be better, since he wouldn’t have to come back in a day to see if they’d gotten any results, but time had been short and he simply went with what was most expedient.
Whit slid out from under the kitchen table, headed into the huge den. A wall of old leather-bound books bought by the decorative yard rather than for their literary value lined one side of the mammoth TV. A thin layer of dust lay atop the gilded pages. He checked another recorder, stuck it behind the thick editions of Moby Dick and War and Peace, deciding they were safe from Frank’s, or Bucks’ interest.
He hurried upstairs, his feet quiet on the soft plush of the carpets. Down an upstairs hall he found the master bedroom. A mess, as though it had been searched. Probably by Bucks. A suit of clothes, stained with blood on the lapels and front, lay on the floor in a heap. He hoped he wouldn’t find a corpse in the tub. There wasn’t one.
One of the side tables was draped in silk, and he slid under its tenting to attach a digital recorder to its underside. There. Whit stood. The final request Eve had made was to copy the hard drive on her home computer.
I’ve got enough info there to put Paul away. If the worst happens to me, Whit, you need it for protection, she’d said over the morning coffee. Assuming Paul or Bucks hadn’t already moved it or erased it.
He found the office down the hall from the bedroom. Clean, tidy, no files, no papers out for the casual observer. He sat down in front of the PC and powered on the machine. It began its start-up whir.
Downstairs, the front door opened, the alarm system gave a little ping. Then the door shut.
He got up, went to the top of the stairs, moving silently.
Behind him the PC played its quiet but annoying startup fanfare. In a bedroom across the hall he peered out past a drape to the front driveway; a Honda that hadn’t been there before sat parked across the street. Whit moved quietly back into Eve’s office, thinking: I am so screwed.
He heard movement downstairs, heels on tile, then silence. Then the soft pad of feet on the carpeted stairs.
Whit drew the pistol Gooch had given him from the knapsack. He stepped back into the room’s small closet and eased the door shut. Most of the way. He could see the PC’s start-up screen completed, icons against a black background.
‘Frank?’ a voice called out. A woman’s voice, a little throaty. He listened for more than one tread. Footsteps went by the office door, down toward the master bedroom. ‘Frank Bucks? You here?’
Then the quiet again. He heard movement centering around the bedroom. The intruder checking out the room. He concentrated on breathing without sound. He squatted in the closet, a fur coat tickling his right cheek and throat, a long tweed coat itchy on the other side of his face. Clothes you could wear for five whole minutes in a Houston winter. He pointed the barrel of the gun toward the closet door.
You going to shoot another person? In cold blood?
He counted. Frank and Bucks could return at any second. He didn’t have forever to get out of this house.
Now footsteps approached from down the hall. On the PC screen, the desktop blanked into a colorful array of bubbles bouncing around the monitor. He figured whoever the other intruder was, she hadn’t heard the PC’s annoying trill.
A figure passed before the crack in the closet. Then took a seat at the system, pulled the office chair close to the desk.
He could see her back. A young woman, dressed in a dark blouse, black leather slacks. She turned, he saw her profile.
Tasha. The beautiful stripper with the computer equipment as her gimmick.
He watched her fingers dance on the keyboard, saw slivers of screens appear on the monitor. She took a CD out of her purse, popped it in the tray, moused around the screen. He heard the whir of the hard drive, the whine of processing.
Tasha sat back.
She was working on the computer. What? Copying files? Deleting them by reformatting the hard drive? Sweat inched along his ribs. She could be destroying the evidence Eve needed to dangle over Paul’s head. His teeth bit into his bottom lip. But if he showed himself, what would he have to do to her? He wasn’t going to hurt her and she could tell Frank and Bucks that he’d been in the house. If they had half a brain they’d search it then, find the voice recorders.
But why was she here when they were gone? She’d called their names, parked in the driveway, must’ve had a key to open the door.
He heard the click of keys being pressed.
‘Baby, they’re not here.’ She was talking on a cell phone. ‘Yeah. Yeah. I’m getting it done. We’re good to go.’ A pause. Whit was suddenly conscious of every inch of his body itching, of sweat that felt like it was pooling in his shoes. ‘You ordered the hit yet?’
Whit closed his eyes. There was a long pause.
‘I don’t want details,’ she said. ‘Don’t go there. We ought to go down to the Caribbean for a few days, have a holiday.’ Another pause. ‘Don’t get all pissy-ass on me.’ Pause. ‘That’s right, that’s right.’
Screw the recorders. She knows what’s going down and I need to know.
Tasha said, ‘I’ll call you back,’ and he saw her, in the crack of the door, drop the phone back into her purse, zip it shut. He counted to three and kicked open the closet.
She spun toward him but he had his pistol at her jaw line before she could turn entirely around.
‘Don’t move. Don’t scream,’ he said.
‘Please don’t.’
‘We never did get to finish our chat last night,’ Whit said. ‘Did we?’
21
‘Is there a problem, Officer?’ Gooch said. ‘I just want to get my car and go to my meeting.’
Tell me again why you waited so long to come back,’ the officer said.
‘I ran from the restaurant when the shooting started. Headed to a friend’s house off of Westheimer. Drank a bunch. Slept real late.’ Gooch put a shake in his voice. ‘I haven’t touched a drop in five years. Last night knocked me off the wagon. But I’m okay now. Had two pots of black coffee.’ He wiped at his lip. ‘I got AA over at St Anne’s in twenty minutes, I really need to make it.’
The officer examined the license Gooch offered. It was in the name of Jim O’Connor, a license Gooch had acquired a couple of years ago for emergencies.
Gooch stood at the back of Eve’s car and rattled the Mercedes keys in his pocket. Eve had told him that the car, owned by Paul, was actually registered in the name of a company fronted by an investment broker who was in Paul’s pocket. The broker liked gambling over in Bossier City and Biloxi a great deal on long weekends, and he liked the hidden lines of credit Paul provided him even more.
The cop said, ‘One minute, Mr O’Connor,’ and headed to the patrol car.
Gooch sucked air through his teeth. He hoped that in the dives for cover and the mad run for the exits no one had seen him return fire or shoot the hostage-taker. The second gamble was that the in-the-Bellini-pocket broker would simply say, yes, Mr O’Connor is using my car, there’s no problem. Thinking that O’Connor worked for Paul and was using the car. But that broker would for sure be calling Paul as soon as he got off with the police. The Bellinis would know someone had grabbed Eve’s car from the scene. He was surprised they hadn’t yet, but they were allergic to cops, and there were several cars remaining in the lot.
The officer was taking a long time on the radio. There would be no criminal record for the policeman to access on Jim O’Connor. Gooch smiled. Finally the patrolman signed off, came back, asked Gooch for a statement of what he’d seen last night. Gooch said he’d seen the window shatter, and had run like hell with everyone else into the parking lot. He had not seen the shooters; they’d taken off.
‘And you left this really nice car sitting here?’ the cop said.
‘I thought more of saving my ass than saving the car.’ Gooch bit his lip, put on that anxious face that Whit seemed to wear so often lately. ‘It was nuts. I got to my friend’s house, started drinking, and lost myself in the bottle.’
