Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 01 - Galveston (3 page)

“What if I say no?”

An icy look flashed in Augie’s eyes, quickly replaced with amusement. He grinned. “Then I suppose Mister Abbandando would have to come to you.” He paused and hooked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the warehouses. “But, it would be more convenient for you since he’s up in his office over there. Warmer too.”

‘Over there’ was a warehouse that stretched a quarter mile from end to end. Above the white metal building was a bright red sign, Maritime Shippers. A panel of windows spanned the breadth of the fourth floor of the warehouse. A figure in a white suit stood in the window. I couldn’t tell which direction he was facing, but I had the feeling he was watching me.

I threw caution to the wind. I was in enough trouble now. Meeting ‘Mustache Pete’ couldn’t cause me anymore. “Why not?”

‘Mustache Pete’ Abbandando was a tall, corpulent Italian in a white, three-piece suit with which his large, black eyes contrasted sharply. I saw instantly the source of his sobriquet, ‘Mustache’. It was not a compliment. The mustache was thin, almost miniscule, out of place on the broad expanse of shiny flesh between his nose and upper lip.

Given his height and girth, a full-bodied, barbershop handlebar would have been much more appropriate.

No, the nickname was definitely not a compliment.

I wondered if he was smart enough to figure it out. Even if he weren’t, I knew no one dared use the moniker in front of him.

But, to be honest, ‘Mustache Pete’ Abbandando was a convivial host.

He crossed the expansive room and extended his hand. “Ah, Mister Boudreaux. Thank you for coming.” He gestured to a bar at the end of the room. “I have coffee, cappuccino, or your choice of drinks.”

I eyed the generous assortment of alcohol on the shelves behind the bar wistfully. Before I could give myself time to reconsider, I replied. “Coffee’s fine.”

He led me to a table in front of a wide expanse of windows. The table was expensively appointed with a linen cloth, China glassware, and silver urns.

“Good view,” I replied, sliding into the chair he indicated.

He waved a single finger and a thin waiter with the sharp features and cold eyes of a hatchet man magically appeared.

“Word is, Tony—-Can I call you Tony?” He asked as he slid into the chair across the table from me.

“Sure.”

“Good.” He smiled broadly. “Call me Pete. Now, the word is, Tony, that last night after the last cement truck dumped his load, you shot and killed Frank Cheshire.”

I studied him warily, hoping he wasn’t measuring me for a cement jacket. “Was he important to you?” I sipped the coffee. Hot and rich, but without that extra wallop of Louisiana coffee.

He grew thoughtful, lowering his gaze to the coffee, which he was slowly stirring with a silver spoon. His heavy jowls sagged toward the cup, and his fat lips glistened in the reflection of the sun through the windows. His mustache reminded me of a single pencil mark on a sheet of typing paper. 

Keeping his eyes fixed on the coffee, he shook his head. “You have nothing to fear from me, Tony. The truth is, I’m looking for one of my own men. My cousin, Albert Vaster. He is the son of my mother’s third brother. He is a good boy, but he is missing. I think he might have been, for reasons that are unimportant to you, following Frank Cheshire. Since you were the last to see Cheshire alive, I thought perhaps you might have seen Albert. My men have searched the island for little Albert. He is nowhere to be found.” He handed me a snapshot. “That was taken two months ago at his mother’s birthday. He dances there with his mother.”

I studied the picture. Little Albert Vaster was a handsome young man, around six feet or so and a thirty-something. I shook my head. “Sorry, Pete. I’m new in town. All I can tell you is about the restaurant last night and the docks later. If this man was there, I didn’t see him.”

Pete sipped his coffee, his eyebrows drooping like an injured pup. “Tell me about the shooting if you don’t mind.”

“Sure. Not much to tell. Cheshire shot my friend four times, then tried me. I got him instead.” I shrugged. “And that’s all it was.”

“Why would he do this?”

“Beats me.” I shook my head. “We were just walking along and then, there he was.”

“You didn’t see the one running away?”

“Nope.”

‘Mustache Pete’ stared out the window. He pursed his lips. He drew a deep breath and looked around at me. Finally, he said. “Frank Cheshire was dirty, Tony. Dirty as a cop can get. I think … no, I truly believe he killed my Albert. Maybe last night.” He turned his eyes back on the window.

