Cut and Run (31 page)

They arrived in San Antonio by seven in the morning, and found a small motel. She didn’t want to be alone so he got a room
with twin beds and while she showered he drove to a nearby Target, waited for it to open, and bought them cheap jeans, sneakers,
underwear, shirts, duffel bags. When he got back to the hotel she was clean but sitting in her dirty clothes. He showered
while she changed and then he drove her to a nearby emergency room.

The doctor was a young Pakistani woman who gave Whit a fierce, accusing glare as she inspected his mother’s bruises. ‘What
happened?’

‘My boyfriend beat me up,’ Eve said. ‘My son came and rescued me.’ She gave Whit a little smile.

‘My word,’ the doctor said, checking in her mouth. ‘He pulled out two teeth, broke two.’

‘With pliers,’ Eve said.

‘You should file charges,’ the doctor suggested.

‘Perhaps later,’ Eve said.

‘I beat him up,’ Whit said.

‘Good for you.’ The young doctor cleaned and stitched up Eve’s lip, gave her painkillers, and made an emergency appointment
for them with an oral surgeon on call with the hospital.

While the surgeon worked on Eve’s damaged teeth, Whit sat in the waiting room, watching the Texas Cable News channel. The
report on the fire came third on the update. Two people found dead in the parking lot of a warehouse, investigators sifting
through the rubble had found at least two more remains. It appeared to be arson
and one of the dead had been identified as Gregory Buckman, a former Energis executive who had become of interest to the
police after a recent attack at his home. A second man, as yet unidentified, had been mauled to death by two Dobermans, who
were also found killed. Police suspected, the announcer said, that the killings and fire were drug-related.

They would find nothing left of José. He closed his eyes. Killing José, strangely, didn’t bother him. It was almost as if
he hadn’t done it. Eve had told him about Public Service, what José had told her, and he could not shake the thought that,
in letting Tasha go, he had released a woman who, however misguided, was trying to do good. Justice wasn’t often a straight
line, but he wasn’t sure what he had done was justice any more than what José or Tasha had done.

The oral surgeon took his time with Eve and when she came out she was groggy, her mouth padded with cotton, armed with pills.

‘That wasn’t fun,’ she mouthed. ‘Need to sleep.’

So he took her back to the hotel. She lost herself in a heavy doze. He checked the voice mail on his cell phone. One from
Vernetta Westbrook, one from Arturo Gomez, five from Claudia. He called her.

‘Where are you?’ she said.

‘I found my mom. In San Antonio.’

‘Whit, is Frank Polo with her?’

‘No. They’re not together anymore. She left him.’

‘We found a partial of a fingerprint of Polo’s at Harry’s murder site,’ Claudia said. ‘Actually, on the underside of Harry’s
rental car bumper. If he was wearing gloves he probably tore the latex taking off Harry’s plates. The police are looking for
Polo. Whit, you can’t protect this man.’

‘I promise, I’m not.’ He paused. ‘We’ll come back to
Houston in a few days. She got hurt, I had to get her medical attention.’

‘Is she okay?’

‘Yes. Frank Polo roughed her up.’ A cold rage settled in his bones. Frank’s prints at the murder scene. That devious little
bastard. ‘Claudia, I want to tell you everything. I’m not sure I can. Because I have to take care of my mom first.’

‘When you come back to Houston, you have to talk to the police and the DA’s office. You understand that.’

‘I’ll call right now and set up a time to meet,’ he said. ‘How’s Gooch?’

‘Continuing to improve. Continuing to not cooperate. And Greg Buckman is dead.’

‘Really?’

‘You don’t know anything about that, do you, Whit?’ There was a coldness in her voice he’d never heard before.

‘No,’ he said, watching his mother. ‘I don’t.’

‘Come home, Whit.’

‘This is over now,’ he said. ‘I will. Claudia. Thank you.’

‘I’m going back to Port Leo today, Whit. Without Gooch. I can’t take off more time. Call me when you get home.’ And she hung
up without a good-bye.

He thought of calling her back, but instead called Charlie Fulgham’s cell phone. ‘Are you back home?’

‘Yes. Should I not be?’

‘Your house is safe now. Are we all still your clients?’

‘Still got my three dollars in my pocket,’ Charlie said.

‘Buy some legal pads, Charlie. Fast.’

‘I don’t want to talk to the police, Whit,’ Eve said. It was Wednesday morning, and she was curled on the hotel bed. She’d
taken another Vicodin but it hadn’t kicked in hard.

