Dead on the Island (17 page)

"I know that I have not been able to help
you much, except in a negative way," he said. "But I feel that the
information that I am requesting would be fair trade for the time
I've given you here today."

"I appreciate the time," I said. "And I
appreciate your being frank with me. I hope you won't mind if I ask
just one indelicate question, since you've assured me that you had
nothing at all to do with any of this."

He gave me a straight look that he might not
have meant to be unfriendly. "Only one?" he said.

"Only one. Since you aren't involved at all,
did you ever
hear
of any plot against Dino or to kidnap the
girl? Sharon Matthews."

He leaned back in his chair. "I suppose that
might be interpreted as a bit indelicate if the answer were yes,
but the answer is no. I assure you that I have no knowledge of
anything relating to the kidnapping of Sharon Matthews other than
what you and Dino have told me today."

"All right," I said. "I believe you. But
before I agree to tell you anything else I find out, I want you to
agree to help me with something."

He raised one eyebrow. The left one. I never
could understand how someone could do that. "What?"

I told him about Jan. "If you ever hear
anything, anything at all, that might connect to her--"

"I'll be glad to let you know," he said.
"It's quite unlikely, however."

"I know," I said.

~ * ~

I was hungry by the time I got back to the
Island, but I didn't take the time to eat. I was looking for
another source of information, the only one I had any confidence in
aside from Sally West. It was a fairly nice night, not too cool,
and I found him almost immediately, dumpster diving behind a huge
Kroger supermarket on 61st Street.

At least I thought it was him. All I could
see was legs hanging out of the dumpster. I drove the Subaru down
to the end of the buildings, parked, and walked back.

"That you in there, Harry?" I said.

There was a noise of papers rustling and
than a hollow banging as something hit one of the sides of the
dumpster. Then a burlap bag hit the pavement beside me. God knows
what was in it. Harry followed it down.

"You're looking sharp, Harry," I said.

In the light of the blue mercury vapor lamp
that flooded the area I could see that he was wearing at least two
shirts, one black and red flannel and one underneath that was some
unidentifiable miracle fabric. Over them both he wore a ripped
jacket of olive drab with the lining showing through a couple of
the jagged holes in the sides. He had on a pair of olive drab pants
that hit him about halfway up the calves. A pair of faded jeans
underneath extended a little farther down.

"That you, Tru?" he said. "You look like you
doin' all right for youself. Want a bite to eat?" He reached for
the sack.

"No, thanks," I said, maybe too quickly for
politeness.

He reached into the sack and came out with
what appeared to be a very dented, labelless can of dog food or cat
food. The can was the right shape, and I was willing to bet it
wasn't tuna.

"This go pretty good 'bout now," he
said.

I took a step back. "My God, Harry. How can
you eat that stuff?"

He looked at me, amazed that I would ask
such a stupid question. "You jus' takes a piece of bread," he said,
extending one hand as if it held the slice he was speaking of, "and
you jus' spreads it on." He made a spreading motion with the hand
that held the can.

I'd met Harry--"Outside" Harry, most people
called him--when I was looking for Jan. I had occasion to visit a
few alleyways, and Harry had been in more than one of them. I'd
struck up a conversation one day, more out of curiosity than
anything else and soon discovered that he was a mine of
information. No one knew how old he was, but I'd talked to people
who swore that he must be at least eighty. He'd been on the Island
for as long as anyone could remember. After so many years, no one
really paid any attention to him. He came and went, picking the
garbage for whatever he needed or wanted. During all that time,
he'd heard and seen a lot and remembered most of it. Despite what
many people thought, he wasn't feeble-minded. He was just old.

"I think I'll skip the meal tonight," I
said.

"Got me a head of lettuce in here, too," he
said, reaching back into the sack. "Couple oranges, too."

"Save them for yourself, Harry. I'm not
hungry." It wasn't much of a lie. Thinking about Harry's diet took
away my appetite.

Harry twisted the top of his bag shut.
"Well, I jus' like to share. But if you don't want none . . . . "He
looked up at me sharply. "Must want somethin', though."

