Cut and Run

32

‘You lied to me,’ Kiko said.

‘I told you exactly what I was told,’ Bucks said. ‘That there was a delay in getting the money.’ He rock-steadied his voice. ‘Paul lied to us both because Eve robbed him blind. She’s gutted him. He has very little left he can quickly convert to cash with that money gone.’

‘Why should I believe you now?’ Kiko said.

‘Eve stole the loot, I swear. Kiko, you know I wouldn’t screw you over, I’ve got too much to lose. I’m about five minutes from capturing her ass. I got a team working to grab her for Paul.’

‘There’s been a change in plan,’ Kiko said.

Bucks listened to what Kiko said, closed his eyes. ‘I understand.’ He clicked off the phone, waited for the horrible thumping in his chest to subside.

Adapt. Adapt. He could still come out on top. The phone rang in his hand and he answered it, heard Paul telling him where they thought Eve was now, and truly thanked God and Chad Channing together for the strength they were giving him.

Bucks waited in his Jag with MacKay. They were parked a half block from the Greystoke Hotel in the shadow of a new real estate development, in a parking lot where a restaurant was closed and shuttered. They could see most of the porte cochere for the Greystoke. Cars arrived in a steady stream; the hotel had an upscale martini bar that attracted locals. Valets scrambled around the vehicles. But what pissed Bucks off was a car pulling in next to them, a Cadillac with Jerry Smacks driving and the Wart in the passenger seat.

Bucks sipped from a water bottle. The next hour would determine how he played his next card. He felt warm and calm, confident for the first time in a day.

‘They gonna wonder why you’re here with me,’ MacKay said. Now both men were looking over into Bucks’ Jag. Jerry Smacks gave a friendly little wave with his hand. The Wart didn’t smile.

‘Why are they together?’ Bucks asked.

‘More likely to make the hit, working together,’ MacKay said. ‘Better to split the fee rather than none at all. Cut me out, too.’

‘So why are we here together? In case they ask.’

‘My car broke down, you giving me a ride,’ MacKay said. ‘Quit worrying, you’re the boss.’ He eased down the window; Jerry did the same.

‘Gentlemen,’ MacKay said. He didn’t volunteer why he was in Bucks’ car and Jerry Smacks didn’t ask.

‘So you boys sitting here jerking or what?’ the Wart said. ‘We gonna go in?’

‘Need to know,’ MacKay said, ‘which of the fifteen-odd floors they’re on, for starters. The registration desk isn’t gonna give that up.’

‘I’m not inclined to walk through a front door,’ Jerry Smacks said.

‘Yeah, you struck me as a back door kind of guy,’ MacKay said.

Jerry folded a rectangle of gum into his mouth, muttered to the Wart. Then he looked past MacKay to Bucks. ‘How you want us to handle it, Mr Buckman?’

‘I pay the bounty, gum boy,’ Bucks said. ‘I don’t do the job for you.’

‘Fine,’ the Wart said. He started to get out of the car. ‘Then I’m gonna-’

‘Whoa,’ MacKay said. Target number two.’

A tall blondish man stood at the valet spot. He gave the attendant a dollar and hurried to a slightly decrepit Volkswagen van that had been brought up to the curb.

‘That’s our boy,’ Bucks said. His bruised eye throbbed at the sight of Whit. ‘Eve’s alone in the hotel. MacKay, you and Jerry go in. You know what I need. I’ll follow our boy. Wart, you come with me.’

‘Why me?’ the Wart yelled.

‘He’s part of the contract,’ Bucks said. ‘Kill him, you still get paid.’

MacKay was out of the car already, buttoning a leather jacket, lifting his dreadlocks free from the collar, hurrying across the pell-mell rush of Westheimer. Jerry Smacks followed. The Wart huffed into the Jag and before his door was shut Bucks wheeled into traffic, earning a blare of horns. He cussed. Honking might attract Mosley’s attention. But the van, four cars ahead, stayed in the left lane, didn’t slow, didn’t turn.

A charge of electricity played along Bucks’ skin. Man, this was a rush like cutting a deal with California power buyers, seeing how far he could shove the rates down their desperate little throats, calculating his enormous commissions in his head. He jammed in a Chad Channing tape, upped the volume. Chad’s reassuring baritone filled the car. ‘It’s important to remember,’ Chad Channing said, ‘that goals are as real as the air we breathe. They surround us. They permeate us, like oxygen. They sustain us. The life lived without goals is life without breath.’

‘I heard this about you,’ the Wart said. ‘But I didn’t want to believe it.’

‘Listen and learn.’ Bucks drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, as though the tape had a pelvis-grinding backbeat.

‘Yeah, a tape’s gonna tell me how to live.’

‘Do you have goals, Wart?’ Bucks asked.

