Cut and Run

7

Eve sat at Frank’s desk, peering at the computer screen. Frank still hadn’t returned from lunch, which he considered a marathon event, and he’d forgotten his cell phone on his desk. She was reviewing the files on the CD Paul had given her and gritting her teeth. The discrepancies between large credit charges and the books had started small but widened in the past two weeks. In one case, a private party of ten in a suite had incurred charges of nearly ten thousand dollars. Only five appeared on the spreadsheet for the same charge, the other money diverted and never making it into the Bellini pockets. A little, yes. A perk. This much was unforgivable.

The slow crooked twist of a headache sprouted in her temples and she craved a hot bath, a cold glass of wine, and silence.

Her cell phone beeped and she clicked it on, hoping it was Frank.

‘Eve? It’s Bucks. I’ll meet you at the exchange,’ Bucks said. ‘I’m running a little late on other business for Paul. Sorry.’ The barest hint of conciliation in his tone.

‘He wanted us to go there together,’ she said.

‘Sorry, can’t. I’ll meet you there.’ He took a breath. ‘Hey, Eve. About last night. I apologize. I was out of line. Too much wine. I was kidding around with you, okay?’

‘It’s forgotten, honey,’ she said, trying to sound relaxed.

‘Eve, I do respect you. The great work you’ve done for Tommy all these years.’

She didn’t believe him, not for a moment. But she needed him on her side now, with Paul furious, and said, ‘It’s okay. We need to work together well, for Paul’s sake. Let’s have a drink after the errand today.’

‘Drown the hatchet,’ he said with a little laugh. ‘But not at the club. I’ll take you to a classy place with a really stellar wine list. I’m sure you’re tired of looking at tits in strobe lights.’

‘That sounds good.’

‘I’ll see you shortly,’ Bucks said, and hung up.

Odd. She would have thought that Bucks would have ridden with her, been her shadow in getting the money. Especially if he knew about Paul’s accusation against Frank. But fine, whatever. She closed the accounting files and headed down into the nearly deserted club. A few men still sat at tables, watching a dancer. An air of failure hovered about them, guys alone in the afternoon who didn’t have desks to return to, and she wondered if most of them were salesmen having off days, blowing commissions they hadn’t earned.

She walked out into the bright, hard Houston winter light, headed for her Mercedes.

Frank. That idiot. She wondered why he’d skimmed. He didn’t do drugs beyond a rare and purely social toot of coke. He had no gambling problem. Their finances were fine, not grand, but then they didn’t need much. Tommy provided fairly. Paul seemed far less inclined to share the wealth. Ninety thousand. It was a long slow bleed that she couldn’t afford. She was in her late fifties now; she couldn’t launder and courier money forever.

She had already taken a few precautions over the years, in case she needed to run. Credit cards under an assumed name, cash hidden in secret deposit boxes. She could drive right now to Houston Intercontinental, get on a plane. To Detroit. Or where no one knew her, find the Montana of the next stage of her life, begin again.

And what then? She could not conceive of landing a normal job. What on earth would she put on a resume? Her history of the past thirty years might as well be a blank tablet, a life run on empty. And she couldn’t leave Frank behind.

If Paul wanted you dead, she told herself, you’d be dead already. He’s mad but he’s not killing mad.

So who told him about the skim? Not Bucks, because Bucks would have grilled her about it himself. So someone else.

She drove onto the 610 Loop that encircled Houston, gliding the Mercedes around slower cars. Midafternoon traffic moved like a European Grand Prix, cars weaving, brakes used often and not wisely. She headed past acres of industrial buildings, the newly refurbished Gulfgate shopping center, the dazzle of Reliant Stadium and the forlorn quiet of the Astrodome.

She headed north, over the Sidney Sherman bridge that arched over the vast Port, watching the road but taking in the view of Houston and the Ship Channel below. The Port of Houston was huge, the major artery for shipping from the Deep South down to Mexico, Central America and South America. Massive storage facilities lay to her left, acres full of just-unloaded Volkswagens and Audis to her right, freighters and tankers idling at the docks. The Port made her nervous; it seemed a door where a person could be seized, taken anywhere in the world, and never found again, all in a matter of days.

The next exit past the Port was Clinton Drive, and she took it. The rest of the traffic on the road were eighteen-wheelers. She headed away from the highway and on her right was an array of rail lines and gates where heavy trucks rumbled out with cargo. On her left were weedy lots, a prosperous-looking lumberyard, a tire reseller, brick bars with signs offering ICE COLD BEER and BEBIDAS COMPUESTAS, a Chinese restaurant, a tiny walk-up taco stand.

