Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 01 - Galveston (7 page)

Not wanting to impede my benefactor’s progress, I scurried aside several feet, peering into the fog at the indistinct figures and rubbing my sore shoulder.

Moments later, there was one startled scream after another followed by two splashes of water.

The shadow remained motionless, then turned toward me. A thousand crazy thoughts raced through my mind. What if this guy was some kind of psycho who thought he owned the docks? What if he came after me? I held my breath.

That didn’t help. He started toward me.

I took a step sideways, ready to jump in the bay.

A voice broke the silence. “Tony! You okay? Hey, Tony!”

“Virgil? That you?” I stared at the vague silhouette in disbelief.

He drew closer, and I made out the baseball bat in his hand. “Yeah. You shouldn’t of left without me, Tony. There’s bad people here who want to hurt you.”

I glanced at the darkness beyond the wharf. “Yeah,” was all I could say.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Well, I’ll have a sore shoulder, but, yeah, Virgil. I’m just fine.”

“Then why don’t we go back to the motel.”

“That’s the best suggestion I’ve heard all night. By the way,” I said as I reached for the pickup door. “How’d you find me.”

“Oh, I just stuck a bumper beeper on your pickup. I’m supposed to take care of you, Don’t you remember?” He replied simply, walking past me and disappearing into the fog. His disembodied voice echoed from the gray mist. “Go ahead. I’ll get my car and follow.”

 A bug? I gaped after him. He bugged my truck. I grinned. Not bad for a bodybuilder. Not bad at all.

The grin on my face vanished as I pulled out of the dock gates. Apparently, ‘Mustache’ Pete failed to make believers out of those who had taken a potshot at me. Otherwise, where did the three goons who jumped me on the wharf come from?

That night, I dreamed of baseball bats, oversized goons, and icy water.

I was glad when morning came.

Sipping on a cup of hot coffee, I visited the websites I had discovered on Cheshire’s computer. I wasn’t quite sure just what I expected to find, but whatever it was, I didn’t find it.

If diamond smuggling were the reason Cheshire had been at the docks, then I could make a case against half-a-dozen shipping lines as being the carriers of the goods. Each of the lines made either a direct or indirect contact with South Africa, a blanket assumption I made as to the source of the diamonds.  

By mid-morning, I had finished downloading the available information from each website. Later, I could sit at the snack bar in my motel and go back over the data with a greater degree of detachment.

Then I started on the telephone numbers I’d copied from Cheshire’s telephone book. The first number was an adult movie house, the second Joe’s Pizza, and the third the local newspaper. Remembering the cement truck two nights before, I arched an eyebrow at the fourth number, the Allied Cement company. There was no answer at the fifth number, 555-3636.

As I replaced the receiver, the phone rang.

A guarded voice whispered. “The D.A. stashed some coke on the back of the vanity drawer in your room.”

Before I could say thanks, kiss my foot, or take a hike, he hung up. I couldn’t tell if it was the first caller or not.

I yanked the drawer out. There it was, a nice clear plastic bag taped to the back of the drawer. I ripped it off, then yanked open the other drawers. Just the one.

Hurriedly I ripped it open and dumped it along with the shredded bag in the commode and flushed it all down the drain.

I was paranoid by then. Frantically, I searched every hiding spot in the motel room. They were all clean.

And just in time, for there was a sharp rapping at the door followed by a belligerent voice. “Boudreaux. This is the police. Open up.”

I folded the list of websites and telephone numbers into my pocket and calmly opened the door.

Four uniforms leered at me. An unfamiliar sergeant stuck a folded piece of paper in my hands. “Search warrant, Boudreaux. Step back.”

Taking the warrant, I did as he said. “By all means, Sergeant. You gentlemen come right in and help yourself. I’ll just sit over here out of the way and watch TV.”

They didn’t even put on a good show of searching. After glancing around the room for five seconds or so, the sergeant pulled out the vanity door. “Just as I thought. Cok—” The word died on his lips. He frowned, turned the drawer upside down, then tossed it on the bed and pulled out the other drawers.

All clean.

They promptly tore my room apart, but found nothing.

I clucked my tongue. “Gee, Sarge. Looks like someone gave you boys a bum tip.”