‘Yeah. Pop this guy, collect my money, and spend the evening with good Thai pad noodles, a bottle of Glenfiddich, and a couple of hours with a nice little whore I know.’ The Wart checked his gun again, keeping it low, below the line of the windows. ‘Loser’s got to get off Westheimer first. Too many people around.’

‘Those are powerful goals you got, Wart. You’ve got a rich life.’

‘I’m content,’ the Wart said. ‘You didn’t say if you prefer head shots.’

‘Let’s get him alone first,’ Bucks said. ‘Make him hurt. Make him talk. And if he doesn’t tell me what I want to hear, you can take as few or as many shots as you want, buddy.’

‘Nice-looking guy,’ the Wart said, ‘Reminds me of the jocks who treated me like a nothing in high school. Guy like him, I usually take special care of the face. Dead or not. You ever see what’s left of a face after you hook a gun along the gumline and fire through the lip?’

‘See? You’ve got a goal.’

‘So embrace your goals. Say them, each morning, like a prayer,’ Chad Channing intoned from the tape. ‘Make meeting your goals not simply your challenge, but your bliss.’

‘Turn that crap off,’ the Wart said. ‘It’s working my last nerve.’

Bucks could smell the five million, feel it in his hands. Not just money. Sudden power. Now. So close. Eve and this bastard had hidden it and if his luck was sweet the guy was driving to get it right now. That thought, that thought was golden. This was his reprieve.

‘Oh, please, yes,’ he said as Whit turned onto Richmond. ‘Yes, buddy, take me right to bliss.’

*

MacKay and Jerry Smacks walked into the handsome lobby of the Greystoke, Jerry muttering about taking the front door. The valets nodded but gave them no special notice as a crowd of departing guests came out at the same moment. MacKay made a beeline for the lobby phones. He didn’t even glance at Jerry as he picked up a phone.

‘You want to tell me the plan, friend?’ Jerry said.

‘Just play along.’

‘You aren’t cutting me out of the action, bud.’

‘Emily Smith’s room, please,’ MacKay said into the phone.

‘Very direct approach,’ Jerry said.

‘Ms Smith,’ MacKay said after a moment. ‘Hello. Paul sent me. The tall young man who just left? He’s here with us now. We have him. You understand me?’

There was a pause.

‘You have two minutes to come down to the lobby. We’ve taken him away in a car.’ MacKay kept his voice low and friendly. ‘You are not to make a scene. You are not to scream or do anything other than what I tell you to do. Or your young man pays the price. Do you understand me? You have a minute and fifty seconds now. I’ll see you momentarily.’ He hung up.

‘Cool,’ said Jerry Smacks. ‘I like your efficiency.’

‘Follow my lead and don’t get in the way,’ MacKay said.

Jerry pasted a smile on like MacKay’s, quiet and friendly, and the two men went to the elevator bank. There were five elevators. MacKay studied the numbers. Two young Asian women pushed the up button, an elevator arrived empty, they boarded and held the door for MacKay and Jerry.

‘Thanks. Waiting for a friend,’ Jerry said.

The elevator shut.

‘A minute left,’ MacKay said. ‘We’ll see how much this guy matters to her.’

Eve replaced the phone in the cradle. How? How could they have found her, how could they have grabbed Whit? They called her Ms Smith. They knew about the credit card. They had her son.

She dialed Whit’s cell phone, her fingers shaking, expecting there to be no answer or worse, the cool steel of Bucks’ voice.

‘Yeah?’ Whit answered after two rings. Calm.

She nearly collapsed in relief. ‘A man just called, said they snatched you.’

‘No one has me. I’m driving.’

‘I have two minutes to get to the lobby or they say they’ll kill you.’

‘Get out. Get out now.’

‘How? They’re in the lobby.’ Eve tried to keep her voice calm but the urge to run surged in her bones.

‘Find another way, I’m heading back to the hotel,’ Whit said.

‘No. It’s a trap. Don’t risk it.’

‘Get the hell out, Mom. Come to the back of the hotel. I’ll pick you up there.’

‘Don’t risk it. I’ll call you where to come get me. Don’t come back here.’

‘Stay calm. I’m coming, head for the back,’ he said.

She hung up the phone. She left the small bag she’d packed, grabbed her purse, checked her gun inside. Closed her hand around it. The CD with Paul’s files on it was in there, too. Whit had left nothing valuable in the room. She put on the wig, hat, and glasses she’d used checking in. She opened the door, peered down the hall. Nothing but empty hallway, with an abandoned room-service tray a couple of doors down. The soft buzz of a basketball game played on a television a room away. She ran for the elevators, pressed a down button.

MacKay said. ‘Her two minutes are up.’