She turned her Mercedes right onto McCarty, and a block down turned again into a little parking lot. A bar stood at the end, Rosita’s, with a hand-painted sign above the door, a woman with a snake entwining both her arms, unlit neon signs for cervezas in the window, and next to it a small office built of cinder block, painted white. The world headquarters, as she always called it, of Alvarez Insurance. Interested parties who called the number on the door got a heavily accented voice on the answering machine, basically apologizing that Mr Alvarez could not accept any additional clients. The glass door announced BY APPOINTMENT ONLY in both English and Spanish, and what could be seen of the office looked empty, drab, uninviting to thieves since it was rarely occupied. Tommy had used it for meetings and exchanges, and cleaned money through it as a business. Mr Alvarez was nominally retired but sold a lot of life insurance policies overseas that were cashed in within a year of purchase, moving money back into the country. Last year he had moved nearly four million of Bellini money, all propelled by Eve’s finding a new loophole in insurance law.

No cars were parked nearby. Richard Doyle drove a Cadillac and he wasn’t here yet. She hoped he hadn’t succumbed to his ongoing, deep addiction and swung by the horse track on the way over. Five million in cash could be a temptation. She’d have to count it, brick by brick, twice, before she’d sign off.

Eve got out of the car, wrinkling her nose at the distant smell of the Port. She was fumbling for the office keys in her purse when the man turned the brick corner of Rosita’s, not twenty feet away, and hurried toward her. ‘Excuse me, ma’am?’

Eve glanced up at him, her hand still deep in her purse. She didn’t know the man: attractive, balding, fortyish, khaki slacks and a navy blazer.

‘Yes?’ Eve said.

And the man brought up a small camera, one small enough to hide in his hand, and snapped three pictures. He lowered the camera as Eve ducked her head and he said, ‘I didn’t have a high-quality close-up to use. You’re Ellen Mosley, aren’t you?’

Eve froze. Then her feet moved and she hurried back to her car.

‘If you’re not Ellen Mosley, why are you running from me?’ the man asked.

Eve didn’t look at him again, fumbling for keys. Her skin felt like ice. She forgot entirely about the car’s remote entry. ‘Taking my picture like that, what kind of freak are you?’

‘One of your sons wanted me to find you.’ The man didn’t come closer. ‘Let me help you.’

‘Help me?’ Doyle and Bucks would be here any minute. Jesus, who the hell are you? she wanted to scream at the man.

‘Do you ever think about your sons, Ellen?’

‘That’s not my name and I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She jammed the car key into the lock, turned it, yanked the door open.

‘Would you like to see one of your sons?’

‘I don’t have children,’ Eve said. She felt like a fist had smashed through her skin, her muscle and chest bones to seize her heart and squeeze it into gel. She sat in the car, slammed the door, thumbed the lock switch. The man hurried to her car window, calling to her through the glass. Calling her Ellen, unbelievable.

‘If you want to see your son, I can arrange it. No one has to know. Please. Forgiveness isn’t impossible…’

Eve powered up the car, threw it into reverse, peeled out from the lot. She watched the man standing in her rearview mirror, not giving chase. Of course not. He probably already knew Eve’s license plate, knew where she lived. But she knew nothing about him.

She gunned the car down McCarty, back onto Clinton, toward the highway.

Harry Chyme watched the gray Mercedes tear away from the parking lot. The woman had glanced at Harry when he’d yelled through the window that he could help her, that no one had to know if she saw her son, the unexpected words about forgiveness. He’d nearly had her. Harry tucked the camera back into his pocket. This wasn’t going to be easy for Whit to hear. Certain dogs should be left sleeping, even better left to die in their sleep. He had wrestled with taking this direct approach, but he had waited until she was alone, far from Bellini colleagues, and it had gotten him the answer he needed before Whit decided to charge up here: not interested.

Whit could stay home and Harry could go back to doing divorces.

Harry walked around to the back of the bar, where he’d parked after following her to the Port from the club. Go back to his hotel, call Whit, tell him the woman wasn’t Ellen Mosley. Perhaps that would be best. See if…

A voice sounded behind him. ‘Hey, buddy. You bothering Eve?’

He called you Ellen Mosley.

Eve got four blocks down Clinton before she pulled over in front of an abandoned warehouse and vomited into a ditch. She hadn’t eaten much today and she spat a long ropy strand that tasted of orange juice into the chopped tops of the roughly mown grass. She wiped a tissue across her lips, looked back down the road as if the man in the navy blazer would be leading an avenging charge of Mosleys, Babe in the lead, six angry sons marching behind.

But the road was empty.

