Dead on the Island

by Bill Crider

  The first man stood up. "Me too. But we can't fuck up again. I'd rather be a little nervous than get Lenny pissed off."

  "I guess so." Kirk didn't sound too sure, even about that.

  I was wondering how to resolve the situation. Obviously they were there to try killing Dino again, not to give him Sharon. The Mauser was lying beside me. A TV private eye would just yell something like "Freeze, you scumbags!" and then blow the guys away. I'd never done anything like that. Besides, as tense as Kirk and his buddy were, they might blow me away before I could get the second word out of my mouth.

  On the other hand, they were so nervous that they might just shoot each other. I reached as quietly as I could into one of the boxes and put my hand around a roll of adding machine tape, intending to throw it to the other end of the warehouse. Then when their backs were turned, I could yell "Freeze!"

  It was a good idea, and it might even have worked. I just didn't get a chance to try it. When I shifted position to throw the tape, I brushed my hip against the sack I'd brought with me. The two Big Red bottles clinked together.

  It wasn't much of a sound, really, but it seemed as loud as a six-car pile-up to me. It must have sounded like considerably more to Kirk and his pal.

  Almost instantly a light was turned on. They'd had one, after all, probably the better to spotlight Dino with when it came time to shoot him.

  I flattened out behind the boxes. They didn't know where, exactly, the noise had come from. They swept the light around the entire warehouse, and I thought they might miss me. Then the light came to rest on the boxes in front of me. Two thin beams seeped between narrow spaces between the cardboard sides.

  The light moved on, then returned. No one was saying a word. If they fired at the boxes, I was fairly well protected by the rolls of paper and the ledgers, but it wasn't a place I'd like to stay for an extended length of time.

  The light held steady. I didn't move. I hardly breathed. I began to sweat, not so much with fear as with uncertainty.

  Still no one spoke, but I heard footsteps. I picked up the Mauser. If they fired through the boards beneath me, I was a dead man. I hadn't been as smart as I'd thought when I chose my hiding place.

  But one of them wasn't so smart, either. After all, he was the one holding the light.

  I rolled to one side, brought up the Mauser, and snapped off a shot at the light. There wasn't any time to do any aiming.

  There was a dull splat, a groan, and the light was flying through the air. It hit the floor and rolled, pointing away from the restroom. It was almost as dark as it had been before.

  "Jerry, Jerry!" the man who must have been Kirk said in a hoarse whisper.

  Jerry groaned. I had no idea where I'd hit him, but he obviously wasn't feeling too good about it.

  It was quiet for about two seconds. Then Kirk fired his pistol. I could see a flash of light, almost as if a faulty flashbulb had gone off. The bullet thudded into one of the boxes. Dust flew.

  Then Kirk was moving, toward the restroom. I gave him just enough time to get there, and then swung over the side, holding the edge with one hand. It wasn't much of a drop, a few inches maybe. I let go and landed without hurting the knee.

  Kirk was inside, I was outside. I knew where he was, but I didn't think I'd made enough noise to let him know where I was.

  I was wrong. Suddenly he stepped round the side of the bathroom and fired twice.

  Fortunately, he didn't know exactly where I was, and the bullets zipped by me and thwanged into the tin wall.

  I fired back and Kirk gave a strangled cry, tossing his pistol away. He crashed to the floor. He didn't move again.

  Jerry wasn't moving, either. I walked to the flashlight and picked it up, then directed the yellow beam toward first Jerry, then Kirk.

  Long shadows extended from the bodies. It was an eerie sight. Jerry appeared to be breathing. Kirk didn't.

  I walked over to Kirk. I'd shot him right in the nose. He'd fallen on his side. I didn't look at the back of his head too closely. A sour sweetness rose in my throat. I swallowed it.

  Jerry wasn't much better off than Kirk, and there was a lot more blood, most of it on the front of his shirt where he was holding his hands. He was alive, but only just. I didn't want to lift his shirt to see what was under it.

  He looked at me and tried to say something, but only blood came out of his mouth.

  I walked to the restroom and vomited in the toilet.

  When I came back out, Jerry was dead.

