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.