Accused

THIRTY

"You find the leak?"

"Nope."

The next morning, Scott dropped the baggies containing the tape strips with Billie Jean Puckett's fingerprints and the whiskey bottle with Pete Puckett's fingerprints on the district attorney's desk. The D.A. studied the whiskey bottle.

"Good stuff. I'll get Hank to run 'em." He held out a document. "Trey's phone bills came in, we ran the numbers. One name caught my eye-Gabe Petrocelli."

"Who's he?"

"Local bookie. Straight line to Vegas."

"The mob? In Galveston?"

"Mob's been here since Galveston was Sin City. How do you think the Maceo brothers got Sinatra to play the Balinese Room?"

"Trey was gambling?"

"He had Gabe's cell phone number, and Gabe had his. I don't figure them for double-dating."

"You see Obama's finally gonna pardon Jack Johnson?"

Gabe Petrocelli tapped a thick finger on the sports section of the local newspaper spread across the table.

"Who's Jack Johnson and what did he do?" Scott said.

"Heavyweight champion of the world, nineteen-oh-eight through nineteen-fifteen. Born and raised right here on the Island."

"That's not a crime."

"He married a white woman."

"I was married to a white woman."

"He was black. First black champion, the Ali of his times, the most famous athlete in the world back then. Wore custom suits, drove fast cars, and married three white women, which didn't sit so well with white men back then. They convicted him under the Mann Act for transporting a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. You know that law is still on the books?"

"I do know that."

"Stupid… the law, not you."

"Thanks."

"After he won the title, race riots broke out all across the country. That 'Great White Hope' business started because of Johnson, boxing folks trying to find a white fighter who could beat him. Boy, must've been big betting on those fights." Gabe sighed. "Not much betting on boxing these days, everyone's gone to cage fighting and football. Like Trey."

Gabe Petrocelli had curly black hair, a barrel chest, and the hairiest arms Scott had ever seen on a man. He appeared to be in his late forties. He had grown up in the bookmaking business and had taken over the family franchise. His bar-"Gabe's"-was located in a renovated Victorian-style building on Strand Avenue in the entertainment district near the harbor. The bar was not yet open for business that day, but Scott's business card had gained him an audience with Gabe. His two goons had required Louis to remain outside then had patted Scott down for guns and wires. Scott and Gabe now sat in a booth in the back while his goons watched The Sopranos on the TV over the bar.

"They love that show," Gabe said.

He chuckled and sipped his espresso.

"Lawyer with a bodyguard. I like that. Shows some style."

"I try." Scott gestured around at the bar. "Classy place."

"Used to be a high-class whorehouse. All these old buildings on the Strand, they got history. And that's all Galveston's got now… history. Everyone wishing this piece of sand was still important, like it was before the Great Storm. Those were the glory days."

"So you're a bookie?"

"Italians, we been running the bookmaking business on the Island since Prohibition. It ain't what it was back in the day, but it's a living."

"Gabe, you ever been arrested?"

He nodded. "Charges were dropped."

His prints were in the system, so the prints at the house didn't belong to him.

"How long had you known Trey?"

"Since he was a boy. Not personally back then, I'm twenty years older than him, but everyone on the Island knew of him. Then I'd see him out at the club. Nice boy."

"He liked to gamble?"

"Trey was addicted to the thrill. High stakes. We get a lot of athletes."

"What'd he bet on?"

"Football, mostly. At least with me. But only a few hundred grand. The big debts, he ran those up at the casinos."

"In Vegas?"

"Everywhere. Trey knew the exact driving distance from every tour event to the nearest Indian reservation."

"Indian reservation?"

"Casinos. Congress gave the Indians free rein to operate casinos on their reservations-which are like sovereign nations-but they don't know shit about craps or blackjack, so the big casinos made deals with the tribes to operate them, split the profits. Hundreds of Indian casinos now, they take in twenty-six billion a year. Shit, every Indian in America's a goddamned millionaire now." Gabe smiled. "White man took their land, now they're taking the white man's money."

"How much did Trey owe the casinos?"

"Fifteen million."

" Fifteen million? How?"

"How not? Five-thousand-dollar slots, craps, blackjack-you name it, he lost at it."

"Did the mob kill him?"

Gabe didn't blink. "I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"First, I would've heard about it. His death, that came as a big shock to me. And he was a good customer, he had the ability to repay, so the boys would've given him time to make good on what he owed. Plus interest, of course."

"And the second reason?"

"If the mob had killed him, they wouldn't have stabbed him with a kitchen knife in his own bedroom where they might leave DNA or a print behind. They would've snatched him, taken him out on a shrimp boat, and cut him up for shark bait. That didn't happen. Ergo, I don't figure we did it."

" Ergo? "

Gabe shrugged. "I watch Law and Order on TV."

"Noncustodial mothers are more common now," Boo said.

Karen and the girls were sitting under the umbrella at the table on the back deck. She'd been telling them-because Bobby had been telling her-about the Karankawas, Indians who had lived out on the West End before it was the West End. But they didn't want to talk about the past; they wanted to talk about the future.

"Meredith did a segment this morning about mothers who leave their children," Boo said. "I bet she's a really good mother. Meredith. You could tell she'd never leave her children. But two million mothers have. Mother's not the only one."

"She's the only mother who left you," Karen said, then she caught herself. "I'm sorry, Boo. I shouldn't have said that."

"That's okay. You've been like a mother to us. And you've always been honest with us." Boo glanced at Pajamae, who nodded. "Karen, will you be honest now?"

"Yes."

"Do you think Mother murdered Trey?"

"No."

"Do you think she'd be a good mother to me and Pajamae?"

Karen Douglas had first met Rebecca Fenney seventeen days before, so she could be objective about her as an accused murderer. But Karen was carrying a baby inside her; she could not be objective about Rebecca Fenney as a mother.

"No. She's neither a murderer nor a mother."