "Bullshit you have to talk to me."

  He was shutting the door as he spoke, but I put my shoulder into it and slammed it open, knocking him backward a step or two. He definitely wasn't the guy who'd run over me.

  "Get your ass outta here or I'll call the cops," he said.

  "Good idea. Ask for Gerald Barnes. Tell him to put a little hustle in it."

  He thought about that and decided that calling the cops might not be such a good idea.

  "I was a few years younger, I'd whip your ass," he said.

  "I don't doubt it. Right now, your grandmother could probably do the job with one hand."

  "Yeah, you don't look so good. What the hell you want, anyhow?"

  "You know who I am?"

  "Hell yes. You're that snot-nosed little fart used to hang around with Dino. Still do, from what I hear."

  "Could you shut the door?" I said. "It's cold in here."

  "Don't like to waste money on heat," he said, but he shut the door.

  "Thanks," I said. "I've had a rough night."

  "Yeah, it looks that way. What happened to you?"

  "I tripped on a rug. You wouldn't happen to have an ibuprofen tablet would you?"

  "What's that?"

  "Never mind. How about an aspirin?"

  "Never touch the stuff."

  "I have a pretty bad headache," I said.

  "Big deal. You're a young guy. You can take it." He gave me a crooked smile. "What'd you want to talk about?"

  "Gambling," I said, hoping he was right about my ability to take the headache. "Also Braddy Macklin. And Patrick Lytle."

  The smile disappeared when I said Macklin's name. I was glad Hobart wasn't twenty years younger. Or even ten. He could have mopped the floor with me even if I was at my best.

  "I don't know anything about those topics," he said.

  "Sure you do. I'm old enough to remember that fight you had with Macklin. Anyone who's lived on the Island for over a month has heard that story. And gambling? I know what led up to that fight. You had a habit."

  His brow furrowed, and he looked at me as if he might like to dismember me. I hoped he wouldn't try it. I didn't want to get hurt. After a second or two, his brow smoothed out, however, and the fire dimmed in his eyes. I let myself relax.

  "Damn right, I had a habit," he said. "Now it'd get me a spot on one of those TV talk shows. Gambling addiction, they call it. Everybody would feel sorry for me and try to get me some help. They even got a hotline number on the back of the lottery tickets. You can call if you got a problem. Back in the old days, nobody cared. They figured if you couldn't control it, you were just stupid, or weak. They didn't know it was an addiction. They got twelve-step programs for that kind of thing now."

  I wondered if he watched the same shows that Dino did. It sounded like a distinct possibility.

  "What about Patrick Lytle?" I asked.

  "Don't know him."

  I winced as a particularly good drumbeat split my head. I'd switched from "Peggy Sue" to Sandy Nelson slamming the skins on "Teen Beat."

  "Try again," I said. "Lytle's wife was a good friend of Macklin's, a very good friend. Don't tell me you didn't know about that."

  "Maybe I remember a little about it, now that you mention it. It's all ancient history."

  "Not to me. I thought maybe you could tell me a little about her."

  He thought that one over. "You wanna sit down?"

  He didn't have to ask me twice. The room we were in was furnished in early Salvation Army Thrift Store, and I sat on a sofa older than Dino's if not in nearly as good a condition. The foam rubber showed through several holes in the fabric. Hobart sat in a platform rocker that had a bed pillow in it in place of its original cushion.

  "She was a real looker, Miz Lytle was," he told me after he'd settled himself. "Red hair. I always liked red hair on a woman. And real white skin, with a freckle or two. I don't mind freckles. Lots of red-haired women have 'em."

  That wasn't exactly an earth-shaking revelation. I asked him about her gambling habits.

  "She gambled, all right. Her husband, too."

  Sally West hadn't remembered about Lytle's gambling. Or maybe she hadn't known. What I was looking for was a way to explain how Lytle had lost his money.

  "Big losers, were they?"

  He shook his head. I thought I saw the hairpiece move, but I could have been wrong. My head still wasn't quite right, and it was affecting my vision.

  "Nah," he said. "They were big winners. At least she was. I couldn't say about him."

  "I didn't know there were ever any big winners at the uncles' tables," I said.

  He got a faraway look. "Sometimes there were. It could be managed, especially if they were good-looking women that Braddy Macklin liked a whole lot."

  I was shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that there might have been rigged gambling at The Island Retreat.

  "Do you have any idea how much she might have won?"

  The faraway look faded. "That was a long time ago. A damn long time."

  "It was. But I think you can remember."

  "OK, maybe I can. It was a lot. Not all at once, but over a year or so she took a lot of money out of the Retreat. Probably never spent a penny of it, either. No need to. She had two men taking care of her."

  "But you don't remember about Lytle?"

