by Bill Crider
DEAD ON THE ISLAND
A Truman Smith Mystery
By Bill Crider
Smashwords Edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Copyright 2011 by Bill Crider
Copy-edited by Erin Bailey
Cover Design by David Dodd
LICENSE NOTES:
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ALSO FROM BILL CRIDER & CROSSROAD PRESS:
AS JACK MACLANE:
Blood Dreams
Goodnight MooM
Just Before Dark
Keepers of the Beast
Rest in Peace
AS BILL CRIDER:
A Time for Hanging
Medicine Show
Ryan Rides Back
Nighttime is the Right Time
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Antoinette Floyd Brodnax, who loved Galveston as much as anyone I've ever known, and to Bob, Francelle, and Ellen, who will remember all those summer days we spent in Galveston a long time ago.
Author's Note
Galveston Island is, for me, as much a state of mind as a geographic location. I therefore apologize to Galvestonians for the liberties I've taken with the Island's geography and history in order to make it as much my island as it is theirs.
1
There was no one on the seawall except for me and the rat.
I was there to run; I don't know why the rat was there. Maybe he just didn't have anywhere else to go. Or maybe he was looking for a handout. If he was, he'd come to the wrong place. Even the few forlorn gulls that were floating around above us knew better.
In the summer it would have been different. The seawall is crowded then, and it's no good for running, though some people still try. The tourists are out in force, walking, riding their rented bikes and pedicycles, dragging their recalcitrant offspring, cruising along on skateboards, and in general making the seawall a place to avoid.
Unless you're a seagull, that is. Or a rat.
In the summer, the seawall is rat paradise. The remains of hotdogs with mustard, corn chips, potato chips, jelly sandwiches, half-eaten candy bars, parts of pickles, the leavings of a thousand picnics--it's all there for the taking.
And if you can get your snout into the opening of an aluminum can, there's the dregs of a beer or a diet Coke to top off the meal. Then you can slip into a crack in the wall or into a crevice among the boulders at its base and watch the world go by.
Tanned skin and pasty white; burned and peeling; oiled and leathery--all cinched up in whatever manner of suit that might happen to catch your fancy, from a string bikini to a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty model from the early days of Hollywood.
But it wasn't summer. It was the last week in February, and a cold norther had managed to push its way down from the Panhandle all the way to the coast, dropping the temperature into the lower forties and turning the sky the color of lead. The wind pushed back at the Gulf and moved the heavy clouds along. A frosty mist hung in the air. There were still plenty of beer cans down in among the boulders, but they had long since been emptied of anything a rat might want to drink.
Traffic was sparse on the boulevard to my left. Today qualified for the depths of winter on the Texas Gulf Coast. It was a day to stay home and read a good book or watch Jeopardy on TV.
I wasn't worried about the weather, though. I had on a pair of Nike Air Spans, fleece-lined running shorts, and a black and gray sweatshirt that I'd bought at K-Mart. The north wind cut right through the sweatshirt, but I knew I'd get plenty warm once I started the run.
The rat was wearing dark brown fur, a leathery tail, and a quizzical look. I wondered if the wind were bothering him, but before I could ask he disappeared over the side of the seawall. It would be a lot warmer down among the boulders, out of the wind. I hoped maybe he could find an old can of bean dip that might still have a dried brown rim of beans left for him to eat.
I started into the run, going slow at first, not that I ever got up too much speed. I was at the west end of the seawall, running east. I figured to go for a mile or two or three and then turn back, depending on how well my knee held up.
After half a mile I was warming up, and the knee was feeling all right. As long as I held myself to about eight-and-a-half minute miles it would probably be fine. It was only when I pressed myself that I found myself listing to the right. Even then I could usually keep from falling if I stopped in time, but I told myself there was no need to worry about that. Eight-and-a-half minute miles were perfectly acceptable.
After about two miles I saw someone coming from the opposite direction. I wasn't surprised, since it was more likely that there would be people in that direction, even in February. It was about time for me to turn around, anyway.
I was about to make my turn when I recognized the other runner, even though he was a good way off. You can do that, recognize runners from their gait. Me, for instance. I have a sort of modified version of the Ali Shuffle, except that it's all forward motion. My feet don't ever get too far from the ground. Can't afford to jar the knee.
The runner up ahead wasn't like me in the least. He was getting his knees up and moving right along, smooth and steady. Probably hitting the miles in seven minutes or a little less. I'd've bet a dollar it was Raymond Jackson.
So I didn't turn around, after all. Later, I wished that I had, but he would just have caught up with me. There was a time when . . . . But that was quite a while ago.
When we met, Raymond turned and slowed to my pace. "What's happenin', Tru?" he said
"Nothing much, Ray," I said. Ray's a black man, late thirties or thereabout. My age. He's about the size of a good NFL defensive back, but he looks to be in better shape than most of them. "How's it with you?"