‘Give her one more,’ Jerry Smacks said.

‘Hardly, man,’ MacKay said. ‘Go get the car, bring it around fast. We’re leaving in a hurry.’

Jerry left, and MacKay watched the lights above the elevator, watching for each elevator to make its inevitable drop to the lobby, letting out couples, an elderly woman, a teenage girl. Then one car stopped at two.

MacKay headed for the middle of the lobby, watching the stairs exit. Waiting to see if she’d come out, gambling to herself he wouldn’t grab her with other witnesses in the lobby.

Another minute passed. MacKay bolted for the front door.

On the second floor, Eve ran past the hotel’s conference center, past a spa and an exercise room, past a set of meeting rooms named after famous Texas artists, dead and living. The Ney. The Umlauf. The Kohler. Laughter bubbled behind doors, people who didn’t have a life-or-death care in the world. A stairway led to the pool and she hurried down it.

She called Whit on her cell. ‘I’m heading to the back of the hotel.’

‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

‘Stay on the phone,’ she said.

The pool was empty, but in the Saturday afternoon sun a couple of women in their forties sat at a table, sipping coffee and chatting quietly. A waiter set a two-tiered tray of cakes between the women. Eve walked past them. There was no gate opening to the back of the hotel but she spotted a service entrance, leading to the kitchen. Dinner prep work was under way, a couple of men in chef’s clothes glancing up at her as she rushed past their chopping and dicing.

‘Excuse me, ma’am…’ one started and she ignored him, heading for the red glow of an exit sign.

‘Hey!’ the chef yelled again, petulant as a toddler. ‘You can’t barge in here…’

She turned back to the chef, put the phone down for a second. ‘My ex is in the lobby. I have a restraining order against him. Excuse me.’

The chef started to apologize, conciliation in his voice, but she didn’t wait. She hit the door. A hallway, another exit sign at the end. She ran through that door into the cloud-broken light of Houston winter, the narrow lot behind the hotel empty except for valet slots lining the back lot, the hum of traffic from 610 like a ghost whispering in her ear. Next to the lot sat an office building, a squat crystal of green glass, ten stories high, and beyond it a concrete parking garage. Deserted on a Saturday. Then an Italian restaurant with a gargantuan neon sign, then a steakhouse, both lots a third full.

And then the Cadillac wheeled around the back of the lot, thundering for her.

Eve turned and ran, skimming the back of the hotel, aiming for a loading bay at the far corner of the hotel. She jammed her hand deep in her purse, closed her fingers around her Beretta. She turned to fire but the car was now seven feet behind her, slamming brakes, and she went across the hood, the windshield, the air in her lungs whooshing out. With a gasp she fell off the Caddy, the asphalt biting into her face and palms.

A car door creaked open by her head.

‘Nice braking, man,’ a voice above her said. Jamaican accent. She scrabbled to her feet; her ribs, her legs thrummed as if on fire. Her gun and phone were gone. Dropped.

‘Eve Michaels,’ the Jamaican said. He smashed a pistol across her head. She hit the pavement again, blood trickling along her cheek. The Jamaican picked her up, handcuffed her, shoved her in the car.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ A gravelly male voice, not Jamaican, yelled. ‘Waste her and let’s-’

Then the distinctive double pop of a silencer. Eve waited to draw breath, wondering if the passing from life to death was truly so instant and painless that you didn’t realize it had happened. But she still needed to breathe. She did. A car door popped open, and she heard the dull thud of dead weight hitting the pavement. Then the car started.

She risked a glance upward. The Jamaican, in the driver’s seat, leveled her own gun at her.

‘Eve,’ he said. ‘You see how it is? That guy wanted to hurt you. I killed him. Makes me your friend.’

She put her head down on the backseat.

If she raised her head, Whit might see her. He would be heading back to the hotel. He’d chase them, get himself killed. Stupid kid.

Just let him go. Stay down and keep him out of it. Do the right thing for once in your life, Ellie. She thought of him as a baby, her easiest because he was the last and she was too tired to worry about every little cough or scrape. She sure hadn’t wanted another but here he came, her best. The only person ever in her life to truly come looking for her. Like she mattered.

‘Here are the rules,’ the Jamaican said as he made two sharp turns to the right, ignoring car horns pealing behind him, heading onto Westheimer, then onto the frontage road of Loop 610. ‘You stay down. You get up, I shoot off a finger. Get up again, I shoot off a tit. Clear?’

‘Clear,’ she said thickly. Her head hurt like it’d been cut open and the brains rearranged. ‘I won’t make trouble.’

‘Good call. Hey, you want a stick of gum? Lots of spare spearmint up here.’ The Jamaican gave a little laugh.

Eve closed her eyes. Let me go, Whit. Let me go, baby.