by Bill Crider
To tell the truth, he was doing better than I was and was actually getting out of his house a bit these days. He'd stopped spending all his time watching soap operas on TV.
I'd long since given up any hope of locating Jan, or at least of finding her alive. In the Houston area, it's not so unusual for people to disappear, but sometimes they turn up later, usually not in very good condition.
That's the way it was with Jan. A couple of kids found her.
Or what was left of her.
Bones, mostly. A few rags of clothing. That was all.
The kids had been out rabbit hunting in an overgrown field not too far off Interstate 45, the main highway that connects Houston and Galveston. They found the remains--that's what they called it on the TV news, "the remains"--in the middle of the field. The kids ran all the way home to tell their parents.
I heard the report that night. I always listened for things like that, and I made a note to myself to send Jan's dental records to the Medical Examiner's office, just in case. I did that whenever I caught a story about bodies being discovered, but so far there had not been any response.
This time, there was. Not all the bones were there. They'd been disturbed by small animals, probably. But the skull was there, and the ID was positive.
They couldn't tell me how she died. There wasn't enough left for that. Naturally, given the location of "the remains," foul play was assumed. But it couldn't be proven.
I'd always told myself that when Jan's body was found that I'd find her killer. Some way, I would find him.
But there just wasn't any way I could do that. It could be that I already had, though I could never be sure. Last words of dying men are notoriously unreliable. At the time, I'd been sure; now, I had my doubts.
It didn't really matter. It was all in the past now, and while I was certain I'd still feel the guilt that I'd felt earlier--What if I'd kept in touch with Jan better? What if I'd tried to find her sooner?--at least it was all over.
And because it was over, it was time for me to get back out into the world, to try getting out of the self-pitying rut I was in and do something again, something besides painting houses.
It wasn't that there was anything wrong with painting. In fact, I enjoyed it in a way. It was the kind of work that gave you quick results. You could see what you were doing, and you could tell that you were making an improvement. From day to day, you could see your progress. It was even challenging, in a way. You couldn't let your mind wander, and you couldn't get sloppy. And while a steady hand wasn't absolutely required, it helped.
In other words, it was all right, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do. It was something to pass the time, to get me through the day and pay me a little money for the time I spent. But that's all it was.
So when Fred Benton called, I was interested in spite of myself.
The business with Dino and Ray had made the Houston papers, or at least part of it had, and when Fred saw my name he remembered the little kid whose father had brought him to see the alligators. And when he saw that I was a private investigator, or at least had been one in the recent past, and that I had been involved in a case that included a murder or two, he decided to give me a call.
After all, to Fred, killing an alligator was murder, and he was willing to pay me to find the killer. It wasn't exactly the kind of job I was used to, and it certainly wasn't glamorous, but it would get me off the Island and out of the house. Maybe it would even get me interested in something besides my own problems, the way Dino's kidnapped daughter had.
Hell, it was worth a try.
~ * ~
I got out of the Jeep at Fred's house, a long, low, ranch-style building with a carport that had room for a Lincoln Town Car, the Jeep, a tractor, and a Ford pickup. There was a light on in the kitchen.
"Want to come in for a little nip?" Fred said.
"I think I better get back to Galveston," I said. "I have to feed my cat. He gets upset if I don't feed him."
"You're kidding me, right?" Fred said. He was standing by the Jeep, one foot up on the little step attached to the side.
"I'm not kidding," I said.
It wasn't that Nameless got upset, really. It was more that I felt an obligation to him. There were times when I thought he was only letting me feed him to make me feel good, and I appreciated that.
"You gonna come back tomorrow?" Fred said.
"I'll be here. How early should I start?"
"People around here get up early. Prob'ly a lot earlier than you do."
"I can get up early if I have to," I said.
"You don't have to. Just get here in the middle of the mornin'. I've got a lot more stuff to tell you."
"Such as?"
"Such as who might kill a gator like that. How much do you charge, anyway?"
I hadn't thought about it. Dino paid me two hundred dollars a day, plus expenses, so that's what I said. Fred was an old friend, in a way, but then he had a Lincoln Town Car. I couldn't let sentiment get in the way of making money.
"Sounds about right," he said. "I'll see you in the mornin', then. You plannin' to stay here, or you gonna have to go home ever' night to feed your kitty cat?"
"It might be a good idea for me to stay here," I said. "I can get someone to feed the cat."
"You sure? I'd hate to see a kitty cat go hungry."
I was beginning to regret having said anything about the cat. It looked like Fred didn't have the same feelings for cats that he did for alligators.
"The cat'll be fine," I said.
"All right, then. If you're sure. You can stay here at the house. Mary won't mind."
Mary was his wife, a short, round woman with red hair that should've by rights had a lot of gray in it, considering her age. I guess she knew a good beautician.
"You can stay in the guest bedroom," Fred went on. "I'll have her make it up for you."
"I wouldn't want you to go to any trouble."
"You said you were gonna charge me for expenses, didn't you?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Well, I can't afford to put you up at some fancy motel, and besides, there's not one anywhere close. So you can stay here."
