When Old Men Die

by Bill Crider

  "Well," Dino said, "I heard it somewhere. It doesn't make any difference where it was. And there's plenty of money there."

  "I know there is," I said. "It's just that there's not a whole lot to go on here. I don't even have a place to start."

  "We're not worried about that," Dino told me. "Like I said, you're a professional. You'll think of something."

  I shoved the money into the pocket of my loose-fitting jeans. "You have a lot more faith in me than I have in myself."

  Dino tossed the box of Tender Vittles in the air and caught it. "That wouldn't take much, would it?" he asked.

  "No," I said. "It wouldn't take a whole lot."

  "I didn't think so," he said. "And that's another reason why you should take the job."

  Maybe he had a point there. But I didn't really think so.

  Three

  Actually, things weren't as bad as I'd tried to make them seem to Dino. There was somewhere to start, even when you were looking for a street person like Harry. There was always somewhere to start.

  Or if not, there was someone to start with. At least there was if I could find him. His name was Ro-Jo, and to my surprise, I located him in less than a minute.

  I said good-bye to Evelyn and Dino, got in the Jeep, and drove east on Seawall Boulevard. I spotted Ro-Jo after I'd gone about twenty blocks. He was on the concrete walkway leading to the 61st Street Pier. His grocery cart, never out of his sight, was beside him. There was no one fishing on that pier, either, so Ro-Jo wasn't in anyone's way.

  I hadn't expected to find him so easily. He's usually scrounging in the dumpsters behind Kroger or Randall's, or maybe one of the fast-food places, hoping that someone's thrown out something edible. It wouldn't have to be something I'd consider edible. Ro-Jo was like Harry. They had standards that were a little different from mine.

  I parked the Jeep and climbed out. Ro-Jo hadn't spotted me yet, so I watched him for a minute. Him and the cats.

  All along the seawall, on the beach side, there are cats living in the rocks. I suspected that Ro-Jo had eaten some tuna fish or maybe even cat food that day, or someday recent enough for the smell to be still in his clothing. The cats swirled around him as he tried to tie the bottoms of his camouflage pants to his ankles as tightly as he could with a frayed piece of toweling.

  "Hey, Ro-Jo," I called when he was finished. "Are those your cats?"

  Ro-Jo looked up. I think that his hair had been red once and that he'd been called Rojo, which is Spanish for red if you pronounce the j like an h. But no one called him that anymore, and the new pronunciation didn't matter because his hair was no longer red. It was tangled, matted, and greasy, and maybe you could call it auburn if you were feeling poetic.

  His camouflage suit looked fairly new, but the toweling that now tied it to his ankles and wrists looked older than I am, as did the rusty grocery cart that he had piled high with his worldly possessions, all of which were packed in black garbage bags and covered with a clear plastic drop cloth.

  "What're you tying down for?" I asked him, walking down to where he stood.

  "Gonna get cold tonight, man." His beard and mustache were so thick that I could hardly see his mouth as he spoke. "Gotta keep that frigid air outta my sleeves and britches legs."

  I looked around at the cats that were rubbing against his legs and swarming around both of us now, gray tabby cats, calico cats, black cats, any kind of motley cat you could think of. I wondered if Nameless had lived along the seawall before he adopted me.

  "Nice pets," I said.

  "They aren't mine, man. I don't even like cats."

  He was wearing a pair of worn Nike cross trainers, and to prove his point he used the toe of one to shove aside a little calico.

  "If you don't like them, you could kick harder than that."

  "Hey, man, I didn't kick her. I don't kick animals, even if they bother me, which these don't. I might not like 'em, but they keep down the rats. And besides, these cats got enough trouble without me kickin' 'em."

  "What kind of trouble?"

  "They live in these rocks here," he said, pointing along the seawall. "But when the tide comes in, what happens?"

  "It covers the rocks," I said.

  Ro-Jo looked surprised that I'd gotten the answer, but I was a detective, after all. I could figure out stuff like that.

