Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 09 - The Crystal Skull Murders (7 page)

Besides, who could say? Many of us fail over and
over until finally we find our little niche. Because I
knew the feeling well, I was always a sucker for those
niche-seekers. It wasn’t beyond the realm of reason that
this might be the niche Doreen was seeking.

Still, I wasn’t looking forward to the next two weeks.

Before I left my apartment, I called Danny and told
him I was bringing my partner.

“No problem,” he replied instantly. “The more the
merrier.”

“This one is a woman,” I added.

“That’s even better,” he gushed. “By the way, are you
still seeing that little rich girl? What was her name, Janice?”

I grinned. “Just don’t get any ideas. Besides, she’s
classy, not for the likes of you”

He roared with laughter. “And you think you got class
driving around in broken-down pickup. Why, you’re
just a Louisiana Cajun that slogged out of the swamps
and ended up in the great state of Texas, Tony”

I shook my head as I replaced the receiver. Danny was a good friend, and I had never tried to reconcile the
fact he was on one side of the law, and I was on the
other. That was one little detail we simply ignored.

Doreen was sitting in her Jag in the parking lot when
I pulled in. I stopped beside her and rolled down the
window. “Hop in.”

She shook her head. “I’ll follow you”

I’d made up my mind not to tap dance around the situation. All day, I’d been uncomfortable around her. Of
course, I had to admit it was by my choice, deferring to
her insistence of being formally addressed, following
me in her car, and her obvious repugnance toward
Goofyfoot. Maybe I was wrong, but I sensed she felt
she was superior to those about her. I had no intention
of enduring another two weeks like that.

I decided to run the flag up the pole, express my feelings, and see which way the wind blew the flag. “Nope.
If you go, it’s in my pickup. Besides, we need to talk.”

She frowned. “About what?”

“You’ll see. Are you going?”

She studied me for several seconds, then with a disgusted shake of her head, climbed out of the Jag.

Buckling her seat belt, she demanded, “All right.
What is it you want to talk about?”

I’ve never traveled the world, but I can’t believe any
city in any country has worse traffic at 5:30 in the afternoon than Austin, Texas. Interstate lanes packed with
side-by-side, bumper-to-bumper traffic stretch for miles, and you’ve got to feel sorry for the poor slob
who tries to enter from an on-ramp, which is probably
also backed up for miles.

Streets for a mile on either side of the Interstate catch
the overflow traffic. The gridlock is so complex that one
simple fender-bender could hold up traffic for hours.

So, when we pulled out into the traffic heading for
downtown, I kept my eyes on the road. “I want to talk
about you and me, Doreen”

She jerked around and gave me a blistering look
when I used her given name.

I continued, not planning on saying anything that
would create any more dissension between Marty and
the USS BI-oops, I mean, Marty and his wife. “Marty
told me about your situation, that you’d left Texas Investigation and that you were his sister-in-law. He also
mentioned you were divorced a few years ago. Now, in
this business, we have to work together. From now on,
I’m Tony and you’re Doreen. We don’t have to like each
other, although that would make things much more
comfortable, but we do have to cooperate with each
other-sort of use each other for a sounding board”

I paused, expecting a heated retort. When she remained silent, I continued. “I contacted a friend at Texas
Investigation. You didn’t leave; they fired you. He said
you were hard to work with.” I glanced at her from the
corner of my eye. She was staring straight ahead and her
fists were clenched in her lap. I continued. “Now, I don’t
know about any of that. I don’t care about any of that. All I know is that you could find a home here at
Blevins’. If you want my help, I’ll be more than happy
to do whatever I can. And yeah, sometimes we work
with the dregs of society. That’s just the way it is.” I
chuckled. “But the truth is, Blevins’ isn’t really such a
bad place, and the job isn’t a bad job.”

For several moments, the only sound was the clamor
of traffic. I didn’t know if I’d been too abrupt or too subtle. Finally, she cleared her throat. “My brother-in-law
talks too much”

I laughed. “I won’t argue that”

“Did he tell you Dora, that’s my sister, nagged at him
for a week to hire me?”

Honesty is fine, but there is always a time for a little
discretion. “Nope”

A few moments later, she asked, “Who did you talk
to over at Texas Investigations?”

I arched an eyebrow. “Just a friend.” I glanced at her,
and for the first time saw a faint smile on her lips.

“And you don’t want me to hassle him, huh?”

“Something like that” I had the feeling that perhaps
we had broken the proverbial iceberg that seemed to be
separating us, but I was mistaken. I might have cracked
it, but it wasn’t broken. “So, tell me, what happened
over there?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she replied. Then she
changed the subject. “How did you come to know this
O’Banion thug?”

I glanced at her sharply.

She saw the anger in my eyes and shrugged. “Well,
he is mobster, isn’t he?”

Flexing my fingers on the steering wheel, I replied
brusquely, “Even if he is, not all mobsters are thugs”

She arched a skeptical eyebrow. “So, how did you
two meet? Marty said something about high school”

I drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “Eleventh
grade here in Austin. We got into a few schoolboy
scrapes together. He dropped out during his senior year,
and for a while, we lost touch with each other. Next
time I saw him was at the Texas-Oklahoma game up in
Dallas. He looked prosperous. We slapped each other
on the shoulder, sipped from his flask a little, lied a lot,
and then went our separate ways.

“My first year on this job, I saved his bosses a couple
suitcases of money, which naturally put me in good
with them. Since then, as long as it doesn’t affect him,
he’s given me all the help I’ve asked for.”

