When Old Men Die (14 page)

"I don't really know much about him.
 
But I do know that he was interested in buying The Island Retreat."

"What?
 
Did he have the money?
 
Did -- "

"Don't get excited.
 
I don't know much about it.
 
And I don't think he was interested for himself.
 
He was undoubtedly representing someone else."

"Are you sure?
 
Even Dino doesn't know about that."

She smiled, a trifle smugly.
 
"Dino doesn't know
every
thing."

"All right.
 
Who else is involved?"

"I haven't found that out yet.
 
I'm sure you will, however, and then you'll tell me."

I promised that I would give it a good try.
 
"What about Macklin's enemies?"

"Most of them are dead.
 
But if he was thinking of helping bring gambling back to the Island, you can be sure that he had enemies.
 
Some of them from the old days, some of them from now.
 
That's something else for you to find out."

I wondered if Macklin's daughter would know.
 
Even if she didn't, I wouldn't mind talking to her again.

"Lytle isn't exactly living in the lap of luxury," I said.
 
"What happened to his money?"

"That's another mystery," Sally said.
 
"His family was in textiles, I believe, and they made a sizeable fortune before the cotton market collapsed.
 
Somehow he didn't manage to keep much of it, only enough to hold onto the house."

Holding onto it was all he was doing.
 
There was furniture in the bedroom, but I suspected that most of the rest of the place was as bare as the parlor had been.
 
The furniture that Nancy thought was there had probably been sold to antique dealers many years ago.

"I'm afraid I haven't helped you very much," Sally said.

"You've given me a lot to think about, and a lot to work on.
 
I have one more thing to ask, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind.
 
I'm glad for the company."

As usual, I promised myself that I'd get by to see her more often.
 
I always meant it at the time.

"Do you know anything about Harry Mercer?"

"Only what you know.
 
I used to see him prowling the streets when I was younger and got out of the house.
 
He's been on the Island a long time."

She wasn't able to tell me
any more
, and when I left her I had more questions than answers.
 
But I thought they were questions that would get me closer to Harry.
 
If they weren't, they were questions that would get me closer to whomever killed
Braddy
Macklin, and though I wasn't sure I cared about that, I felt more than ever that Macklin and Harry were somehow connected.

By the time I got to the Jeep, I thought I knew how.

T
he weather hadn't improved since the day before, and by the time I got to Dino's house it was raining.
 
It's bad enough in the Jeep when it's cold; rain is
really
miserable.
 
Luckily, I got to Dino's before I got soaked.

Dino was watching Phil Donahue, and he made me wait until a commercial came on before he'd talk to me.
 
I don't think he was really that interested in Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, but he said he was.
 
He did, however, turn off the set when I started talking.
 
I filled him in on my visit with Lytle and told him what I'd learned from Sally.

"Are you sure you didn't know about Macklin representing someone wanting to buy the Retreat?" I asked.

Dino shook his head.
 
"Sure I'm sure.
 
I tell you what, Tru, if I didn't know better, I'd think you didn't trust me."

"I trust you.
 
More or less."

"More or less.
 
Maybe we could go on TV.
 
Friends who don't trust friends."
 
He clapped me on the shoulder.
 
"Hey, it's nearly noon.
 
You want some lunch?
 
I got a couple of roast beef dinners, or maybe you'd like some Mexican food.
 
How about enchilada dinners?"

"We'll go out," I said.

"What are you talking about?
 
It's raining.
 
We'll get drenched.
 
I can pop a couple of those babies in the oven, they'll be ready in a jiffy."

"Get your raincoat," I said.

W
e went to Shrimp and Stuff, which was close and cheap and probably the only place in town where you could still get a shrimp dinner for under five dollars.
 
Of course you have to order it at the counter, wait for your number to be called, and eat off a Styrofoam plate, but that doesn't affect the taste of the food.

"I'll probably get pneumonia," Dino said while we were waiting for our food.

"No you won't.
 
It was hardly raining, and you were wrapped up in that coat."

"Yeah.
 
As if that helped."

He looked really uncomfortable, and he kept glancing around the room to see if anyone was staring at him.

"Stop whining," I told him.
 
"Did you know about Macklin and Mrs. Lytle?"

"I probably heard about it.
 
I don't remember.
 
I was just a kid at the time."

"What about Macklin's enemies.
 
Anybody want to kill him that you remember?"

"What's all this harping on Macklin?
 
You're supposed to be looking for Harry."

"I am."

"You must be pretty sure the two of them are connected, then."

I looked around the room.
 
Shrimp and Stuff was a little more
yuppified
than it had once been.
 
There were even a few baskets of ivy, which looked imitation to me, suspended from the ceiling.
 
The clientele was still the same, though, mostly locals with a couple of tourists thrown in.
 
Nobody seemed interested in our conversation.

"Maybe Harry knows who killed Macklin," I said.