  Ro-Jo bobbed his head. "Right, man. The tide comes in and covers the rocks, and these cats got no place to go except across those four lanes of traffic there." He gestured in the direction of the street. "Lots of mashed cats, man."

  While we were talking, a white pickup stopped in front of my Jeep and a man got out. He took a bucket from the pickup bed and started stirring something in it with a stick.

  The cats deserted me and Ro-Jo instantly and teemed around the man from the pickup.

  "What's going on?" I asked Ro-Jo.

  "Feeding time, man."

  While we watched, the man put cat food out on the rocks. The cats gulped it greedily. Some seagulls appeared out of nowhere and swooped down to check out the food, but not close enough for the cats to grab them.

  "Who's the guy?" I asked.

  "I don't know, man. All I know is, he feeds the cats."

  Everyone was doing favors these days. Some good Samaritan was even feeding the seawall cats. I guess the least I could do was ask a few questions about Outside Harry. I figured that if anyone had seen him, Ro-Jo would be the one. I'd seen them together on the streets a couple of times.

  "I don't know where he is, man," Ro-Jo said when I asked. "I ain't seen that old dude in a couple weeks. Maybe more than that. Where's he hangin' out, anyhow?"

  "That's what I wanted you to tell me," I reminded him.

  "Oh. Yeah. Right. Well, I don't know."

  "You have a place you go when it gets cold?"

  He narrowed his eyes, which were nearly as hard to see as his mouth, what with the hair hanging out from under the old Astros cap he wore and growing high on his cheeks.

  "What you want to know that for, man?"

  "I'm not planning to sneak in and rob you in the middle of the night," I told him. "I just thought Harry might have a place like that, and I wondered if you knew where it was."

  "Maybe," he said, watching the man who had fed the cats get into his truck and leave. "Maybe not."

  Well, what could I expect? I pulled out my billfold and gave him a ten.

  It disappeared inside the camouflage suit. "You know that old building down on East Beach by those condos? Looks like some kinda old pump station or something?"

  "I know it."

  It wasn't a pump station, though, whatever that was. I thought it used to be some kind of marine laboratory.

  "Harry said something about it to me once," Ro-Jo went on. "It's not much of a place, though. There's better."

  "Where?"

  He stuck out a hand.

  What the hell, I thought. It was Dino's money.

  Actually, it wasn't, not that specific money. It was mine. All the bills Dino had given me were bigger than any I had, but I wasn't giving Ro-Jo any of those. I handed him another ten. That left me one more of my own.

  This bill disappeared faster than the first one had. "There's The Island Retreat," Ro-Jo said.

  The Island Retreat was a memory of Galveston's heyday, when Dino's uncles were in power and when there was as much gambling going on right there on the Island as there was in Las Vegas. The Retreat was supposed to be a restaurant, and food was actually served there, but gambling was the main attraction.

  The Texas Rangers raided The Retreat with regularity, but they never found a thing. The Causeway in those days featured a drawbridge, and somehow the Rangers were always getting delayed on their way to the Island. By the time they arrived, there was no sign of any gambling apparatus.

  Once, or so I'd heard, they got by the watchers and the drawbridge and came right into The Retreat, but the pier was so long, and the uncles so skilled in delaying tactics -- talking, whining, plea
ding, demanding warrants -- that by the time the Rangers reached the room at the end of the pier, where the gambling went on, there was nothing to be seen but a group of happy diners eating at tables covered with sparkling white cloths.

  Storms had shortened the pier, but a lot of the old building was still there, boarded up and covered with FOR SALE signs. It might be a good place to get out of the cold, but it was right on the busiest part of the seawall, and the door had certainly appeared to be locked securely every time I glanced at it in passing.

  I asked Ro-Jo how anyone could get inside.

  "You have to wait till after dark," he said.

  "The street's pretty well lighted along there," I said.

  "I didn't say anything about going in by the front door, man."

  "All right. So how do you get in?"

