Friction, page 29
When he reached the Gilroys’ house, he ran along the side of it toward the rear. He heard the squeal of Holly’s brakes, her car door being shut, her running footsteps slapping the wet pavement of the driveway.
He reached the back door mere seconds ahead of her. He raised his hand to knock, but she rushed up behind him and grabbed his forearm in a two-handed grip. Her breath coming in fast pants, she said, “Crawford, whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t. I beg you. For Georgia’s sake.”
The door came open suddenly. “What the bloody hell?” Joe Gilroy, standing behind the screen door, took in the situation at a glance. To Holly, he said, “I tried to tell you, didn’t I? I’m calling the police.”
“I am the police,” Crawford said.
“You’re a hazard. This time you go to jail.” Joe turned away.
Crawford was vaguely aware of Holly losing her balance when he shook off her grasp, but through the screen, he could see Joe going for the phone, and he had to stop him.
He pulled on the door handle. Discovering it locked, he jerked on it repeatedly and viciously until the old-fashioned clasp gave way, then he flung open the door and rushed inside.
He was across the kitchen in two strides, snatching the cordless phone out of Joe’s hand, and throwing it to the floor.
Grace appeared, her hand at her throat, crying out in alarm as the two men went at each other. Joe threw punches that would have leveled anyone weaker and slower to react. Crawford dodged the pounding fists and at the same time landed a few well-placed punches.
Holly cried out, “Crawford! Stop! Stop!”
Crawford saw that Joe was becoming winded and used that to his advantage. He drove his shoulder into the older man’s midriff and pushed him backward until he came up against the counter, then planted his hand in the center of Joe’s chest and lodged his knee up between his thighs.
Joe was red-faced with fury. His teeth were clenched. “I’m going to kill you.”
“Maybe,” Crawford said, breathing hard. “Later. But right now, you’re going to get Georgia up—”
“Like hell I am.”
He tried to wrestle free from Crawford’s restraining hand, but Crawford jammed his knee directly beneath Joe’s testicles. “You’re going to get Georgia up and dressed and…and leave. Take her away from here, Joe. Please,” he said, his voice cracking. “Get her away from me.”
It never failed to freak Smitty out, this thing that Chuck Otterman did with the fifty-cent piece. It was like he was trying to hypnotize you or something, but it had the opposite effect on Smitty. Rather than lull him, it made him nervous as a whore in church.
Every time he came to this place, he dreaded it more, and always considered himself lucky when he was able to leave under his own power, drive away in his own car, all his parts still attached, his heart lub-dubbing in a more or less regular rhythm.
The only reason he risked coming here was because doing business with Otterman was so profitable. But their transactions required him to drive for miles through an eerie swamp, nary a light to be seen after sundown, to this fishing cabin that had probably been put together by a coon-ass using Elmer’s and thumbtacks.
He’d once asked Otterman what state it was in, Texas or Louisiana.
“Are you into geography?”
“Not really.”
“Then what difference does it make?”
The difference it made was a long list of federal crimes involving words like “interstate trafficking,” but Smitty kept his concerns to himself and had continued to make periodic trips to this old fishing shack way out in the middle of spooky-effing-nowhere.
The corrugated tin roof leaked. A bucket had been placed on the floor to catch the constant drip from the hard rain that contributed to the chilling atmosphere. The plunking sound the drops made as they splashed into the bucket was driving Smitty to distraction, but Otterman seemed unbothered as he set aside his coin and counted out hundred-dollar bills onto the table between them, forming neat stacks of fifty. When he had ten stacks, he passed them one by one to Smitty, who placed them in a pouch.
With a flourish, Smitty zipped it up and flashed Otterman a grin. “Those boys guarantee their product. You have any trouble with the guns, you be sure to tell me.”
“You can count on that.”
Otterman’s tone wasn’t the friendly kind that Smitty had been hoping for. Truth was, it had the undercurrent of a threat and made him need to pee. With false bravado, he said, “When you need more, you know who to call.” And he winked. “Always a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Otterman.” He stood up.
“Sit down.”
Smitty dropped back into his seat. For what seemed like an endless time, the only sounds in the room were the incessant drips, the rain striking the metal roof like a hail of bullets, and distant rumbles of thunder.
Finally, Otterman said, “Pat Connor. Know that name?”
“I don’t believe I do.”
“Prentiss policeman.”
“Oh well, no wonder.” Smitty shot a laugh over his shoulder at the two men standing behind him. “I don’t have many friends among enforcers of law and order.”
“Earlier this evening, Connor met with me in your crappy nightclub.”
“What about?”
“A couple hours later, he died in his kitchen.”
“Ticker gave out?”
“He was shot dead while pouring himself a drink.”
Now Smitty really had to pee. “You don’t say? Huh. I hadn’t heard that. The clubs don’t close till two a.m., so I don’t often see the evening news.”
“He was discovered too late to make tonight’s news.” Otterman glanced up at the man standing at Smitty’s right shoulder. “But I have it on good authority that two bullets were fired into the back of Connor’s skull.”
Smitty whistled, or tried to. His lips were too rubbery to pucker. “That ought to do it, all right.”
