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.