Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 01 - Galveston Read Free

came on awful strong. I can’t leave town, but I can’t just sit around and do nothing.”
    “No problem. I know a good lawyer down there. My cousin, Ernie—Ernest Blevins.  Get in touch with him. He’ll do what he can.”
     
    I replaced the receiver and plopped down on the bed. With a grimace, I realized I’d forgotten to call Janice Coffman-Morrison, my Significant Other and heiress to one of the largest fortunes in Texas, the Chalk Hills Distillery. We had made plans for tonight, but since I had no Starship Enterprise transporter chamber to beam me up, there was no way I was going to be in Austin at 9:00 p.m.
     

Chapter Three
    Needless to say, Janice was disappointed, but she understood. We really had a perfect relationship. She understood when she wanted to understand, and I understood when she wanted me to understand. Simple and uncomplicated, like us. And neither of us wanted to complicate things with marriage.
    She and I met a few years back when I helped her out of an insurance jam. Because of her money, she had no interest in a  serious  relationship and believe it or not, despite her money, nor did I. We had fun together even though I quickly realized I was simply a dependable escort, an occasional lover (at her whim), and a frequent confidant.
    Ergo, a tool to satisfy her needs. And she was the same for me. Like the novel, Separate Peace, we had reconciled our positions in our relationship. And both were fairly content.
    Inexplicably, despite the skewed relationship, we were very good friends who enjoyed each other’s company. Personally, I’d never been able to figure out ‘our relationship’, as Janice referred to it, but then, I really never worried about it. I seldom paid serious attention to those psychological or personal relationship things. I let the women worry about that sort of thing. I just said ‘yes’ or ‘no’ at what I considered the appropriate occasions. That usually kept me out of trouble and warded off any worries.
     
    Now I was more worried about the D.A. His threats had me jumpy as a three-tailed cat at the local daycare center. Meeting Marty’s lawyer cousin, Ernest Blevins, didn’t help. In fact, after talking to good old boy Ernie a few minutes, I began wondering just how many dots you had to connect to pass the Texas’ bar exam. By the time I left his office around mid-morning, next to slashing my wrists, I figured throwing myself on the mercy of the court might be my best option.
    To sort my thoughts, I took a walk when I left his office and ended up at the docks. The sun shone brightly out of a clear winter sky.
    Despite the cutting wind howling out of the north across Galveston Bay, forklifts zipped across the docks; great shore cranes swung massive loads from cargo holds to waiting flatbeds; conveyor belts whined and strained, transporting goods from the darkened caverns of great ships into cave-like warehouses. Stevedores scurried in every direction across the dock, over the ships, into the warehouse, like ants on a wedge of chocolate cake.
    I retraced our steps of the night before across the wharf. Stains, smeared now by footsteps and rubber tires, remained where Ben had fallen. I crossed to where Cheshire had gone down, then backtracked to the giant shore crane from around which he had emerged the night before.
    Beyond the crane, a small section of the wharf had been cordoned off, the portion that had been poured the night before.  I paused at the bright orange ribbon and studied the bustling activity about me.
    Powerful trucks belching black diesel fumes and loaded with bulging bags of rice waited in line to be off-loaded for distant countries in the Far East. Thick streams of wood chips from the timber mills in East Texas spewed from great spouts into the holds of giant ships headed for the Orient.
    The freshly poured cement, a patch about twenty by twenty, appeared to be curing well. I noticed a footprint in the cement and grinned, remembering the times I