  "I didn't pay attention to him. I always had a weakness for a red-haired woman, and if there's one thing I don't blame that son of a bitch Macklin for, it's for taking her away from her husband. He was a spineless little bastard anyway."

  I tried to get Hobart's mind off the woman. "About Lytle's gambling . . . .?"

  "Dammit, I told you I didn't pay any attention to him."

  "He wasn't a winner, then."

  That puzzled Hobart for a second, but then got my point.

  "You're right," he said. "If he'd been a winner, I'd have known about it. There weren't too many of 'em."

  "Would Macklin know?"

  "You trying to get smart with me? I know that asshole's dead, and I don't give much of a damn one way or another."

  "Seen him lately?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

&nb
sp; "You and he were both talking to people about bringing gambling back to the Island. Except that you were on opposite sides. You must've crossed paths."

  "Well, we didn't. I haven't seen that son of a bitch in thirty years. Never wanted to. I'll see him one more time, though. Wouldn't miss his funeral for the world."

  "Were you talking to people about gambling because you oppose it on moral grounds, or were you working for someone?"

  "That's none of your business, is it."

  It wasn't a question, and I didn't feel like arguing the point. My head hurt too much. I stood up.

  "I can find out," I said. "I can find out if you've seen Macklin, too."

  He sat in his chair and looked at me. "Go ahead and find out. I don't give a damn."

  Maybe he didn't. I left him sitting there, another old man who hadn't escaped the past. He could call it ancient history, but it still meant something to him, just like it meant something to most of us in one way or another. I was pretty sure I had a lot to do with Harry and Mercer and what had happened to both of them.

  But Hobart was still a tough old buzzard, and he wasn't going to tell me any more than he already had, not without some powerful coercion. I didn't feel like coercing anyone. I just felt like going home and taking a long, hot shower and getting into bed.

  I let Hobart's screen door slam behind me as I left. I walked down his steps to the Jeep and drove home.

  Twenty

  Of course I couldn't go home and take a shower and go to bed. Or I could have, but that wasn't on the program yet. I had something else to do first. I had to go to The Island Retreat.

  I'd entered two different deserted buildings in the last two nights, and I'd been beaten up and shot at both times. As a result, I'd developed terrific headaches. The one I had now had switched from "Teen Beat" to the intro to "Pipeline" by the Chantays.

  I stopped at a convenience store and bought a bottle of ibuprofen and a can of Big Red to wash a couple of the tablets down with. I sat in the parking lot for a while after I'd finished the Big Red, and my head eventually began to feel better. I wasn't sure whether to credit the ibuprofen or the soft drink. I've often thought that Big Red might have secret curative powers. Maybe there had been an article on the subject in Weekly World News. If there hadn't been, there probably would be.

  I drove to the seawall and parked the Jeep well down the street from the Retreat. I walked past a restaurant and a gift shop, both closed. The gift shop had piles of conch shells wired on either side of its entrance. No one had ever found shells like that around Galveston.

  Near the gift shop there was a set of concrete steps built into the seawall. I went down the steps and walked along the narrow strip of beach to the Retreat.

  Third pole on the west side, was what Ro-Jo had said. I'd have to wade a little, but not much.

  Thinking about what Ro-Jo had said to me reminded me that he was dead. Maybe because of the bump on my head, I hadn't really accepted that fact before, in spite of seeing his body on the warehouse floor.

  If there was ever anyone who didn't deserve to die like that, Ro-Jo was the one. He was just a simple guy who liked to keep to himself. Maybe he lived what politically correct people liked to call an "alternative lifestyle," but he didn't bother anyone. He just pushed his shopping cart and kept out of the way. I hoped I'd be able to find the person who'd killed him. Maybe I should have tried harder to shoot him while I had the chance.

  I waded out into the Gulf until it was lapping around my calves. I could feel it sucking at my shoes as it pulled back from the shore. The water was cold, but not so cold that I couldn't stand it.

  I didn't feel a lot like trying to climb up the pier leg that Ro-Jo had recommended, but there were cross braces at easy intervals. If Harry could climb it, so could I.

  Of course, I didn't have any proof that Harry had climbed it. I was just taking Ro-Jo's word for that.

  I grabbed the first crosspiece and pulled myself up. My wet jeans stuck clammily to my leg, and the breeze from the Gulf turned everything below my knee into an icicle. Luckily, it didn't take me long to get to the top of the pier.

  I could see the lights of the occasional car that passed along Seawall Boulevard, but no one could see me. I was just a part of the pier. Or so I hoped.

  I wrapped one arm around the pole I was hanging onto and pounded on the floor of the Retreat with my right hand. At first I thought that I was going to have to climb right back down, but then I felt something give.