That got Dino's interest.
 
"How?"

"Maybe he saw the murder."

While it was true that Barnes had told me there was no hole in the floor of The Island Retreat, it had occurred to me that he might be wrong.
 
The police wouldn't have been looking for it, and it could have been concealed somehow.
 
Maybe it wasn't even in the same room where Macklin had been shot.
 
The fact that there was no trash around didn't mean anything either.
 
Harry might have been more careful in the Retreat than he'd been at the lab, if he was the one who'd left the trash at the lab.
 
I was just guessing that he was; it could have been anyone.
 
Even Ro-Jo.

"So someone's after Harry because he can put the finger on him," Dino said.

"It's a possibility."

"You think Harry is already dead?"

That was another possibility, one that I didn't want to think about.
 
I'd been worried enough when there had seemed to be only a vague connection between Harry and Macklin.
 
And while this new connection was anything but solid, I was even more worried now.

"Well," Dino said, "what do you think?"

I was saved from answering when the woman behind the counter called our number.
 
Dino and I got up to get our trays.
 
We both asked for extra helpings of the red sauce, which was the best in town.
 
For a few minutes we were too busy eating to talk, but Dino finished off a hush puppy and asked me again.

"What do you think about Harry?
 
You think somebody's killed him, like they killed Macklin?"

The truth was that I didn't have any idea.
 
"I hope not," I said.
 
Then I added, "If he's dead, he hasn't turned up anywhere."

"So what're you gonna do?"

"I'm going home and read a book," I said, dipping a fried shrimp in red sauce.

Dino stared at me.

"Look," I said, "I don't have any idea where Harry could be. I don't even know who to ask.
 
If Ro-Jo shows up, I can ask him, but now he's lost too.
 
So what I'm going to do is wait until after dark.
 
Then I'm going to check out the Retreat if I can get inside it.
 
Harry might be there, for all we know."

I didn't mention going by the old marine lab to look for the bullets, since Dino didn't know I'd discussed that with Barnes.
 
But I intended to do that, too.

Dino looked skeptical.
 
"Harry wouldn't be in the Retreat, not after the cops have been there."

"Why not?
 
It's the safest place in Galveston right now."

I thought it was a good point, but Dino didn't agree.
 
He had other ideas about what I should be doing.
 

"You
oughta
go talk to Cathy Macklin," he said.
 
"See if she can tell you anything else about her old man.
 
Like who he was enemies
with in
the old days.
 
There must still be some of those guys around."

"You'd be the one who'd know about that," I said.

"Is that a crack?
 
You still don't trust me?"

"I didn't mean it that way.
 
I just thought you might know.
 
Or be able to find out."

He ate his last french fry.
 
When he was finished chewing, he said, "I might.
 
I could do it on the phone."

"Good.
 
I'll take you home."

"And then what?
 
Go read your book?"

"We'll see," I said.

Dino wasn't happy with that answer, but at least it had stopped raining and we didn't get wet on the way back to his house.

I
probably would have read the book, but there was someone at the house when I got there.
 
He was sitting in a big black Mercedes sedan, looking out through the windshield at the bay.
 
You couldn't see the Gulf from the house.

Nameless wasn't much of a guard cat.
 
He was sitting on the porch, waiting for someone to open the door and let him in.
 
The guy in the car wasn't bothering him at all.
 
If the guy had some Tender Vittles, Nameless would probably go off with him.

When I stopped the Jeep, the visitor got out of the Mercedes.
 
He was tall, taller than I am, and much wider through the shoulders.
 
He was wearing an expensively tailored suit, not exactly the preferred Island wear even in the winter, but his face didn't match his outfit.
 
It was a hard face, one that you could strike a match on, and the eyes were like black marbles.

He walked over to the Jeep.
 
"Your name Smith?"

"That's right," I told him.
 
And then to prove that I had a snappy comeback for every occasion, I asked, "What's yours?"

For a second I thought he wasn't going to tell me.
 
He just stood there and looked at me out of those hard black eyes, as if he weren't sure whether to break my neck then or wait until a little later.
 
The way he was built, he could do it whenever he wanted.

But he didn't break anything.
 
He told me his name.

"Alexander Minor," he said.
 
"You can call me Alex.
 
I want to ask you something."

I got out of the Jeep and walked past him to the house.
 
I opened the door and let Nameless in.
 
Then I turned to Minor.

"You want to come inside?" I asked.

He didn't.
 
He wanted to get whatever it was that he'd come for and get out of there.
 
But he didn't say that.
 
He just walked over to where I was holding the door open and went in the house.

My parlor wasn't as bare as Patrick Lytle's, but it didn't look like anything in this month's
House Beautiful
either.
 
There was an old couch covered with something that might have once served as the seat covers on a twenty-year-old Plymouth and a couple of chairs.
 
Aside from an old Quasar TV set, that was it.