Jeff Abbott - Cut and Run

‘What you gonna do to me?’ Frank practiced saying in his mind to his imaginary interrogators. ‘Make me give the Grammy back?’ That was always a hell of a line to keep in your pocket, it made people know that they weren’t nearly as cool as you were. The Grammy, he still had that, up on a mantel in his bedroom. Usually one of the last things he saw before he went to sleep.

For a change, there were no police cars parked near the house. No lawyers waiting to talk to him, and no Bucks. He had gone to the hospital straight from Kiko’s with Whit and Gooch, but stayed in the background, not letting anyone know he was with the other two. Thank God he hadn’t come home that night to find a furious and panicked Bucks waiting for him, anxious for help.

He got out of the car, headed up to the front door. The woman was waiting for him in the eaves of the porch, dark-haired, mildly pretty, with a serious and intelligent face. Frank froze, the keys in his hand.

The man in front of her looked older than the pictures of Frank Polo Claudia remembered, vaguely, from her older sister’s record covers. He’d been short for a singing star, big black hair in a seventies flip, gaudy with chains and the requisite long-pointy-collared shirt slit open to the belly, big-heeled shoes, pants tighter than skin. This man was still short, but quietly dressed in comfortable gray slacks and a plain blue shirt, hair cropped short without a bit of gel. But there was the too-big diamond on the ring, the hint of gold chain under the modest collar.

‘Yes?’ he said. A little fear in his voice, the barest inflection. Because she was unexpected and he was tense, expecting attack or trouble from a new angle.

Claudia had given long thought on how to work this. ‘Mr Polo? I’m looking for Tasha Strong. I understand you have her address or phone number. She’s unlisted.’

‘Who are you? A cop?’

‘No. A friend is worried about Tasha and asked me to find her.’

‘See me at the club, I don’t have the dancers’ contact info at home.’ He fumbled for his house key on a thick ring.

‘I’m also looking for Eve Michaels.’

‘She’s out of town.’ Not looking at her.

‘Where could I find her?’ Claudia asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know what town she went to?’

‘You have ten seconds to get off my porch,’ he said. ‘Then I call the cops.’

‘Eve Michaels is missing, isn’t she? Won’t one more investigation fill up your date book, Mr Polo?’

He crossed his arms. ‘Eve and I had our differences. She left town for a while. Satisfied?’

‘She got a cell phone?’

‘Not for strangers to call.’

‘I’m not exactly a stranger. I’m Claudia Salazar. I’m a friend of Whit’s and Gooch’s.’ She watched his face; he gave no reaction to their names. ‘Is Eve dead? Did the Bellinis kill her? Or Jose Peron?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Frank said. ‘Eve wanted time alone.’

‘Time away from her son? Whit’s her son, isn’t he?’

Now he studied her and said, ‘I can give you her cell phone number if you want.’

‘That would be great, thanks.’

‘I don’t have it memorized,’ he said. ‘You know how it is, you press the speed dial code. My phone’s inside. You’re welcome to come in.’ Suddenly friendly, the frost gone. ‘Or wait out here.’ Like knowing he’d been too friendly.

‘I’ll come in. Thank you.’

‘I was about to make coffee,’ Frank Polo said. He stopped, tossed his suit coat onto the chair, closed the door behind her. ‘You want a cup? You could even try Eve’s cell phone from here.’

She pasted on a warm smile. Get him talking; people nearly always told you more than they thought they would. ‘That’d be great. My sister’s a big fan of yours.’

‘Oh. Well. Thanks,’ he said. Thanking her for her sister’s devotion to disco seemed strange, but then what else was he going to say? She wondered, a moment too late, if saying her sister rather than she was a big fan was an insult. But Frank Polo didn’t seem to care. ‘Whit know you’re here?’

‘Yes.’ It seemed the prudent answer. Claudia followed Frank to the kitchen, watched him putter with filter, grounds, and water over the brewer. He turned to her, leaned against the counter, and smiled again.

‘I’m a bad guy, Claudia. I told you a little white lie,’ Frank said. ‘Eve didn’t leave because of an argument. She left because of Whit.’

Claudia waited.

‘Him being her kid, looking for her. Finding her. It upset her. Deeply.’

‘I’m sure it was a shock.’

‘For me, too. I didn’t even know she had a kid.’

‘She has six of them. All boys. Whit is the youngest.’

‘Six? God Almighty.’ The coffee maker gurgled in the quiet. ‘If you’re Whit’s friend, maybe you can help convince him to give her a little space.’

‘She didn’t leave town because of Paul Bellini?’

‘Why would she?’

‘Things could be a little tough at the office now. You both worked for him.’

Frank took down two coffee mugs from a cabinet, gave her a blank smile. ‘Technically, I work for a holding company that owns Topaz.’

‘Owned by Tommy Bellini, a mobster.’

Frank shrugged, put out milk, sugar, sweetener. ‘Former mobster. Tommy’s a good guy who, in his past, did bad things. It doesn’t make him a bad person if he’s good at heart.’

‘My actions don’t matter because I define myself as good?’ Claudia said. ‘Sorry, that excuse chafes me.’

‘We all have our life philosophies.’ Frank poured coffee into her mug, pushed the sugar bowl toward her. ‘Look, she doesn’t want to have anything to do with Whit, okay? I know those words hurt. The poor kid, it breaks your heart.’

‘She leaves town right at the same time that Kiko Grace and Paul Bellini are murdered?’ Claudia shook her head. ‘I’m wondering, what triggered all this bloodshed, Mr Polo?’

‘I don’t know who Kiko Grace is.’

She watched him, sipped the coffee. ‘Kiko Grace is a drug lord from Miami. He was found shot to death the day after Paul was. Two major crime figures gone in short order. Now something or someone set that off. Maybe Eve.’ She put down her coffee.

‘You must be looking for work to keep your mind busy. Are you another PI? Or a lawyer?’

‘I’m a police investigator down in Port Leo, where Whit’s from. But I’m not here in any official capacity. I’m here as his friend.’

‘You could have told me that from the beginning,’ Frank said, almost reproachfully.

‘I didn’t want you to run from me being a cop,’ she said. ‘But I’m not going to lie when you ask me, either.’

‘I’m not allergic to cops,’ Frank said. He smiled. ‘The Bellinis have lots of cop friends. Always have.’

‘Great,’ she said. ‘For my own curiosity, or a memento for Whit if Eve doesn’t want to see him again, would you have a picture of her I could keep?’

He seemed to weigh his options. ‘For Whit? Let me see.’ He set his coffee down, wandered off down a hallway. She didn’t like him out of her sight, but it was his house, she knew the risks of stepping inside. She noticed a picture of Frank and a woman hanging on a dining room wall, beyond the kitchen.

The woman was pretty, must have been drop-dead gorgeous in her shallow youth, fine-featured, high-cheekboned, thin lips parted in an honest smile for the camera. She looked normal, nothing bent or broken within her that would make her leave her family, her children, run off with an embezzler, perhaps kill him, then join a crime family. She didn’t look like a mom who’d bake cookies for the PTA but she looked like a mom who’d let you eat ice cream until you got sick. Whit looked like her, Claudia could really see the resemblance, across the eyes, the mouth, the cheekbones, and she bit her lip, her heart full for Whit.