Texas Tango: A Flint Rock Novel (9 page)

"Does Steve have a last name?" Laura wondered.

"Stevenson Karbouski.
 
Don't know if it's his real name."

"Description?"
 

"Thinning black hair, brown eyes, five feet maybe six or seven inches, thirty pounds overweight, very white even teeth.
 
He likes black pants and silk shirts and his pants are always too tight in the waist.
 
I always thought he was about to threaten me.
 
Maybe he was once a cop.
 
Not a pleasant voice."

Laura excused herself, walked to the bar.
 
Three minutes later, she slid back into her chair and told Shana, "
turns
out I know the bartender.
 
He says they are short a cocktail waitress.
 
He'll try you out for a week if you want to see if it's a fit."

"Shana looked astonished.
 
Said nothing for half a minute.
 
"Really!" she finally exclaimed.
 
"Tell him yes."

"Tell him yourself,” Laura said.
 
She and Shana were sitting at a table for two some distance from the six sided bar.
 
“Come on I'll introduce you.
 
Oh.
 
And I told him you are a friend.
 
So don't embarrass me."

Laura left them talking as she took twenty-five steps away from the bar.
 
She pretended to admire a statue of two cowboys on a pedestal in the center of the room under a gorgeous cupola of green stained glass.
 
She dialed Harry Johnson, gave him the description of Stevenson Karbouski and spelled the name.

Shana shook hands with the barman, sealing their agreement.
 
Laura walked back to the bar.
 
"I didn't ask him about a room yet, Shana confided."

"I have a better idea about that," Laura declared.
 
Why don't you stay with me during the tryout
week.
 
I am living in a three bedroom house a few blocks north of here, not far from the University of Texas.
 
My father owns it.
 
He's a realtor.
 
He bought it below market but hasn't been able to flip it yet because it is architecturally different and it has a lot of expensive elements.
 
So I am living there alone till it sells.
 
What do you say?”

"I say YES, thanks."
 
She stepped from where she and Laura had been sitting to a dark nook along the wall where she had left her carryon.

Chapter 9

Stevenson Karbouski stepped onto a local train at Pompeii, a suburb of Naples, Italy.
 
He had taken a United Flight at noon the day before, Saturday, and arrived in Rome at 8:00
A.M.
the following day, Sunday.
 
By the time he reached Naples on a non-express, it was a little past noon.
 
His stop at a military surplus store on a back street not far from the central station did not take long because he had called ahead.
 
He left a credit card that had a spendable value of $100,000 and took away a shoe box containing a mobile phone trigger and some T4 Plastico explosive.

A few minutes before 6:00
P.M.
, Steve was walking away from the House of the Vetti brothers in Pompeii.
 
He had slid the shoebox between vertical bars on the see-through
iron gate
that had been added to the entrance of the house.
 
Then he used a sawn off broom handle that he brought with to push the small box till it was out of reach from the gate.
 
It rested on the tiled floor just underneath a fading three foot high fresco, a painting at eye level directly on the wall.
 
The subject was a Greek mythological figure called Piriapus.
 
He was depicted as a strong man, having an erect phallus, exaggerated in length and resting on a scale to illustrate its extraordinary size.

The House of the Vetti once attracted many curious visitors, but had been temporarily closed much of the time for ten years.
 
The house contained many frescos but only
those
 
in
the vestibule, which included the one of Piriapus, could be viewed without unlocking and entering through the front gate.

An hour and a half after Steve pushed the shoe box through the
bars,
he left a note at the desk of the Bristol Hotel.
 
The manila envelope had printed on it the name of Flint Rock which the woman at the desk did not remember to give to Flint when he and Mary returned from Gina's dinner.
 
She noticed it two hours later, walked it to his room and knocked on the door.
 
He was on the sofa in the sitting room in Ava's room not far away, so he did not hear the knock.

Flint awakened at 8:00
A.M.
to the sound of his phone.
 
It was Laura, about to go to bed an hour after midnight in Austin.
 
Shana had already turned in and Harry had asked Zeta to tell Laura what they now knew about Steve.
 
She passed it on to Flint.
 
Steve was a former Soviet spy, an East German with an odd Polish-sounding name, granted asylum by the United States when the USSR ceased to exist.
 
His personal history had gaps that Zeta thought odd.
 
She told Laura to tell Flint to watch out and to not trust him.

Laura and Flint hung up.
 
Mary was still asleep because it was only then her body clock’s usual bedtime seven hours earlier in Texas.
 
Flint returned to his room, opened the envelope that he found on the floor just inside his door.
 
In it was a sheet of white paper with block letter printing:
 
"YOU BIG PRICK—11:00
A.M.
HOUSE OF THE VETTI.
 
