by Kara Lennox
“The day Guido broke a girl’s ribs, I decided to call it quits. I didn’t want to work for Frank and I didn’t want my ribs broke. That’s when I moved out of Carlos’s crib. Went to Conroe. Got most of my business through the internet, though when times were slow I still could work a corner with the best of ’em. Thought I was safe, but he found me.”
Elizabeth was sick. She didn’t want to know this about her father, but she knew she had to stick with this interview. It might be their only chance.
“Conroe was a whole new territory for Frank. That’s when he hooked up with a partner. And if I thought Frank was controlling, this supposedly silent partner of his was ten times worse. I could not do business—he made it impossible. And the girls who gave in to him—they were treated worse than dogs. I heard he was mean just for the sake of it—you know the kind of man I’m talking about.”
“Like my dad,” Tonda said under her breath.
“And I didn’t even have Carlos on my side. I was all alone. I finally told this partner that I was done. If he didn’t leave me alone I was going to the police and telling them everything I know. I figured he’d either back off...or kill me. That was when Frank stepped in. He kinda liked me, I think. Didn’t want to see me hurt. He met me at the Quikki Market, tried to sweet-talk me into falling in line. But I wasn’t going for it. Then he tried to pay me to leave town, but I’d already uprooted and moved once. I have a kid in Houston, you know? I only see her once a month. If I moved away, I’d never see her.”
Elizabeth’s heart pounded in her ears. This was great information—if only she could stomach it.
“So who is this partner?” Elizabeth figured whoever he was, he’d just become her Suspect Number One.
“Nobody knows who he is. He’s like a ghost. Appears out of nowhere, usually in the dark. He’s a voice in your ear, that’s all.”
“So you never saw him?”
“Not clearly. He’s tall. That’s about all I remember.”
“What race?”
Yazmin shrugged. “I don’t know. There were a couple of girls who were using Frank’s death as a chance to break away, go back to being independent. One of them got mugged and beat up pretty good. The other disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Tonda repeated. “As in, permanently disappeared?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Her name was Maggie. White girl, red hair. I only met her once.”
“I don’t blame you for being scared, Yazmin. If you want protection, I can get it for you. It might take a little time.” She would have to convince Daniel to take the woman in temporarily or put her up in a hotel or hire a bodyguard for her. But Daniel was a reasonable man, and he might just do it.
“No, I don’t think so. I’m tired of trusting other people. I’d rather watch my own back.”
“I understand.” She reached into her purse and switched off the microphone app. She was in no danger, and she wanted to talk privately to the two women. She grabbed a business card and handed it to Yazmin. “If you ever want to talk to me—just talk, you know, about problems—I work at a free clinic in Houston. I’m hoping to be back at work next week sometime.” If she was lucky. She wrote her cell number on the back of the card. “Meanwhile, if you think of anything else, you can call me anytime day or night. If you’re scared or you find out anything about this silent partner—please let me know.”
“I will.” Yazmin tucked the card into her shoulder bag. “You’re okay.”
Tonda beamed. “Told you she was.”
Elizabeth caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. She peered across the restaurant to the hostess stand. “Oh, crap.”
“What?”
“Is there a back way out of here?”
Yazmin nodded. “That’s why I wanted to meet here.”
“Go. Now. Use it. I think I was followed.” It would take too long to explain what was really going on.
Yazmin didn’t hesitate. She scooted out of the booth and bolted for the ladies’ room.
“There’s a maintenance exit in the hallway near the bathrooms,” Tonda explained.
“We’re about to have company,” Elizabeth whispered. “Tonda, please understand. They brought me to the mall. But they promised I could meet with you alone.”
Tonda looked horrified. She placed her hands flat on the table, as if this was the only way she could keep from lunging for Elizabeth’s throat. “You lied to us?”
“I’m afraid I did. It was the only way they’d let me meet with you at all.”
“Cops?” she said warily. “Maybe I better go to the ladies’, too.”
“They’re not cops. Exactly.”
“Oh. Your buddy Hudson.”
“Not my buddy right now,” she murmured.
It seemed as if they were going to sit the next booth over. Didn’t they trust her? Maybe she shouldn’t have turned off the mic, though she didn’t think that was the reason they’d come. They’d appeared too quickly.
She waved to them. “Hello, boys.” Her icy tone belied the friendly greeting. “’Fraid your cover is blown.”
“Oh,” Hudson said. He looked at Elizabeth, then Tonda, then back at Elizabeth. “Where’s Jazz?”
“Bathroom,” Elizabeth said.
Hudson shot a panicked look toward the restroom hallway while Joe didn’t waste time; he headed in that direction. “You let her go alone?”
“She’s not my prisoner, Hudson. She came to me willingly.”
“She’s a treasure trove of information. You’ve barely scratched the surface. You can’t just let her walk away like that.”
“Well, I just did, didn’t I?”
Joe returned from the bathrooms. “She’s gone.”
Elizabeth was incensed. “Thanks to you. You didn’t have to come barging in here. Did you hear the code phrase? No. You had no right—”
“The mic went silent. That’s reason enough.”
Jeez. They must have been waiting right outside the restaurant door.
“I needed to talk to her confidentially. I couldn’t do that with you two listening in.”
Tonda looked outraged. “You’re wearing a wire?”
“I had to, Tonda. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Whatever. Let me out.”
“Tonda—”
“I said, let me out.”
Reluctantly, Elizabeth slid out of the booth. Tonda threw five dollars on the table. “Don’t want to stick you with the check for our coffee.” She strolled out of the restaurant like a queen.