I leaned back in my chair, wondering why Pete had revealed his suspicions to me, a stranger.

He continued. “The truth is Albert had the idea Cheshire was up to something, something that would affect us. I think that is why Albert was killed.”

I respected the portly man’s concern, but emotions colored by anger, hot-blood, family pride, all combine to make for shaky, impulsive judgments. “Was Cheshire on your payroll?”

He turned back to me, his black eyes slits. After a moment, a slight sneer twisted his thick lips. He smoothed his tiny mustache delicately with his little finger. “At one time. Not for a year now. I think he was working for Sam Maranzano.”

I don’t know why I kept asking questions. Curious, I suppose. I should have known better. Being nosy always caused me problems. “Who’s he?”

“A Sicilian wop. Sam Maranzano out of Chicago. He moved to Houston last year.”

“Muscling in?”

‘Mustache Pete’ arched an eyebrow and looked at me slyly. “Not so you can see. He is sneaky. I think he is waiting for the right moment, which,” he added with a touch of bravado. “I will not give him.”

“If your cousin was following Cheshire last night, then he was on the wharf. Did your boys check the bay for him?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes two, three days before bodies come to surface. Sometimes the currents carry them into the Gulf. Sometimes they are never found.”

I looked out the windows at the broad bay stretching far to the north. Without warning, there was a sharp pop. Faster than the eye could discern, the window shattered into a five gadzillion spider webs, then imploded back into the room.

I didn’t know what had happened, but I wasn’t crazy enough to hang around and find out. Even before the first chunk of shattered glass hit the floor, I was on my belly next to the wall. ‘Mustache Pete’ was waiting there for me.

At that instant, the doors burst open and half-a-dozen buttonmen packing an eclectic collection of Uzis, AK 47’s, and even an ancient Thompson rushed to the window, throwing their Nicky Hilton clad bodies up as shields for ‘Mustache Pete’ Abbandando.

Pete looked up from where he was huddling next to the wall and gave me a crooked grin and grunted. “All in a day’s work.”

I had to admire his insouciant unconcern. “I tried to appear as nonchalant. “I hope not. This is the only suit I own.”

Pete chuckled. “I like you, Tony.”

“Don’t see no one, Boss,” said a voice.

A second chimed in. “There’s a boat in the bay heading for Texas City.”

Pete grunted and pushed to his hands and knees. With the help of two of his boys, he struggled to his feet, but I noted he was careful to stay away from the windows. I brushed myself off and looked out the window, but from across the room.

Augie indicated a small hole in the ceiling near the far wall. “The boat, Boss. Had to be.”

Pete nodded. “Do it.”

I didn’t know what the cryptic reply meant exactly, but I’d lay odds it boded nothing well for those in the boat.

Taking my elbow, Pete guided me to the bar in one corner of the room. “After that, I need something stronger than coffee, Tony.”

I slid up on a stool. “Tempting, but I’ll settle for water and a twist of lemon if you have it.”

He arched an eyebrow.

With a sheepish grin, I explained. “Some of us can’t handle the hard stuff.”

Behind us, several workmen scurried in to put a temporary patch on the window.

To my surprise, Pete built both our drinks himself. While he did, I glanced at the snapshot partially crumpled in my hand. I smoothed it out on the bar. Yep, Albert Vaster was a nice looking young man. I paid closer attention to the picture. He and his mother were dancing the tango.

The reason I knew it was a tango was that a few years earlier, I’d taken some dance lessons in an effort to prevent embarrassing my Significant Other, Janice Coffman-Morrison, when we attended one of her country club shindigs.

The only dances I knew when we met were the Cajun two-step and the Church Point Stomp. In the joints I frequented, the steps were classics, but I discovered quickly those two hops were frowned upon at the Barton Springs Country Club when the club’s executive director threatened to throw us out of the season opening ball if we danced another step of either.

Seems like Austin society frowns on high kicks and Cajun howls.

I studied the snapshot, noticing the wingtip shoes Albert wore. I couldn’t help remembering the single wingtip I’d spotted back by the dumpster on the wharf earlier.

Unseeing, I lifted my gaze and stared at the handful of repairmen at the window. A couple of wild ideas flashed into my head.

‘Mustache Pete’ must have been puzzled by the thoughtful contemplation on my face. “What? You think of something?”