He sat down next to her, touched her shoulder. ‘Where would Frank run?’

‘Anywhere, if he’s got five million. I really don’t know.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Mom,’ he said. He touched her swollen jaw. ‘You and Frank strike me as people with contingency plans. Where
is he?’

‘I told you, Whitman, I don’t know.’

‘He put you in mortal danger when he could have cleared your name in an instant. He ran when it was time to save you,’ Whit
said. ‘He doesn’t really love you.’

‘He loved me,’ she said. ‘Just not enough. Like how I loved you when you were little. Just not enough.’

‘There is no parallel,’ he said. ‘Please.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were a judge?’ she said, surprising him.

He kissed the top of her head. ‘I didn’t want to scare you off.’

She managed a smile. ‘I’m proud of you. Really proud of you, honey.’

He felt a little kindle of pride that died instantly. ‘Sure. You should be. I killed a man. Let a criminal walk free. Lied
to one of my best friends, lied to the police. I’m a real pride and joy, Mom.’

‘But you saved your mother,’ she said. ‘You saved me.’

‘We’re going back to Houston tomorrow.’

‘Okay,’ she said, suddenly surrendering. ‘I’m ready.’ She closed her eyes, sleepy again. ‘I’m actually very clean, you know.’

‘Charlie’s going to represent us. If needed.’

‘That should be good for laughs,’ she said and she went back to sleep.

The manifesto from Public Service appeared in six newspapers nationwide Thursday morning, including the
Houston Chronicle
. They claimed responsibility for the
deaths of five drug lords, including Paul Bellini and Kiko Grace, and three others in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New
York in the past month. Two of the dead had been found with rolled-up money in their mouths, a signature of the group. The
manifesto was both a scathing indictment of the government’s war on drugs, for not being tough enough, and against the drug
trade, for its relentless waste of human lives, police efforts, and money.

The statement held a chilling promise: ‘We target the casual buyer, for you are the cash cow of the drug trade. If we see
you buying drugs, even simply a joint to share with a friend, we will shoot you.’ And ending it with ‘ “God defend the right!”
– William Shakespeare.’

Whit wondered where Tasha was, if she had written the letter. Or if José had before he died. The TV pundits had a field day
on this twisting new front on the drug war.

When Whit met Charlie at his house, Charlie hugged Eve, shook Whit’s hand, and pointed to the letter in the paper. This, sweeties,’
Charlie said, ‘is called manna from heaven.’

Two hours later they sat in Gooch’s private hospital room, an artful arrangement by Charlie. Whit and Eve sat next to Gooch’s
bed; Arturo Gomez, two of his detectives, and Vernetta Westbrook on the other side of the bed.

‘My clients will cooperate fully,’ Charlie Fulgham said. The party-loud shirt from his stand-up routine was gone, replaced
by a gray Armani suit, fitted to the millimeter.

The police officers all looked at Charlie like they knew him. And didn’t like what they saw.

Gomez started. ‘All right, Mr Mosley—’

‘Actually, you should refer to him as Your Honor,’ Charlie said. ‘Judge Mosley is a highly respected magistrate.’

Gomez surrendered on the point. ‘Can you fill in the gaps for us, Judge Mosley?’

‘It’s really simple,’ Whit said. And he told them: he had hired Harry Chyme to find his mother. Harry told them that she was
in Houston, he believed, living under the name Eve Michaels, and he and Gooch came to Houston to find her. They never heard
again from Harry, but after making inquiries at a club Harry said her boyfriend managed, found Eve.

‘She agreed to meet us at Pie Shack,’ Whit said, and this was the risky part. Gooch could go to jail for this when he had
saved their lives, saved the life of the young hostage the gunman had taken.

‘But Ms Michaels was followed there,’ Charlie said, stepping smoothly in. ‘By gunmen possibly related to this Public Service
group. Vigilantes mistakenly seeking to harm Ms Michaels due to her connection – via Frank Polo – to Tommy Bellini’s businesses.
We certainly know that Public Service had declared war on the Bellini family, right or wrong.’

Gomez grilled all three of them, but they stuck to their story with relentless precision: they ran, like everyone else, and
in fact went into hiding because Eve was afraid the Bellinis or these gunmen were after her.

‘If the Bellinis did illegal activities,’ Eve said, ‘I didn’t know about it. I was the accountant for five of Tommy Bellini’s
companies, and they are all perfectly legit. If his son started dabbling in the drug trade or screwing around with his father’s
companies, it has nothing to do with me.’