"Just to talk."

"Well, tha's all right, but I got to work."
Harry shuffled off toward the next dumpster. "Some folks got to
stay busy."

I followed along after him. "I wondered if
you'd seen a man," I said.

Harry stopped. "Seen lotsa men," he said.
"See 'em all the time."

"This is a particular man." I described the
man I'd previously described to Jimmie Hargis.

Harry listened carefully, his head cocked to
one side. He was short to begin with, and with his bag tossed over
his shoulder he looked like a black gnome standing in the blue
light. "Might've seen that one," he said. He turned and shuffled
off again.

I went after him. This was the way
conversations with Harry were usually carried on.

He stopped at a brown-painted dumpster,
tossed his bag in, and then pulled himself over the rim. He dug
around for a while with his legs sticking out. I could hear him
tossing things around. Then his legs disappeared inside. I hoped I
was half as agile as he was when I reached his age.

A cardboard box flew out of the dumpster and
hit the ground beside me. Then Harry's head appeared above the rim.
"Prob'ly around Corea's, somewhere in there," he said. The head
disappeared.

"Thanks, Harry," I said.

I walked back to the Subaru and took out the
six-pack of Old Milwaukee I'd bought earlier. I carried it back to
the dumpster and set it down where Harry would be sure to find it.
I'd tried giving him money a time or two, but he was always
insulted by the offer. He was self-sufficient and proud of it. He'd
once complained, though, that he never found any beer in the
dumpsters. Since then I'd left a few six-packs lying around. He was
amazed at the turn in his fortunes.

I never asked him how beer went with cat
food.

I didn't really want to know.

"I haven't smoked at all since Dino got
here," Evelyn Matthews told me when I noted the absence of ashtrays
in her living room. "It bothers Dino, and I've wanted to quit for
years."

"I guess Dino's as good an excuse as any to
get started on a health kick," I said.

"Better than no excuse at all." She walked
me back to the room where Dino was propped up on the bed. He didn't
look any better than he had the last time I'd seen him, but then he
didn't look any worse. He smiled when he saw Evelyn.

"I take it you don't have any complaints
about the nursing," I said.

"Not a one," he said. "Tell me what you
found out."

I told him. It didn't amount to much.

"I didn't figure Hargis to be in on
something like this," he said. "There's no reason for him to be
trying to get rid of me. Besides, the money is just small potatoes
to him. Where's this Corea's place you mentioned?"

"It's a little Mom and Pop grocery just off
Broadway," I said. "Outside Harry knows alleys behind all the
places like that, and sometimes he knows who goes in and out the
fronts."

Dino's forehead wrinkled. "That little place
not too far from my house? Some kinda stucco on the outside,
painted beige?"

"That's the place."

"Puts the guy kinda close to home," he said.
"Think he was watching my house?"

"Who knows? I thought I'd check around the
neighborhood tomorrow and see if I could find out anything."

"I guess it's worth a try. You talk to Ray
today?"

I was surprised that he'd asked. "'What Ray
don't know, Ray can't tell,'" I said.

"Yeah, well, I expect he's pretty worried by
now. I think you better go by and check on him. Make sure he hasn't
called the cops in on this, not that he would. Let him know what's
going on."

"OK."

"And for God's sake, Tru, try to make some
sense of this, will you?"

"Sure," I said. I was willing to try. I just
didn't know how.

~ * ~

The lights were on in Dino's house, and Ray
came to the door. He didn't seem especially surprised to see
me.

"What's happening, Tru?" he said.

"Not much," I said.

We went into the living room. The huge
television set was blaring away, but it wasn't tuned to any station
I'd seen Dino watching. As best I could make out, three men wearing
space helmets and gauzy white outfits were chasing a girl wearing a
stainless steel bikini through a huge swamp of mangrove trees and
shallow water. An alligator rested on a log that pushed its way out
of the thick mist rising from the water.

"MTV," Ray said. He walked over to the
couch, located the remote, and clicked the set off. There was a
drink sitting on the coffee table, and he picked it up. "Big Red?"
he said.

