Go-Between

Chapter Twelve

“I don’t know, hon, where do you think we should stay?”

“Well, it depends on what you like,” Michelle said.

She and Caitlin sat in the Great Room at Caitlin’s house, Michelle with her Safer America-issued laptop, a tiny Sony VAIO. It was just after 3 p.m., which meant that Caitlin had opened a bottle of wine. Another chardonnay, which seemed to be her go-to.

Maybe I can get her into sauvignon blanc, Michelle thought, or a good rosé or even vinho verde. Something light and crisp for a horribly hot day like today.

But that wasn’t why Caitlin was drinking, was it?

She’d arrived at ten this morning per Caitlin’s instructions to find that Caitlin was still in bed.

“Is she okay?” Michelle had asked Esperanza.

“Sometimes she just sleeps late,” Esperanza had replied, with an eloquent shrug. “You know… she doesn’t always feel so good.”

When Caitlin finally did show up, just after 11:30, her face looked puffy, her eyelids swollen. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I had a little bit of a migraine.”

Maybe she’d kept drinking after Michelle had dropped her off last night. Or maybe she’d just been too depressed to get out of bed. You couldn’t be too hard on her for that, Michelle thought. She’d had a few days like that herself, after Tom had died.

“I guess we might as well stay at the Century Plaza,” Caitlin said now, leaning back against her beige-wheat couch. “That’s where the fundraiser is.”

“There’s nice hotels in Santa Monica,” Michelle found herself saying. “Right by the ocean. It’s a really great area with a lot of good restaurants. Maybe you could… take a little extra time. Enjoy yourself.”

It’s not that I really care, she told herself. Caitlin’s problems were Caitlin’s problems, and Michelle had plenty of her own.

But the way Caitlin looked, the dark circles around her eyes, the slight tremor in her hand…

I’m supposed to be taking care of her, Michelle thought, and she doesn’t look good at all.

“I know some good yoga classes in that part of town,” Michelle said. “Plus there’s great hikes, there’s the beach…”

Caitlin’s smile remained in place, but her eyes looked puzzled. Lost.

“You wanted to start working out, right?”

“I suppose I did,” Caitlin finally said. “All right.” Something in her shifted. Focused. “Why don’t you pick the hotel? Arrange an extra day on either end. We’ll get started on that.”

Stupid, Michelle thought, as she checked hotel prices and availability on the desktop in Caitlin’s office. Really stupid.

She’d lived in Brentwood for seven years. She had friends who lived in Santa Monica. She’d taken yoga in Santa Monica.

What were the odds she’d run into someone who knew her?

Maybe she should book a hotel in Beverly Hills.

She shook herself. And thought: So what if someone recognizes me? So what? I’m Michelle again, not Emily. It might be a little awkward, she’d have to trot out Gary’s stupid story about traveling around the world to find herself or rekindle her passion for life, or whatever it was she was supposed to have been doing for the last couple of years. But she didn’t have to worry about getting arrested.

And her late husband was magically no longer a crook.

The Shore was booked. Too bad, she’d heard great things. It hadn’t opened yet when she’d left for her vacation in Mexico.

Emily’s phone buzzed. She’d set it to silent, but she could see it light up at the bottom of her purse, see the tiny tremor in the objects around it.

Carrying Emily’s phone felt dangerous. Stupid, even. But so did leaving it behind. And this was a phone call she couldn’t afford to miss.

Their lawyer, Derek.

She swiped the screen to answer. “Can you hang on a minute?”

Outside, the late afternoon heat felt like plunging into a bowl of hot soup. She made her way to the shade of one of the old oaks.

“So we have a date for the new bail hearing,” Derek said. “It’s next week, Wednesday.”

“Shit, I…” she began, then stopped herself.

Won’t be in town, she’d almost said. Michelle would be in Los Angeles, babysitting Caitlin for the big fundraiser.

Emily wasn’t supposed to be in Houston at all.

Her phone was already slippery with sweat.