  They had come here to kill Dino, and either one of them would have killed me. Looking at them, I knew they were two of the three who'd beaten me at The Sidepocket.

  But I hadn't wanted to kill them. I hadn't intended it.

  I was still holding the Mauser. I stuck it in my waistband. Then I turned the light on my hand. I guess I expected it to be covered in blood. I started shaking and had to go sit on the scale.

  After a while I was all right. I climbed back up on the ceiling of the restroom and got the sack. Then I got out of there.

  ~ * ~

  I went back to Evelyn's. There was a light on, and I knocked on the door.

  "My God," Evelyn said when she saw me. I didn't ask why.

  "Where's Dino?" I said.

  "In the bedroom." She was looking at me the way you look at someone who's walked away from a plane crash. I walked by her and to the bedroom.

  "What happened to you?" Dino said. He was sitting up in the bed. "You look like hell."

  I told him what had happened.

  "You didn't call the cops?"

  "Evelyn can call them," I said. "Anonymously. She can say she heard gunshots." I looked over my shoulder at Evelyn, who had followed me to the room. "Can you do that?"

  She nodded and went out.

  "They would have got me this time," Dino said. "I really think they would have got me this time."

  "Maybe not," I said.

  I was beginning to calm down. My hands had been shaking on the wheel of the car all the way to the house, but they were almost steady now. I wished it was all over, but it wasn't. Not quite.

  "I just can't figure it," Dino said. "Who'd want to kill me?"

  "I think I know," I said. "I think we'll be hearing from him in a little while, probably around three o'clock or so."

  "You know? Tell me, by God." Dino sat up straighter, wincing slightly from the effort. "What do you mean, we'll be hearing?"

  "If I were sure, I'd tell you. But there's still a chance that I'm wrong. Let's just wait. It can't take much longer than that."

  I looked at my watch. It wasn't even one o'clock. The whole scene at the warehouse had taken only a few minutes, never mind that it had seemed like a lifetime. Or two.

  "Look," Dino said. "You gotta tell me."

  "Not yet. I'm going in and lie down on the couch. If we don't get a call in a couple of hours, then I'll tell you what I think. I hope I'm wrong."

  Evelyn walked in. "I called the police. They started asking me questions. I hung up."

  "Good," I said.

  The call would be recorded, but I doubted that it could ever be traced. Too short. I left them alone in the bedroom and went to lie down.

  ~ * ~

  The ring of the telephone woke me up. I was surprised that I'd been asleep, but I've been told that sleep is a common reaction to stress. Evelyn answered the phone.

  "Hello," she said. Then she did a lot of listening.

  The two men hadn't gone back to wherever they'd come from. Anyone who'd gone near the warehouse to see what had happened to them would have encountered the cops, but I didn't think the caller had been there. The failure of Jerry and Kirk to return would have spoken for itself.

  "Ask to speak to Sharon," I said.

  Evelyn looked at me, nodded. "I want to talk to Sharon." She listened. "I don't believe you. I want to talk to her." There was another pause. I could tell when Sharon started talking. Evelyn's face changed. Then she was crying.

  I got up a
nd took the phone from her hand. There was no one on the other end.

  "They hung up," Evelyn said, wiping the back of her hand across her eyes. "You knew, didn't you? Dino said you knew."

  "I thought I did. I didn't want to be right, but I was afraid I was. I should have known from the first."

  Dino was yelling from the bedroom. When we didn't answer, he walked in. I don't know how I had looked to him earlier, but I was sure he looked worse than I had. It was hurting him to walk.

  "What happened, goddammit? Talk to me, Tru. Who was it?"

  "It was Ray," Evelyn said.

  Dino looked as if someone had hit him in the gut with a Louisville Slugger. He shuffled over to a chair and sat down like an old man.

  "Ray?" he said.

  "Ray," I said. "How many people knew Sharon was your daughter? Maybe quite a few, according to Sally West, but how many of them cared? How many of them even remembered that they knew it? It didn't matter to anyone. Except to Ray." Yas, Suh. Ah jus' brangs the dranks.

  Dino shook his head. "I don't get it."

