Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 14 - Murder in a Casbah of Cats (12 page)

“OK, maybe we will, but how about it? You give me a hand?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“We got three bozos to work on, Corky Radison, Willy Morena, and Chippy Alberto. Word I have out should let us know what they’re hustling now. I’m guessing they’re connected with Collins. Find something we can use as leverage to get one of them to turn canary on the others.”

For several moments, Dutch pondered the suggestion. “Considering what we have to work with, it’s as good a shot as anything. What about O’Banion?”

“He said he’d call with something today.”

His voice brusque, Dutch said, “Well, call him.”

“Don’t worry. He’ll call. Then I’ll get in touch with you.”

A broad smile played over his wrinkled face. “Feels good to get back in the saddle.”

After Dutch left, I wandered into the kitchen for coffee. Edna was busying herself putting together lunch. I poured a cup and idly watched her as she laid out halved ciabatta rolls and various other ingredients. “What’s for lunch? Looks good.”

She beamed up at me. “Hot chicken sandwiches with mushrooms, spinach, and cheese.” She laid out the rolls and hit them with whole grain mustard. On them, she dumped a couple of handfuls of roasted shredded chicken, following with Fontina cheese, sliced white mushrooms, chopped shallots, and baby spinach.

I watched apprehensively. I was staring at gourmet sandwiches, not the ham and cheese I normally put myself around. Still, I was adventuresome enough to try new dishes, a spirit I inherited from my mother and grandmother.

Grand-mère Ola was a superb cook. My mother, her daughter-in-law, learned from her, and I learned from the two of them. I enjoyed preparing Cajun dishes, a talent that on occasion, my significant other’s aunt, Beatrice Morrison, who was also a ranking member of Austin’s social elite, has utilized more than once for a gumbo or jambalaya at one of her soirees out at Chalk Hills Distillery. The distillery was the engine that provided her with enough money so that she could have bailed out General Motors instead of the US government doing it.

“Henry loves these,” she said over her shoulder, her fingers flying as she put the sandwiches together.

“Speaking of Henry, I was wondering. If I’m not getting too personal, I noticed he doesn’t have a beard or hair on his arms or legs.”

Her face clouded. “Or his head,” She reminded me. “Poor Henry. He’s a good man.” Her fingers grew still. She looked around at me. Her eyes were filled with pain. “When he was younger, he worked with American relief agencies in Sudan, I think it was. The rebels caught him and kept him prisoner for over two years. When he came back, his hair had fallen out. Never has grown back.”

I grimaced. “Tough.” While I felt a tinge of sympathy, I couldn’t help wondering if such imprisonment, with its attendant demands or even torture, might have such lasting effects that even today would cause a reaction. In the back of my mind, I was still trying to reconcile his explanation of the night before. He had deliberately lied to the lieutenant. If, as he said, he’d come from the direction of the pool cabana, he would have come up on my left, not my right as he did.

Edna’s voice jerked me from my reflections. “He’s never talked about it. I don’t know what they did to him, but whatever it was, he keeps it closed up inside.” She drew a deep breath and tucked the last sandwich on a tray.

She set the tray of sandwiches next to a pitcher of iced tea in the middle of the kitchen table, after which she placed bowls of chips on each side of the platter. “Sit down and help yourself.” She glanced at the clock. “Almost twelve. The others will be by any time—Frank too. These are his favorites.”

I had no sooner slid in at the table than Frank Creek came through the rear door. “Umm,” he moaned when he spotted the platter of sandwiches. “Edna, I love you.”

He tossed his straw hat on the cabinet, rolled up the sleeves of that ubiquitous blue denim shirt, and bent over the kitchen sink. Over his shoulder, he said, “How are things going, Boudreaux? Find any more bodies since last night?”

“Not that I know of,” I replied, laughing with him even though his lighthearted comment was somewhat jarring.

Henry and Gadrate joined us. Edna was the last to sit.

“Where’s the brat?” Gadrate asked.