  I pushed upward and a section of floorboard moved. After that it was easy. I shoved the board aside and pulled myself through the space that I'd made. In a couple of seconds I was sitting on the floor of the Retreat, my legs dangling down underneath.

  It was even darker in the Retreat than it had been in the warehouse, if that was possible. I wished I had the Mag-Lite.

  I pulled the Mauser out of my waistband, and for a few minutes I just sat and listened. I could hear the Gulf swirling under the pier, the wind blowing around the old building, and the cars on the street. That was all.

  Of course I hadn't heard the guy in the warehouse either, but somehow the Retreat felt empty. It was an almost spooky feeling, as if I were alone with the ghosts of the uncles and their laughing customers. I could imagine the spinning roulette wheel, the clang of the old slots, the rattling of dice. Or maybe that was just my headache. I pulled my feet inside the building and stood up.

  I tried feeling my way around. There was nothing in the room with me, no furniture of any kind. That wasn't surprising. This would have been the main entrance. The tables would be farther back. I wasn't sure whether Macklin had been shot here, but I thought not. And that was why the cops hadn't found the loose floorboard.

  I'd found it, but I don't know what else I had expected to find, except maybe Harry.

  He wasn't there, however.

  No one was.

  I fumbled and stumbled through a couple of the other rooms, but I found nothing of importance. I couldn't see well enough, though there was a little light coming in through cracks around the boards that covered the windows.

  Before I left, I sat on a chair that was covered with a plastic drop cloth and tried to make some sense of everything that had happened and that I'd learned since Dino found me on the fishing pier.

  Nothing came of the effort. My head was throbbing too hard. Preston Epps was doing "Bongo Rock."

  I went back to the front of the Retreat, dropped down through the hole, and climbed down to the beach.

  Now I could go home.

  When I woke up the next morning, Nameless was standing on my chest, looking me straight in the eyes. He'd probably sneaked up there to suck my breath, as cats are reputed to do, but I'd cleverly foiled him by waking up.

  "I'm onto you," I said.

  He started purring. He'd always been good at playing innocent, though he'd never managed to look that way. I shoved him off my chest and got up.

  That was my first mistake of the day. When my feet touched the floor, a shock ran through my legs, up my torso, through my neck, and right to the top of my head. I touched the knot on the back. It didn't feel any bigger than it had the night before; it didn't feel any smaller, either. My ear wasn't quite as tender, however.

  I fed Nameless, which caused even more purring, and I decided he would never suck my breath. If he killed me, who'd feed him? Dino might, but Nameless couldn't count on that.

  I hoped Nameless could reason that out for himself. I'd read somewhere that a cat had a brain the size of a marble. That didn't allow a lot of room for reasoning capabilities.

  I cleaned up and went for a run. It was going to be a nice day. The rain was gone, the sun was bright, and the gulls were sailing overhead, hoping that I might have couple of Cheetoes or something equally wonderful to toss them. I didn't, but they occasionally glided down close to me just to make sure, begging and squalling.

  I liked the sun and the gulls, so it was too bad that every other step I took threatened to c
ause the top of my head to go flying off. I ran only a couple of miles and went back to the house. There was no need to torture myself.

  I ate some cereal and read the newspaper. There was no mention of Ro-Jo, but it was a Houston paper. Houston doesn't report much Galveston news.

  I went back to the bedroom and set the CD player to shuffling the Elvis discs. Elvis started in on "I Need Your Love Tonight" while I tried to do a better job of sorting things out than I had the previous evening. It was a little like trying to work a fifteen hundred piece jigsaw puzzle with no picture to guide me, but I kept it up until some things began to fall into place.

  One thing was certain: Harry had disappeared. Ro-Jo, who was now dead, had told me a couple of places where Harry might be, but Harry wasn't there. I'd probably never know, now, whether Ro-Jo had steered me to those places because he really believed Harry might be there, or because he'd steered someone else there and he thought it might be fun if the two of us got together. I guess it didn't matter much.

  The next thing I knew for sure was that someone else was looking for Harry. The question was why. Had Harry witnessed the murder of Braddy Macklin? If that was true, and it seemed to be at least a good possibility, then my question was answered.

  But that brought up another couple of questions. Who had killed Macklin? And why?

  And how was Patrick Lytle mixed up in all this? He said he wanted to find Harry, but his reasons didn't impress me. What about his wife and her gambling winnings?

  And then there was Lawrence Hobart. The Hammer. Working to keep gambling from returning to the Island. Who was he working for? As Macklin's old enemy, he had a good enough reason to kill him, but had he? He seemed mean enough.

  Alex Minor was another question mark. I suspected that he represented the interests that Dino's uncles had successfully kept off the Island while they were running things, but what if I was wrong about him? What if he was really what he said he was? Stranger things had happened. Not to me, however.