Cut Out

by Bob Mayer

Philip Cobb had the look of a defeated man, his formerly round face drawn and lined. “I didn’t have much choice.”

  “If you hadn’t gotten involved with them in the first place, we wouldn’t be sitting here with our entire lives destroyed.” The hopelessness in Lisa Cobb’s voice was obvious to all three men. She was short, only three inches over five feet, and her previously slender build had grown almost anorexic from the stress of the past month. Her short blond hair was combed straight and pulled back severely, highlighting her heart-shaped face. She wore no makeup, nor did she need to; her pale skin was almost translucent. Her despair had been growing for weeks now, and as quickly as she let it show, she pulled it back in. “I’m sorry, Phil. I just can’t—”

  “It’s all right,” her husband said, gathering her in his arms and looking over her shoulder into the unsympathetic eyes of Guyton. Cobb shifted his gaze uneasily to O’Fallon. “When do we get out of here?”

  The agent pointed at a tall, dark-haired woman standing in the back of the courtroom. The woman was well dressed and appeared to be in her mid-thirties. She had the cold look of sexless efficiency that many career women feel forced to adopt, particularly those in male dominated fields. “That’s your contact from the Witness Protection Program. She takes you from here.” O’Fallon reached into his jacket, pulled out a card, and handed it to Lisa. “If you have any problems or need anything, give me a call.” He crooked a finger at the woman, who came forward.

  “Captain Chris Donnelly, this is Philip Cobb and his wife, Lisa.”

  The U.S. marshal didn’t bother extending a hand. She just nodded at the two of them. “We’re getting your stuff transferred to our car.” She looked at the crowd of people. “Let’s get out of this circus.”

  Lisa turned to O’Fallon before following her husband. “I don’t like what happened, but I do appreciate your handling of things.”

  O’Fallon shrugged. “We made the best of a bad situation. I’m sorry you got dragged into it.”

  Lisa ignored Guyton and followed her husband and Donnelly. As they entered the hallway outside the courtroom, two men wearing three-piece suits and sunglasses took up flank positions, pushing away the horde of reporters who were screaming questions.

  “Mr. Cobb, how do you feel having turned on the most powerful organized crime figure in Chicago?”

  “What are you going to do now, Mr. Cobb?”

  “How do you feel being called the ‘real estate agent who put away Michael Torrentino’?”

  “Do you feel the comparison between you and A1 Capone’s bookkeeper is appropriate?”

  “How does it feel to see them sent to jail and walk away a free man when you were guilty too under the RICO Act?”

  Lisa tried to shut out the yelling as she followed Donnelly into a small anteroom. She held onto her husband’s arm, more to prevent herself from collapsing than as a sign of closeness.

  “From here on out you two are my responsibility,” Donnelly explained. “As part of that, you have to do what I say.” She pointed at a small table. “Place all your personal belongings on the tabletop.”

  Philip put his wallet there while Lisa emptied the contents of her purse. Donnelly went through it all expertly, pulling out driver’s licenses, credit cards—anything that had their name on it. “You’re going sterile. You’ll get your new IDs when you get picked up.” She found the card O’Fallon had given Lisa, looked at it, then tossed it in the discard pile. “You can’t have anything like that,” she said. She handed back the considerably thinner wallet and lighter purse.

  “Where are we going now?” Philip asked.

  “We’re getting you out of the city right away. The farther you are from Chicago, the better.”

  “You still didn’t say where,” Philip repeated.

  “We’re going to North Carolina. Charlotte, to be exact.”

  “Are we flying?” Philip asked.

  Donnelly shook her head. “No. The airports may be watched, and even if we use false names, you still might be spotted. Once you get on a plane, they’ll know your destination and have time to set something up. We’re driving all the way down there, so you’d better get comfortable. It’s standard procedure in a case like this.”

  “Doesn’t the government have its own planes?” Philip asked. “That way we wouldn’t be tracked on a commercial flight.”

