Cursed to Death

by Bill Crider

  I went into the bathroom and took a shower, first hot, then cold. The bathroom had been modernized about twenty years before, and the plumbing still worked just fine. I toweled off, dressed in jeans and yet another sweatshirt, this one with a red Arkansas razorback on it, and looked for something to eat.

  There was a kitchen where another bedroom had once been. The kitchen had been installed at about the same time as the bathroom, but the appliances had not been new even then. The freezing compartment in the refrigerator was about the size of a cigar box. I found some bread that wasn’t molded and made a peanut butter sandwich.

  I sat in the recliner and tried to read Absalom, Absalom while I ate. Every now and then the knee would twinge, just to remind me that I’d been running. My mind kept drifting off the book and I had to drag it back forcibly. After a while, I went to sleep.

  Chapter 2

  Sometimes I have trouble sleeping at night, and it catches up with me. I woke feeling a little stiff from having dozed off in the chair, and I was sorry I hadn’t rousted Nameless from the bed earlier.

  I checked my black plastic Timex. It was one-thirty, leaving me plenty of time to get to Dino’s. I wondered what it was that he wanted me to look for. Or who. I wasn’t sure I could be persuaded to do it, even by Dino.

  I put a couple of 45s on the Voice of Music’s thick changing spindle, “Ruby Baby” by the Drifters and something by Ricky Nelson, and tried to read a little more of the Faulkner book. I got through a page or two before it was time to leave.

  I went into the bedroom and gathered up Nameless, no small job considering that he must’ve weighed eighteen pounds or so. I carried him down the stairs and set him in the yard. He didn’t object, but he didn’t look too pleased with me, either. He watched sullenly as I got into the Subaru.

  Dino didn’t live far, but then nothing is far from anything else on the Island. His neighborhood was a long way removed in time from mine, though. A hundred years ago, people built their houses high to get the afternoon breeze off the Gulf and maybe even to take a look out at the surf every now and again. Then, thirty or forty years ago, the natives, the ones who called themselves BOI for Born on the Island, went the other way and built houses that looked like houses anywhere and tried to deny that the water was even out there.

  Dino lived in a big Tudor-style house that would have looked right at home in one of the older neighborhoods in West Texas, in Abilene or San Angelo, and up and down the street there were similar stodgy brick houses pretending that they were built on solid rock instead of shifting sand.

  There were people on that street who never wet a toe in the Gulf. Some of them probably hadn’t even seen the water in years.

  I parked on the street and went to the door. Ray opened it before I could ring the bell.

  “Come on in,” he said. “Dino’s in the living room.”

  Dino’s living room was nicer than mine, but the furniture hadn’t changed since the 1950s, except for the entertainment center, which must have held every electronic device known to the video trade. There were a huge, flat-screened TV, a VCR, a video disc player, stereo speakers, and a couple of items I couldn’t identify.

  Dino was sitting on a floral-covered sofa watching General Hospital. “This shit hasn’t been the same since Luke and Laura split,” he said. He turned off the set with a complicated device that was about the size of a paperback book and had more buttons on it than a doorman’s coat. “How’s it hanging, Tru?” He got up and offered me his hand.

  “It’s fine, Dino,” I said. “You’re looking good.” It was true. He was still solid and hard, like the linebacker he had once been.

  “I still work out,” he said. “I hear you do, too. I could never do that running stuff, though. I pump a little iron. How’s the knee?”

  I looked over at Ray, who smiled. “It’s OK,” I said. “I get around all right. Ask Ray.”

  “That’s right, Dino,” Ray said. “The guy nearly ran me into the seawall today.”

  “I bet,” Dino said. “Well, let’s sit down. Get us some drinks, Ray. What’ll you have, Tru?”

  “You got a Big Red?”

  Dino made a gagging sound. “I got it. I knew you were coming over. Bourbon and Seven for me, Ray. Big Red. Jesus.” He sat on the sofa.

  I went to an overstuffed straight chair nearby. “What’s the deal?” I said.

  “Let’s wait for Ray,” he said. So we waited.