Edna shushed her. “Hush, now. That ain’t fair. She’ll be down later.”

Gadrate rolled her eyes. “At least I won’t have to take it up to her.”

Around a mouthful of chicken sandwich, Henry directed a question at me. “Heard any more from the lieutenant about the dead man, Guzman?”

“Not a peep.” I took a long drink of iced lemon tea. It was almost as good as my mother made. “What I can’t figure is what Guzman was doing here.”

“Who was he? The lieutenant tell you?”

I looked around the table at them. “You all remember Bill Collins.”

As one, they paused and looked up at me, their eyes reflecting their puzzlement. Frank leaned forward. “What about him?”

“Guzman and Collins ran together. And Collins is right here in Austin.”

Edna gasped.

Gadrate looked at me skeptically.

Henry cleared his throat. “I thought he was in prison.”

“Got out five years back. He’s working at H&H Laundry, out on the east side of town.”

“H&H?” Edna looked at Gadrate. “Isn’t that the one we use?”

The slight maid, wearing her usual bright-colored blouse, a lime-green one today, replied. “That’s the one. We been using them even before I come here to work.”

Edna turned to Henry. “Maybe we should tell Skylar about that when she returns. Maybe we should change to another laundry.”

Henry shrugged. “I’ll tell her.” He looked at me. “How long did you say Collins has been there, five years?” I nodded. He continued. “Five years. And no trouble, Edna. We’ve been using
them for over twenty years. I’ll tell her, but I don’t see any sense in changing laundries just because he works there. H&H has over two hundred workers, from what I’ve heard.”

Back in my room after lunch, I wandered out on the balcony to call Larry and Chopper on Sixth Street. While I spoke with them, a black Ford pickup from Jefferson-Jones’s Full Service Fuel Stop pulled in the drive with several red jerricans in the bed and disappeared around in back of the mansion.

Neither had any information for me. “I put out the word, Tony,” Larry said. “Goofyfoot and Downtown are asking around.”

Over the years, I’d developed a cadre of winos who often furnished me with information I’d not have been able to secure elsewhere. I first met them through my old man, whom I stumbled across sleeping in one of the alleyways behind Sixth Street. He’d deserted us when I was a kid, preferring the rails for transportation and beneath bridges for sleeping quarters.

While the transient population on Sixth Street was in a constant state of flux as new ones came in and old ones left, a few remained, Goofyfoot and Downtown, to name a couple.

No sooner had I punched off than one of Danny O’Banion’s soldiers called. “Danny’s out of town,” he said. “But he told me to pass this along to you. Radison is in Camp J at Angola. Guzman dropped out of sight.” Before I could speak up about the night before, he continued. “Morena and Alberto are heavy in the drug market between Austin and San Antonio.” He paused. “Danny said you should call him if you find Morena.”

“What does he want him for?”

“That’s Danny’s business, but Morena ain’t going to like it.” He clicked off.

I started back to my room as the black Ford pickup drove away, half a dozen five-gallon jerricans in the bed. I shook my head, surprised at the amount of fuel the small tractor used.

I plopped down at my desk, staring unseeing at my laptop before me. To the best of my recollection, at Angola, Camp J was a working cellblock, the politically correct term for chain gang. I shook my head. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for those poor jokers in there, but like Grand-père Moise always pounded into my thick head, “you get exactly out of life what you put into it.” He was only a country farmer, never having attended school, but he was wiser than most people I’ve ever met.

So, now I had Morena and Alberto to run down. I punched in Dutch’s number and told him what I’d learned. “Both are in the drug scene. But I’ve had no luck in running them down.”

“I got you one better. Morena’s got himself a squeeze at the old Dixie Hotel down on First Street. Alberto, I don’t know.”

“You haven’t lost the touch, huh?”

“Don’t brag too soon. Now we need us a lever, something that’ll pry Morena loose from whatever he might know. And I got a gut feeling he knows about Guzman’s murder.”

“Well, you got your wish. O’Banion gave us our lever.”

