When Old Men Die by Bill Crider Page A

with me, unless some member of his family needed bail money.   "What can I do for you?"
    "I understand that you're looking for Harry Mercer," he said.
    "Harry Mercer?"
    "You might know him better as 'Outside' Harry."
    "Oh," I said, always quick with a comeback.   Until that moment, I hadn't even known that Harry had a last name.   "That's right."
    "I'd like to talk to you about Harry if it's convenient," Lytle said.   "Like you, I'm quite interested in his whereabouts."
    Harry was getting more popular by the minute, which was a little surprising, but I wasn't going to question my good luck.   Maybe Lytle had some information that I could use.   I didn't have anywhere else to look.
    "I'd be glad to talk to you," I said.   "When and where?"
    "I don't get out much these days," Lytle wheezed.   "Would it be convenient for you to come by my home this morning?"
    "Any time," I said.
    "Fine.   Let's make it eleven o'clock.   Do you know where the house is?"
    I told him that I knew.
    "Very well.   I'll see that the gate is open."
    When I hung up, Nancy was looking up at me.   "Was that the Patrick Lytle?" she asked.
    "The one and only."
    "And you're going to his house?"
    "At eleven o'clock," I said.
    "I'd give a lot to see the inside of that place.   You need any company?"
    I wouldn't have minded having Nancy along, but for some reason I didn't think Lytle would approve.
    "You think Zintner would give you the time off?" I asked.
    She sighed and lit a cigarette.   "Probably not.   But I've wondered about that house since I was a kid."
    "So have I," I said.   "I'll tell you all about it."
    She exhaled a stream of smoke that rose to join the rest of the pollutants collecting near the ceiling.
    "You'd better," she said.   "Or I'll make you really sorry."
    "He's pretty damn sorry already," Becker said from the desk where he was sitting.
    "What's the matter with him?" Nancy asked.
    "Jealous of my good looks," I said, and left before he could get out of his chair and ruin them with his baseball bat.
    Â 
    L ytle's house was in one of the older parts of the city, where some of the houses looked as if they would be right at home if they were removed to San Francisco.   They were narrow, several stories tall, and so close together that the neighbors could have reached out their windows and shaken hands.
    Lytle's house, however, wasn't like that at all.   It wasn't even what I'd call a house.   It was a mansion, and along with its grounds it occupied about half of an entire block.
    If you were just driving by, you might think that no one lived there.   The grounds were enclosed by a rusty wrought iron fence about five feet high, and the house was hard to see from the street because it was surrounded by huge palms that grew closely together and by giant magnolias and oaks that hadn't been trimmed in forty years or more.   The oaks were the oldest of the trees, and Spanish moss hung from them like long gray beards.   They must have been older than the house itself, and that dated from somewhere just after the turn of the century.   The magnolias weren't much younger.
    The house hadn't been kept up any better than the trees.   The porch columns were nearly bare of paint, and what few flakes remained on the house were faded almost colorless.   I had been a house painter only recently, but I couldn't even begin to estimate how many gallons of paint would be required to cover the Lytle mansion again, or how many hours it would take to get the job done.   I was just very glad that I wasn't going to have to paint it.
    As Lytle had promised, the gate was open.   I drove through, the branches of an oak brushing my head as I passed under it.   Either Lytle didn't get many visitors, or those he had didn't mind having their cars scraped by oak limbs.
    I got out of the Jeep and walked to the porch.   It was a little like walking through the jungle.   The grass hadn't