  Dino and Ray and I went back a long way. We grew up together on the Island, though in different parts of the town. When the Island had been wide open, which it had been until the mid-1950s, a couple of Dino’s uncles had controlled all the gambling and most of the prostitution. I didn’t remember anything about that time, having come along at the tail end of it, but I’d heard plenty. You couldn’t grow up on the Island and not hear. Ray had been born in one of the black whorehouses, and somehow one of the uncles had gotten to know him (or maybe it was Ray’s mother that he got to know). Ray had been brought up practically like a member of the family. Me, I was just another guy, until high school, when I have to admit in all modesty that I became the best damned running back that Ball High had ever known. My ability on the field got me inside a lot of doors that would have otherwise been slammed in my face, and Dino had been on the team.

  Ray came in with the drinks. “I forgot you liked yours out of the bottle,” he said, handing me a glass of Big Red and a napkin.

  “I’ll manage,” I said, taking the glass and wrapping the napkin around it.

  “So, Tru, how long you been back on the Island?” Dino said, sipping at his drink. “A year now? Little more?”

  “About that,” I said.

  Ray had left the room again. He hadn’t had a drink for himself. I took a swallow of the Big Red. Some people say it’s like drinking bubble gum, but I like it. I figured Dino would get to the point eventually.

  “You think you’ll be staying?”

  “It’s a thought,” I said.

  “You got any money?”

  “A little. I’ve been painting a few houses. Not too many lately, though. But business will pick up in the spring.”

  “I got a little job you could do,” Dino said, twirling his glass between his palms as he leaned forward on the sofa. “You could make a little money before spring.”

  I took another swallow of Big Red. “What’s the job?”

  “I want you to find somebody,” he said.

  “I don’t do that anymore.”

  Just about then Ray walked back into the room. “That’s what I told him,” he said.

  “Yeah, but I figured that was just bullshit,” Dino said. “You aren’t the kinda guy who’d just quit like that. Not you.”

  “Sure I am.”

  I set my glass down on the floor. There was a coffee table that had legs that started somewhere in the middle and curved out to the edges and were tipped with something that looked like copper claws, but it was too far away to reach.

  “Look,” Dino said. “I knew Jan, too. I liked her. Ray knew her. He liked her. Everybody liked her. Nobody blames you. You got to get over that.”

  “Why?” I said.

  Dino put his glass on the coffee table, got up, and started pacing around. “It’s not your fault she disappeared,” he said. “It’s not your fault you couldn’t find her.”

  “He’s right,” Ray said. “Maybe she just wanted to disappear. She may turn up any day now with a story about spending a year in Vegas.”

  “No,” I said.

  “OK, probably not,” Dino said. “I got plenty of contacts in Vegas. I checked that one out.”

  “That was just sort of an example,” Ray said. “She could be anywhere.”

  “She’s dead,” I said. “We all know that. We just don’t know who did it, or why, or what he did with her.”

  Dino sat back down on the couch. “OK. OK. Maybe so. But that’s no reason for you to fold it up. You can’t just lie around and paint houses when you get the chan
ce. I checked you out, too. You had a good thing going when you were a P. I. You could find anybody.”

  “I couldn’t find my sister,” I reminded him.

  “Let me put it this way, then,” Dino said. “You owe me one. I called in a lot of markers to help you look for Jan.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. I owe you one.”

  “Besides that, I . . . what’d you say?”

  “I said, ‘I know. I owe you one.’”

  “That’s what I thought you said. You mean it?”

  “I mean it,” I said. “You helped me out, and you didn’t have to, not even for old time’s sake.”

  Dino laughed. “That knee still bothers you, huh? Well, I didn’t help on account of that. You were a buddy, and you needed help. So I helped. It didn’t work out, but I tried.” He picked up his glass and tried to take a bite off one of the ice cubes that was left. “So, you gonna help me with this one?”

  “Maybe. Tell me what it is, first.”

  “I don’t think he trusts you, Dino,” Ray said. He was standing somewhere behind me.