He glared at me, a crimson blush spreading up his neck and covering his cheeks. “Yeah?”

I shrugged. “Seems that way. Sorry you went to all the trouble for nothing.”

He stammered, finally managing to muttered a curse as he stomped out my room. I couldn’t resist the opportunity. “You old boys come back now, you hear? And, by the way, tell Sergeant Wilson I said hi.”

Chapter Eight

A few more curses drifted up from the parking lot, but the squeal of their tires on the macadam was a truer measure of their frustration. I stood in the open doorway, staring at the cruisers disappearing into the traffic. I struggled to make some sense out of what was going on around me.

“You all right, Tony?” Virgil stood in the open doorway of the room next to mine. He closed his door behind him.

“I had some guests.”

He grunted. “Saw ’em. Figured it was best for you if I stayed out of sight. The less they know, the better off we are.”

“Come on in,” I said, turning back into the room. “I could use a drink if I hadn’t taken the pledge.”

Inside, I poured us some coffee as I told him about the warning call, not so much for information he might provide as to bounce my theories off another. “I don’t know that the D.A. set me up. All I have is the caller’s word, but this is the second time he’s been right.”

“The second?”

“Yeah. First time, he said Cheshire was mixed up in diamond smuggling. Another source verified that.”

He shrugged his shoulders. The white on white shirt fit over his heavily muscled torso like spandex. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbow, revealing forearms of corded muscle. “You must be on to something, huh?”

“Why would the D.A. try to frame me? What did I do that would make him go south?”

“Maybe he wants to make certain the Grand Jury indicts you.”

I studied Virgil a moment. His answer made as much sense as any I could come up with. “Maybe so. Anyway, sitting around here is getting us nothing.” I slid my cup back on the snack bar. “Grab your coat, Virge. We’re going to pay Allied Cement a visit.”

Allied Cement was on the mainland, north of Galveston on the outskirts of Texas City. A few battered signs along Highway 146 into Texas City touted a ‘Beautify Texas City’ project of the previous decade.

A privacy fence of weathered cedar surrounded the ten-acre site in an obvious effort to follow the city beautification guidelines set up a few years earlier. Perched on a maze of steel beams in the middle of the yard, four giant cylindrical silos towered over fifty-foot high cone-shaped piles of gravel and various aggregates. Like pieces of a Rube Goldberg creation, half-a-dozen whirring conveyor belts with large buckets filled with sand and gravel ran in a dizzying mélange of angles from the ten-foot square hoppers on the ground to the top lips of the silos.

The whine and roar of straining diesel engines filled the air as front-end loaders with their three-yard scoops dumped various aggregate and sand into the hoppers in an unending procession.

Bright yellow cement trucks sat rumbling beneath the silos, waiting their turn for the next load of ready mix concrete.

A blast of cold air greeted us as we climbed from my truck. I tugged my jacket around me and hurried for the dispatch office.

Inside, a welcome flow of warm air rolled over us. A countertop divided the office. A grizzled clerk of about fifty and wearing a Houston Astros gimme cap nodded. “Howdy, boys. What can I do for you?”

In the glassed-in office behind him, a younger man with a round face glanced up and frowned.

I pulled out my wallet and flashed my identification, the Private Security card issued by the state. I explained. “There was a cement truck a couple nights back around ten o’clock on the docks near Maritime Shippers. Can you check your job register or log to see if it was one of yours?”

The old guy frowned. “Do what?”

“You keep a record of trips the trucks make?”

His frown deepened. He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, so?”

“So, can you tell me if one of your cement trucks was on Berth 21 in Galveston two nights ago at around ten o’clock?”

He saw the light. “Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can tell you.” He reached under the counter and pulled out a thick book with a worn brown cover. He hesitated. “Now, who are you?”

Patiently, I pulled my wallet back out and opened it to my license.

At that moment, the younger man from the office came out, his forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. A roll of flesh hung over his belt. “Can I help you?” He gave the older man a glance that said I’ll take over.

“I hope so,” I replied with an amiable grin on my face. I offered him my hand and introduced Virgil and myself.

He nodded. “Jerry Cook, Mister Boudreaux. I own this company.”

