Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 09 - The Crystal Skull Murders (9 page)

He tugged on the lapels and grinned. “I decided to
give this place some class. Not bad, huh?”

I shrugged. “Not bad”

At that moment, a slight man wearing a black T-shirt
and worn jeans held together by holes and slashes, entered and headed for the hallway. Tattoos covered every
inch of bare skin. “Hey, Buck.”

Buck nodded. “You’re late, Clay”

With a shrug, Clay rang his hand over his short-cut
hair. “My old lady. I’ll get things cleaned up out here”
He gestured to the empty beer containers on the tables
and floor.

“Make sure you dump the ashtrays too”

Clay grunted.

Grinning broadly despite his missing teeth, Buck
poured two cups of coffee and slid them across the bar
to us. His eyes lingered on Doreen a few extra seconds. At that moment, S.S.Thibeaux, whom we’d spotted
when we first came down to investigate the torching,
pushed through the front door. When he saw us, he
jerked to a halt. For a fleeting second, his eyes met
Buck’s then shifted to me. “Hey, Tony. Saw you come
in. How’s it going?”

“Can’t complain.”

Deliberately ignoring Buck, he added, “Stop in and
visit when you get a chance.”

Although I was well aware of S.S.‘s dislike for Buck,
I thought nothing of his sudden appearance. As he said,
he saw us enter and just stopped in to say hi.

Buck cleared his throat. “What’s up? Any progress
on Getdown’s place?”

I shook my head. “Just getting started” I sipped the
coffee. “By the way, you know that storeroom of Getdown’s?”

Buck wiped at the bar. “Where all the bums hang
out? What about it?”

“Doreen and I were out there yesterday when some
guy in a blue business suit jumped us. By the time we
got outside, he had disappeared. One of the winos said
he saw the guy run in your back door. Just after lunch.
You happen to see anyone like that?”

Buck paused, considering the question, at the same
time running the tip of his tongue back and forth in
the gap between his upper teeth. His eyes darted at
Doreen, then back to me. Slowly, he shook his head.
“Impossible.”

Beside me, I saw Doreen stiffen. “Why impossible?”
I asked.

He glanced at the open cooler behind the bar. “I keep
the back door locked. Just to keep those bums from
stealing me blind,” he explained while slamming the
cooler door. “And I got me an expensive generator in
the back. I sure don’t want it hauled away.”

I frowned. “Generator?”

“Yeah” He tapped a finger to his temple. “I ain’t all
that dumb. “Whenever power goes off, I kick that sucker
in. I’m the only establishment on the street with lights.”

Laughing softly, I replied, “And I bet prices go up,
huh?”

His grin split his angular face. “And how. The only
ball game in town, so to speak”

Doreen spoke up, her words soft and honeyed. “Could
someone have taken a key without you knowing, Buck?”

He leered at her and shook his head. “No way” He
patted the key ring on his belt like it was a six-shooter.
“This set and one just like it in my vault are the only
ones” He leaned toward her, resting his elbows on the
bar. “Like I said, ain’t no way those bums saw anyone
come into my place like that” His brow knit angrily.
“Who was it that told you that anyway?”

I shrugged and deliberately lied. “You know how it
is, Buck. They all look the same. I don’t know”

Doreen persisted. “Maybe one of your employees
left it unlocked.”

He studied her a moment, then turned on his heel and headed down a hall toward the rear of the building. He
waved for us to follow. I fell in behind Doreen. There
were three doors opening off the hall, and just as
Doreen passed one, she glanced around at me and nodded to the open door. I glanced in and spotted a small
one-gallon fuel container beside a portable generator.

For a moment, I hesitated, but Buck’s declaration
kept me going. “See.” He gestured to the door. “Here’s
why they couldn’t accidentally forget. Two locks. A
Master lock on a hasp, and a Sergeant lock in the door.
They might forget one, but not two. Any of my employees who leave either one unlocked gets fired” He gave
us a satisfied look, but my mind was on the fuel can.