  “Yes, we have our own planes,” Donnelly replied. “But that’s involving a few too many people for our operation. We want the minimum number to have even the slightest idea where you’re going.”

  Philip wiped his brow with a damp handkerchief. “Can I go to the bathroom before we leave?”

  Donnelly pointed. “Go through that way and use the private one off the judge’s chamber.”

  Philip left and Lisa stood alone, the impersonal gaze of Donnelly and her two men flickering over her. Philip was back in five minutes, and Donnelly led the way out the door and through the back of the courthouse, bypassing the reporters gathered out front on the courthouse steps. The two guards hustled the Cobbs into the backseat of a waiting sedan with darkened windows. Donnelly slid into the passenger seat up front.

  “What if they follow this car?” Philip asked nervously, glancing over his shoulder out the back window as the driver pulled the car into the heavy traffic outside the federal courthouse.

  Donnelly’s face was unemotional. “Don’t worry. Even if they are now, we’ll lose them before we’re out of the state. Trust us.” She turned to Philip. “You turned state’s evidence to get this deal. Torrentino’s people have good reason not to be very happy with you. You made the choices that put you in this position. My recommendation is not to make it any harder.”

  “What happens when we get to Charlotte?” Philip asked.

  “That’s where we do what’s called a dead drop,” Donnelly said. Seeing the confused expressions on both their faces, she explained further. “I know who you are, as do the people in my field office. We’re taking you to Charlotte and we’re going to put you in a motel just outside of town. Another field office will pick you up. I don’t know which one and I won’t ever know. That way my people and I will have no idea where you are. The people picking you up at the motel will have your new identities but they won’t know who you were. The motel is a ‘cut-out’ between the sections of the Witness Protection Program. We’re a very compartmentalized organization because we have to be. Each compartment has no idea of what’s happening in the other compartments. It makes everything more secure.”

  “Who will know who we really are and where we are?” Lisa asked.

  “The main office in D.C. will have that information, but I can assure you that it will never get out. There are only four people on the access roster to that information and all have the highest clearances. The biggest threat you have of being discovered,” she added, “is if you do something yourself to give away your former identity. There’s little doubt that Torrentino’s people will be looking for you, and they have connections with organized crime all over the country.”

  “Great, just great,” Philip muttered nervously.

  A look of disgust flickered across Donnelly’s face. Lisa Cobb saw it, even though her husband hadn’t. It was the same look she’d caught on almost everyone’s face since the day the police had shown up at her door to tell her an attempt had been made on her husband’s life. Her initial concern had changed to shock as the circumstances of the attack became clear to her. Philip’s involvement with organized crime, followed by the information that he had been in that building visiting a mistress, had hit like a double blast from a shotgun, shattering the illusion in which Lisa had wrapped her life.

  Lisa Cobb had grown up on the south side of Chicago, and that experience had convinced her that somehow she was smarter than those who’d had a more sheltered upbringing. She garnered a scholarship to the University of Chicago, where she found herself in a new environment—one where street smarts paid little dividend. She received her degree in graphic art
and threw herself into a job with a small local newspaper outside of Chicago.

  She met Philip after her second year there when he came to town to teach a seminar on real estate investment. He represented a different world to her—the world into which she was now trying to fit. It had just seemed the right thing when after three months he asked her to marry him. A year later their daughter, Melissa, was born. Lisa left her job and threw herself full time into being a mother. For four years life had gone well; Philip’s business boomed and they moved out of the city into an exclusive suburb.

  Their lives fell apart three years ago when Melissa, then four, began having trouble walking. She would fall over unexpectedly and complain of dizziness. Lisa took her to a doctor; the verdict surpassed her worst fears—a malignant growth in the child’s brain.