BRING THE SHRINK."

Flint showered, shaved, dressed and went to the rooftop restaurant for breakfast.
 
Mary was there waiting for her first sip of coffee to be brought.
 
He joined her, they ordered, she read the note.

"You going?" she asked him.

"Yes.
 
Might learn something," he replied.

"Taking Ava?"
 

"Probably not wise, but I'll ask what she wants to do."

"Okay if I go instead?"

"Fine with me, but why take the risk?" Flint wondered out loud.

"I'll be bored if I stay here and . . . well, the note said to bring Ava.
 
I'm about her size.
 
You might get more if whoever this is thinks you are following directives."

Mary and Ava both had full dark hair with some curl.
 
Both were athletic and walked smoothly with energy.
 

Mary called Ava.
 
They chatted.
 
Then Flint took the phone and read the note to Ava.

"House of the Vetti," Ava said slowly, “is at Pompeii, but that particular house has been closed for the last few years.
 
I saw it on a school field trip when I was a young teenager.
 
We all giggled at Piriapus."

Time was short.
 
Flint would be late to Pompeii even if he and Mary left immediately and went directly to the House of the Vetti.
 
After more discussion, Ava agreed to Mary's request to take her place

Flint had the Sig .38 in his right hand blazer pocket.
 
The sunny day made his medium weight blazer just enough for comfort.
 
The battery in the gun’s handle was fresh so the red laser sight worked properly.
 
He would have to trust that it was sighted in for about forty or fifty yards.
 
No time to try to find a shooting range and check it out by firing it.

Mary and Flint each had on Ray Ban aviator tear drop sunglasses.
 
Mary took one of the two extra clips of ammo for the Sig and put it in her hand bag;

"My dad had a Sig Saur," she told Flint.
 
It was not a .38 like this one; 9 mm instead.
 
I got so I could beat him on the range most of the time."

"Have you fired with a laser sight?" Flint asked her.

"Yes.
 
My father's had conventional open sights, but an army colonel at the range had a Glock with a red laser dot.
 
I fired
his a
couple of times."

The local train took an hour.
 
Another five minutes to walk to the entrance of the Pompeii restoration and get tickets for each of them.
 
Then it was a fifteen minute walk to the street on which the House of Vetti is located.
 
They were twenty-five minutes late.

As the pair walked up to the house entrance, the nearest person was half a football field's length away.
 
An iron gate at the house’s entrance was locked, but Piriapus and his oversized appendage was visible through the vertical bars.
 
Mary suppressed a laugh.
 
Flint had been there several years earlier, before the building was closed to the public.
 
His mind was puzzled.
 
Why would someone want him and Ava on that spot?
 
Then he saw the shoe box inside the locked
iron gate
, well out of reach.
 

"Run," he said loudly as he grabbed Mary's arm and followed his own directive.
 
They were moving fast, already ten yards down the concrete and stone wall away from the
iron gate
when the plastique blew Piriapus to smithereens.
 
Flint was behind Mary, so he absorbed more energy from the blast than did she.
 
He went down.
 
Mary almost did, but she stayed upright and was another ten yards further along when a figure stepped from somewhere across the narrow street.
 
He twirled a set of bolas perdida above his head—the kind that Argentine gauchos use to stop people from running.
 
They use heavier ones for cattle.
 
It caught Mary's ankles, whipped around them tripping her.

A gun fired at Flint.
 
The slug missed by a few inches.
 
Flint was conscious but he had lost his breath from the hard impact of falling on cobblestones.
 
He could not see their assailant.
 
Mary yelled "THROW IT."
 
He hurled the gun toward her voice.
 
He felt a man standing over him, breathing heavy, swearing and sweating.
 
He heard a pistol cock.
 
Then the intense explosion of a pistol fired.
 
The assailant collapsed, laid heavy on top of Flint.

By the time Mary untangled herself from the bola, stood and walked to where Flint was just beginning to breathe again, the man she had fired at was absolutely still on his back.
 
Mary kept the Sig Sauer aimed, but then she saw further precaution was not needed.
 
Her bullet had struck him in the temple.

Mary helped Flint stand while he pocketed the dead man's passport.
 
She handed him the pistol which he slipped back into his side pocket.
 
Because the house was closed, no one else was close enough to be hurt.

Without discussion Mary and Flint moved back toward the entrance gate.
 
No police were anywhere to be seen until they were out of view of the damaged front wall.
 
Flint took Mary's arm and they drifted along with two other couples who were headed back down the restored streets to get some food.
 
Flint and Mary did not look bad—no torn clothing or broken skin.
 
Hardly any dust despite their having both fallen.
 
Mary smoothed her hair.
 
Flint's hat covered his short haircut.