“To have been executed like that, Connor must have let down someone who was counting on him to deliver. Money. Goods. Information. Something of value like that.”
Smitty actually flinched when Otterman suddenly sat forward and leaned toward him across the table. “Do you know Crawford Hunt?”
He screwed up his face as though thinking hard. “Crawford Hunt, Crawford Hunt. The name sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place him.”
Otterman said mildly, “Take your time. Think about it.”
After a few seconds, Smitty pretended to have suddenly remembered. “Oh, yeah. Wasn’t he the guy—”
“The Texas Ranger.”
“Right, right,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Wasn’t it him who was in the courtroom when it got shot up this week? Is that who you’re talking about?”
Otterman flipped the coin, caught it and formed a fist around it, then leaned even closer toward Smitty. “You’re a pimp, a crook, and a creep. The only reason I tolerate your company is so I don’t have to personally deal with the backwoods, redneck lowlifes around here who supply surprisingly good guns.
“But if you ever lie to me again, not only is your lucrative sideline with me finished, I’ll also burn your ratty clubs to the ground, and then stick the barrel of one of those pump-actions up your anus and pull the trigger.”
Smitty swallowed and bobbed his head in complete understanding.
Otterman sat back and calmly resumed rolling the coin across the backs of his fingers. “Let’s try to have an honest conversation. I’ll go first. After I left your club tonight, Crawford Hunt was seen there. In your company, Smitty. He also had a woman with him. They carried somebody out.”
“His old man. Who’s a sorry drunk. If you were from around here, you’d know the history. Anyway, tonight, he was worse off than usual. I had to call Crawford to come get him and cover his tab.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You have no other dealings with Crawford Hunt?”
“Shit, no. I hate his guts. A few years back, he busted me for pubic lewdness. A guy can’t get a blowjob in his own car?”
“Who was the woman?”
“Can’t remember her name, but she could shrink-wrap your dick.”
“The woman with Hunt, you idiot.”
“Oh. The judge.”
“Holly Spencer?”
“She doesn’t look like any judge I ever faced. Firm tits, smokin’ ass.”
Otterman didn’t react for several seconds, then he cracked a smile that sent chills down Smitty’s spine. “You’re the expert on that.”
He forced himself to chuckle. “Well, I reckon everybody’s gotta be good at something.”
Otterman’s smile relaxed until it was no more. “The boys will see you out.”
With no more notice than that, “the boys” jerked him to his feet with such force his teeth clicked together. He was supported between them as they dragged him toward the door.
It occurred to Smitty in a moment of blinding, terrifying clarity that he’d forgotten the money pouch, and that, this time, he wasn’t leaving the fishing shack under his own power.
Crawford’s plea to his father-in-law had left the four of them in a bizarre freeze-frame. He was the first to move. He turned his head and looked at Holly. In a gruff voice, he asked, “Are you hurt?”
Astounded by the sudden turnabout, she looked at him with bafflement. “Hurt?”
“You lost your balance on the step.”
“Oh. No, I’m…I’m okay.”
Still holding her gaze, he said, “You understand now why I wanted you here, to see this, hear it.”
“I believe so.”
“I still want custody of Georgia. This doesn’t change that.” Turning back to his father-in-law, he said, “We’ll continue our fight, Joe. Once all this is over, we’ll pick up where you threw that last punch if that’s how you want it. But you’ve got to get Georgia away from here tonight. Right now.”
He lowered his knee so that it was no longer wedged between Joe’s thighs and withdrew his hand from the man’s chest. Having seen for herself the ferocity of Joe Gilroy’s hatred for Crawford, Holly halfway expected him to launch another physical attack. He didn’t, but his facial features remained granite hard, his eyes piercing.
He said, “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about. What’s happened?”
Rain had plastered Crawford’s hair to his forehead, but he seemed impervious to it and his wet clothes. “I know who the courtroom shooter was. So does Holly.”
Joe’s eyes cut to her. “It’s true,” she said. “I identified a Prentiss police officer as the gunman.”
“How’d you figure it out?”
“Too long to go into,” Crawford said. “But an hour or less after we made this discovery, he turned up dead. Murdered inside his house. And it wasn’t pretty.”
Grace made a mournful sound. “Let’s all sit down. I’ll make coffee.”
“There’s no time for coffee, Grace,” Crawford said. “Start gathering up only what you’ll absolutely need to take with you.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. A few days, maybe.”
“Hold on, Grace,” Joe said when it appeared that she would do as Crawford asked. “I haven’t heard anything that compels me to pack up my family and sneak out of town in the middle of the night like a band of gypsies.”
“Can’t you for once just do something without having to be the fucking commander?”
Holly took a handful of Crawford’s shirt and pulled him backward, then stepped between him and his father-in-law. “Mr. Gilroy, Mrs. Gilroy,” she said, turning her head to include Grace, “we’ve concluded that I wasn’t the intended target in the courtroom. Crawford was.”
Joe glanced beyond her toward Crawford. “That doesn’t surprise me. But why, specifically?”
“Do you know a man named Chuck Otterman?” Crawford asked.