She got back into her car. She drove along Clinton, past the highway, into blue-collar Galena Park, past a little motel that catered to truckers, fast food spots, an old-style barber shop. She pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot several blocks down. She put her lipstick back on, keeping her hand steady. What if the man was still there in a few minutes when Bucks or Doyle showed? Would he watch them, follow them? She should have said, Sorry, you have the wrong person, I don’t know who you’re talking about. Bluffed her way out and gotten into the office. But she was already rattled by Paul telling her about Frank; she wasn’t using her brain, her best weapon.

She went inside, bought herself a Coke. Drank it, further washing the hot-yuck taste from her mouth, ate a mint. Tried to call Bucks on her cell phone. No answer. Tried to call Richard Doyle at his office. No answer. She didn’t leave a message with either.

She called Paul and he answered. ‘I can’t get in touch with Bucks. Tell him the meeting with Doyle’s off.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s a heating problem in the building.’ Their code for police are watching. The man wasn’t police, but Eve couldn’t give the real reason to call off the exchange.

‘I’ll let him know.’

‘Tell him to call me. I’m down Clinton at the McDonald’s.’

Paul hung up without another word.

Eve sat down at a booth with her Coke and three booths over a mother fussed over her trio of small children, all with ketchup-smeared lips, vrooming the little plastic roadsters that came with their lunches and letting their hamburgers cool on the trays. The mother was cajoling them in Spanish to eat their burgers, not fill up on their fries. The boys ate the drooping fries like birds devouring worms. Three little boys. She watched the children.

Your boys probably ate a lot of meals at McDonald’s. God knows Babe never knew how to cook.

She waited, now that the shock was subsiding, for regret to fill her heart. Sadness. Her children had not been mentioned to her since that long-ago day in that small wreck of a motel room in Bozeman. James Powell, threatening her kids, her broken ties to them raw and fresh, her nestling the little gun in his snoring mouth.

But instead she felt scared and confused. Her kids couldn’t be looking for her, they couldn’t. She watched the clock tick its minutes. Fifteen passed. She drank a second Coke, tried again to call Doyle and Bucks.

Eve got back in her car, studied the wheel. She didn’t want to leave the plastic womb of the McDonald’s, didn’t want to go back to the Alvarez office. But Doyle would be there by now, and Bucks would still show if Paul hadn’t reached him. She couldn’t screw up this job, no, not after Frank had put them on the firing line. She started up the car, turned out into the lot, headed back to the office.

A car she recognized as Richard Doyle’s Cadillac sat parked near the Alvarez front door. No sign of the man in the navy blazer. She pulled up next to Doyle’s car; he wasn’t sitting behind the wheel. She got out, went up to the door, her key ready this time. But the door was unlocked and she pushed it open.

She smelled the crisp stink of gunfire as soon as she stepped through the doorway.

Eve froze. There was no sound but the quiet hum of the air-conditioning. The office had a small reception area, with two offices and a tiny kitchen in the back. Silk flowers that needed dusting stood on the bare receptionist’s desk. She took her gun from her purse, held it in a firing stance. She moved forward, into the main office she used for her exchanges.

Richard Doyle lay on his back. He was a florid-faced good old boy, but the rosy, full cheeks paled in death. Two bullet holes marred his forehead, dark and wet. Blood splattered his shirt and tie; another bullet had found his chest. The man in the navy blazer lay next to him, two bullets in his forehead, blood on his eyeglasses, eyes wide, mouth slack. His hand was on his chest, three of his fingers ripped by a bullet.

Eve knelt by the man supposedly sent by her son. Felt his pockets. Empty. No camera with her pictures inside, no wallet, no ID. She stood, her legs wobbly. Her foot stepped on Richard Doyle’s hand and she jumped back quickly.

There was no sign of the five million in cash Doyle was bringing to her. No duffel bag, no suitcase, nothing.

She moved through the rest of the office. There were few hiding places. Empty. The back door to the office was unlocked as well. She pushed it open, looked back into an alleyway. Empty except for a pickup truck she knew belonged to the bar owner in the neighboring building. And a car that looked like a rental, a nondescript Taurus. She took two steps toward it.

And heard sirens begin their cry on the moist breeze.

She shut the door, ran back through the office, back out the front. Got in her Mercedes, revved it away from the storefront. She pulled onto McCarty, back toward Clinton, and when she was a block away she saw in her rearview mirror a Houston police car wheel into the lot, pulling up near the bar. Someone must have heard shots and called the cops.

A car pulled out after her onto the road, from across the street, a silver Jag she recognized as Bucks’.

He revved up close behind her. In the rearview he gestured to her to stop. She slammed her foot down on the gas, accelerating toward a red light that would put her back on Clinton.

