When Old Men Die

by Bill Crider

  Fourteen

  Patrick Lytle, I thought, was a lot like Dino. If he ever left his house, he would probably panic. I wondered if he watched Oprah and Geraldo and all the rest.

  He was also trapped by a past that he didn't really understand, not if he thought that Outside Harry was a glorious representative of it. In short, Lytle was probably a little crazy, not that there was anything wrong with that. Some of my best friends were a little crazy. For that matter, I was probably a little crazy too.

  And for some reason that train of thought made me think of Sally West. I stopped at a store for a bottle of Mogen David wine and drove to her house, which was right on Broadway and even older than Lytle's mansion.

  The old black man named John answered the door. He never changed from year to year. Sally was ninety now, and while he probably wasn't quite that old, he was at least as old as Patrick Lytle.

  "Hello, Mr. Truman," he said. He always said that. "Miss Sally's in the parlor."

  He took the wine. "Thank you, John," I said, and followed him to the parlor, where he announced me and then melted away.

  Sally West was small and frail. She wasn't in mourning, but she was dressed in black, as she had been every time I saw her. She was sitting in a cane-bottomed rocker and, like Lytle, she didn't get up when I entered the room. She could if she had to, but it took more effort than she wanted to expend. Despite her age, her eyes were bright and sharp and her voice was crisp.

  "Hello, Truman," she said. "You do have some news for me, I hope."

  "A little," I said.

  "Oh, good. Then sit down and tell it to me."

  I sat in a rocker just like the one she was using and told her about Braddy Macklin's murder, Outside Harry's disappearance, and my visit to Patrick Lytle. While I was talking, John came back in with some of the wine in crystal glasses on a silver tray. The wine bottle was on the tray as well, and he set it on a small table by Sally's chair. Then he handed us the glasses and vanished again.

  When I had finished the story, Sally had finished her first glass of wine, so I got up and poured her another. I had hardly tasted mine. I wasn't as fond of Mogen David as Sally was.

  "You have wonderful stories, Truman," she said. "And you do lead the most exciting life of anyone I know. Hearing you makes me wish you could come by more often. Is there anything I can tell you in return?"

  Dino had introduced me to Sally when I first came back to the Island. She was a wonderful source of information about the old days, and she loved to gossip, or to "exchange information," as she put it. To her, it wasn't gossiping. Not to me, either. It was just talking to a friend. Sally had a lot of friends, and she knew almost as much about the Island's present as about its past.

  "You could tell me something about Patrick Lytle," I said.

  If anyone would know about Lytle, Sally would. On the wall beyond where she sat there was a dark mark painted to indicate the level to which the flood waters had risen in 1900. There was a lot of other history in the room as well. Sally's family had been on the Island as long as nearly any other, and her house and mind were repositories of the Island's lore.

  "I'm sure you already know a great deal about Mr. Lytle," she said.

  "Just stories I've heard. Nothing I'd put much stock in."

  "Most of the stories are probably true. He's lived in that house since he was a boy, just as I've lived in this one. Neither of us gets out much anymore." She took a sip of wine. "He must be a bit like me, living in the past more than the present."

  For Sally the past began long before the days when Dino's uncles were running the show on the Island. She didn't resent the gambling days the way Lytle seemed to do, and in fact she seemed to have enjoyed them, but she thought that early decades of the century were the time when Galveston was really alive. From my conversation with Lytle, I suspected that he felt much the same way.

  Sally interrupted my thoughts. "How is our friend Dino these days?"

  "He's still not getting out much," I said.

  "I'm not at all surprised. But didn't you tell me that he was getting better about that?"

  "He is," I said. "But not as much as he should be."

  Sally had a theory about Dino. She believed that he was a victim of some sort of paralysis of will. Trapped by the legend of his uncles and unable to do anything to bring back the kind of glory they represented to the Island, he shut himself away from the responsibility he believed he had. And from the possibility of failure.

  "You've been good for him, though," Sally said. "You've helped take his mind off himself."

  "It hasn't been me so much," I said. "It's just that things have been happening. They haven't been such good things, either."

  They hadn't, but they'd been as good for me as for Dino. I'd been so depressed about Jan that I'd just about dropped out of life until Dino got me involved with finding his daughter.

  "You shouldn't judge things so hastily," Sally told me. "Wait a few years. Time gives you a much better perspective."

  I wondered if I would have her perspective even if I lived as long as she had. I doubted it.

