Texas Tango: A Flint Rock Novel (2 page)
"You came all this way in the wet weather!"
Flint exclaimed reaching toward her to take the card.
"Thank you."
"Miss Laura already tipped me nicely."
As she spoke she seemed to lose her balance.
Just before Flint's fingers touched the card, he ended up catching her as she fell into him.
The card floated erratically into the space behind the driver's seat.
"Oh dear," she gasped as she thanked Flint for steadying her.
"Let me get it."
She bent, brought the card off of the car's dark carpet and released it into Flint's hand.
"Let me drop you back at the Menger,” he offered.
“No need to walk both ways in drizzle."
"Thank you.
This short skirt is a little chilly."
The little sports car was so close to the ground that she wasn’t sure how to manage her long legs as she lowered herself into the right hand seat.
Flint noticed without trying that the color of her blouse was an exact match for that of her panties.
The drive to Crocket Street took less than three minutes—just long enough for the waitress to reveal that Miss Laura was a repeat customer at the bar.
Getting out of the Miata was as awkward for her as getting in.
Flint had no choice but to confirm his earlier impression of her preference for color coordination.
Friday traffic was stop and go till Flint reached Loop 410,
then
it moved faster.
An hour later he was driving
He was approaching Exit 223 when a yellow dump truck on his tail swerved to the next lane catching the left side of the Mazda’s rear bumper.
The car spun 360° before rolling.
Flint hung upside down in the seat belt while his favorite Austin radio station played Ed Bruce singing a song about his first taste of Texas having blue eyes and golden hair.
Flint struggled unsuccessfully to unlatch his seat belt.
It was no use.
He relaxed.
The Tennessee singer crooned that his first taste of Texas lingered in his heart and on his tongue.
EMTs still had not arrived.
The DJ's voice announced, “you're listening to KVET, 98.1—the voice of central Texas where we like to color outside of the lines."
Flint had been upside down quite a few times during his early years as a pilot, but this was his first time inverted in a car.
He stayed relaxed by focusing on the radio.
“Waylon Jennings was born in Littlefield, Texas,” the DJ said.
“In the suburbs of a dry-land cotton patch, in the middle of a West Texas rain.”
Flint listened to Waylon say, “and for all you folks out there in radio land
who
don’t know what a West Texas rain is—well that’s what is commonly known as a sand storm.”
Flint remembered a sand storm he had been in near Mason, Texas many years before.
He was alone at night, not able to see the flashlight he held a few inches in front of his face.
That made his current predicament seem
like nothing.
Medical techs cut the seat belt as Flint heard Waylon say life’s like an old country song:
“Times was hard but livin was easy.
We always found a way to survive.”
EMTs rolled Flint toward an ambulance parked in the wide, grassy median between north and south bound lanes of Interstate 35.
At a nearby emergency room Flint gave a Department of Public Safety officer a description of the truck, declined hospital admission.
Flint's insurance company delivered a rental car to him at the ER.
He arrived late to Armadillo Sounds, a new recording studio on Congress Avenue.
The grand opening party was in full swing.
An hour later, Flint wished the owners of the new establishment well and drove back to San
Marcos,
laid Dr. Eva Milan’s rain spattered "I want to meet you" card on the night table.
Dropping off to sleep, he pictured her penetrating eyes.
Chapter 2
Sorrento, Italy is seven hours later than Austin, Texas.
Bill Murphy was an early riser.
He liked to get a run in on the beach where Naples stops and Sorrento begins before all the local fishermen got underway.
Saturday morning, New Year's
day
, was no exception.
He'd done the run, soaked in the shower, dressed casually, and strolled up hill to eat breakfast.
From the Bristol Hotel on a cliff overlooking the Bay of Naples, the Mediterranean appears deep blue, inviting mesmerized stares.
From the Bristol’s rooftop restaurant, Murphy gazed absently across the bay.
It was half past eight.
The waiter placed scones and a pot of coffee on his table as he finished a tall glass of orange juice, freshly squeezed.
He had already spent an hour online with a top security clearance code reading files through a server in the CIA building in McLean, Virginia.
Murphy dialed a number left in a voicemail from Harry Johnson.
They had known each other for thirty years, since they served in the same Marine Corps counter intelligence unit.
Harry became a Texas Ranger when he left the service.
Bill joined the CIA.
"Texas Rangers.
Harry Johnson here."
"Hello Harry."
"Hey Murph.
Thanks for returning my call so quickly.
I am investigating an apparent attempt on the life of Dr. Ava Milan, an Italian born shrink who practices in Austin."
"So your voice mail said.
I understand that you are looking for a motive.
