Jeff Abbott - Cut and Run

‘I understand,’ she said. She fought down a wave of nausea.

He leaned back. ‘Now. You and Bucks go get that money for me. I’ll see you when you get back, all right?’

Eve stood, fought to keep from trembling. ‘All right.’

‘Drive careful,’ Paul said. ‘That traffic’s a bitch.’

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.