  For two years, Melissa battled the cancer, and Lisa devoted herself to supporting her daughter. The toll on Philip was something Lisa had ignored, to a certain extent not even allowing him to participate in the effort to save their daughter. Not only had she ignored the emotional cost of the illness, but in her preoccupation with Melissa, Lisa had failed to notice the signs that Philip’s business was failing miserably. As the real estate boom came to an end, he was left holding numerous downtown office properties that he couldn’t unload. That burden, combined with the high cost of Melissa’s medical treatments, rapidly ate up whatever savings they had and put them deep into debt.

  Lisa shivered in the backseat, her head resting uncomfortably against the cold glass of the darkened side window. Lately she’d come to realize that she had tuned out Philip to the point where she had no idea what he was doing.

  That realization forced her to confront another, darker, one: how much had her lack of interest and attention led her husband to do what he did? Lisa closed her eyes and forced her mind off that path. She didn’t want to think about it. She surrendered herself to the wave of exhaustion that she’d been keeping at bay and was asleep within minutes, the mutter of the engine and the noise of the tires soothing her mind as the miles from Chicago and their lost life accumulated.

  CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

  28 OCTOBER, 11:47 p.m.

  Lisa opened her eyes and looked blearily around the rear of the car, trying to determine what was different. It took a few seconds but then she realized that they were no longer moving. The dome light went on as Donnelly opened the front passenger door and beckoned. “Time to go,” she said, getting out.

  “What?” Philip mumbled, peering out the window at the dimly lit parking lot. A one-story motel—The Continental—was spread out in front of them. The office was to the far left, along with a flashing light that beckoned to the road weary on the interstate. Underneath the light was a sign indicating that the Firefly Lounge was open until two in the morning. A scattering of cars was gathered around the entrance to the lounge, but the motel’s business seemed to be slow, with only two cars parked in front of rooms. The rumble of the interstate was close by, and a string of fast-food restaurants and an all-night truck stop marked the two-lane road on which the motel was located.

  “Are we there?” Philip asked as they exited the back of the car.

  In response, Donnelly pointed at the door directly in front of them. “Room one-oh-seven. Here’s the key.”

  Philip didn’t move. “Aren’t you going to stay with us?”

  Donnelly shook her head. “My job was to get you here. I’ve done that.”

  “But who’s going to protect us?” Philip protested.

  “No one knows you’re here except us and the people picking you up,” Donnelly explained wearily.

  “Well, where are the people picking us up?” Philip demanded.

  “They’ll be here in the morning. We need time to clear out, and we weren’t sure exactly what time we’d get here. We made better time than I expected.”

  “But why can’t you stay until they arrive?” he asked.

  Donnelly’s patience was wearing thin. “I don’t know the people who are meeting you. They don’t know me or my people, and I don’t want them to. That helps ensure your safety and the safety of all the other people in the system. I’ve already explained this to you several times.” She jerked her head toward the door of the room, where the driver had unceremoniously dumped their suitcases. “Now, it’s time for you to go in there, and it’s time for me to head for home.”

  “What if we were followed?” Philip pressed.

  Donnelly’s patience snapped. She leaned forward, putting her face less than a foot from his. “I’ve listened to you whine for ten hours. I don’t want to hear any more and I don’t have to. I’ve done my job. We weren’t followed, I can assure you of that. You’ll be picked up in the morning; meanwhile you’ll be safe.” She pulled two cards out of her pocket and handed one to Philip and one to Lisa. The card had a phone number printed in the center and a four-digit code on the bottom right. “This is the number to call if you ever have any problems. Use that personal code to identify yourself and pass the security check.” She glanced over her shoulder as she settled back into the car. “Good-bye.”

  29 OCTOBER, 12:03 a.m.

  Lisa threw herself onto the bed and stared up blankly at the ceiling. Her husband had gone directly into the shower, and she could hear the roar of the water through the thin wall. The weeks between the day her world had fallen apart and the end of the trial seemed like a blur. She didn’t even feel as though she was really here in North Carolina. A part of her kept expecting to wake up from the nightmare.

