Murder Takes a Break (17 page)

For some reason I believed her, at least about that.
 
She wasn't the same young woman she'd been when we'd first met, and the change was for the better.
 
I thought maybe she'd come to terms with who she really was, which is something a lot of us never quite manage.

Unfortunately, however, she wasn't turning out to be exactly the mine of information I'd hoped for, and I was almost certain that she was holding out on me.
 
I asked if she could remember anything else about the party, anything at all, but I didn't get any more out of her.
 
After a few more minutes of trying, I called Dino.

"See anything you wanted to order?" I asked when he came back to the kitchen.

"Not a thing.
 
Was Sharon any help to you?"

"Not much," Sharon said.
 
"I couldn't remember a whole lot."

"So where does that leave us?" Dino asked me.

"It leaves us needing to see someone else."

"Who?"

"It's a surprise," I told him.

"Oh, boy," he said.

"I
thought we'd be going to see Evelyn," Dino said after we'd negotiated the run-down stairway and settled ourselves in the pickup.

"We are," I said.
 
"I just didn't want to mention that in front of Sharon."

"Oh.

"I didn't want Sharon to think we didn't trust her," I said, starting the pickup and pulling away from the curb.

"But we do, don't we?"

"Mostly.
 
But it never hurts to check."

"If you say so."

"I say so."

He didn't respond to that, and I drove over to the residential area near the Bolivar ferry landing.
 
The streets in Evelyn's subdivision were all named for fish.
 
I didn't know whether I'd rather live on a street named for a Romantic poet or a fish, but I was pretty sure that "Tuna" didn't have the same prestige as "Coleridge."
 
Maybe it all depended on your priorities.

"How long's it been since you talked to Evelyn?" I asked when I stopped in front of her house.

"Not long.
 
Couple of days."

"She'll be glad to see us, then," I said, and she was.
 
She was also as surprised as Sharon.

"I don't know how you got him out of the house after dark," Tru," she said.

"It wasn't easy.
 
I had to threaten to kill him."

Evelyn laughed at that, sure that I was kidding.
 
She had a nice laugh.

"I'm afraid it's business instead of pleasure, though," I told her.

She wasn't one to waste time on small talk when there was business to be done.
 
Maybe it was her background.

"Tell me about it," she said.

I told her the whole thing while Dino sat and looked at his hands.
 
Now and then Evelyn would glance over at him and shake her head.

When I was finished, she said, "Old habits aren't easy to break. I hope you weren't too hard on him, Tru."

"Not as hard as I should have been."

"Good.
 
But if anything like this ever happens again, he'd better go to the police or we'll both get after him.
 
Now, what do you want from me?"

"I want to know if Sharon told you anything about that party."

"I wish she had, but she didn't.
 
I suppose that when death is involved, she feels more comfortable with her father.
 
He forgot to mention it to me, too."

"Hey," Dino said, coming out of his trance.
 
"It's like you said.
 
Old habits, and that stuff."

"I'd hoped you were doing better," Evelyn said.

"I'm trying.
 
It's tough sometimes."

"I wish I could help you, Tru," Evelyn said.
 
"But I don't know a thing."

"I was afraid of that.
 
Well, Dino, are you ready to eat supper?"

"I guess so," he said.

He couldn't work up any real enthusiasm for the idea, however.
 
I could tell that he'd rather go straight home.
 

"Can Evelyn go with us?" he asked.

"I don't think that would be a good idea.
 
We'll still be working."

Dino grunted.
 
"How can we work and eat?"

"We're going to the Hurricane Club," I said.

Dino nodded, as if he'd suspected as much.
 
"Big Al's place."

"That's the one.
 
I wonder if she'll be there?"

"With my luck?" Dino said.
 
"Sure she will."

W
e were only a short distance from the old downtown area, which had been going through something of a rebirth during the last few years.
 
Of course, it would still be overrun by stragglers from Dickens on the Strand celebrations, but the place where we were going was a little east of all the activity, in a part of town the tourists usually steered clear of, thanks to the fact that the lighting was bad and most of the buildings appeared in imminent danger of collapsing.
 
Not to mention that the people standing outside the buildings looked like they were answering a casting call for the sequel to
Deliverance
.

The Hurricane Club had been in the same spot for almost as long as the Galvez Hotel had occupied its spot on the seawall, or maybe even longer.
 
No one was really sure.
 
It wasn't the kind of building whose owners were interested in requesting a historical marker from the state.
 

There were of course many differences in the Galvez and the Hurricane Club, the main one being that the Galvez received regular cleanings from a competent staff.
 
I wasn't sure that the Hurricane Club had ever been cleaned at all.

I parked not far from the front entrance, and Dino and I got out of the truck.
 
The establishment's name had once been painted on the wooden front of the building, but the paint was so faded that it was impossible to read in the darkness.
 
The old wooden canopy over the door sagged dangerously, but the music coming from inside was pleasant.
 
It was Patti Page singing "Cross over the Bridge."
 