"That should be fine, then."
"Good. I'll see you in the mornin'." He took his foot off the step, shook hands with me to seal the deal, and started inside.
"You sure you don't want to tell me anything else tonight?" I said. "Give me something to think about?"
"You go feed your kitty cat. Get your beauty sleep. We can talk tomorrow."
"All right," I said. I walked over to where my car was parked and got in. By the time I got it started, he was in the house.
The air-conditioning in the '79 Subaru wasn't as efficient as it might have been, but after ten or twelve miles it was at least relatively cool inside when you considered the heat and humidity outside. My shirt, a short-sleeved gray sweatshirt, was beginning to feel clammy on my chest, and most of the sweat on my face had dried.
I managed to pick up a Houston oldies station on the radio and was treated to Jackie Wilson singing Higher and Higher, probably the best song he ever did, which is saying a lot. It made me feel better just to listen to it. After his incredible falsetto faded out, I heard a flurry of cajun fiddles, and there were Rusty and Doug singing "Alligator Man," a song I hadn't heard or thought of in well over twenty years.
I wondered if it meant anything.
~ * ~
I took my time on the way home, and Nameless was waiting for me outside the house when I got there. He liked to prowl the neighborhood most of the night, but he always wanted in for a snack about ten o'clock. It was a lot later than that, and I wondered how long he'd been waiting.
I had hardly stopped the car before he jumped up on the hood and stalked around with his tail in the air, looking at me through the windshield.
I got out of the car. "All right. All right," I said. "Tender Vittles, coming right up."
I started for the house, and he leaped down from
the hood and flashed by me to wait at the door. I had moved to a house on the Western part of the Island, the very house, as a matter of fact, where we'd finally found Dino's daughter. Dino owned the house, and he had decided he'd never live there, it being too close to the actual beach and sand that some of the Island's natives liked to avoid as much as possible in a kind of reverse snobbery.
It was a very private house, surrounded by bushes and shrubs so that you could hardly see it from the road, and there were no other houses nearby. If the Island ever flooded, I'd have to get out, assuming that I got enough advance warning, but otherwise it was ideal for me.
It was a place where I could lose myself again, if I wanted to.
Nameless liked it, too. He liked all the trees and shrubs and the various birds and lizards he could hunt in them. He liked scouting around the mostly barren neighborhood for whatever it was that lived in places like that and that was slower than a cat. He had taken the move very well, considering that he had never really lived with me in the first place, and it had allowed him to get back to his ancient hunting heritage.
Still, he liked his packaged food. It was regular, more or less, and it didn't try to run when he bit it. I didn't think he got very much nourishment out of the birds and mice he caught, anyway. Mostly he just liked to play with them until they no longer amused him and then to kill them with the casual cruelty that all cats are capable of. Then he'd bring them to the front door and lay them out for my approval.
When I thought about it, casual cruelty like that was what Fred Benton was asking me to look into. The kind of cruelty that would lead someone to kill an alligator, skin it, and leave the carcass for Fred to find, almost as if to say, Look what I did. Aren't you proud of me?
Or maybe it was a warning of some kind. It was impossible to say now, of course, but maybe it was a good sign that my mind was getting on the right wave lengths, trying to think like a hunter again.
I hoped I would be able to adjust as well as Nameless had.
I opened the door and we went in. He scooted through the living room for the kitchen, which is where his bowls were, one for food and one for water. I fed him a package of Tender Vittles Lite--Ocean Whitefish flavor--and then stood there while he ate it. If I left, he'd just come looking for me and howl until I came and stood beside him. I knew he would eventually go ahead and eat if I ignored him, but I was never quite stubborn enough to wait him out.
After he'd eaten most of the food, he got a drink. Or several drinks. He stood and lapped water until I thought he might pop, though he never had yet. I think there's something in that packaged food that makes cats thirsty, or else Nameless had a great craving for water.
When he finished drinking, he wanted back out. I went out with him and looked across the scrub to the bay. I thought about Jan, but not for long. It was time to put all that out of my mind and get on with it.
Whatever it was.
I looked around for Nameless, but he was long gone. I went back inside to read a little about alligators so I wouldn't look like a complete fool the next day. I thought that I surely had a book about them somewhere. I had books about nearly everything else.
That's all I'd brought with me from the last place I'd lived--books. Dino's house was furnished, mostly with garage sale items, true, but comfortable enough for me. There was a worn old couch with a brown cover, a color TV set that no longer had very true colors, a radio, a bed, a stove, a refrigerator, and even a washer and dryer. All the comforts.
There weren't any bookshelves, though, and I'd been planning to build some. I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. That meant there were books stacked everywhere. On the floor, on the couch, on the TV set, and even on the dryer. Not on the washer, though. It loaded from the top.
I'd been reading Faulkner, and I was up to The Hamlet. I was determined to read straight through his works, but it was going to take me a while. I was pretty sure he wouldn't mind if I interrupted my schedule to read up on alligators.
