Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 09 - The Crystal Skull Murders (18 page)

We waited another thirty minutes. The Miata still remained.

“Now what?” She glanced at me.

“Stay here. I’ll see what’s going on.”

Using the pretext of a friend who was to meet Abdo
after work, I spoke with a supervisor who informed me
that Abdo was at St. Mary’s Hospital getting a finger
set after breaking it on the job.

I jerked to a surprised halt when I left the building.
There across the street, standing beside the Jag and
talking to Doreen was Carlos Abdo, ponytail, flat nose,
and a bandaged forefinger.

As I approached, Doreen smiled. “Tony, this is Carlos
Abdo. We’ve been talking about the fire at the Hip-Hop.”

His left arm was in a sling, and he was wearing a
short-sleeve sport shirt. There was no sign he’d had a
run-in with Max.

He nodded. “From what Ms. Patterson here says, you
guys are trying to find who torched the Hip-Hop?”

Remembering Wanda’s comment from early that
morning that word on the street connected Abdo with
the fire, I was taken aback by his casual reference to the
fire. He was no moron, so I guessed he was buoyed by
an ego filled with confidence. “Yeah. I was told you
might be able to help us”

He arched an eyebrow. “Who told you that?”

I shrugged. “You know how it is on the street” I
glanced at Doreen. “You remember where we heard it?”

With a sly gleam in her eyes, she pursed her lips and
shook her head. “Around. That’s all I can remember.”

He grunted. In an off-hand manner, he replied, “No
matter. All I know about the place is that Monday, the
day before the fire, I dropped off a regular order of towels and tablecloths.” He hesitated. “Oh, yeah. Getdown
ordered a bunch of fancy uniforms for his people, green
and yellow. We got them ready a week early, and I went
ahead and delivered them too”

Somewhere in the back of my head, the words green
and yellow rang a bell, but try as I might to grasp the
thought, it slipped through the clumsy fingers of my
mind like water.

Abdo continued. “Then I picked up all the dirty
laundry. Normally, I deliver on Sixth Street twice a
week, Tuesdays and Fridays, but that week, I delivered
on Monday because the boilers at the laundry were going to be replaced the next day. Another reason I remember that Monday is because I ran into that old bum
that got hisself killed in the fire.” He grimaced. “What
was his name-seems like it was-”

“Rosey,” I said. “His name was Rosey”

“Yeah” He nodded emphatically and with a grin,
said, “That’s it. Rosey. He was downing a jug of Thunderbird.” He shook his head. “Shame. Harmless old
man.”

“Yeah” I changed the subject. “Your parole officer
says you’re doing a good job”

The grin on his face faded into frown of suspicion.
“Yeah. I’m doing good.”

“What does he think about you delivering laundry to
the bars on Sixth Street? Most guys in your shoes are
told to stay out of clubs and bars.’

He glanced at Doreen, then with a smug grin, replied,
“They just don’t want us hanging around there, that’s
all. As long as it’s connected to the job, they got no
problem. At least, mine don’t.”

Doreen frowned. “Isn’t Garcia’s on Sixth Street?”
She winked at me. I grinned, guessing where she was
going.

Abdo’s smile faded. “Yeah. Why?”

With a nonchalant shrug, she replied, “Oh, nothing. It’s just that we know you were setting up drinks for the
house at Garcia’s last night. I’d call that hanging around,
wouldn’t you?”

His face blanched, and a worried frown etched wrinkles in his forehead. He looked around at me, and I
nodded. His frown deepened. “Look, so I was down
there. One time. Give me a break.”

“I don’t know.” Doreen paused and pulled out her little notebook. As Abdo looked on, she methodically
thumbed through the book. “From what we learned,
you’ve been down there more than just last night.” She
paused, glanced up, then tapped a fingernail on a page in
the notebook. “We’ve even got dates” It was a lie, but
he had no way of knowing.

Abdo gulped.

It was my turn to ratchet up the pressure. “You make
ten forty-three an hour, four hundred bucks a week, probably closer to three hundred take-home. Yet you drive
a Miata. You must be a whiz at money-management,
Abdo”

Sweat popped out on his forehead. He gulped hard.
He took a step back. “Hey, it’s a used one. You can get
them cheap”

“How cheap?”