“This picture.” I handed it to him. “Did Albert always wear shoes like that? Wingtips.”

The heavy-set man squirmed around in his chair so the overhead light shown on the picture. “Yes. He always wear the wingtip. He say the wingtip was the shoe of a gentleman.” He looked around at me. “Why?”

I held my hands up, palms out. “Now, there is probably nothing to this, but this morning before Augie came up to me, a front-end loader scooped up a bunch of trash and dumped it in a commercial dumpster beside the new concrete they poured down there.” I nodded to the window. “I saw a black wingtip on the dock.”

Pete frowned, the wrinkles deep in his fleshy forehead. “I don’t understand. We import thousands of shoes from Taiwan. You think it might be Albert’s.”

“Like I said, there’s probably nothing to it, but the shore crane where I spotted Cheshire last night is directly in front of the dumpster. If Cheshire did waste your cousin, he could have tossed him in the dumpster to be covered by trash before dumping at the landfill.”

Pete studied me a few seconds, then his eyes grew wide. He grabbed the phone and barked a few orders into it, after which he replaced it and leaned back. “My boys will find the dumpster. Thank you, Tony.”

“Like I said, there might be nothing to it.”

“Yes. But on the other hand, there might be.”

I changed the subject. “You get many drive-by’s like that?” I nodded to the window.

He shrugged. “Nature of the business.”

“Rough business.”

He smoothed his miniscule mustache. “Most are.”

Thinking back over his last remark, I tended to agree with him. The toughest job I had was teaching English to kids who didn’t want to learn in a high school that didn’t want you to teach.  The kids split their infinitives with knives and dangled their participles out the third story window. As far as the intellectually-challenged administration was concerned, a syntactical relationship between a noun and adjective was the standard plot of a porno movie.

I downed my coffee and slid off the barstool. “Wish I could tell you more, Pete, but that’s all the help I can be.”

He nodded. “For that I thank you.”

Chapter Four

Back on the wharf, I called the hospital on my cell phone. Ben was still in a coma, which meant I was still in limbo.

More than once, I’ve seen a poor huckleberry get himself thrown into the slammer with no lawyer, no outside help, and end up on the short end of a hard time verdict.

The D.A.’s threat the night before still bounced around in my skull. Indictment for murder, lose my license. And just after I’d finally proven my old man wrong.

Before he abandoned Mom and me, he said I’d never amount to anything. Well, I did. I worked my way through high school, through college, and now I owed no one. No one except my boss, Marty Blevins. I’d made something of myself, and no one was going to take it from me. My old man, wherever he might be, wasn’t going to laugh at me.

I drew a deep breath and stared unseeing at the squalling and diving seagulls overhead. I couldn’t afford to wait for Ben Howard to wake up. Like Marty said, he might not, and if he didn’t, I was in alligators up to my neck.

At a brisk pace, I headed back to my pickup. I had work to do in my motel room. And the work began with Frank Cheshire. I wanted to know as much about him as I could.

I unloaded my laptop and booted it up. My desktop came up, a picture of Oscar, my albino tiger barb, the single exotic fish remaining in my aquarium after my old friend, Jack Edney, murdered the other fish when he urinated in the aquarium.

Unfortunately, Oscar didn’t survive intact. He suffered brain damage for now he could only swim in tiny circles.

As most murderers, next morning Jack demonstrated remorse, blaming his act on his drunken state at the time.

My landlady tended Oscar while I was gone, so I knew he would be well fed.

I quickly reconfigured some of the Internet options and dialed my local service in Austin via long distance. I called up the website of Eddie Dyson, computer whiz, entrepreneur, stool pigeon, and reformed thief. Eddie had built himself a lucrative business selling information online.

He had upgraded the questionable occupation of stoolie into that of an online executive and capitalist, taking payment only by VISA. Other than his innovative system of delivery, all the old guidelines still held true. No questions asked and keep your mouth shut.

The truth was, I never wanted to know where he found his information. This time I order a full report on Frank Cheshire.

Shutting down the computer, I pulled some note cards from my briefcase and started building my collection of note cards with a few random questions. Why did Cheshire try to kill us? What was he doing on the wharf? Why was Albert Vaster following Cheshire? What kind of job was Cheshire doing for Maranzano?