I have searched our records, and I've spoken to a reliable asset who is extensively connected here.
Twenty years ago, when she was seventeen, Ava Milan associated with a Mafioso boss.
She was one of several call girls who occupied his play time.
She left Naples as the wife of a U. S. Navy physician just before she turned eighteen.
She has maintained telephone contact with a couple of mob people.
And she spent some time in India a few years ago.
There is a note in the file that she may have known a terrorist there—a fellow named Mohammed Abida Bahaar."
"Any other names in your records that might help me?"
“Yes, two.
Our government's current interest in terrorism led to a recent Agency reexamination.
Ava Milan's activities in India turned up the name of Abdu Koriem.
He is an Indian guru to whom she wired a thousand dollars two years ago.
No correspondence.
There is speculation that Koriem wanted money to adopt two children.
Not clear how Milan met him.
She seems to have studied hypnosis with him."
"How about the mob?"
"The file has transcriptions of six phone conversations between Dr. Milan and a woman in Naples named Gina Francesca Lezioni, the surviving mother of a dead Mafia boss.
The transcripts are in Italian.
I scanned them quickly.
They seem to be laments about the death of Lezioni's son.
Signora Lezioni repeatedly curses the bastards who killed him, but she claims not to know who they were.
Dr. Milan expresses sympathy for the mother's loss.
He was killed in New Jersey, but Dr. Milan told the mother that she had not seen him since she left Italy."
"Anything else?"
"Not on quick reading."
"Thanks for your help, Murph.
Stay safe."
They hung up.
Bill Murphy lingered over an English breakfast at the Bristol, paid and walked down the steep, curved road into Sorrento.
He could have called a taxi but the rain hadn't decided whether to fall, so he took the eighteen minute downhill stroll to the center of Sorrento.
As Murphy walked, the temperature dropped rapidly from 54° to 46° Fahrenheit and a light mist began.
He pulled his hat down, tilted his head forward to keep the wetness off his glasses, and failed to see the car that skidded until it hit him.
As the ambulance loaded Bill Murphy, eleven kilometers away near downtown Naples a man died of a stab wound.
Medics rolled Murphy into the emergency reception area as he watched another set of
attendants park
a gurney next to him.
From the conversation he overheard, he realized the dead person was the asset he had mentioned to Harry Johnson an hour earlier.
Murphy guessed from the location where the stabbing happened that it was connected to questions the asset had been asking about Ava's long ago mafia chief.
He activated his phone, called Harry Johnson again,
warned
him that someone was taking an active and negative interest in the Ava Milan investigation.
Then he passed out from the pain killer injected by his physician.
Chapter 3
Central Texas.
Saturday morning, January 1.
Flint was up and having coffee by 8:00
A.M.
He felt sore from hanging in the seat belt.
When his phone rang, he thought the insurance company was calling.
He got a surprise.
“Mr. Rock?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Ava Milan.”
“Hello Dr. Milan.
I'm glad to meet you.
I intended to get in touch this morning.”
“Please call me Ava.
I am embarrassed.
My behavior last night at the Menger was a little unconventional.
Just yesterday I acquired a few cards that . . . well, I gave one to you.
The only one I have given out in fact.
You see I am a psychiatrist.
When I meet people, they often assume that I will know things about them they don’t want anyone to know.
That makes getting acquainted difficult.
So I decided to try the cards.
But last night someone nearly killed me.
A little south of Austin a big construction truck ran me off the road and my car crashed.
I feel lucky to be alive.”
“Well now, Ava, that makes two of us.
I was also in an accident with a truck which rolled my car.
I assumed it was due to bad visibility and wet road conditions.
What kind of truck caused you a problem?"
"I barely got a look at it.
Tall, yellow colored, hauling gravel I think."
"Your description sounds like it was the same kind of truck that hit me.”
They continued comparing notes.
Ava had not fared as well as Flint.
She had a hurt elbow and a sore left knee.
She did not yet have a rental car, so a few minutes after 9:00 Flint was outside of 200 Congress Avenue, a new condo building called the Austonian, which at fifty-six floors advertised itself as the tallest residential building in Texas.
Ava had arranged for Flint to park in her building's garage.
She was waiting in the lobby of the gleaming new glass and steel high rise when Flint walked in.
She extended her hand.
“I have tea ready to make upstairs, but I want to look in on my office across the street before taking you up.
I have a studio space in 100 Congress where I see patients,” she said looking across Willie Nelson Boulevard which separated her residential and office buildings.
She led Flint across what had been called Second Street before it was renamed for the famous country singer.
They were soon in a rose colored, polished granite, twenty-two story building.