“I don’t know if I can make it. I… my father… he’s in the hospital, and…”

“Understood. Look, don’t worry about it. We’ve got your statement. We’ve got letters from the fire chief and from a few other businesses about Jeff’s ties to the community, what an asset he is. I even got that couple he helped find when he volunteered to fly search and rescue.”

Jeff’s a standup guy, she heard Bobby say.

“Do you think… is that going to be enough? Should I… should I try to come? Would that help?”

There was a moment of silence on the other end. “I don’t think it’ll make a difference one way or another.”

“So it doesn’t look good.” It wasn’t a question. She didn’t really need to ask.

“I’ll be honest with you, Emily. They’re a taking a pretty hard line with Jeff. I’m not sure why, given his lack of priors. It may be they want to push us into taking some kind of deal.”

“A deal? Like what?”

“Immunity or a reduced sentence in exchange for information. Maybe. They’re not showing their cards yet.”

She couldn’t say what she wanted to say, that she doubted this was why “they” were taking a hard line, that assuming Gary had arranged the bust, the last thing “they” wanted was for Danny to talk.

“And you know, I could be reading the situation incorrectly. I just want to prepare you for the possibility of an outcome we’re not going to like.”

“Right,” she said.

“Emily… has anyone contacted you? I mean, any law enforcement agencies, for questioning?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, that’s good news,” he muttered.

“Who should I expect?”

“Most likely, Arcata Police or the DEA. It’s not clear to me how they’re handling this investigation so far.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think they’re still scrambling to put the pieces together. Jeff’s arrest… it didn’t happen because of a long investigation, as far as I know. There was a confidential informant involved, and we won’t have access to his or her identity until a week before the trial.”

Not Gary. He wouldn’t put himself directly on the line like that. Most likely someone he or another intermediary had paid off.

“Okay,” she finally said. “Keep me posted. And… tell Jeff to call me. Okay? Can you do that?”

She couldn’t call him. The jail didn’t allow it. He had to call her, collect.

“Marisol’s seeing him tomorrow. I’ll make sure she tells him.”

The next day, Thursday, she left work a few hours early, bought a car, and opened two bank accounts.

She didn’t want to keep the rental-she’d bet they had some kind of black box tracking device in it. Using the Safer America car for anything other than Safer America business was out of the question.

She took a cab to a used car lot on Southwest Freeway, not too far from the hotel where she’d stayed her first night here, when she’d come to visit Danny in jail.

She picked out an eight-year-old silver Toyota Corolla that had about 60,000 miles on it. $9,500, plus tax and registration. Something you wouldn’t notice.

“So, let’s talk financing.” They sat in a tiny beige office. The salesman, a young guy with a thatch of blond hair, leaned over his veneer desk. High-school athlete, Michelle thought, whose shoulders strained against a wrinkled blue button-down shirt that was damp with sweat.

“That won’t be necessary.”

She got out an envelope she’d earlier stuffed with cash and counted out the bills.

The salesman took in the stack of money. Sat back with raised eyebrows and gave her a lopsided grin. “That’s a lot of cash.”

She smiled back. “Babysitting money.”

At the first bank, one in River Oaks not far from Tootsie’s, she opened a checking and a savings account, depositing $3,000 in checking and $3,000 in savings. She could have her paychecks direct-deposited here. Her official bank.

For the second, she drove out to a bank near George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Opened a checking account under Emily’s name with $2,000 and rented a safe-deposit box, where she stashed another $9,000.

“How about a savings account?” the teller asked.

“Maybe later,” Michelle said. “After I’ve saved a little up.”

That left close to $25,000 in her apartment.

It wasn’t ideal. But none of this was ideal, was it? Gary could easily find out where she’d opened bank accounts. Could have that money taken away as quickly as she’d deposited it.

Probably quicker.

Sitting in evening traffic in her silver Toyota, she asked herself what the point of all this was. Opening different bank accounts, packing a go-bag, would any of that really help?

She had the money for now, was promised more, but could she hold onto it?

