Dead on the Island

A Truman Smith Mystery

By Bill Crider

Smashwords Edition published at Smashwords by
Crossroad Press

Copyright 2011 by Bill Crider

Copy-edited by Erin Bailey

Cover Design by David Dodd

LICENSE NOTES
:

This e-book is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only.  This e-book may not be re-sold or given away
to other people.  If you would like to share this book with
another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person
you share it with.  If you're reading this book and did not
purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you
should return to your vendor of choice and purchase your own
copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this
author

Try any title from CROSSROAD PRESS – use the
Coupon Code FIRSTBOOK for a one time 20% savings! We have a wide
variety of eBook and Audiobook titles available. Find us at:
http://store.crossroadpress.com

AS JACK MACLANE:

Blood Dreams

Goodnight MooM

Just Before Dark

Keepers of the Beast

Rest in Peace

AS BILL CRIDER:

A Time for Hanging

Medicine Show

Ryan Rides Back

Nighttime is the Right Time

This book is dedicated to the memory of my
grandmother, Antoinette Floyd Brodnax, who loved Galveston as much
as anyone I've ever known, and to Bob, Francelle, and Ellen, who
will remember all those summer days we spent in Galveston a long
time ago.

Galveston Island is, for me, as much a state
of mind as a geographic location. I therefore apologize to
Galvestonians for the liberties I've taken with the Island's
geography and history in order to make it as much my island as it
is theirs.

There was no one on the seawall except for
me and the rat.

I was there to run; I don't know why the rat
was there. Maybe he just didn't have anywhere else to go. Or maybe
he was looking for a handout. If he was, he'd come to the wrong
place. Even the few forlorn gulls that were floating around above
us knew better.

In the summer it would have been different.
The seawall is crowded then, and it's no good for running, though
some people still try. The tourists are out in force, walking,
riding their rented bikes and pedicycles, dragging their
recalcitrant offspring, cruising along on skateboards, and in
general making the seawall a place to avoid.

Unless you're a seagull, that is. Or a
rat.

In the summer, the seawall is rat paradise.
The remains of hotdogs with mustard, corn chips, potato chips,
jelly sandwiches, half-eaten candy bars, parts of pickles, the
leavings of a thousand picnics--it's all there for the taking.

And if you can get your snout into the
opening of an aluminum can, there's the dregs of a beer or a diet
Coke to top off the meal. Then you can slip into a crack in the
wall or into a crevice among the boulders at its base and watch the
world go by.

Tanned skin and pasty white; burned and
peeling; oiled and leathery--all cinched up in whatever manner of
suit that might happen to catch your fancy, from a string bikini to
a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty model from the early days of
Hollywood.

But it wasn't summer. It was the last week
in February, and a cold norther had managed to push its way down
from the Panhandle all the way to the coast, dropping the
temperature into the lower forties and turning the sky the color of
lead. The wind pushed back at the Gulf and moved the heavy clouds
along. A frosty mist hung in the air. There were still plenty of
beer cans down in among the boulders, but they had long since been
emptied of anything a rat might want to drink.

Traffic was sparse on the boulevard to my
left. Today qualified for the depths of winter on the Texas Gulf
Coast. It was a day to stay home and read a good book or watch
Jeopardy
on TV.

I wasn't worried about the weather, though.
I had on a pair of Nike Air Spans, fleece-lined running shorts, and
a black and gray sweatshirt that I'd bought at K-Mart. The north
wind cut right through the sweatshirt, but I knew I'd get plenty
warm once I started the run.

The rat was wearing dark brown fur, a
leathery tail, and a quizzical look. I wondered if the wind were
bothering him, but before I could ask he disappeared over the side
of the seawall. It would be a lot warmer down among the boulders,
out of the wind. I hoped maybe he could find an old can of bean dip
that might still have a dried brown rim of beans left for him to
eat.

I started into the run, going slow at first,
not that I ever got up too much speed. I was at the west end of the
seawall, running east. I figured to go for a mile or two or three
and then turn back, depending on how well my knee held up.

After half a mile I was warming up, and the
knee was feeling all right. As long as I held myself to about
eight-and-a-half minute miles it would probably be fine. It was
only when I pressed myself that I found myself listing to the
right. Even then I could usually keep from falling if I stopped in
time, but I told myself there was no need to worry about that.
Eight-and-a-half minute miles were perfectly acceptable.

After about two miles I saw someone coming
from the opposite direction. I wasn't surprised, since it was more
likely that there would be people in that direction, even in
February. It was about time for me to turn around, anyway.

I was about to make my turn when I
recognized the other runner, even though he was a good way off. You
can do that, recognize runners from their gait. Me, for instance. I
have a sort of modified version of the Ali Shuffle, except that
it's all forward motion. My feet don't ever get too far from the
ground. Can't afford to jar the knee.