Doreen glanced at me, then smiled at Buck. “I see
what you mean.”

Buck led the way back to the bar. I stared at his back,
unable to shake an overpowering feeling that he was lying through his teeth.

A half-a-dozen garbage bags bulging with trash were
piled on the floor in front of the bar. Clay held up his
hand. “Need the keys, Buck.”

Buck unsnapped the key ring from his belt and
tossed it to the slightly built man.

At that moment, my cell phone rang. It was Chief
Pachuca. I asked if I could get a copy of the fire marshal’s report on the Hip-Hop or if not, just a short interview with the fire marshal.

“Why the fire marshal?”

I watched Buck’s eyes when I replied. “I’m curious
as to what incendiary agent was used to start the fire”

To my disappointment, Buck didn’t react one way or
another.

Pachuca promised to get back to me. I punched off
and nodded to Buck. “Thanks for the coffee, Buck”

“Anytime. Anytime. Hey, Tony, what’s that inincendiary thing you was talking about? Something to
do with the Hip-Hop?”

Then I realized why there was no reaction from
Buck. He had no idea what I was talking about. “Yeah.
I want to find out what kind of fuel the torch man used
to start the fire. You know, gasoline, kerosene-”

Doreen glanced at me, but I kept my eyes on Buck.

His face remained impassive. He shrugged. “Oh”

Clearing her throat, Doreen gestured down the
hall. “Before we leave, I need to visit the little girl’s
room.”

“Second door on left,” Buck said.

She disappeared down the hall.

Buck leaned across the war. “Nice looking woman.
She your squeeze? You two got something going?”

Something going? I shook my head, remembering
the stress and aggravation of the previous day. With a
straight face, I replied, “Nope, just working together on
this case. That’s all.”

He arched his eyebrows and ran his fingers through his greasy black hair. “What do you know,” he muttered,
glancing at the entrance to the hall. “What do you
know.” He thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t
suppose you have her phone number, huh?”

Doreen paused with her hand on the door handle of
my Silverado and looked across the bed of the pickup
at me. “I think he was lying about the back door.”

“Oh? What makes you think so?” I climbed behind
the wheel.

She opened the door and slid in. “He’s a man. Men
lie.”

I lifted an eyebrow.

Suddenly aware of what she had blurted out, she
hastily added. “Present company excepted.” With a hint
of blush, she continued. “Nothing definite. Body language, I guess. Did you notice he wouldn’t look us in
the eyes”

I chuckled. “Buck’s always been like that. Shifty
eyes.” With a wry grin, I added, “You must not have noticed, but there were a couple times he was looking
you straight in the eye.”

She stiffened, then seeing the amusement in my eyes,
smiled grimly. “He looks the kind to hit on every
woman he sees”

“He is,” I replied. “By the way, he wanted your
phone number.”

Doreen rolled her eyes. “Oh, no”

I chuckled.

She glared at me, but there was a tiny glitter of
laughter in her dark eyes. “It isn’t funny.”

“I know,” I replied in mock seriousness. “If you think
that wasn’t funny, wait until he calls you.”

Doreen stared at me in disbelief. “You didn’t?”

I laughed. “No. I couldn’t do that to anyone. Now,
where’s that list of pawn shops?”

In the PI business, sometimes you tell the truth,
sometimes you lie (although we call it pretext, which
obviously sounds much better than lying). The successful PIs have an uncanny knack for knowing when to do
which. My knack borders more on the unremarkable
than the uncanny, but I figured we’d make more headway at the pawnshops with the truth.

Before we started hitting the shops, I parked in front
of Neon Larry’s. Leaving the motor running, I hurried
inside, looking for S.S.

I’d met S.S. a few years earlier when I stumbled onto a Chinese Triad smuggling military weapons out of the
country. While he was tied to the operation through the
tenuous connection of a cousin neck-deep in the operation, S.S. was innocent. But given the mood of the law
community and an over-zealous District Attorney, he
would have been sent away for years. With a couple judicious omissions in my statement to the police, he
dodged indictment.