  “It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just that you might be asking something that I really can’t do. Or won’t do. So tell me who you want me to find.”

  “Get the picture for him, Ray,” Dino said.

  I didn’t hear Ray leave the room, but he must have. In a minute he was back, holding a cardboard folder. The outside of the folder had a sort of woodgrain look, just like the folders we’d gotten our own high school pictures in twenty years before. Ray handed me the folder.

  “Take a look,” Dino said. I opened the folder. Inside was a five-by-seven color glossy of a girl about sixteen or seventeen. Straight hair, the color we used to call mousy blonde. Blue eyes, a strong nose, a firm mouth. She had a prettiness about her, but there was nothing fragile in it.

  “So,” I said. “A nice looking kid. She the one that’s missing?”

  “That’s right,” Dino said. “Two days now.”

  “And you want me to find her.”

  “Right again. No wonder you were such a hotshot investigator.”

  “No need to be touchy,” I said. “Whose daughter is she?”

  “A friend’s,” Dino said, looking at his empty glass.

  “That won’t get it,” I said. “If I do this little job for you, and I’m not saying I will, I’ll have to talk to her parents. Kids disappear for a lot of reasons. Some of them are right at home.”

  “Not this kid,” Dino said. “Take my word for it.”

  I handed the folder back to Ray. “This isn’t going to work,” I said.

  “Goddammit, Tru!” Dino jumped to his feet.

  I stayed in my chair. “Look, Dino, I work the way I work. In a case like this, I always talk to the parents. Besides, it’s bound to be complicated. I’m sure you’ve already tried a few things yourself, like you did for me.”

  “Tell him, Ray.”

  “We’ve checked with the cops,” Ray said. “We’ve put out feelers in other cities where we still have contacts. I’ve been to the bus station here and in Houston. And in a few towns in between.”

  “What’d you find out?” I said, but I figured I knew.

  “Not a goddamn thing,” Dino said. “Not one solitary goddamn thing. The cops don’t know from nothing. Nobody’s seen her. She’s just gone. Just like—”

  “Like Jan,” I finished for him. “You can say it. I won’t mind.”

  “She’s younger than Jan,” Ray said. “It’s not the same thing.”

  I could have told him that he was making a mistake right there. You never assume anything. If you do, you mislead yourself. But I didn’t tell him. Instead, I said, “What about her friends? Teachers? Does she work? When was she last seen? I’ve got to talk to her parents and find out things like that.”

  “I can tell you,” Dino said.

  “This is beginning to smell,” I said. “I don’t think I want to be involved in it, even if I owe you.” I stood up.

  “You’re gonna have to tell him, Dino,” Ray said.

  “Shit,” Dino said. He looked at me hard and then said, “All right, goddammit. Sit down. I’ll tell you.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Please,” Dino said. “Please sit down. Is that polite enough for you? You want pretty please with sugar on it?”

  I sat down. Ray handed me the folder again.

  “There’s not any parents,” Dino said. “I mean, there’s not any father. The mother is one of my uncles’ girls.”

  I looked at Ray.

  “He’s telling it, not me,” Ray said.

  “She stayed in town after the houses closed down,” Dino said. “Nobody knew where she’d worked before, and she’s a respected woman now. She had the kid a few years after leaving the houses but before she’d really established herself. She was naturally a little upset at the idea that part of her past might come out in an investigation, and she asked me to see what I could do.”

  “Another favor from big-hearted Dino,” I said.

  “Yeah, another favor. Nothing wrong with that. We take care of our own, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “I know a few people on the cops,” Dino said. “They didn’t ask to see the parents.” He gave me a hurt look.

  “They don’t work like I do. They’ve got computers and terminals everywhere, which is good in a way, but it keeps them from doing some of the legwork they used to do.”

  “Well, Evelyn—the mother—didn’t want to talk to them, and she didn’t have to. I guess she’ll talk to you, but you gotta promise that you won’t talk to anyone about her past, uh, occupation.”

  “No promises,” I said. “I don’t really want to do this.”