  Philip came out of the bathroom and threw on his clothes.

  “Where are you going?” she asked as he headed for the outside door.

  “I’m going to get some sodas from the machine. You want one?”

  Lisa shook her head and sank back on the bed. Five minutes later, Philip was back, two Pepsi’s in hand. He popped one, pouring it into the plastic glass from the bathroom, and set the other on top of the TV. He was nervous, flitting about the room, glancing out the curtains every so often, checking his watch constantly.

  “She said it would be morning before the other people showed,” Lisa noted from the bed.

  “Yeah, I know.” Philip lit a cigarette and sank down into one of the chairs.

  “I can’t believe they’d just leave us like this,” Lisa said.

  “They don’t care. They got what they wanted from me and now I’m just a pain to them.”

  Philip sat in the chair, his eyes unfocused. Lisa lay on the bed in her misery, still not quite sure how to resolve all that had happened in the past months and shelve it away in her mind. She realized some time ago that her big mistake had been marrying Philip in the first place, but it was a realization too late in coming. She was twenty-nine now and she’d given seven years of her life to a man who’d effectively trashed hers in one day. Lisa knew a little about the mob from her youth, and she very much doubted that they would be sympathetic if she tried explaining how she no longer loved the man who had turned state’s evidence. They would most likely not even give her a chance to explain. Divorce had not been an option in the whirlwind of events following the attempt on Philip’s life.

  Philip suddenly stood, startling her. “I’m going down to the lounge. You try and get some sleep.”

  Lisa frowned. “Why don’t you stay in the room?”

  “I’m going nuts in here,” he snapped and then he was gone.

  Lisa felt the emptiness close in—the same emptiness she’d felt eight years ago in her drafty studio in suburban Chicago. She rolled off the bed and pulled on her jacket. Anything would be better than staying here alone. She left the room and walked along the covered sidewalk toward the lounge. She pushed open the door and stepped in, pausing for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the dim light inside. Philip was nowhere to be seen. There were about a dozen people lined up at the bar and a scattering of couples at the tables between the bar and the booths that lined the far wall.

  Lisa felt slightly foolish. Perhaps
Philip had gone to the men’s room. She moved toward the bar, keeping an eye on the restroom doors at the far end of the lounge. She took a stool at the end of the bar, with a comfortable separation of one empty chair between her and the next person. After ordering a ginger ale from the bartender, she turned in her seat and checked the room again.

  Her heart froze as she spotted Philip seated in a booth, a woman at his side. Thoughts tumbled in her brain. Who was the woman? A part of her wanted to believe it was someone Philip had just picked up in the bar, but the way the two sat close together made it clear that they were familiar with each other. The answer strained to be heard, but Lisa didn’t want to accept it. She had never met the woman who had been so instrumental in the destruction of her life, but somehow she knew that the woman seated with Philip was Jill Fastone. How could the woman have known where they were?

  Philip must have called her! Lisa was so shocked that her anger stayed at bay for a half minute. Tripping on the heels of the anger, though, came nausea. She staggered off the bar stool toward the ladies’ room, not caring if Philip saw her. She shoved the door open and knelt by the toilet, heaving up the scant contents of her stomach.

  12:17 A.M.

  In the bar, Philip turned to Jill, at a loss. Nothing was making much sense anymore. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  Jill had a vaguely smug look on her face. “Where to?”

  Philip was already on his feet. “The room. We’re going to have to straighten all this out. I have to tell her. I can give up my old life but I can’t give up you.”

  Jill laughed, shaking her head, as she followed him out.

  12:18 A.M.

  “This is Surveillance. They’re back. I’ve got two entering one-oh-seven.”

  The team leader—code name Master—acknowledged the transmission from the back of the panel van parked in the darkness on the far side of the motel, out of sight of the Cobbs’ room. “This is Master. Roger. Description? Over.”