  Ro-Jo didn't say anything. He looked over my shoulder at the sky. I turned and looked too. The blue had turned dark and there were a few low clouds turned orange and pink by the setting sun. I looked back at Ro-Jo. He was rubbing his fingers together, so I gave him my last ten.

  "You gotta climb up the pier, man," he said after making the bill vanish. "Third pole on the west side. There's a hole in the floor you can get through if you know where it is."

  He stopped and looked at me.

  "I don't have any more money," I said. "You've got it all already, so you might as well tell me."

  He did. It would involve a little wading, but not much.

  "You mean Harry can climb the pier?" I said. "He looks too old for that."

  Ro-Jo shrugged. "Hey, man, when you're lookin' for a warm place to sleep, you can do a lot of things."

  Maybe he was right. I supposed that if Harry could do it, I could. If Dino had still owned the building, I could just have asked for a key, but the uncles had lost control of most of their real estate before they died, and I was sure that Dino wasn't the owner of The Retreat. He probably didn't even know who was.

  "Thanks for your help, Ro-Jo," I said. "I'll see you around."

  "Yeah, you might. Why're you lookin' for Harry, anyhow?"

  I was already on my way to the Jeep. "Somebody wants to know where he is," I said over my shoulder.

  "I know that, man. I just wondered why you were lookin'."

  I stopped and turned back to Ro-Jo. "You know somebody's looking for Harry?"

  "Sure, man. I've made more bread this week than in the last ten years."

  "Someone else gave you money to tell them about Harry?"

  "That's what I've been saying. Takes you a while to catch on, doesn't it."

  "Who was it?"

  "I don't know man, just some guy."

  "What did he look like?"

  Ro-Jo looked at me with what might have been contempt. It was nearly impossible to see his expression.

  "I don't know, man. I don't give a damn what people look like."

  He was probably telling the truth. I didn't press him on it.

  "Did you tell him the same thing you've told me?" I asked.

  "Hell, no, man. I didn't know him. I don't tell anybody the truth unless I know 'em."

  "But you're telling me the truth?"

  "Sure, man. I know you, and Harry knows you. He says you're all right for a guy who lives in a house."

  "It's not much of a house," I said.

  Ro-Jo opened out his arms. "More than I got. You gonna look for Harry?"

  "I'm supposed to."

  "Well, if you find him, tell him Ro-Jo says 'hey.'"

  I promised that I would.

  Four

  I didn't want to try The Island Retreat, not until well after dark and much later in the evening. Someone was sure to see me if I did.

  That left the old concrete building that Ro-Jo had mentioned, so I headed in that direction. When I came to the more populated area of the seawall, I glanced over to my right as I passed one of the gift shops that extended out over the Gulf on its own pier. Only a few yards farther on was The Island Retreat. Just as I remembered, the doors were securely fastened, the windows boarded up. I kept on driving.

  After you pass Stewart Beach, there's not much to see. Suddenly the seawall is on your left, and you're driving practically at sea level.

  There's very little development on that end of the Island, except for two high-rise condos that are practically on the beach, testament to man's undying faith that the next big storm, which is certainly going to come someday, will be perfectly harmless, no more than a passing breeze that might ruffle a few palm branches or tear the blossoms off the oleanders that grow along the esplanade on Broadway.

  It's nice to be optimistic, but I'd put my money on that part of the beach being as clean the day after the storm as if it had been swept by a broom. Of course I've been wrong before.

  At the far end of the Island was Apffel Park, which at the right time of the year would be covered with tourists and day trippers from Houston. There probably wouldn't be many people there now, especially at this time of day. After passing Apffel Park, you came to the Bolivar Roads; there was no more island left.

  The place I was looking for was on the town side of East Beach and within sight of the high-rise condos, but then so is everything else on that end of the Island.