  Dino looked at me for a second or two. “Go call Evelyn, Ray. Tell her the deal. See what she has to say.”

  Ray faded out of the room again.

  “This Evelyn have a last name?” I said. “A job?” I opened the folder and looked at the picture again. “I’m just curious, but I’m going to have to know sooner or later. Why not now?”

  Dino walked back over to the sofa and sat down. He picked up the button-covered TV control and turned it over and over in his hands. “Her name’s Matthews,” he said finally. “Evelyn Matthews. And, yeah, she’s got a job. She works at the Medical Center as a receptionist. I don’t think she’s going to want to talk to you there, though.”

  Ray came back into the room. I didn’t hear him coming, but there he was. “She’ll talk to him,” he said. “But she’s not too thrilled about it.”

  “That’s just because she hasn’t seen me yet,” I said.

  Dino smiled faintly. “I forgot what a high opinion you had of your looks. But somehow I don’t think you’ll impress this one.”

  “We’ll see. When and where?”

  “Her house,” Ray said. “After she gets off work. I’ll write down the address.”

  This time he was back quickly. He handed me a piece of white paper with the address written in black ball-point. It was just off Ferry Road.

  “Easy enough to find,” I said. “All the streets over there are named after fish, though.” I looked at Ray and then at Dino. “There’re probably a few more things you guys want to tell me now.”

  “Huh?” Dino didn’t get it.

  “I mean, you must’ve found out something about the girl, maybe something I should know. You must’ve done a little nosing around here in town.”

  “Oh,” Dino said. “Yeah. We did that. A little. But it’s your turn now. Maybe we did it wrong, and anyhow, everything we know, we got from Evelyn. If you’re gonna talk to her, you can get everything we got. After that, it’s up to you. You’re the ace private eye.”

  “Your faith in me warms my heart,” I said. “Especially considering my track record around here.”

  “Look, Tru,” Dino said. “You gotta quit blaming yourself. We told you it wasn’t your fault.”

  “I know. I just can’t convince myself.”
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br />   “Well, this may help you get it off your mind. Working for somebody else, I mean.”

  “Maybe.” I didn’t believe it any more than he did.

  “Sure it will. Now, what’s the freight?”

  “It’s a favor,” I said. “Like you did for me.”

  Ray laughed somewhere behind me. “How much money you got in the bank, Tru?”

  I turned my head so I could see him. “A little.”

  “I bet ‘little’ is just the right word,” he said.

  “I never thought house painting was going to make me rich.”

  Dino stepped over to my chair. “I want this official, and I want your best shot. What do you usually charge? Two hundred a day and expenses? Tell me if that’s not enough.”

  “Well,” I said, “it beats painting houses.”

  He reached into the pocket of his wool-blend slacks and pulled out a sheaf of bills folded in half. He counted out ten of them. “Here’s for five days, not counting the expenses. You can keep a record or not. I’ll trust you on them.”

  I took the money. It had been a long time since I’d held that much. “What if I don’t find her? I looked for Jan hard for six months, a lot of the time for three more, and off and on for the last three. I still haven’t found a trace.”

  “You get paid for doing the work, not for the results,” Dino said. “Besides, this is just a kid. This is different.”

  “Sure it is,” I said. I stood up. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Chapter 3

  From Dino’s house I cut back to Broadway and drove toward the beach. There’s a lot of Galveston’s history along Broadway. The wide esplanade is covered with oleander bushes and tall palm trees and often looks quite pretty, but on either side of it are the signs of what’s become of a once beautiful city.

  The long cotton warehouses of the old compresses, once jammed with bale after bale of cotton, stand deserted and empty. It’s a polyester world, but all the cotton shipping had long departed Galveston before people started dressing in miracle fibers. Signs of decay are all around. A huge hardware store, empty, its windows boarded up, its parking lot cracking and weeds growing through the cracks. An old movie house that’s gone through every phase there is. Not so long before it had been showing Debbie Does Dishes and now it was trying to make a go by showing G-rated family films. Muffler shops. Pawn shops.