And he never forgot it.

And I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

And given the same circumstances, I’d do it again.

He was a warehouse of street information. From time
to time, he had supplied me with snippets of gossip that
were of great benefit in regard to various cases.

“He just left. Be in tonight at eight,” said Larry, a
hollow-eyed carryover from the decade of Flower Children. His gray ponytail hung down to his waist.

By noon, we had canvassed seven pawnshops throughout downtown Austin. Street denizens hocking whatever
they could find, hustle, or steal, frequented all of them.
Unfortunately, none had paid out the princely sum of
$50.00 to any street bum. “Yeah,” one owner drawled.
“It’s usually five, sometimes ten bucks for a watch or
whatever. But believe me, if I forked out fifty bucks to a
wino, I’d remember. I’d probably call the cops right off”

We grabbed a fast lunch at La Casa on Congress Avenue overlooking the Colorado River. The broad, green river, some hundred feet below, is a spectacular sight,
steeped in history. Patches of live oaks dot the rugged
white limestone banks sloping down the water’s edge.
As I downed the last bite of chicken fajitas, my cell
rang. It was Chief Pachuca. “I’ll save you a trip to the
fire marshal, Boudreaux,” he said. “They found traces
of gasoline.”

“Does that help us?” Doreen asked after I told her of
the conversation. “Buck had a container of gas in his
backroom. I checked”

I grinned. “I figured you would. But don’t forget, he
also has a generator, which is probably powered by
gas” I pushed back from the table. “For all we know,
Getdown might have stored gasoline in his backroom”

By 2:00, we had four pawnshops left, all on Congress Avenue south of the river. The first one at which
we stopped was Bernie’s Pawn, the corner business of a
strip mall perched on a bluff overlooking the Colorado
River. Bars covered the exterior windows. Inside, the
office window, also protected by iron bars, opened into
the room.

From behind the window, an overweight woman with
sagging jowls, graying hair, and a cigarette dangling
from her lips eyed us suspiciously when we entered. I
led the way to the window. “Morning. Bernie around?”

Her lips curled. A couple expletives rolled off her
lips, and then she added, “Bernie’s dead. Six years
now.”

I shrugged. “You the owner?”

“You a cop?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then I’m the owner, Mrs. Bernie. Bernie was my
husband” She squinted through the cigarette smoke at
us, probably trying to guess what we were going to
pawn. “What in the h-” She hesitated, glanced at
Doreen, then apologized. “Sorry. Profanity is a bad
habit, but it comes in handy. Kinda like a universal language for some of them I get in here. Now, what can I
do for you?”

I showed her my identification and explained, “We’re
working on a case up on Sixth Street. We were told that
a couple weeks back, a wino pawned some object for
fifty dollars”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What was it?”

My hopes soared. At each previous pawnshop, the
response to that remark had been a resounding “no,”
not “what was it?”

I gave her my little-boy-lost smile. “That’s what
we’re trying to find out.”

She arched an eyebrow, uttered a couple obscenities
and said, “He might have, but he’s got a month to redeem it.”

Doreen glanced at me, an eyebrow raised at Mrs.
Bernie’s rough language.

My pulse speeded up, but I tried to keep the excitement from my voice. “Can you tell me what it was?”

Eyeing me narrowly, she replied. “I don’t see what
harm it can do. It was a glass skull.”

Doreen and I exchanged puzzled looks. “A glass
skull?”

Mrs. Bernie tapped her forehead. “Yeah. A skull. A
glass skull.”

Doreen spoke up. “Do you think it would be possible
to see it? I’ve never seen a glass skull.”

Mrs. Bernie paused and cocked her head to the side.
She spoke with her cigarette between her lips. “What is
it about that skull? It something special?”

Doreen and I exchanged puzzled looks once again.
“What do you mean?”

She eyed me shrewdly. “You’re the second guy today
who’s come in and asked it about it. I’d figured on doubling my money on it if the old wino don’t come back,
but maybe I’ll be cheating myself at that price seeing
there’s so much interest in it.”