  "Ray was always second class," I said. "Your uncles took him in, and then you, but what did it ever get him? He almost made it out, almost made it to the pros, but he didn't. So he came back here. To what? To watch you watching television. To get the drinks when you called him. To go fetch somebody you needed to talk to."

  Dino was still not getting it. "But . . . I gave him money. He had a place to live. Goddammit, he was my friend!"

  "It wasn't enough," I said. "You remember what this island used to be. You remember the uncles. I guess Ray did, too. He must have thought you'd be like them. High living. Top of the line."

  "That just . . . wasn't my style."

  "I guess he found that out. You're like the Island, Dino. You're not aging gracefully."

  He looked up at me. "You're no fucking prize yourself, Tru."

  "Hell, I know that. I've been hiding as much as you."

  "You're sure about Ray?"

  "I am," Evelyn said. "It was him."

  "Those guys at The Sidepocket went for my knee," I said. "Who told them to do that? The clincher is the one I should have clicked on earlier, though. Who gave them this telephone number? Only Ray would have known that you were here. I went by to see him earlier today--yesterday. He wasn't worried about you at all. No wonder. He knew you'd gotten away from the men at the airport, and he knew who you were with. Everything came up Ray, but I just didn't see it. I didn't want to see it, I guess."

  "Hell," Dino said. "How could you? You weren't looking in the right direction."

  "I'm sure he went to Ferguson when he found out that Sharon and Terry Shelton hung out at The Sidepocket and that Ferguson rounded up the strongarm boys. I don't know who killed Shelton and Ferguson, but it had to be Ray or one of the others. He's eliminating everyone who was in on it."

  "But why?" Evelyn said.

  "I'm not sure even Ray knows. I just think he doesn't want any witnesses around."

  "Between you and him, there won't be many," Dino said.

  "Thanks," I told him. "I needed that. But I don't think he was counting on me to do his job for him tonight."

  "What about Sharon?" Dino said.

  "I think he's kept her alive this long just in case. Just in case something went wrong. He's been good at covering his bets. He had the guy watching the Shelton house in case I showed up there. Now he's got something that you want, which means that you'll be pretty sure to do what he tells you."

  "I still can't believe it," Dino said. "Ray."

  "Ray," I said. "Good old Ray."

  "So," Dino said. "Where does all this leave us?"

  I looked at Evelyn.

  "He sounded strange, very upset," she said. "At first I couldn't make out what he was saying. He was . . . sort of choked up, or . . . I don't really know." She shook her head. "Anyway, he wants us--all of us--to meet him somewhere. He didn't say where. He just said, 'Tell Dino. He knows.'"

  "Do you?" I said.

  Dino looked puzzled. "You said he sounded weird, Evelyn, but this is really weird. How should I know where he wants us to meet him?"

  "I don't know," she said. "But that's what he said. 'Tell Dino.'"

  "Think about it," I said. "It can't be far, or he wouldn't be able to get there easily. He had those tough guys stashed practically in your front yard."

  "I just can't figure it," Dino said. "You think he's at the house?"

  "No," I said. "He's had Sharon somewhere right here on the Island all along, and she isn't at your house."

  "Well, I have another house--'

  "Where?"

  "It's a place I bought a few years ago, when I was thinking of moving out of town. But I couldn't do it, not after I thought about it. Too much beach and water."

  Just like a native, I thought. Wouldn't want to live in sight of the Gulf. "Where?" I said again.

  "Down past the west beach," Dino said.

  "Many other houses around?"

  "I haven't been there in at least a year. I was thinking about putting it on the market. But no, there weren't many houses around last time I saw it."

  That didn't necessarily mean there weren't any by now, but there was a good chance that Ray might have seen the place as a good hideaway.

  "Ray know about this place?" I said.

  "Yeah. He was with me the whole time I was looking."

  "That's our best bet then." I turned to Evelyn. "Did he give any instructions?"

  "Yes. We're all to arrive in one car. Yours. He says he'd know it anywhere."

  "That's it?"

  "Yes."

  "What about Sharon?"

  "She sounded scared. Really scared."