"Not bad," he said.
We ran along together for a few minutes. I was breathing a little harder than he was.
When we got to the three mile mark, I said, "I'm turning it around, Ray. Good to see you." I sprinted out ahead and made an easy, wide turn.
Ray turned, too. "I'll go along with you for a ways," he said.
Neither one of us was inclined to talk much, so we ran in silence for a while. The scudding gray clouds, the mist, the gray-green water of the Gulf--all of them together didn't seem to make it much of a day for talking.
Finally Ray spoke up. "Dino wants to see you."
I'd been afraid all along that running into Ray hadn't been a coincidence, though I'd hoped it was.
"What for?" I said.
"He's lost somethin'. He wants you to find it," Ray said.
"I can't do that anymore," I said.
"Hey, I know that," Ray said. He wasn't having any trouble talking at all. I was having to pause a little between every second word. "I told Dino that. I said, 'Man, he don't do that kind of job anymore.' Dino just looked at me. You know how he does. 'He'll do this one,' he said. 'Find him.' So I found you. I hope you not gonna make me look bad and not talk to him."
We ran on for a minute or two. "I'll talk to him," I said. "Thanks for making it look like I had a choice."
Ray laughed, but he didn't say anything. We ran along until we got nearly to the end of the seawall, where my car was parked.
"You don't put up much of a front, man," Ray said. He was probably talking about my car, a '79 Subaru GL with two doors and a fading gray paint that just about matched the color of the day.
"It gets me where I'm going." I opened the door and reached into the back seat where I usually have a couple of towels. I threw Ray a green one and kept the yellow one for myself. It's softer.
I stripped off the sweatshirt and dried off as best I could in the cold mist. I put on another sweatshirt from the back seat.
"Sorry I don't have another one," I told Ray.
"That's all right," he said. "Just give me a ride up to my car."
We scrunched ourselves into the Subaru and started up Seawall Boulevard toward the east end of the Island. "About Dino," I said, shifting through the gears. "When?"
"Today's fine," Ray said. He had my green towel draped around his neck. "You wanna come by after lunch?"
"Two o'clock?"
"Two o'clock it is. I'll tell him. There's my ride."
We were almost to the Moody Center, which had been the Buccaneer Hotel when Ray and Dino and I were young. From buccaneer to retirement home. There was probably a message somewhere in that for me if I let myself think about it. I didn't let myself.
Ray's car, a maroon BMW, was parked across the street from Moody Center. I stopped by it.
"I didn't know you'd become a yuppie, Ray," I said.
He got out of my car and leaned in to toss the green towel into the back seat. "In the words of Chuck Berry," he said, "'it jus' goes to show you never can tell.'"
I laughed, remembering the song. I probably had the record someplace.
"Two o'clock," he said. "Don't you forget, now." He shut the door and the window rattled a little bit.
"Yeah," I said to myself, driving to the corner and turning left. "Two o'clock."
~ * ~
I was living that year in a two-story unrestored Victorian house not far from St. Mary's Hospital on Avenue I. Or on Sealy Street. Call it either one; that's what the locals do. I get the letters just the same, but they're mostly addressed to "Occupant."
For a long time, Galveston seemed determined to destroy all the relics of its historic past and was doing a damned good job for the most part. Now the buildings on the Strand, some of them anyway, have been restored to their former glory, and a lot of the Victorian houses in the Historical District are looking better than they have for over a hundred years. The trim sparkles, and the pastel paint jobs inspired by Miami Vice most likely, would turn Sonny Crockett puce with envy.
The place where I lived didn't look that good.
I wasn't exactly in the Historical District anyhow, and the guy who owned the house was just holding onto it as an investment. Which meant that he was paying the taxes and hoping that someone would come along and offer him a whopping profit for it. In the meantime I was serving as a sort of glorified house-sitter, supposedly making sure that thieves didn't break in to steal and vandals didn't corrupt the investment.
I drove into the alley behind the house and parked in the back yard. There was no carport, but I had a cloth cover I could toss over the Subaru in case of storms. I climbed the outside stairs of the house to the second floor. The first floor was used mostly for storage, and it would take a lot of work to get it back where it had been in the previous century. The original hardwood flooring was still there, but not much else.
Upstairs wasn't that much better. I'm not known for my neat housekeeping habits, and the furniture hadn't been approved by anyone's decorator. In fact, most of it was cast-off items that I'd picked up from friends or found lying in the streets. The sofa was missing a cushion, the recliner wouldn't recline, and the old RCA color set insisted that most of the people on TV these days had a vaguely green cast to their skin. It also had a nearly round picture tube. I didn't particularly care. I also had an old Voice of Music portable hi-fi record player that I could play my 45s on. It sat on the floor by the sofa.
