Dead on the Island by Bill Crider Page A

but I wasn't
counting on it. "How about my matchbook?"
    Ray tossed it to me, and I grabbed it out of
the air. I slipped it back in my pocket with the package of
cigarettes. Then I stood up. "I guess I'll be going."
    "You going to be doing any dancing at this
club?" Dino said, glancing at my knee.
    "Depends on the band," I said.
    "OK," he said. "Ray'll let you out."
    By the time I was out of the room, I heard
the TV set come to life again.
     

6
     
    I wanted to go by the house to check on
Nameless and have a quick sandwich before my trip into Houston, and
as I drove I thought about Dino. It was hard to believe that his
whole life now was bounded by a television screen, but I supposed
it was possible. He had all the money he would ever need, and he
could keep up his old contacts by telephone. It seemed that he had
no desire to enter the world his uncles had been so fond of and
found so profitable.
    Of course, at the end of things, his uncles
hadn't found their world to be such an ideal one. Hundreds, if not
thousands, of slot machines littered the bottom of Galveston Bay,
the big clubs were closed forever, and the Hollywood stars didn't
come to the Island anymore. Neither, for that matter, did the
Houston highrollers, and many BOIs traced the decline of the
Island's economy to that ill-fated day when a certain Texas
Attorney General thought he might get elected Governor if he could
clean up the most notable den of iniquity. That he was completely
and absolutely wrong, that most people both on the Island and
elsewhere actually resented what he did, came as a huge surprise to
him, though not to anyone else in the state.
    Galveston had tried recently to vote
gambling's legal return to the Island, but the referendum had
failed. The churches, of course, were strongly opposed, and some of
the rich and powerful, such of them as were left, thought that
gambling would be bad for the city's newly-created image of
historical browsing ground. There were, however, two cruise ships
that took happy gamblers out beyond the twelve-mile limit every
weekend to relieve them of some of their money at the blackjack
tables, the poker tables, and the slots.
    I didn't know what Dino thought about all of
this. He'd been a roistering youth, but apparently all that kind of
thing was behind him now.
    And Ray seemed quite content to pass his
time sticking by Dino in a weird sort of Old Family Retainer way.
Maybe it was his way of repaying the uncles, who'd after all pulled
him literally out of the whorehouse. It's possible that for the
merest second a suspicion of the nature of Ray's relationship with
Dino may have crossed my mind, but if it did I dismissed it
instantly. I'd known both of them too well and too long to think
that they were gay; they certainly hadn't been when they were
younger.
    I pulled up in back of the house and just
managed to get out of the car before Nameless zipped up to the
steps in an orange streak. I guess he wanted another package of cat
food, which I promptly doled out to him. He began purring as soon
as he stuck his nose in the bowl. I wasn't sure how it was possible
for a cat to purr and eat at the same time, but it was a trick that
Nameless managed with easy regularity.
    I went on up to the second floor, leaving
the door open in case Nameless wanted to pay me a visit. It was up
to him.
    It was time for me to outfit myself for the
trip to The Sidepocket. I'm not a member of the Heavy Metal crowd,
or any crowd at all for that matter. I have several different
outfits that I once wore to visit various kinds of night spots, but
I didn't think any of them would be appropriate for The
Sidepocket.
    For a C&W club, I could have worn my
kicker outfit, complete with boots, starched blue Levi's, and white
shirt. For a singles bar, I had a very nice natural fiber
double-breasted suit in which, if I'd had a haircut lately, which I
hadn't, I could pass for a rising executive. Not a young executive,
but an executive nevertheless. But for the