Dead on the Island (2 page)

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.

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?"

"You got a Big Red?"

Dino made a gagging sound. "I got it. I knew
you were coming over. Bourbon and Seven for me, Ray. Big Red.
Jesus." He sat on the sofa.

I went to an overstuffed straight chair
nearby. "What's the deal?" I said.

"Let's wait for Ray," he said. So we
waited.

Dino and Ray and I went back a long way. We
grew up together on the Island, though in different parts of the
town. When the Island had been wide open, which it had been until
the mid-1950s, a couple of Dino's uncles had controlled all the
gambling and most of the prostitution. I didn't remember anything
about that time, having come along at the tail end of it, but I'd
heard plenty. You couldn't grow up on the Island and not hear. Ray
had been born in one of the black whorehouses, and somehow one of
the uncles had gotten to know him (or maybe it was Ray's mother
that he got to know). Ray had been brought up practically like a
member of the family. Me, I was just another guy, until high
school, when I have to admit in all modesty that I became the best
damned running back that Ball High had ever known. My ability on
the field got me inside a lot of doors that would have otherwise
been slammed in my face, and Dino had been on the team.

Ray came in with the drinks. "I forgot you
liked yours out of the bottle," he said, handing me a glass of Big
Red and a napkin.

"I'll manage," I said, taking the glass and
wrapping the napkin around it.

"So, Tru, how long you been back on the
Island?" Dino said, sipping at his drink. "A year now? Little
more?"

"About that," I said.

Ray had left the room again. He hadn't had a
drink for himself. I took a swallow of the Big Red. Some people say
it's like drinking bubble gum, but I like it. I figured Dino would
get to the point eventually.

"You think you'll be staying?"

"It's a thought," I said.

"You got any money?"

"A little. I've been painting a few houses.
Not too many lately, though. But business will pick up in the
spring."

"I got a little job you could do," Dino
said, twirling his glass between his palms as he leaned forward on
the sofa. "You could make a little money before spring."

I took another swallow of Big Red. "What's
the job?"

"I want you to find somebody," he said.

"I don't do that anymore."

Just about then Ray walked back into the
room. "That's what I told him," he said.

"Yeah, but I figured that was just
bullshit," Dino said. "You aren't the kinda guy who'd just quit
like that. Not you."

"Sure I am."

I set my glass down on the floor. There was
a coffee table that had legs that started somewhere in the middle
and curved out to the edges and were tipped with something that
looked like copper claws, but it was too far away to reach.

"Look," Dino said. "I knew Jan, too. I liked
her. Ray knew her. He liked her. Everybody liked her. Nobody blames
you. You got to get over that."

"Why?" I said.

Dino put his glass on the coffee table, got
up, and started pacing around. "It's not your fault she
disappeared," he said. "It's not your fault you couldn't find
her."

"He's right," Ray said. "Maybe she just
wanted to disappear. She may turn up any day now with a story about
spending a year in Vegas."

"No," I said.

"OK, probably not," Dino said. "I got plenty
of contacts in Vegas. I checked that one out."

"That was just sort of an example," Ray
said. "She could be anywhere."

"She's dead," I said. "We all know that. We
just don't know who did it, or why, or what he did with her."

Dino sat back down on the couch. "OK. OK.
Maybe so. But that's no reason for you to fold it up. You can't
just lie around and paint houses when you get the chance. I checked
you out, too. You had a good thing going when you were a P. I. You
could find anybody."

"I couldn't find my sister," I reminded
him.

"Let me put it this way, then," Dino said.
"You owe me one. I called in a lot of markers to help you look for
Jan."

"Yeah," I said. "I know. I owe you one."

"Besides that, I . . . what'd you say?"

"I said, 'I know. I owe you one.'"

"That's what I thought you said. You mean
it?"

"I mean it," I said. "You helped me out, and
you didn't have to, not even for old time's sake."

Dino laughed. "That knee still bothers you,
huh? Well, I didn't help on account of that. You were a buddy, and
you needed help. So I helped. It didn't work out, but I tried." He
picked up his glass and tried to take a bite off one of the ice
cubes that was left. "So, you gonna help me with this one?"

"Maybe. Tell me what it is, first."

"I don't think he trusts you, Dino," Ray
said. He was standing somewhere behind me.

"It's not that," I said. "It's just that you
might be asking something that I really can't do. Or won't do. So
tell me who you want me to find."

"Get the picture for him, Ray," Dino
said.

I didn't hear Ray leave the room, but he
must have. In a minute he was back, holding a cardboard folder. The
outside of the folder had a sort of woodgrain look, just like the
folders we'd gotten our own high school pictures in twenty years
before. Ray handed me the folder.

"Take a look," Dino said. I opened the
folder. Inside was a five-by-seven color glossy of a girl about
sixteen or seventeen. Straight hair, the color we used to call
mousy blonde. Blue eyes, a strong nose, a firm mouth. She had a
prettiness about her, but there was nothing fragile in it.

"So," I said. "A nice looking kid. She the
one that's missing?"

"That's right," Dino said. "Two days
now."

"And you want me to find her."

"Right again. No wonder you were such a
hotshot investigator."

"No need to be touchy," I said. "Whose
daughter is she?"

"A friend's," Dino said, looking at his
empty glass.

"That won't get it," I said. "If I do this
little job for you, and I'm not saying I will, I'll have to talk to
her parents. Kids disappear for a lot of reasons. Some of them are
right at home.”

"Not this kid," Dino said. "Take my word for
it."

I handed the folder back to Ray. "This isn't
going to work," I said.

"Goddammit, Tru!" Dino jumped to his
feet.

I stayed in my chair. "Look, Dino, I work
the way I work. In a case like this, I always talk to the parents.
Besides, it's bound to be complicated. I'm sure you've already
tried a few things yourself, like you did for me."

"Tell him, Ray."

"We've checked with the cops," Ray said.
"We've put out feelers in other cities where we still have
contacts. I've been to the bus station here and in Houston. And in
a few towns in between."

"What'd you find out?" I said, but I figured
I knew.

"Not a goddamn thing," Dino said. "Not one
solitary goddamn thing. The cops don't know from nothing. Nobody's
seen her. She's just gone. Just like--"

"Like Jan," I finished for him. "You can say
it. I won't mind."

"She's younger than Jan," Ray said. "It's
not the same thing."

I could have told him that he was making a
mistake right there. You never assume anything. If you do, you
mislead yourself. But I didn't tell him. Instead, I said, "What
about her friends? Teachers? Does she work? When was she last seen?
I've got to talk to her parents and find out things like that."