  The building was about a hundred yards off the street, right on the edge of a lagoon. There was an oyster shell road running down toward it through the tall sea oats, but the road was blocked by a rusty gate. There was a sign hanging on the gate. The sign was white with black letters and spotted with rust. It said:

  KEEP OUT

  U. S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

  If I went past the gates, would I be considered a trespasser? I didn't see how. After all, the government is the people, isn't it? And I was one of the people. So this was my property, wasn't it? My tax dollars at work, and all that.

  I had a strong feeling that if I were caught, no judge in the country would buy that line of reasoning, but I didn't think I'd be caught. There certainly wouldn't be a guard. No one cared about that crumbling old hunk of concrete. Someone had probably put the sign up because a lawyer had given a speech about liability in case of accident, but I didn't intend to hurt myself and sue.

  I looked around for a place to park the Jeep. Parking right in front of the gate seemed a little too obvious. Someone was sure to see the Jeep and wonder what it was doing there. I could have driven to one of the condos, but their parking places were probably guarded a lot more tightly than the building was.

  There was a paved road leading down to the condos located not too far from the old lab building, and just off the road there was a small pool. Ruts led through the sea oats to the pool, where someone had driven down to it, maybe to cast a net for bait.

  There was no gate across these ruts, so I could drive down to the pool and leave the Jeep, hoping that anyone who saw the Jeep would assume that a fisherman was somewhere around, even if I wasn't in sight. It was nearly dark now, and I didn't think anyone would see the Jeep down there anyway.

  A big heron flew up off the pool when I drove up and sailed off gracefully, looking startlingly white against the darkening sky. I sat and watched him for a minute before taking my Mag-Lite from under the passenger seat and getting out of the Jeep.

  As I walked through the nearly head-high sea oats toward where I hoped Harry was hiding out, I wondered who besides me was looking for him.

  And I wondered why.

  I also wondered if Dino had leveled with me. If he'd been lying, it wouldn't have been the first time. When he'd asked me to look for Sharon, he'd told me that she was the daughter of "a friend." Which was true, if you considered that Evelyn was his friend. Still, he should have told me that Sharon was his daughter as well. Eventually he did, of course, but he'd held back in the beginning.

  It was a shame that a man couldn't trust even an old friend to be truthful.

  Harry must have known someone was looking for him. That was no doubt why he had disappeared
in the first place. I just couldn't imagine what anyone would want with him. He didn't have any money, at least not that I knew about. For that matter, he didn't have anything, not unless he'd found something in the dumpsters or in the alleys. If he'd done that, he hadn't told Ro-Jo about it.

  Or maybe he had. Maybe Ro-Jo had taken it from him and quietly disposed of him. That was possible, but not very likely. Ro-Jo was a peaceable sort. He would take money from me for information, but he wasn't aggressive. He didn't like to confront people. He wouldn't even kick a cat.

  The oats slapped against my jeans, and I could hear the gentle sound of the surf on the beach. It was soothing and peaceful, a little like listening to a New Age relaxation tape.

  There was still a faint glow of the sunset in the west, but the sky overhead was dark and a few stars were breaking through. The dark gray bulk of the building loomed high on its concrete stilts in front of me.

  When I reached it, I could see what Ro-Jo meant when he said it wasn't much of a place. Whatever purpose the building had once served, it was now only a skeleton. There was enough light for me to see that the outside walls were solid, but the windows had quite a few missing panes, and a lot of the ones that weren't missing were broken. There were a couple of tall antennas sticking up from the roof, but I suspected that there was no receiving or sending equipment inside.

  The place certainly didn't look very inviting, but maybe that was just the kind of place that Harry would look for if he wanted to hole up from the weather. He probably wouldn't have much company.

  I turned on the flashlight and shined it around the stilts. Most of them were in the shallow water of the lagoon, though a couple in front were on relatively dry land. There was no sign of Harry's shopping cart, but he would probably have stowed that elsewhere. Maybe he had even managed to get it inside the building somehow.

  On the side of the building there was a rickety wooden stairway leading upward. The salty air had just about rotted it away, and I wondered if it would hold my weight or if one of the steps would crumble away to nothing when I put my foot on it. Or maybe it would just break in two.