  "She has a right to be," I said. "So am I."

  17

  The Gulf breeze never really stops blowing. It hit us in the face as we stepped out the front door, cool and damp in the early February morning. The sky was clouded over almost entirely, but that could change at any minute. As it was, we were going to be operating mainly in the darkness.

  Evelyn got in the back seat of the Subaru. She was so small that she could almost be comfortable. Dino sat in the bucket seat opposite me.

  I was carrying extra bullets for the Mauser in the pocket of my jeans, and before I started the car I reloaded the clip.

  "You steal that gun off a dead Nazi?" Dino said.

  I didn't answer. If he was trying to be funny, he wasn't making it. I stuck the pistol back in the back waistband of my jeans. It would rub my back as I drove, but I didn't want to chance trying to get to it if I put it under the seat.

  We drove down Seawall Boulevard, past the pier where Dino's uncles had once had their biggest casino; past the huge Flagship hotel, also built on a pier, which had showered huge panes of glass during Hurricane Alicia; through the old Fort Crockett area, where Dino had once gotten a speeding ticket when we were teenagers; past the San Luis and the Holiday Inn. The Gulf was only a few yards to our left, but none of us noticed it.

  Then we slipped down off the seawall, down to the level of the old Island itself. The area behind the seawall was not actually at sea level. After the famous 1900 storm, the level of the entire city had been raised. Sand was dredged out of the channel and distributed all over the Island. Those houses already on stilts just had sand stashed under them; others were actually jacked up until the job was done. For months, people got around the town on rickety elevated walkways. It was quite an engineering feat, not to mention an inconvenience, but everyone thought it would be worth the trouble if it would guarantee that the Island would never be completely underwater again.

  Because it lacked the protection of a seawall, and because it was exactly at sea level, the west end of the Island had been slow to develop. In fact, only in recent years had there been a building boom of any sort there. Now, if you drove to Jamaica Beach, or Indian Beach, or Karankawa Beach, or Sea Isle, or any of the other little areas scattered down the length of the Island you could see hundreds of quiet exp
ensive beach houses, all of them built on stilts, all of them ten or twelve feet or more off the ground. The Island is very narrow there, and in any of the houses you happen to choose you can see the Gulf from one side and the West Bay from the other. Unless, of course, another house is in the way.

  Almost as soon as we dropped down to sea level, the name of the road changed from Seawall Boulevard to Termini Road. I didn't like it. It sounded too much like terminal to suit me.

  I turned on the radio, but I couldn't pick up an AM station. I listened to the static for a minute and turned it off.

  "Remember when we used to drive around the Island when we were kids?" Dino said. "We'd listen to that station that had its studios in Ft. Worth and its transmitter in Coahuila, Mexico."

  "XEG," I said.

  Dino smiled at the memory. "That's the one. Remember those guys we used to listen to? Don and Earl, your Christian gospel singers? Brother J. Charles Jessup?"

  I remembered. "Who was it that had the magic picture of Jesus Christ? The one where you stared at the picture and then looked up at the sky. The picture was supposed to appear in the sky."

  "I don't know," Dino said. "Don and Earl, maybe?"

  "You two are kidding me," Evelyn said from the back seat.

  "Not us," I said. "You don't think Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker just happened, do you?"

  "I guess I never gave it much thought one way or the other," she said.

  On our left now as we drove was mostly undeveloped land, flat and featureless in the darkness. It wasn't much different in the daylight. The sand was covered with a few low-growing plants, but that was all. The big-money developing was down the beach.

  "We used to think they'd sneak over the border after sundown and crank that transmitter up to about a million watts," Dino said. "You could pick up that station anywhere in the world."

  "Magic pictures of Jesus just for sending a little donation," I said. "I wonder what the Laplanders thought about that?"

  Dino didn't answer. "We're coming up on Ten Mile Road," he said. "Turn right and get on Stewart Road there."

  Stewart parallels Termini, more or less, but it's a lot different. Any houses on Termini are likely to be new, expensive, and well-cared for. A lot of the houses on Stewart, and there aren't many, are likely to be the opposite.