His eyes narrowed. “Look, I don’t have to talk to
you. You got no-”

“No, you don’t,” I replied. I pointed to the notebook
in Doreen’s hand. “We can turn that over to your parole
office, and you can explain it all to him.”

The balloon of confidence that had inflated his ego
suddenly went flat. He seemed to crumple in on himself. “Look. I’m being straight here. I don’t know nothing about the fire”

“So, where does all the money come from, Carlos?”
Doreen’s question was cold and clipped.

He stared at her helplessly for several moments before giving up and dropping his chin to his chest. “All
right, but it ain’t that much. I been doing some work on
the side the last couple weeks for Buck Topper.”

Doreen and I looked at each other, each recognizing
in the other’s face the excitement over the possibility of
a break in the case.

I hooked my thumb over my shoulder. “That’s where
you got the bundle for the Miata?”

“It wasn’t no bundle. Five hundred. The dealer’s
carrying a note on the rest.”

Doreen beat me to the punch. “Who’s the dealer?”

“Carson’s Car Lot on Congress. Jimmy Wills. We go
way back so he did me a favor.”

I spoke up as she jotted the name in her notebook.
“So, what was the job for Buck?”

He hesitated and glanced furtively at Doreen and
then back to me. A look of innocence replaced the cunning look on his face. “I don’t know everything, but
Buck was looking for some kind of glass skull”

I don’t know whose jaw dropped open the wider,
Doreen’s or mine. I clamped my lips shut. “Go on”

“That little wino had stumbled across the skull and pawned it. Buck hired me to get the ticket from the old
man, but I couldn’t find him. Next thing I knew, the
Hip-Hop burned and Rosey was dead. The pawn ticket
wasn’t on him, so-”

“Hold on,” I said, interrupting. “How did you know
the ticket wasn’t on him?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “This is going to sound suspicious, but I swear, I had nothing to do
with torching the Hip-Hop.” He paused, then continued. “Like I said, I made my regular deliveries on
Monday instead of Tuesday. I kept an eye out for
Rosey. I even went back at night looking for him. I saw
the fire break out. I started to lose myself, but then I
spotted the old man stumble out the back door and fall
on the ground. He didn’t say nothing when I got to him,
so I searched him. He didn’t have the pawn ticket.”

“So Buck kept you on the payroll to find the ticket or
the skull.”

“Yeah,” he whispered.

I had a nagging feeling that Abdo was holding back
on something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. “Were
you in the Hip-Hop storeroom in the alley this last
Monday?”

“Yeah. The old rummy hung out in there. I figured he
might have stashed the ticket somewhere, but I never
could find it. Just about the time I finished searching the
place, somebody come in, so I got my rear end out of
there”

Doreen’s face grew hard. “So it was you in there”

Abdo frowned. “Huh?” Suddenly, he realized the implication of her statement. “That was you two?”

I nodded and gently tapped the Band-Aid on my
forehead.

He grinned sheepishly. “Hey, man, I’m sorry, but you
spooked me big time. I just wanted to get out of there.”

“So, you ran into the Red Rabbit, right?”

“Yeah. Buck, he gave me the keys to the back door.”

Doreen studied him a moment, then winked at me.
“What about the skull? You ever find it?”

He hesitated and glanced at Doreen before he replied.
“Naw.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what the deal
is on the skull, but I never could find it. Buck got pretty
hot. Made me give him my keys to his back door”

Abdo caught the look Doreen and I exchanged. He
frowned. “What?”

“What if I tell you I know you’re lying? What if I tell
you that we know you found the skull?”

His mouth popped open. “Huh? What are you saying? I told you, I never found the ticket.”

Doreen chuckled. “We’re not arguing that, Carlos.
But we know you found the skull. The only problem, it
isn’t there any longer.”

I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head.
“What?”

“She’s right. You found it down at Bernie’s Pawnshop”

His swarthy face grew red. He tried to stammer out a
response, but he couldn’t get past the first word.

I continued. “The skull isn’t there. It’s gone”

He just stared at us in stunned disbelief.

Doreen eyed him narrowly. “Where were you last
night?”

Recovering from his surprise, he shook his head.
“Huh? Last night? I was at my place, waiting for Buck
to call and tell me what to do next”

“So,” Doreen asked, “Buck also knew the skull was
at the pawnshop”

What little touch of bravado Abdo possessed quickly
fled. “Yeah. He said for me to hang around until he figured out how to get the thing.”

She glanced at me and winked.