The runner up ahead wasn't like me in the
least. He was getting his knees up and moving right along, smooth
and steady. Probably hitting the miles in seven minutes or a little
less. I'd've bet a dollar it was Raymond Jackson.

So I didn't turn around, after all. Later, I
wished that I had, but he would just have caught up with me. There
was a time when . . . . But that was quite a while ago.

When we met, Raymond turned and slowed to my
pace. "What's happenin', Tru?" he said

"Nothing much, Ray," I said. Ray's a black
man, late thirties or thereabout. My age. He's about the size of a
good NFL defensive back, but he looks to be in better shape than
most of them. "How's it with you?"

"Not bad," he said.

We ran along together for a few minutes. I
was breathing a little harder than he was.

When we got to the three mile mark, I said,
"I'm turning it around, Ray. Good to see you." I sprinted out ahead
and made an easy, wide turn.

Ray turned, too. "I'll go along with you for
a ways," he said.

Neither one of us was inclined to talk much,
so we ran in silence for a while. The scudding gray clouds, the
mist, the gray-green water of the Gulf--all of them together didn't
seem to make it much of a day for talking.

Finally Ray spoke up. "Dino wants to see
you."

I'd been afraid all along that running into
Ray hadn't been a coincidence, though I'd hoped it was.

"What for?" I said.

"He's lost somethin'. He wants you to find
it," Ray said.

"I can't do that anymore," I said.

"Hey, I know that," Ray said. He wasn't
having any trouble talking at all. I was having to pause a little
between every second word. "I told Dino that. I said, 'Man, he
don't do that kind of job anymore.' Dino just looked at me. You
know how he does. 'He'll do this one,' he said. 'Find him.' So I
found you. I hope you not gonna make me look bad and not talk to
him."

We ran on for a minute or two. "I'll talk to
him," I said. "Thanks for making it look like I had a choice."

Ray laughed, but he didn't say anything. We
ran along until we got nearly to the end of the seawall, where my
car was parked.

"You don't put up much of a front, man," Ray
said. He was probably talking about my car, a '79 Subaru GL with
two doors and a fading gray paint that just about matched the color
of the day.

"It gets me where I'm going." I opened the
door and reached into the back seat where I usually have a couple
of towels. I threw Ray a green one and kept the yellow one for
myself. It's softer.

I stripped off the sweatshirt and dried off
as best I could in the cold mist. I put on another sweatshirt from
the back seat.

"Sorry I don't have another one," I told
Ray.

"That's all right," he said. "Just give me a
ride up to my car."

We scrunched ourselves into the Subaru and
started up Seawall Boulevard toward the east end of the Island.
"About Dino," I said, shifting through the gears. "When?"

"Today's fine," Ray said. He had my green
towel draped around his neck. "You wanna come by after lunch?"

"Two o'clock?"

"Two o'clock it is. I'll tell him. There's
my ride."

We were almost to the Moody Center, which
had been the Buccaneer Hotel when Ray and Dino and I were young.
From buccaneer to retirement home. There was probably a message
somewhere in that for me if I let myself think about it. I didn't
let myself.

Ray's car, a maroon BMW, was parked across
the street from Moody Center. I stopped by it.

"I didn't know you'd become a yuppie, Ray,"
I said.

He got out of my car and leaned in to toss
the green towel into the back seat. "In the words of Chuck Berry,"
he said, "'it jus' goes to show you never can tell.'"

I laughed, remembering the song. I probably
had the record someplace.

"Two o'clock," he said. "Don't you forget,
now." He shut the door and the window rattled a little bit.

"Yeah," I said to myself, driving to the
corner and turning left. "Two o'clock."

~ * ~

I was living that year in a two-story
unrestored Victorian house not far from St. Mary's Hospital on
Avenue I. Or on Sealy Street. Call it either one; that's what the
locals do. I get the letters just the same, but they're mostly
addressed to "Occupant."

For a long time, Galveston seemed determined
to destroy all the relics of its historic past and was doing a
damned good job for the most part. Now the buildings on the Strand,
some of them anyway, have been restored to their former glory, and
a lot of the Victorian houses in the Historical District are
looking better than they have for over a hundred years. The trim
sparkles, and the pastel paint jobs inspired by
Miami Vice
most likely, would turn Sonny Crockett puce with envy.

The place where I lived didn't look that
good.

I wasn't exactly in the Historical District
anyhow, and the guy who owned the house was just holding onto it as
an investment. Which meant that he was paying the taxes and hoping
that someone would come along and offer him a whopping profit for
it. In the meantime I was serving as a sort of glorified
house-sitter, supposedly making sure that thieves didn't break in
to steal and vandals didn't corrupt the investment.

I drove into the alley behind the house and
parked in the back yard. There was no carport, but I had a cloth
cover I could toss over the Subaru in case of storms. I climbed the
outside stairs of the house to the second floor. The first floor
was used mostly for storage, and it would take a lot of work to get
it back where it had been in the previous century. The original
hardwood flooring was still there, but not much else.