Would Gary really let her walk away from this situation?

Would he let Danny go?

The freeway was a sea of red lights. Barely crawling.

Danny didn’t call. Not that night. Not the next day.

Caitlin had a Friday morning appointment at the hairdresser, she’d told Michelle on Thursday, as she topped off her first glass of chardonnay, “So there’s no need for you to rush on in.”

Michelle went to the gym in her complex first thing Friday morning after a cup of coffee. It wasn’t a very good gym. Most of the space was taken up by a couple of machines, a cable setup, two treadmills, an elliptical trainer and a recumbent Lifecycle, but there was a rack of dumbbells, two bars and some plates, a good enough bench, a set of bands and a couple of fitness balls. Enough for her to come up with a decent workout and clear her head with sweat.

After that, she stood outside the gym on the lumpy common lawn that smelled vaguely of dog shit and called Marisol Acosta.

“I saw him, and he’s fine,” Marisol said. “He’s in good spirits. And he told me to tell you not to worry.”

“Did you tell him to call me?”

A pause. “Yes, I did.”

“He hasn’t yet.”

“Well… I really think it’s just because he doesn’t want you to worry.”

Her heart started to race in her chest, and she wasn’t sure if what she felt was anger, or panic.

“Tell him that not talking to me is what’s worrying me. Okay? Tell him that.”

“I will,” Marisol said. “I promise.” Another pause. “Do you have a landline?”

“A landline? No. I mean…”

Michelle didn’t have a landline. Emily did, back in Arcata. Which did her no good at all here in Houston. “I’m running around so much, I’m not close to a landline most of the time.”

“That might be why you haven’t heard from him.”

“He can’t call my cell?”

“He can, but you’ll need to go to Securus and set up an Advance Pay account. It’s pretty easy. They have a website.”

“Securus?”

“The company that runs the prison phone system. They’ve got contracts all over the country.” A dry chuckle. “I’m guessing they make good money, from the amount they charge for those calls.”

He finally called on Sunday afternoon, while Michelle was packing her bags for Los Angeles.

An automated phone tree called, rather, that same flat, cheerful woman’s voice that was always sorry when you spoke and it “didn’t get that,” and asked if she was willing to accept a collect call from an inmate at Harris County Jail.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed, her Armani jacket spread on her lap. She could hear noise in the background, men’s voices, shouting, laughing, what sounded like metal doors slamming, now and again.

Now that he’d called, she didn’t know what to say.

“How are you doing?” she finally asked.

“Okay. You? Things are good?”

She couldn’t actually tell him anything. Couldn’t tell him where she was, what she’d been doing, where she was going. These phone calls were monitored, and not just if you had a Gary in your life.

“You know, it’s complicated. But I’m okay. Keeping busy.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I figured.”

He got it. God knows, if she told him the story of how she got her first $50,000 payoff, he’d probably nod, roll his eyes and say, “Fucking Gary.”

That Gary, such a crack-up.

“Did you get a hold of…?”

Sam. He had to mean Sam. “Yeah. He’s looking into it.”

“Good. Thanks.”

What could she tell him might actually help?

“I’m sorry I can’t come to the hearing,” she said.

“Don’t be. Look.” A long, drawn-out exhale. “You don’t need to be anywhere near this. I don’t want you to. Just…”

He couldn’t say what he wanted to either.

“I really think you should take a break from all this, Em. You’ve got other stuff on your plate. Me and the lawyers can handle my situation. You need to take care of yourself.”

Was this code? Was it truth? She didn’t know.

Maybe it was a particularly awkward breakup.

“Okay, I don’t know how you’re feeling right now, but the reality is, we’re both in this situation. I can’t just… run away and take a vacation from it.”

Her words came out on a rush of irritation. The two of them were stuck together, whether he wanted to be or not, and even if he’d said it because he cared about her, practically, it made no sense.

She wasn’t going to outrun Gary on her own.

Silence.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “I hear that. Just… take care. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Was there something else she should say?

“You too.”