"No thanks. I just wanted to stop by and see
how the pay-off went last night."

"I don't know," Ray said. He swirled the ice
cubes around in his drink. "Dino hasn't been back since he sent me
away."

"Does that worry you?"

He took a nip from his drink. "Not a bit.
Dino knows how to take care of himself. He's been doing it for a
long time. He'll turn up."

"I thought you took care of him."

Ray smiled. "Man, all I do is bring the
drinks."

"Any more calls?"

"No more. I guess they got what they
wanted."

"I guess so," I said, but of course I knew
they hadn't.

~ * ~

I didn't feel a bit bad about not letting
Ray in on the whole story. If he wasn't worried, there was no need
to tell him anything. Dino's first thought had been right. If he
didn't know, he couldn't tell.

When I got home I sat down and went over
what I knew. I thought at first about calling Vicky, but I was too
tired, not having slept much the night before and having had a
pretty busy day up to that point.

I still believed that Sharon Matthews had in
some way engineered her own disappearance, possibly with the help
of Chuck Ferguson. I thought that she'd stayed at Terry Shelton's
place for at least part of the time she'd been gone. But I couldn't
for the life of me figure out why Ferguson and Shelton were dead,
much less who had killed them.

Unless.

Unless Ferguson had hired the three goons,
and they had decided to cut him and Shelton out and get all the
money for themselves. It made a crazy kind of sense. If they killed
Dino, then all they had to do was pick up the money and run. No one
would come after them. With Dino dead, Ferguson wouldn't dare put
the finger on them because of his own involvement.

That scenario didn't bode too well for
Sharon. They could have killed her already if it was accurate.
Maybe it wasn't, though. I just didn't know.

I fed Nameless, who had a notion that he
wanted to stay inside for a while. I suppose that I'd been
neglecting him for the past few days, but I tossed him out anyway.
I was hoping to get some sleep, and I didn't need him jumping up in
the bed with me and demanding to be put out after I dozed off. He
refused even to look back at me as he stalked off into the
darkness.

I slept, but not well. I dreamed of Jan when
we were kids. There was a swing in our back yard, and I was pushing
her. She was wearing a blue dress. Soon I was pushing her so high
that when I looked at her she was framed against the sky. Because
of the blue dress and the blue sky, I could hardly see her. I could
see only her face, arms, and legs. Then she fell out of the swing.
I ran under her to catch her, but I couldn't see her at all now.
She had disappeared into the blueness. I could hear her screaming,
but I couldn't see her. And then the dream would start all over
again. It repeated itself like a tape loop.

I dreamed of Dino, too, and Ray. Dino was
sitting on the porch of his large white plantation house in a white
wicker chair. He was dressed like Rhett Butler, and Ray was serving
him a mint julep on a crystal tray. "Yas suh," Ray said. "Ah jus'
brangs the dranks."

When I finally woke up, I felt like I'd run
the Boston Marathon. Maybe I was better off on the nights I didn't
sleep at all. I thought about going to the seawall for a run, but
the knee was still tender. No need to push it. The fight the day
before hadn't helped it any.

It was still too early to do much of
anything else, though, so I read a few pages in the Faulkner book
and then went down and let Nameless in. He ate a whole package of
Tender Vittles and whined for more, but I wouldn't give in. He gave
me a look that indicated how much our relationship had deteriorated
and marched upstairs, tail held high.

I followed him up, read a few more pages,
and got dressed. By that time, Nameless had made himself
comfortable in the middle of my bed, and I had to roust him out to
make it up. He dug his claws into the bedspread, pulling it halfway
off the bed before he let go.

"You can be replaced, you know," I said, but
he ignored me. As I carried him downstairs, I found myself
wondering if Vicky liked cats. Some people were allergic to them.
I'd have to ask her.

By the time I'd eaten an Egg McMuffin at my
favorite restaurant, it was eight-thirty, not too early to visit
Corea's Market. I drove over and went in. It wasn't exactly Apple
Tree. The stock was scanty and the light was bad. As far as I could
tell, though, it was clean.