Читать книгу Long Fall from Heaven - George Wier - Страница 18

[ 9 ]

Lieutenant Leland Morgan watched Micah Lanscomb as he walked along the beach below the seawall. It was low tide at the moment, and the strip of beach had widened by perhaps a hundred yards. Lanscomb had his boots over his shoulder and seemed to be in no hurry. His patrol uniform was rumpled, his overly-long hair flopped around in the breeze. There was no telling what Boland saw in the guy. How could he trust him so implicitly with his business?

The beach was otherwise deserted at this hour. It was just Lanscomb and the surf. Morgan had to climb back inside his cruiser at one point when Lanscomb disappeared from view past a hotel boardwalk. He drove a quarter of a mile down. He passed the boardwalk and parked opposite the hotel that stood over the water on top of a forest of black pilings. He got out and approached the seawall, walked a few yards on the wide boardwalk, and watched Lanscomb.

Lanscomb had stopped and was looking toward a set of stairs ahead of him that ascended from the beach to the top of the seawall. Morgan waited and fingered his binoculars.

A man came into view from the stairs and sauntered across the sand toward Lanscomb. It was the beachcomber—Underwood.

Underwood approached Lanscomb and the two began talking. Morgan raised his binoculars.

“What are you two dipshits saying?” Morgan whispered under his breath. “Goddammit, I better let her know right away.”

Morgan watched as Lanscomb pulled out his wallet and offered money to Underwood, who appeared to refuse it. Lanscomb then gestured back the way he had come—in the direction of Nell’s.

A shiver went up Morgan’s spine. If they turned, they would certainly see him. At this angle, if he moved, the motion might attract their attention.

Leland Morgan stepped back slowly across the boardwalk until his tailbone encountered the opposite railing. He crouched until only the top of his head could be seen from the vantagepoint of the two men.

At that moment the two turned toward him and began walking.

Morgan waited until they were beneath him, thirty feet down, then stood and walked back to his cruiser. He drove to Nell’s, where Lanscomb’s little security truck was parked illegally by the seawall. He stopped next to the truck and a smile slowly spread across his face.

It took no more than a moment to write the parking citation. He had to fish through his glove box for the pad, though. It had been more than a year since he’d written a ticket. It was something a lieutenant didn’t normally do but technically could. He paused only a moment when he had filled out the form down to the officer’s signature line. Normally, his signature was no more than an illegible scrawl. It was the badge number next to it that the municipal court went by in the event the violator pled not guilty and he’d have to appear before the bench or a jury. Instead, Morgan wrote his name in plain block letters. He wanted Lanscomb to know his place in the scheme of things, and who was putting him there.

The breeze from the Gulf drove the odor of salt spray into his sinuses. He fought the urge to sneeze.

Why the hell was he here in Galveston, so far from Lubbock and home?

Leland Morgan shook his head. For some questions there weren’t any answers.

He placed the ticket under the wiper blade of Lanscomb’s pickup, climbed back into his cruiser and drove away, his spirits beginning to lift for a change.