  "What was Lytle's attitude toward the uncles?" I asked, getting back to the subject I'd come about. "And about gambling in general?"

  "There's a story there," Sally said. "Would you refill my glass, please, Tru?"

  I did, and then she told me the story. It was one I hadn't heard before, but that was because I was too young to know about it when it happened.

  "Braddy Macklin stole Paul Lytle's wife," she said. "Her name was Laurel, and she was a lovely girl. She dearly loved to gamble. That's how she met Braddy, you see. His own wife didn't approve of gambling, and she didn't approve of Braddy's job. He came off the docks, and his wife thought of that as good clean work. It was hard, of course, but decent. She never forgave him for going to work for Dino's uncles, and their relationship was quite strained."

  She looked at me over the top of her wine glass. "You know that a certain kind of woman is attracted to a rugged man, one who looks as if he might have the potential for violence?"

  I hope she didn't think I was like that. "I can imagine it," I said.

  "Laurel Lytle was like that, and it showed. Braddy wasn't immune to that kind of silent flattery, and before long they were an item."

  That went a long way toward explaining Lytle's feelings about Macklin and about gambling on the Island. Or that's what I thought until Sally went on with her story.

  "Patrick Lytle didn't seem to mind," she said. "I don't recall that he was much of a gambler, though he may have been. Either way, he did nothing to prevent his wife from going to The Island Retreat. I'm sure that if you could see any of the newspapers from that time, you'd find her in the background of some of the photographs they made when the stars came to town."

  "What happened to her?" I asked.

  Sally smiled. "That's the mysterious part of the story. She disappeared." I was about to interrupt, but Sally stopped me. "Don't get excited. It's not as interesting as I'm trying to make it sound. Braddy Macklin didn't kill her, and Patrick Lytle didn't bury her in the back yard. It was all much more mundane. She apparently told several of her friends that she was getting bored with life on the Island and that she was going to ask Patrick for a divorce. She said she was thinking of going to Las Vegas. Maybe to California. After the divorce, she simply packed up and left."

  "So what's the mystery?"

  "Only that no one ever heard from her again. Some of us expected that she might turn up in a movie, perhaps in a bit part. Or, failing that, perhaps become the mistress of some notorious gangster. I suppose that the truth was much more tiresome. She probably married some colorless individual exactly like Patrick and lived miserably ever after."

  I wondered if that were true. And I wondered if Laurel Lytle were back in town. Stranger things had happened.

  "There's a grandson," I said. "Paul. He was at the house today."

  "Oh, yes. Paul. He was the son of Laurel's daughter, Mary Elizab
eth. Mary Beth, she was called. She grew up here on the Island, but she left as soon as she graduated from high school. Did you know her?"

  I vaguely recalled a girl a few years older than I was. In those days, a few years made a lot of difference, especially if it was the girl who was older.

  "I think I remember her," I said. "But I didn't know her."

  "There was some kind of problem between her and her father, but whatever it was, they kept it in the family."

  I took that to mean that Sally hadn't been able to find out what the problem was.

  "At any rate," Sally went on, "she went to school out of state, married, and had a son. Soon after that, both she and her husband were killed in a traffic accident. They were on the way home from a party, and he tried to beat a train to a crossing. He didn't, and they both died instantly. The son was sent here to live with his grandfather, and I think he's been quite a help."

  "What about the old man's legs?" I asked.

  "I'm not sure I like to hear you call him an ‘old man’," Sally said. "He's not nearly as old as I am."

  "I didn't mean that he was old," I apologized. "I just meant that he's older than his grandson."

  "That's all right, then. Patrick was in an accident, too, but his involved something other than a car and a train. He told everyone that he fell."

  There was something about the way she spoke the last sentence that sparked my curiosity.

  "Don't you believe him?"

  "I'm not sure. There was always something unconvincing in his story."

  "What?"

  For a second she rocked in her chair. Then she said, "He was always such a careful man that it was hard for me to believe that he could fall in his own house. I suppose that the insurance company believed him. He was rumored to have gotten a fair settlement from them."

  There wasn't much evidence of any money from insurance or anywhere else in Lytle's house now, but I wasn't really worried about Lytle's legs, so I moved on to other things.

  "What was Braddy Macklin up to lately?" I asked.

  "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 everything."

  "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.

  Fifteen

  The 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.

  We 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 possi
bility."

  "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."