Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 12 - Murder Among Friends Read Online Free PDF Page B

the
world of you, but marriage isn’t something I think I should
enter into right now”
    I pulled into the circular drive and stopped the Jag in
front of the main entrance and turned off the ignition. For
several seconds, I sat staring out the front window.
    Her voice was a whisper. “Tony, Tony. Are you all right?”
She laid her slender fingers on my arm. “You’re sweating”
    I should have been elated, but for some inexplicable reason, I was confused. I forced a wide grin. “Sure. I’m fine,
and I understand. Don’t you worry about it”

    She smiled brightly and hopped out of the small roadster. “Fine. And don’t forget about Sunday”
    With a terse nod, I replied, “Charging the battery on the
car now.”
    Her eyes glittered in the porch lights. “Just leave the Jag
here. One of the boys will put it up”
    After escorting her to the huge double doors and giving
her a light goodnight kiss, I stumbled woodenly back to my
pickup. Slowly, the realization dawned on me that Janice
had dumped me. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work.
I was supposed to reject her, not be the dumpee.
    The drive back to my apartment on the north side of
Austin was the longest drive in my life. The left side of my
brain was bouncing around and shouting in glee, while the
right side wallowed in the quicksand of misery.

     

Adark Lincoln Town Car was parked in front of my
apartment when I pulled into the drive. I recognized it as
Danny’s. The door opened, and a behemoth in a Nicky
Hilton suit lumbered out. The big vehicle seemed to spring
up six inches when he exited.
    Huey. Danny’s bodyguard. A body double for Godzilla.
    As always when I met him, I grinned and held up my
hand. “Hey, Huey”
    The first time I had seen Huey was one night on a narrow
road west of Austin. At the time, his square face looked like
a chunk of chipped granite, square, solid, with no distinguishing features other than a couple of fissures for eyes, a
square knob for a nose, and a third crevice that was probably his mouth. His face hadn’t changed over the years, still
full of knobs and fissures.
    A grunt escaped his thin lips, and he held out an envelope. “Danny says I should give you this.”
    “That was fast”
    The compliment didn’t faze him. Without a word, he
turned back to the Lincoln. I could have sworn I felt the
ground shake. “Tell Danny I said thanks”
    His only reply was a faint nod.
    The Lincoln sagged when he slipped behind the wheel.

    Sprawled on the couch, my old man’s ragged snoring
was a nerve-wracking counterpoint to the blaring TV. I
flipped it off, wishing I could do the same with his snoring,
but I reminded myself, if I disturbed him, he might wake
up, and I much preferred him when he slept.
    I wrinkled my nose. He still hadn’t bathed or shaved.
    Shaking my head, I went into the bathroom for a bottle
of after-shave lotion, which I sprinkled liberally about
the living room. From there, I headed for the kitchen where
I retrieved a can of sweet tea from the refrigerator and
plopped down at the snack bar to peruse the information
Danny had provided.
    Of the forty-two names, he had placed a check mark beside five and, in his inimitable scribbling, made a few
notes on the back of each page. He cautioned me that these
five were the only ones with whom he or his boys had
knowledge.
    Now, I’m not naive enough to believe there’s no gambling in Austin or in any other city in the state just because
it’s illegal. The fact it is against the law makes it that much
more exciting. Still, I marveled to myself as I studied the
list, I had no idea illegal gambling was so extensive.
    The first name on the list was Mary Louise Smith, one of
the loan officers and a regular at the local but illegal dog
and pony OTB rooms. Two weeks earlier, she had paid off
a fifteen-thousand-dollar marker.
    Another loan officer, Rita Johnson, was a two- or threetime-a-month visitor to the gambling boats