“So you think he can help us on this case, huh?”

“I hope so. He knows what’s going on in his world. If
any of those guys, Fusco, Eisen, or Romero are thinking about moving into the area, he’ll know”

“All right. I see what you’re getting at. If they’re not
coming into the area,” she said. “That means they’d
have no interest in burning down the club, which in turn
would eliminate the theory that someone was trying to
teach Getdown Joe a lesson”

I grinned at her. “Good thinking. That would support
the idea that the club was torched to cover the murder.”

She thought for a moment, then remarked, “But still,
why would they have even made a contact if they
weren’t interested?”

I was beginning to like her. “They might have been at
the time. But, that, my dear Sherlock, is what we have
to find out.”

Her eyebrows lifted when we pulled into the Green
Light Parking garage. I explained, “Danny’s office is
on the sixth floor. We’ll park down here and take the elevator.” I stopped at the gate, and a neatly dressed man
in a business suit came out of the small office. “Hello,
Tony” He glanced at Doreen and nodded. “Miss” He
indicated a slot next to Danny’s limo. “You can park
over there. Danny’s on the way down.”

As we pulled into the parking slot, Doreen said, “I’ve
never seen a parking lot boy dressed in a business suit.
He was certainly polite.”

I chuckled and opened my door. “Just one of your
thugs, that’s all”

She looked around at me in disbelief. I nodded.

At that moment, the elevator doors hissed open and
Huey, aka Godzilla in a gray pinstriped suit, stepped
out followed by a grinning Danny O’Banion.

Doreen came to stand by me at the tailgate of the
pickup. She gasped at the out-sized bodyguard. “WhoWhat is that?”

I tilted my head toward her and whispered, “That’s
Huey, Tony’s valet”

She arched a skeptical eyebrow.

Danny waved and called out, “Tony boy. Great to see
you.”

He grabbed me in a bear hug. “You’re looking great.”
He pulled back and eyed the Band-Aid on my forehead.
“Looks like you forgot to duck, huh?”

Before I could respond, he turned to Doreen. “And this
is the young woman you told me about” He offered her
his hand. “You said she was bright, but you didn’t tell me
she was also beautiful. I’m Danny O’Banion, Miss-”

With a knowing smile on her lips, Doreen cut her
eyes at me, then focused on Danny. “Patterson, Doreen
Patterson, Mister O’Banion. And Tony didn’t tell me
you could put out such beautiful malarkey.”

Danny roared. “I love her, Tony. This one is okay”
By now, Huey had opened the limo door, and Danny
took Doreen by the elbow and ushered her into the rear
seat of the limo. “Go around to the other side, Tony,” he
called over his shoulder. “Or we’ll leave you behind.”

“Where are we going?” I asked as I slammed the door.

“Where else?”

“County Line?”

“You bet” He scooted around in the seat to face
Doreen. “You like barbecue?”

I don’t know if Danny noticed it or not, but the look
in her eyes didn’t match the smile on her lips. “Love it.”

“Then you’ll like this place. Best barbecue in the
state. Isn’t that right, Tony? Hand me a beer, Huey. How
about it, Doreen? Want one? Bud Lite?”

She eyed the can distastefully. “Perhaps later.”

Danny shrugged. “Tony?”

“Not right now. I’ll wait for the barbecue.”

He chuckled. “Still doing the AA thing, huh?”

“Yeah. Doing okay for the most part.” I grinned
sheepishly. “Sometimes I fall off the wagon, but I’ve always figured it was a sin to drink anything but cold beer
with good barbecue”

Danny kept up a steady stream of chatter all the way
to the County Line Barbecue, innocuous chit-chat
about her work, his travels, and half-a-dozen inane subjects. Doreen held up her end of the conversation although it seemed to me that most of her responses were
a little too succinct, a little too brief. I glanced at Danny
from time to time, but he didn’t seem to notice, so I just
leaned back and relaxed.

I remembered Jerry Blue’s comment, “she don’t like
men” I grinned wryly to myself. This was one heck of
a business for a woman who didn’t like men.

I made a mental note to query Marty about that remark the next morning.

As usual, County Line was superb. In addition to an icy pitcher of draft beer, Danny and I ordered the AllYou-Can-Eat platter of meaty ribs. With it came a loaf
of freshly baked bread and bricks of butter. “What are
you going to have?” I asked Doreen.

She shrugged. “I’m not very hungry.”

Danny frowned and glanced at me. “I thought you
said you loved barbecue, Doreen?”

“I do, but I couldn’t handle a full order.”

Danny laughed. “Then make it a half order. You’ll
never forgive yourself if you leave here without their
barbecue”

She agreed.

We filled our icy mugs from the pitcher of beer.
Doreen sipped hers daintily, then licked the foam from
her lips with an experienced touch.

When the ribs arrived, we dug in. I glanced sidelong
at Doreen who held the ribs as daintily as she had held
the mattresses, but she did a good job cleaning the meat
off the bones.

I figured the beer would loosen her up a little, but instead, she became more reserved. She nodded at Huey
standing by the door, his massive arms crossed over his
barrel chest. “Isn’t he going to eat?”

Danny winked at me. “Huey’s a vegan. Hates meat”

Doreen frowned at me. I just nodded. She shrugged
and poured another mug of beer and attacked another
rib.

While we gnawed through rib after rib and downed beer after beer, we discussed the circumstances surrounding the Hip-Hop.