I glanced out the window at his plant. “Nice operation you have here.”

“Yeah. We’re one of the first slurry mixers in this part of the state. You know anything about ready-mix?”

“Only that it gets hard.”

He hitched his belt up over his ample belly. “Well, our process is more complicated than the competition’s, but we turn out a better mix with a more thorough hydration and in less time than they do.”  He pointed to a vertical cylinder the size of a boxcar, the top of which was a terminus for several conveyors of sand and aggregate. “By the time the mixture passes through those giant blades inside that mixer, every cubic inch has been mixed and remixed.”

A process of which I couldn’t care less. I nodded politely. “Impressive.”

He gave me a lopsided grin. “Like I said, complicated. But, you’re not here to learn the concrete business. Right?”

I kept smiling. “As I told this gentleman, Mister Cook, I’m trying to learn the identity of the cement truck that delivered a load of cement to Berth 21 in Galveston two nights ago.” I hastened to add. “There’s no problem, I just need to ask a couple questions, that’s all.”

The lopsided grin froze on his lips. He eyed me warily.  “Are you the police?”

“No.” I opened my wallet again. “Private investigator. And like I said, there’s no problem for the company. All I need to find out is who contracted the job.”

Jerry Cook shook his head. His voice had cooled perceptibly. “Can’t help you, Mister Boudreaux. Sorry. It wasn’t us.”

From the corner of my eyes, I spotted the older man quickly cut his eyes furtively at Jerry Cook. “Are you sure? Two nights ago?”

“Positive.”

I glanced at the book. “You know without looking?”

“Yep. Foggy that night. We don’t deliver in the fog. Causes problems when the concrete sets. Isn’t that right, Pitt?”

The older man jumped, then nodded. “Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s right, Mister Cook. Don’t set up good.”

Cook was lying. I felt it in my bones, but I kept grinning like the proverbial possum. “Well, thanks anyway, Mister Cook. Appreciate the help.”

“Anytime.”

I stopped at the door and turned back. “By the way, you know a cop by the name of Frank Cheshire?”

The frozen smile on his face cracked, but he quickly covered it. “Nope. Never heard the name. That surprises me though if he’s from around Texas City. I know most of the force by their first name.”

“He isn’t from around here. Just thought you might have heard of him, but thanks again.”

Outside, his shoulder turned into the cold wind, Virgil muttered. “He’s lying.”

“Yeah. That’s what I guessed.”  I slammed the truck door. “And the only reason someone lies is because they’re covering up something.”

Virgil grunted. “Yeah.”

I started the pickup. My stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since the night before.

Virgil chuckled. “Somebody’s hungry.”

“Yeah. How about it?” I pulled into the traffic.

“You like chicken fried steak and fried potatoes?”

“With gravy?” I stopped at a signal light and glanced at him.

“And homemade rolls.”

The light changed, and I moved with the traffic. “Just point us at it.”

Mae’s Home Cooking was on a side street a few blocks from the Strand. The small, unimposing frame building was packed, but the service was fast, and within thirty minutes, we’d put away a plate-sized chicken fried steak smothered with cream gravy, a heaping pile of crispy French fries, and half-a-dozen butter-soaked homemade rolls wafting of yeast.

“Nap time now.” Virgil grunted when we climbed back in the truck. “Let it settle.”

I laughed. “I won’t argue that.” But a nap was the last thing I had on my mind. I had a lot of work to do, and no idea how much time I had to do it.

Just as I closed the motel door behind me, the phone rang. “Yeah?” I wondered if it were my informant from the station.

“Boudreaux?”

The voice was different. “Yeah?”

“This is Jim Wilson, Sergeant Jim Wilson.”

Instantly, I grew wary. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

“I’m down in your parking lot. Off duty. I’d like to talk, private.”

My initial impulse was to refuse. If the D.A. were trying to set me up, what kind of bum-beef would the sergeant try? On the other hand, he might be my pigeon at the station. I crossed to the window. “Where are you?”

“Red Pontiac. Facing you across the parking lot.”

I spotted a face peering up through the windshield of a red Pontiac. “All right. Be right down.”

Before I left, I informed Virgil. “Just watch in case he tries something.”