‘She’s the long-lost mother of my friend.’
‘Don’t give me lines.’ Bucks stood. ‘Where is Eve and your buddy? Mosley, is that his name?’
‘I don’t know where they’re at now. They’re moving. Don’t want to get caught.’
‘Gooch,’ Bucks said. ‘Consider your situation. You should have a goal. To continue breathing in the next five minutes. Do what you need to accomplish that goal.’
‘They wanted Eve’s car, I said I’d get it for them,’ Gooch said.
‘Where’s the five million?’
‘In my wallet.’
‘Seriously.’ Bucks sat back down again.
‘It’s just you and me here,’ Gooch said. ‘So bag the act. You’ve got the money and you’re blaming Eve. It’s a smart move. You’ve played well off the situation. I’d applaud if I could.’
‘I don’t have the money, asswipe.’ Bucks grabbed Gooch by his shirt, shook him hard. ‘I don’t have the goddamned money!’ He forced his voice to calm, forced his breathing to go steady.
‘I think you do-’
Bucks hoisted Gooch’s head up by the hair, whispered hard in his ear. ‘I don’t have it and I never did, you idiot asshole. Eve has it. If she says I’ve got it, she’s lying, she’s playing you for a fool.’ He let go of Gooch’s hair, stalked around the room. ‘Jesus, I’ve hired three hit men to find her. I’m spending a fortune I don’t have to find this woman. If I had all that money, I would have left town, dumped it in a Swiss banking account, gotten the hell out of Houston immediately. I wouldn’t bother with a frame. I don’t want a job with Paul that bad. You think he’s ever going to give me five million? You think this is my dream job? I used to be somebody.’ Bucks steadied his voice. The panic he’d been fighting down felt like it might surge, blacken his heart, short-circuit his brain. ‘I am somebody. I don’t have it, Gooch.’
‘I,’ Gooch said, ‘don’t care.’
‘You better care. Who shot Nicky? You? Your friend?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It will to Paul. I can tell him it wasn’t you. If you help me.’
Gooch said nothing.
‘Y’all have the money. I need the money.’ He got his voice low, put his mouth close to Gooch’s ear. ‘Paul will kill you if he thinks you can’t help him, okay? But I’ll cut a separate deal with you and your friends. And you get to live.’
Gooch considered. ‘What’s the deal?’
‘We could split the money and I can make sure Paul never bothers any of us again. But I have to have that cash. Listen, Paul can cut a new deal with his buyers. Just buy half the coke tonight, not the whole shipment. It’s not ideal but it would preserve the deal, at least for a few more days. And you would still get half the money, and you get to live.’
‘Let’s say you and I cut a deal. What’s to keep Paul from coming in and shooting me at any second? While I’m your captive I don’t have a single guarantee,’ Gooch said. ‘And even if you get half the money, you just let me go?’
‘You’re right,’ Bucks said. ‘You don’t have a guarantee. Except my word that I’ll keep Paul from killing you because I can’t afford to have your death sour a deal with Eve and Mosley. But I need you to tell Mosley and Eve to give me half the money. Or Paul will come at you like that guy in Detroit he chain-whipped to death. Man, I saw pictures. You don’t want to end like that.’
Gooch said nothing, watched the ceiling. ‘They don’t have the money. They can’t cut the deal you want.’ Gooch closed his eyes. ‘It’s really painful to watch a mind work at such a slow pace.’
‘Painful,’ Bucks said. ‘Friend, you’re gonna learn nine new meanings of the word.’ He patted Gooch’s cheek. ‘If you won’t deal, you’ll just have to take what comes. I have an idea on how to keep you on the table as a bargaining chip.’ He went to the top of the stairs. ‘Dr Brewer, come up here, please.’ Chad Channing stressed the importance of keeping all your bases covered.
Twenty minutes later, Bucks went back downstairs. Tasha Strong was on the phone. She nodded, hung up, and Bucks sat down across from her. Frank Polo sat at the kitchen table, sipping a glass of red wine, rubbing his face. The blond kid, Gary, was on the sofa, frowning, while Doc Brewer, who had tended to Frank’s injury last night, returned to his interrupted work of stitching up a cut on Gary’s head. The muscle assigned to watch the Pie Shack lot, Max, with the spare tire now on his Mustang, was out in the garage surveying the damage to Eve’s car.
‘That was Paul,’ Tasha said. ‘Wants the guy brought to his house. Easier to keep him hid.’
‘The guy still hasn’t regained consciousness,’ Bucks said. Forced himself not to look over at Doc Brewer. ‘I mean, a head injury like that, he may be out for a while.’
‘Long while,’ Doc Brewer chimed in.
‘So he can’t give us information yet on Eve.’ Bucks crossed his arms, looked hard at Tasha Strong. ‘Tell me again what happened.’
‘Paul wanted to see if there were any incriminating files on Eve’s computer. I didn’t think there would be, because she would have taken the whole laptop, but she didn’t.’
‘Why you?’
‘I used to be a Web designer, I’m comfortable with computers,’ Tasha said. ‘He said go check it out, so I did.’
‘Why didn’t he ask me?’ Bucks said.
‘Ask him,’ Tasha said.
‘Sounds like a matter of trust to me.’ Frank sipped at his wine.
‘Shut the hell up,’ Bucks said.
‘So I come inside with the key Paul gave me, and I hear a noise. I go up to check the computer, but before I can do anything, Mosley surprises me with the gun. And then he starts asking questions. About you, Bucks.’
‘What about me?’
‘Where you live. Where you eat. How often you got muscle with you. Are you even a decent shot. Stuff like that.’ Tasha gave him a thin smile. ‘They must be planning to come after you. Tit for tat, since you put a hit on them.’
Bucks commanded himself not to flinch. ‘And what did you say?’
‘I told him I didn’t know you well. Didn’t know where you lived, anyplace you hung out other than the Topaz. He fired a shot, through the window, to scare me. I told him I didn’t know. Then he told me to stay quiet when y’all came in, and he went out the window.’ She folded her arms.
‘You find anything interesting on Eve’s computer?’ Bucks asked.
‘I didn’t have time to look. I’ll do that now.’ She stood.
‘We’ll take the computer with us when we move Guchinski over to Paul’s house,’ Bucks said. ‘All have a look together.’
‘Whatever,’ Tasha said.
Frank set down his wineglass. ‘If there was anything valuable on the computer, Mosley would have taken it.’
‘Shut up,’ Bucks said again, and Frank laughed against the rim of his wineglass.
‘Mosley might have copied the information instead,’ Tasha said. ‘If I hadn’t caught him, no one would know he was here. And they’d have information we didn’t know they had.’
‘Major strategic advantage,’ Bucks said.
‘Baby, You’re My Moron,’ Frank sang.
Doc Brewer stood in the kitchen alcove. He was a short, gray little man with a face the color of faded concrete, and his voice was always soft, as though he preferred to sidle through life unnoticed. ‘Usually I don’t volunteer my opinions,’ he said, ‘but look at the other side of the coin. If he wasn’t here taking something, he was leaving something behind.’ Tapped his ear.
Everyone shut up. Bucks stood on a chair, inspecting the ornate light fixtures. He looked along the window- panes. He pulled the phone off the wall, checked its back. He ducked his head under the kitchen table.
‘Well, hello there.’ Bucks reached for the digital voice recorder.