‘What’s the relationship of the Alvarez insurance firm to the Bellinis?’

Here Eve threw them a bone to chew. ‘I know Tommy loaned money to the Alvarez family when their company was in bad shape,
about to close. He was a silent partner.
They sold a lot of life insurance. But they did their own accounting; I had nothing to do with them as a business.’ She paused.
They always seemed like a nice family.’

‘But you lived in a house owned by the Bellini family.’ This from Vernetta.

‘That was provided to Frank Polo. He was an old family friend. So was I. That’s not illegal.’

Whit’s throat thickened as Vernetta said, ‘Mr Guchinski’s van was found at the Paul Bellini murder site.’

‘The Bellinis grabbed me when I stopped by Eve’s house to pick up her things,’ Gooch said. ‘She didn’t want to go back there,
she thought Frank Polo would force her to stay. Paul and his guys beat me up, detained me.’

‘Paul Bellini wanted Mom to trade for Gooch. They knew about the shooting, they were afraid Gooch and I were involved with
Public Service,’ Whit said.

‘They tried to get me to give them details on Public Service, but I didn’t know jack. They pumped me full of drugs, thinking
if I were looped I’d talk,’ Gooch said.

Whit said: ‘Paul told me we could meet. We did. He had Gooch in the trunk of his car. He thought I was bringing my mother
to him, but of course, I wasn’t. I drove Gooch’s van. Paul and I were talking and he was shot. He was clearly dead. I ran
and took his car, because the shooter fired at me, twice, and I couldn’t abandon Gooch. We took off.’

‘And didn’t call the police,’ Vernetta said.

‘I asked Whit not to,’ Eve said, ‘because I was afraid, and because he’s a judge and I didn’t want him to lose his job.’

‘I take full responsibility for that decision,’ Whit said. They asked more detailed questions about Paul’s shooting, and Whit
answered truthfully.

‘Of course, you could charge Judge Mosley with fleeing
a scene of a crime,’ Charlie said. ‘Of course, in doing so, he saved his own life and that of Mr Guchinski.’

‘He didn’t report the crime,’ Gomez said.

‘At his mother’s request. They’d already been traumatized by one shooting, Detective. And Paul Bellini and his thugs were
already beyond help. Charge them if you like, but then my clients will stop talking.’

Gomez made a noise in his throat.

‘The death at the Greystoke,’ Vernetta said. ‘Detective Tarrant here is in charge of that investigation.’

Tarrant was a thin woman, hair pulled back in a modest ponytail. ‘A man matching Judge Mosley’s description retrieved a van
from the parking valets. Two rooms were abandoned there, belonging to an Emily Smith.’

‘We were at the Greystoke,’ Eve said. ‘But I don’t know any Emily Smith. I was going to meet Frank there; I wanted a public
place because I was afraid of him. But we didn’t stay. Whit left because he wanted to see a friend of his, a police officer
from his hometown. To explain to her what we’d been through. After Whit left, I thought I saw one of the gunmen from the diner,
a man in dreadlocks. I left the hotel and called Whit on his cell phone. Whit rushed back and picked me up. I decided then
to leave town. He took me home. Frank was there. I thought it best that Whit leave us to talk, and at my request, he did.
Frank was calm as we talked, but he drank a bunch of wine and became violent. He beat me, knocked my teeth out. He drank more,
passed out, and I went to San Antonio.’

‘Where’d you stay?’ Gomez asked.

‘In my car. After a couple of days I called Whit. He came and got me.’ Her Mercedes was back in its garage at the house, where
it had been since Gooch was caught, and they had dumped Bucks’ Jag a mile from the burnt-out warehouse late last night.

‘After my mother left town,’ Whit said, ‘the Bellinis left us alone intentionally or were occupied with attacks on them by
Public Service. We didn’t know what was happening.’

The detectives watched them in silence. Whit thought he saw a tug of resignation in Vernetta Westbrook’s eyes.

‘Your Honor,’ she said, ‘you told Claudia Salazar you thought Greg Buckman killed Harry Chyme and Richard Doyle. You never
explained why.’

‘Frank Polo suggested it to me, I’m sure now in an effort to put attention off of him. This isn’t complicated.’

‘My clients were innocents caught up in the crossfire between the Bellinis and Public Service,’ Charlie said. ‘Ms Michaels
has offered her full cooperation with the fraud examiners in the DA’s office, if they want her help in identifying possible
points where illegal Bellini funds became legitimate revenue.’