Her cell phone beeped. Bucks’ name was on the readout. She scooped the phone up.

‘What’s the hell’s going on?’ Bucks said.

‘What?’ she screamed.

‘Why are you hauling ass out?… Why are there cops…?’

‘They’re dead!’ she screamed.

‘They?’

‘Doyle and some guy. And the money’s gone.’

‘What? What guy? Pull over and let’s talk. Right now.’

Her heart felt like it suddenly exploded. Who knew about the meeting? She knew, Paul knew, Bucks knew, Doyle knew. ‘You killed them,’ she said. ‘You shit, you took the money.’

‘No. Pull over, Eve,’ he said. The Jag drew closer; she floored her car, zoomed through another light shifting from yellow to red, went left onto Clinton, headed for the highway. Bucks stayed with her, leaving a chorus of honking cars in his path. ‘Where’s the goddamn money?’

‘I don’t have it,’ she said. ‘You killed them, you took the money.’

His voice was quiet as death. ‘Pull over right now, Eve,’ he said. She sped on and he rammed the Jag’s bumper into her rear. She tore the Mercedes around a pickup truck and a semi heavy with goods from the Port. The Jag wheeled around the trucks, started to pull even with her. A sharp ping sounded, of metal hitting metal. He was shooting at her.

She veered across the lines, into oncoming traffic, accelerating toward a truck that laid heavy on its horn. The truck roared off the road, plowing into a lumberyard’s wire fencing and a parked pickup. She glanced over, saw Bucks closing on her, rounding a station wagon, edging past a braking semi.

Eve tore back into the northbound lane as another truck thundered past, missing her by inches, and cut off Bucks. She aimed left, onto the entrance ramp for 610. A scream of metal sounded behind her. In the rearview she saw the Jag swerve around the back end of another service truck, piping and a ladder flying free from the truck, Bucks peeling away, the left side of his Jag damaged. But still coming.

Now on the ramp, she jammed the accelerator to the floor, hurtling into midafternoon Houston traffic, pounding on the wheel, going up the immediate rise of the bridge.

He came up fast after her, nearly clipping another semi carrying Hondas in a zigzag stack, ripping across lanes, leaving a wake of slamming brakes and screeching horns. Firing at her. Two bullets hit the edge of her rear windshield, ricocheting off. She swerved to the left, nearly colliding with a frightened woman in a pickup truck, a child in the passenger seat, screaming at Eve in terror, and Eve tore back to the right, away from them, thinking, that’s it, he’ll hit me.

But as they rushed down the incline of the bridge, Bucks went left, getting the pickup between him and her, and as he sheered back to follow her she darted into the speed lane, flooring the pedal, moving in and out of the array of trucks, cars now trying to get out of their way. A cloverleaf exchange came up; Eve went toward the exit that would put her on 610 E and watched him try to follow, and then she wrenched the wheel, bolted across every lane and hit the ramp for 1-45 to Galveston. He couldn’t get over, nearly spun out trying, and two cars behind him rammed into each other. Brakes squealed. She couldn’t see him then, merging into traffic now. But he didn’t come up in her rearview. She drove toward the coast, finally taking an exit after ten minutes. She’d lost him. She waited for another fifteen minutes, then ventured back onto 1-45. When she reached the 610 interchange traffic was backed up, two wrecked cars being cleared. No one looked hurt but there was no sign of the Jag in the few seconds she had to scan the stalled cars. She took 610 to Kirby, a major thoroughfare that threaded back into the heart of Houston.

The coldness in his voice played over again in her head, ordering her to stop. Shooting at her, determined to kill her. Sure. She was the last witness.

Bucks had killed Doyle and the other guy, taken the five million. And now he was going to accuse her of taking it. He said, she said, and who would Paul believe?

She knew the answer.

She pulled into a bagel shop parking lot. She fumbled for the phone, called Paul. Tell him. No answer except for Paul’s voice mail. She said, ‘I don’t have the money, I didn’t take it, and if Bucks says different he’s a goddamned liar. He took it, he’s trying to kill me. Don’t believe him. Call me, please, Paul. Please.’

Paul had to believe her. He had to know she was telling the truth. But, oh God, Frank had helped himself to money, Paul had threatened them both, he would believe she was ripe to run, the five million fueling her engines.

She steadied her hands on the wheel. She needed a place to go, a way to talk to Paul that didn’t put her at risk. Not face-to-face right now, that would be suicide if she’d been set up. And Frank. If they thought she’d taken the money they’d go after dumb sweet Frank. I’ll have his tongue cut out, he had said.

She dialed Frank’s phone. No answer.

Run, she thought. Run like hell. She tore out of the parking lot.