There was a real brass bed in the bedroom, but the mattress sank in toward the middle and was probably as old as the bedframe, not that I minded.
Most of the rest of the furnishings were books, paperbacks mostly, stacked haphazardly by the couch and the chair and the bed. I was reading Faulkner then, straight through, starting with Soldier's Pay and working my way up to The Reivers. It passed the time.
There was an old chiffonnier by the bed, and there was a picture of my sister, Jan, on it. I kept it there just to remind me.
Nameless was lying in the middle of the bed. He's an old orange tomcat who is totally unrefined and doesn't really care where he lies down. The couch, the bed, and the recliner are all the same to him. He comes in most every day and since he can't read, or so he pretends, he passes the time sleeping. He lets me feed him if I behave myself.
I hadn't intended for him to be nameless. When he first came in I tried various names on him--Sam, Leroy, Elvis--but nothing seemed to fit. Besides, I didn't really expect him to take up permanent residence. By the time he did, I'd run out of names. So now he was just Nameless.
Nameless looked at me through slitted eyes as I came in, then ducked his head around and tried to shape himself into a ball.
"Don't worry," I told him. "I'm not going to roust you." I threw the towels and sweatshirt I was carrying into the corner by the chiffonnier and then stripped off what I was wearing and added it to the pile. There was an old Maytag washer on the first floor that still worked pretty well. I'd take a load down later.
I went into the bathroom and took a shower, first hot, then cold. The bathroom had been modernized about twenty years before, and the plumbing still worked just fine. I toweled off, dressed in jeans and yet another sweatshirt, this one with a red Arkansas razorback on it, and looked for something to eat.
There was a kitchen where another bedroom had once been. The kitchen had been installed at about the same time as the bathroom, but the appliances had not been new even then. The freezing compartment in the refrigerator was about the size of a cigar box. I found some bread that wasn't molded and made a peanut butter sandwich.
I sat in the recliner and tried to read Absalom, Absalom while I ate. Every now and then the knee would twinge, just to remind me that I'd been running. My mind kept drifting off the book and I had to drag it back forcibly. After a while, I went to sleep.
2
Sometimes I have trouble sleeping at night, and it catches up with me. I woke feeling a little stiff from having dozed off in the chair, and I was sorry I hadn't rousted Nameless from the bed earlier.
I checked my black plastic Timex. It was one-thirty, leaving me plenty of time to get to Dino's. I wondered what it was that he wanted me to look for. Or who. I wasn't sure I could be persuaded to do it, even by Dino.
I put a couple of 45s on the Voice of Music's thick changing spindle, "Ruby Baby" by the Drifters and something by Ricky Nelson, and tried to read a little more of the Faulkner book. I got through a page or two before it was time to leave.
I went into the bedroom and gathered up Nameless, no small job considering that he must've weighed eighteen pounds or so. I carried him down the stairs and set him in the yard. He didn't object, but he didn't look too pleased with me, either. He watched sullenly as I got into the Subaru.
Dino didn't live far, but then nothing is far from anything else on the Island. His neighborhood was a long way removed in time from mine, though. A hundred years ago, people built their houses high to get the afternoon breeze off the Gulf and maybe even to take a look out at the surf every now and again. Then, thirty or forty years ago, the natives, the ones who called themselves BOI for Born on the Island, went the other way and built houses that looked like houses anywhere and tried to deny that the water was even out there.
Dino lived in a big Tudor-style house that would have looked right at home in one of the older neighborhoods
in West Texas, in Abilene or San Angelo, and up and down the street there were similar stodgy brick houses pretending that they were built on solid rock instead of shifting sand.
There were people on that street who never wet a toe in the Gulf. Some of them probably hadn't even seen the water in years.
I parked on the street and went to the door. Ray opened it before I could ring the bell.
"Come on in," he said. "Dino's in the living room."
Dino's living room was nicer than mine, but the furniture hadn't changed since the 1950s, except for the entertainment center, which must have held every electronic device known to the video trade. There were a huge, flat-screened TV, a VCR, a video disc player, stereo speakers, and a couple of items I couldn't identify.
Dino was sitting on a floral-covered sofa watching General Hospital. "This shit hasn't been the same since Luke and Laura split," he said. He turned off the set with a complicated device that was about the size of a paperback book and had more buttons on it than a doorman's coat. "How's it hanging, Tru?" He got up and offered me his hand.
"It's fine, Dino," I said. "You're looking good." It was true. He was still solid and hard, like the linebacker he had once been.
"I still work out," he said. "I hear you do, too. I could never do that running stuff, though. I pump a little iron. How's the knee?"
I looked over at Ray, who smiled. "It's OK," I said. "I get around all right. Ask Ray."
"That's right, Dino," Ray said. "The guy nearly ran me into the seawall today."
"I bet," Dino said. "Well, let's sit down. Get us some drinks, Ray. What'll you have, Tru?"