“What’s that?” He was excited.

“O’Banion wants him in a big way.”

Dutch whistled softly. “How big?”

“I got a feeling Morena won’t walk away from it. Maybe crawl, but not walk,” I added.

He cursed. “I shouldn’t let something like that bother me. The mob always polices their own ranks a lot harder than the cops do. Saves us a lot of headaches, but it’s still frustrating.”

“It’s a break for us, though.”

Puzzled, Dutch asked, “How?”

“You know where his lady friend is. Get word to him that O’Banion’s after him. Tell him if he wants to save his skin, see me.”

A long silence followed. When Dutch spoke, his words were heavy with skepticism. “You got that much influence with O’Banion?”

I chuckled. “I’m not saying O’Banion won’t lop off a finger or two, but that’s better than a head or blowing away kneecaps.”

“O’Banion would go that far?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“Not that the punk doesn’t deserve what he gets. All right, I’ll take care of this end. Where do you want him and when?”

I leaned back and stared at the wall. “Tonight. One o’clock. There’s a tall hedge around the swimming pool on the east side of the house. I’ll be there.”

“What if he won’t buy it?”

“Then he’s dumber than I thought.”

“You got it.”

I caught movement from the side of my eye. I glanced at the French doors. They were partially open. Punching off, I crossed the room to the doors and peered outside. Nothing. I shrugged and decided to look in on my wards, the cats, a few doors down. When I stepped into the hall, I glimpsed Henry disappearing down the stairs.

I hesitated, remembering the movement outside the French doors. Henry? He could have hurried back through the cats’ rooms and down the stairs. I remembered his lie from the night before. Was he part of whatever was going on? He could have easily slipped the spiders into my room.

As usual, the cats were fine. Hercules was nowhere to be seen. On impulse, I peered out the third-floor window at the grounds, looking for him, or the cat I had spotted the day before.

“Hot out there today. Steamy. Supposed to rain later on. Another storm,” said the weatherman.

I looked around. Henry stood in the door wearing a green T-shirt sporting the acerbic remark “Don’t Confuse Me with Facts.” At that moment, Hercules appeared from around the doorjamb. “Here’s your buddy,” Henry said.

I shook my head. “He ain’t no buddy of mine.”

“That was something last night, huh?”

“Guzman? Yeah.”

I was trying to figure out how to broach his lie when he did it for me. “The rain was so hard last night, I almost missed you.”

“Huh?” I frowned at him. “How’s that?”

“At the pool, I saw your flashlight. I went to see who it was. All I could see was the light, and when it went out, I passed you up.” He paused. “I’d have ended up at the gate, if you hadn’t turned it back on.”

I studied him a moment. The rain had been torrential. There had been times I was blinded, and I had dropped the flashlight. “Yeah, it was bad out there.”

Later that day, I sauntered outside for some fresh air, a pretext for inspecting the fence once again. I strolled up and down the hundred-yard stretch of wrought iron and brick where the figure had disappeared. From experience, I knew the heavy mulch of rough bark would reveal no discernible tracks. I kept asking myself the question just how that guy had managed to disappear in the proverbial puff of smoke.

There was no way. Just as there was no way the killer could have vanished from the library.

Beyond the fence, a city bus pulled up at the sheltered stop, which was only a few feet from the fence. Two riders disembarked, both heading back to the east. Domestic help, I guessed.

I heard a splash at the pool and guessed Karla was taking a swim.

When I peeked around the hedge, she was reclining in a lounge chair, soaking up the sun. “Hi,” I said.

She rolled her head to one side and opened her eyes. “Oh. Hi.”

I surveyed the kidney-shaped pool. On one end was a diving board, and in the middle, a curved slide extended over the rim of the pool. I looked at the neat cabana on the north side of the pool. I glanced over my shoulder. Henry could have spotted the flashlight from there. I grinned at Karla. “Nice place out here.”

She sat up. “Yeah, I guess. Hey, why don’t you join me?”

“I figured Kevin would be here by now.”