As it turned out, I didn't have much to read on the subject. All I could find was an article in an old encyclopedia set that I'd probably picked up at a library sale. There were a couple of volumes missing from the set, and I was glad the "A" volume wasn't one of them.
About all I learned was how to tell a crocodile from an alligator, which didn't matter much to me, since there weren't any crocodiles in Texas except in zoos. But in case I ever needed to know, a crocodile had a longer and more tapered snout than an alligator.
And a crocodile is mostly gray, while an alligator is mostly black. That was an interesting point, and one with which I was familiar. It even bothered me occasionally. Who was it that came up with the idea that alligators were green? Walt Kelly?
And here was the real clincher. Crocodiles have about fifty-eight teeth. Alligators have eighty and up. Believe me, if it ever got to the tooth-counting stage, it would be too late for me to care.
There was more in the article, of course, things about where alligators lived, and about their eyes, and about what they liked to eat, which is apparently anything that comes near their mouths, including rocks, bones, dogs, cats, fish, birds, you name it. None of the information, as interesting as it was, looked to be of any use to me.
In fact, I suspected that a few hours with Fred Benton would teach me much more about gators than I would ever learn from a book, so I put the encyclopedia aside and tried to think about what to take with me and how long I might be away.
I shoved some sweatshirts into a cheap canvas bag and put in a couple of pairs of jeans with them. Underwear. Socks. A spare pair of running shoes in case I had time to go for a run while I was at Fred's place. I didn't know if the running did my trick knee any good, but I liked to think it did. As long as I didn't try to run too fast.
That was all I needed. I could throw in the shaving kit in the morning. I liked to travel light.
Then I thought about taking a pistol.
What the hell, I thought. I won't need a pistol. What could happen that would involve shooting?
I put the bag on the couch and went to bed.
3
I called Dino the next morning at seven.
"What the hell?" he said when he finally answered the phone after the twelfth ring. He wasn't used to getting up quite so early.
"I need a little help with my cat," I said.
"Tru? Is that you, Tru?"
"Right the first time. And people say you're stupid."
"They better not say it where I can hear them, goddammit." Dino's uncles had controlled most of the gambling and prostitution in the old days when GalvestonIsland was about as wide-open as anything ever got in Texas. He was used to getting respect, though not from me. "You say something about a cat?"
"I thought you might want to come by here once a day and feed him," I said.
"Why the hell would I want to do that?"
"I'm going out of town. I've got a sort of a job."
"You're gonna start painting houses out of town?"
"This is a different kind of job," I told him. "More along the lines of what I used to do."
"You going looking for somebody?" I could hear the interest in his voice. Also the doubt.
"Not exactly," I said. "It's a murder investigation."
"Murder?" He was hooked for sure now, but I spoiled it by telling him the whole story. "Sounds crazy to me," he said. "But at least it'll get you out of town. I worry about you."
I worried about Dino, too, but he was keeping company with the mother of his daughter again, and I thought he was doing a lot better than he had been just a few months before.
"Don't worry about me," I said. "Worry about what'll happen to my cat if he doesn't get fed. You and Evelyn could drive out here and give him a bowl of Tender Vittles. It'd be a nice outing for you."
He thought about it. "What about that girl you were going around with? What was her name?"
He knew good and well what her name was, but I told him anyway. "Vicky," I said.
&n
bsp; "Yeah. Her. What's wrong with having her do it?"
"She doesn't like cats."
"It's like that, huh?"
"Yeah, it's like that."
Dino and I have known each other a long time, since high school and before. Both of us knew I was lying about Vicky, and both of us knew that there would be no more said about it. The truth was that Vicky had decided I was too much of a brooder, that I was never going to do anything but paint houses, and that there wasn't a thing she could do to change me. She was also sure she didn't want to have any more to do with me unless I did change. So we weren't seeing much of each other lately.
"I guess I could do it," Dino said. He didn't sound too happy about the idea, though.
"Nameless would appreciate it," I said. "And so would I."
"Great," he said. "Just what I need. The appreciation of a cat and a crazy man."
"I'll leave the food packets in a coffee can on the porch," I said. "Right by the bowl."
"Fantastic. Nursemaid to a pussycat. What next?"
"Don't let Nameless hear you call him that."
"Call him what?"
"A pussycat."
"Just 'cause a guy's got balls on him don't mean he ain't a pussy."
"Never mind," I said. "I won't be gone long, so it won't be too tough on you."
"Wonderful. Give me a call if you need any help catching the killer."
"I'll be sure to do that," I said.
~ * ~
I got back to Fred Benton's place about nine o'clock the next morning. It was off the main highway, down a graveled road where the trees grew close enough to touch from the car window and the Spanish moss hung down from them in large clumps. The day was already hot and humid.
Fred was in the carport tinkering with the engine in the Jeep. "Just checking the oil," he said when I walked over. "You had breakfast yet?"
"No," I said. "I don't usually eat it."
"What I figured. Come on in."
I followed him inside, where the air-conditioning was a welcome relief. Mary, whom I'd met the day before, was standing by an electric range, cracking eggs into a skillet.