Big Al kept the juke box stocked with things like that to keep out the riff-raff.
 
The local gangbangers couldn't stand it.
 
Big Al considered them amateurs and had nothing to do with them.

Dino and I went inside, where it was almost as dark as it had been on the street, since most of the lighting came from four or five neon beer signs and the star on top of the little Christmas tree that stood on one end of the bar.
 

The tree was about the saddest I've ever seen.
 
It made the one Charlie Brown picks out on his Christmas special look like the deluxe model.
 
About half the needles had fallen out and they lay all around it on the bar.
 
No one seemed to mind.

The dimness of the Hurricane Club's interior was probably just as well.
 
There was no real way we could tell just how unsanitary the conditions were except by the smell, which was a mixture of stale cooking odors, cigarette smoke, wet sawdust, beer, and urine.
 
In some places the sawdust was picturesque; in the Hurricane Club it was foul.

There were tables scattered around the one big room, and a short bar that had most likely been there since around the turn of the century.
 
There were even a couple of brass spittoons near the bar.
 
The spittoons were actually fairly clean, mainly because everyone apparently spit into the sawdust on the floor.
 
I wouldn't have walked barefoot from the door to the bar for a thousand bucks.
 
And if someone had wanted to cast a pirate movie, the Hurricane Club would have been a good place to look for extras.
 
There was even a guy wearing an eye patch.
 

I fingered my tie.
 
I knew that I was very overdressed, but I didn't think it would be a good idea to go home and change.
 
If I did that, I wouldn't want to come back.

A thin haze of smoke hung just below the ceiling.
 
Nearly everyone I saw was smoking.
 
I don't think the Hurricane Club had a non-smoking section.

Big Al was sitting at a table in the corner.
 
Tonight her T-shirt said, "I Love Animals.
 
They're Delicious."
 

Henry J. was there, too.
 
His back was to us, but Big Al said something to him when we walked in and he turned around.
 
He was wearing the same T-shirt he'd had on that afternoon, and I could see the bloodstains on it.
 
They might have attracted attention at someplace a little more respectable, say a cheap dive in Tijuana, but they didn't look out of place in the Hurricane Club.

Henry J.'s nose was covered with tape and something that winked in the dim light, some kind of metal brace I suspected.
 
Although he didn't look overjoyed to see me, he started to get up to come over and greet me.
 
Or to do something to me.
 
But Big Al spoke to him and he sat back down.
 
The two of them bent their heads together and whispered for a minute.
 
Henry J. looked around at me once.
 
He wasn't smiling.

Then the conversation was over, and Big Al motioned to us to join them.
 

"Be thinking about what you'd like to eat," I told Dino.
 
"Remember, it's my treat."

He looked around, taking in the floor, and then he sniffed audibly.

"Treat?" he said.

"Sure.
 
I said I'd buy your supper."

"I thought you were kidding when you said we'd eat here."

"Kidding?
 
Me?
 
It's not like I never bought you a meal before."

"Yeah, but not in any place like this."

"Best enchiladas in town.
 
Or so I've heard."

"I'll bet you've never eaten one.
 
Have you?"

"There's a first time for everything," I said, and led the way over to Big Al's table.

I
could tell by the look on his face, what I could see of it, that Henry J. didn't like me at all, but he didn't say a word to either me or Dino.
 
He just sat there, staring at me as if he'd like to rip my heart out and feed it to a cat.

There was a cat handy, too, a big white one that slipped in from the kitchen, but it didn't appear to be in the market for a heart.
 
There was already a sizeable gray mouse dangling from its mouth.

"I assume that the two of you will join us for dinner," Big Al said.

I looked away from the cat.
 
There was a plate of enchiladas, rice, and beans in front of Big Al.
 
A covered dish of tortillas sat to one side, near a dish of picante sauce and a plastic basket of tortilla chips.

Henry J. must not have been hungry.
 
There was no food in front of him, though there was a half-full bottle of Dos Equis to go with the three empty bottles beside it.
 
Big Al was drinking Carta Blanca.

Dino and I sat down.
 
Les Paul and Mary Ford came on the juke box with "Mockingbird Hill."

"We'll have the enchiladas," I said.
 
"I've heard they're really good."

"It's true," Big Al said.
 
"Beer?"

"Not for me.
 
Do you have Big Red?"

Big Al laughed.
 
"We don't serve kids' drinks," she said.

"Water'll be fine, then.
 
What about you, Dino?"

"Carta Blanca's OK."

Big Al waved a hand, and a man wearing an apron came over.
 
The apron must have been white at one time, but the time had been years before I was born.
 
He took our order and went into the kitchen.
 
I looked around for the white cat, but it had disappeared.
 
I hoped it hadn't gone back to the kitchen to deliver the meat for my enchiladas.

"You know," Big Al said to me, "You haven't been exactly nice to Henry J. lately."

"Henry J.'s been following me around," I said.
 
"I don't like to be followed."