“I’ve heard of him, sure. Runs the drilling outfit? What’s he got to do with it?”
As concisely as possible, Holly explained the situation. “Crawford has Texas Rangers in the Houston office trying to determine what the connection is and why Otterman would conspire to have him killed.”
Crawford took over for her. “In the meantime, he called me.”
That took Holly aback. “The phone call you mentioned. It was Chuck Otterman?”
“I recognized his voice.” He repeated the brief conversation. “He said there was worse coming my way, and I take that threat seriously. Everything else he’s done has been a sick warning. The park video, trashing Georgia’s room, and—”
“Trashing her room?”
“Joe, we can’t explain it all now,” he said impatiently. “Bottom line, Neal Lester, for reasons of his own, and, in part, thanks to you, is trying to pin all this on me.”
“All I did was ask—”
“I know what you asked, and it was bullshit. But Neal has run with it. I slipped away tonight, but if he finds me, he can hold me for forty-eight hours before charging me, and if I’m in lockup, I can’t protect Georgia, and I go a little crazy when I think of Otterman getting near her. Touching her.”
“This threat you say he issued—”
“I don’t say it, he did it.”
“Okay, but he didn’t mention Georgia.”
“Dammit, Joe, are you willing to risk her life just to win an argument with me?”
“Don’t lay any of this on me,” the older man shouted back. “It’s a mess of your own making.”
Crawford closed his eyes briefly, and when he reopened them, they were bright with an intensity of feeling. “You gotta know how hard it is for me to come here and ask you for a goddamn thing, but you must put our quarrel aside and get Georgia out of here.” The older man opened his mouth to speak, but Crawford headed him off. “And it’s gotta be now.”
Holly divided a look between the two adversaries, still facing off, each as unbending as the other. Taking matters into her own hands, she walked over to Grace. “If you’ll show me where things are, I’ll help you pack.”
While Grace, Joe, and Holly hurriedly collected and packed essentials, Crawford moved from room to room, checking the street out front as well as the back of the property, watching for the stealthy approach of policemen or squad cars, because he figured Neal would eventually think to look for him here.
And so might Otterman or his emissaries.
At some point, Grace brought him a towel. He’d dried off as well as he could while remaining vigilant.
“Daddy?”
When Georgia spoke his name, he turned away from a window overlooking the street, and the sight of her caused a pinching pain in his heart. Holly had quietly gathered articles of clothing from her drawers and packed them in her suitcase, but they’d waited until the last possible moment to wake her up and get her dressed.
She looked sleepy and uncertain as she gazed up at him. Mr. Bunny was clutched to her chest.
“Grandma said we’re going on a trip. I don’t want to.”
“Sure you do.” Crawford picked her up and hugged her close. Her arms closed tightly around his neck, her legs around his waist.
“Can I go to your house?”
“Not this time.”
She laid her head on his shoulder and turned her face into his neck. This was tearing him apart, but he had to be the grown-up, the brave one. He infused his voice with false enthusiasm. “You’re going to have a great time.”
“That’s what Holly said.”
“She’s right. Grandma and Grandpa have lots of fun things planned. But you have to be a good girl and mind everything they say. Okay?”
“Why can’t you come?”
“Because I have to work. But I’ll be thinking about you the whole time, and wishing I was with you.” He felt her chest hitch with a small hiccup that presaged tears. He told himself she was crying from sleepiness, from being startled awake and confronted with a situation that was out of the ordinary and beyond her understanding. But whatever the reason, he couldn’t bear parting from her when she cried.
Rubbing circles on her back, he murmured into her hair, “Come on now. You’re going to be all right. Let’s get you into the car.”
“Will you carry me?”
He squeezed his eyes shut to keep his own tears inside. “You bet.”
Holding her tightly against him, he carried her through the house, now dark, and into the attached garage, where Joe was placing her suitcase, the last of the luggage, into the trunk. When he would have walked past Crawford without saying anything, Crawford addressed him.
His father-in-law stopped and looked at him.
“You’re the only person I trust to do this, Joe. I know you’ll protect her as fiercely as I would.”
Joe held his gaze, gave a curt nod, then got into the driver’s seat.
Without further delay, he carried Georgia to the backseat door, which Holly was holding open for them. He settled Georgia into her seat. When she started to reach for the straps, he said, “Let me buckle you in this time.”
“Mr. Bunny, too.”
“Of course.” He clicked the fasteners and made sure they were secure, then placed his hands on either side of her face and pressed his forehead against hers. “Be sweet for Daddy.”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“More than anything?” she asked, repeating what he often said.
“More than anything.” He kissed her forehead, her hair, her cheek, and finally her lips.
But when he tried to back away, she reached for him. “Daddy? Where we’re going, will you be there tomorrow?”
“Probably not tomorrow.”
“When?”
“As soon as I can get there.”
Then before he let her forlorn expression change his mind about the necessity of this separation, he kissed her again, quickly stepped back, and closed the car door. She placed her hand flat against the window glass. On the outside of it, he kissed her palm, then aligned his large hand with her tiny one, and they stayed that way until Joe backed the car out.
Chapter 27