We watched as Bull Abdo climbed into his Miata,
backed it out, and his bandaged forefinger sticking
straight up, headed down the street without looking at
us as he passed.

“What do you think?” Doreen muttered as we continued to look after him.

“I’m not sure. One thing is certain though, Abdo
wasn’t at the pawnshop last night.”

“Why, because of the dog bites?”

Her perceptiveness impressed me. “Yeah. Last night,
Max was all over the guy running from the pawnshop.
From the blood in the pawnshop, the dog got some
flesh. There were no marks on Abdo’s arm.”

“Maybe Max got a leg instead of an arm”

I arched an eyebrow. “Could be”

“Or maybe Buck sent someone else besides Abdo”

I looked around at her, impressed. “Maybe. Why
don’t we talk to him?’

During the drive to the Red Rabbit, Doreen pursed
her lips. “How far do we go with Abdo?”

“Hard to say. All we have is an ex-con’s word. Let’s
play it by ear.”

“Do you think he torched the place?”

I considered the question. “I don’t think so. I don’t
see what he has to gain. He might not be the brightest
light on the tree, but I don’t think he’s dumb enough to
get mixed up with arson and murder. I can see him
rousting an old bum, but not murder.” I hesitated, then
added, “Unless it was by pure accident.”

A lecherous grin played over Buck Topper’s angular
face when he spotted Doreen at my side. “Come on in,
you two.” He gestured to the almost empty club. “How
about a beer?”

“No, thanks,” I said, sliding on a stool at the bar.
“Have you seen S.S. passing by? I’ve been looking for
him the last couple days. He’s dropped out of sight.”

Buck’s eyes narrowed, then he shrugged. “Naw. S.S.
and me don’t get along much. You know that. Sure
about that beer?”

I closed my eyes and rolled my shoulders. I was almost asleep on my feet. “Just some coffee, and then we
need to talk”

He leered at Doreen while he filled my cup and slid it
down the bar to me. “What about you, Doreen?”

“Why not? Just a Coke with ice.”

Buck arched an eyebrow. “Whatever.” He sat a canned
Coca-Cola and glass of ice on the counter before her
and glanced at me. “Okay, what are we going to talk
about?”

I sipped the coffee. “Tell us about Bull Abdo,” Doreen
said, sliding onto the stool at my side.

The grin faded from his face. “Abdo?” He shrugged.
“What about him?”

I was tired and exhausted. With only about thirty
minutes sleep, my tail was dragging, and I was in no
mood to play games. “Look, Buck. Abdo said you hired
him to find a pawn ticket for a glass skull, which meant
you knew about the skull two or three days before the
fire” I paused, waiting for Buck’s response. When he
didn’t reply, I continued. “He didn’t find the ticket, but
he did find the skull, and he says he told you about it.
Now, is he telling the truth or not? If he is, that means
you lied to us”

His smile faded. His gaze darted between us several
times. He played for time, time to think. “Lied to you?
About what?”

“Monday you said nobody had come into the rear of
your club. Abdo says you gave him keys to the back
door. It was Abdo who ran over us out in the storeroom. He admitted it. Now, one of you is lying, and
when someone lies, they’re trying to cover their tails.
So who is?”

In a soft, but firm voice, Doreen added in a chilly tone, “We know much more than you think, Buck. If
we’re not happy with what we hear, then we’ll just turn
it all over to the cops and be done with it.” She pulled
out her little notebook and waved it under his nose.
“And what we have here, you don’t want the cops to
see.”

It took all my will power not to laugh at her brass.

His eyes narrowed. He dragged the tip of his tongue
over his lips. “All right. Yeah, I lied. I hired Abdo, and
he told me where the skull was” He hesitated then continued. “I knew I couldn’t get it until the ticket expired,
so I had to wait.” He paused and drew a deep breath.
“Then I heard that Abdo set the fire. Well, I panicked. I
didn’t want to get mixed up in anything like that.”

“Who told you he torched it?”

He grimaced, and in an unconvincing tone replied,
“One of my customers. I don’t remember who.”

“Abdo says he didn’t start it.”

Buck sneered. “If he didn’t, then who did? I just
didn’t want to get involved with that.”

I didn’t believe him. Buck had always been able to
mix fact and fiction to suit his needs. “That’s what I intend to find out. Tell me, Buck. How did you find out
about the glass skull?”