Though Elizabeth was devastated to have disappointed Tonda like that, she was proud of the girl for standing up for herself, not being cowed by the two rather intimidating men looming over the table.
Hudson took a couple of steps after Tonda as though he was going to stop her.
“Let her go, man,” Joe said. “We’re not going to get anything out of either of them now.”
Hudson blew out a breath and heaved himself into the booth. “If I just could have questioned her—”
“You could have. Eventually.” Elizabeth put as much starch into her voice as she could. “I was building rapport with her. She was starting to trust me. But maybe that’s something you don’t understand. Trust?”
“I did trust you. Until you warned Yazmin. That’s why she took off, right? You saw us and warned her?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t going to betray those women any more than I already had. You may be a great cop, Hudson. But I know these women. I talk to them every day. If you’d tried to strong-arm her, she’d have shut down. You wouldn’t have gotten one more bit of information.”
“We won’t anyway.”
“She’s got my number. I did her a favor. She might return it. You never know.”
“So what did we learn?”
“We learned what my dad was involved in,” Elizabeth said bitterly. “And we learned there was a partner.”
“Yeah, a nameless, faceless partner who might have been tall. Sounds like the boogeyman. Gi
ve me a break.”
“Hey, it’s more than when we started,” Joe said.
“Let’s just go,” Hudson said, standing again. “I told you this wasn’t going to work.”
* * *
NONE OF THEM said anything on the way home. Just as they reached the gates of Daniel’s estate, Elizabeth’s phone rang. She was shocked to see that it was Tonda.
“Tonda. I’m so sorry.”
“I just got a minute. Jackson would rip me a new one if he knew I was calling. But that guy with the fish tattoo on his arm?”
“Yeah?”
“Jackson said he lives at the Bella Breeze apartments on Cherry Blossom.” Tonda hung up.
So, Elizabeth didn’t know how to get information, did she? “Wait. Don’t open the gate.”
“Why not?” Hudson turned to look at her, pulling his sunglasses off so she could see his hazel eyes.
“I just found out where Munch lives.”
Joe pulled a U-turn.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JOE DID A search on the GPS for the Bella Breeze Motel. In moments, they had a route. Twenty minutes. “We should drop her off first,” Hudson whispered to Joe.
Liz leaned forward from the backseat. “No way. I’m in this as deep as you are.”
“Earlier, didn’t you say you wanted to leave the investigating to the detectives?”
“Well, yeah. But this is my source’s information.”
“Liz. This guy is dangerous.”
Of course he was. What was she thinking? “Then none of us should go. Maybe we should call the cops.”
Hudson was an inch away from saying I am a cop before he clamped his mouth closed. “And tell them what?”
“This guy tried to kill you.”
“You want to know what happens if we call the cops? Either they blow us off completely, or they check this apartment building when they get around to it, or they show up with three squad cars, sirens blaring, and Munch goes out the fire escape and disappears.”
“You don’t have a lot of faith in your fellow cops.”
“This is Houston. Harris County. If we were in Montgomery County I could call... Hell, I wouldn’t trust them to do it right, either.”
“The original crime is their jurisdiction,” Joe pointed out. “You could call them.”
“Don’t bother, Joe,” Liz said. “He wants to be in control.”
Hudson raised one finger, intending to argue, but before he could formulate a denial, he realized she was right. He wanted to be in control, in charge. As a cop, he always had a stake in solving a crime, bringing a bad guy to justice.
As a victim, that stake was a lot higher. Of course he wanted to control every aspect of the investigation. It was too important to trust to anybody else. Kinkaid had skills, for sure, but Hudson was the only real detective here.
“Don’t worry,” Joe said. “She can stay in the car. We lock her in, nothing short of a nuclear blast will get in here.”
Liz grumbled something, but Hudson couldn’t quite understand it. He tapped on the car window. It looked like normal glass....
“Bulletproof,” Joe said. “At least unless someone’s shooting with a sniper rifle or armor-piercing grenade launcher.”
“Yeah, well, last time I left Liz in a car by herself things didn’t go so well.”
Liz looked slightly uneasy as she leaned back in her seat and refastened her seat belt. But even the reminder of the gang stealing hubcaps didn’t cause her to back down.
“Can we lean on this guy a little?” Hudson asked. “He’s not like those scared little hook—” he wished he’d stopped himself in time “—working girls, I mean.”
Liz’s eyes flashed dangerously.
Joe followed the GPS’s monotone voice down a narrow, depressing street, past a used-tire shop and a bedraggled taqueria. “We don’t have to treat him with kid gloves, if that’s what you mean. We can give him some crap.”
Not if Liz had anything to say about it. She’d probably insist Munch had issues and they needed to show him compassion. But she was going to stay in the car. “Does this thing have a panic button?”
“Right here.” Joe pointed to a big red button on the dash. “Liz, if you feel like you’re in trouble, push the button. This thing will put out a siren shrill enough to burst eardrums. We’ll only be a few feet away.”
“Does someone stealing hubcaps qualify as trouble?” she asked drily.
“You can’t remove the hubcaps on this car. You can’t even flatten the tires without a great deal of effort and tools most street thugs don’t carry. We won’t go far. You’ll be fine.”
Hudson watched Liz with his peripheral vision. Her lips were firmed into a grim frown. “What if you get into trouble?”
“Call 9-1-1 and lay low till someone gets here,” Joe replied, choosing to take her question very seriously, though Hudson had gone into bad neighborhoods hundreds of times to question witnesses or suspects, and no one had ever tried to kill him. He still wasn’t sure Munch was trying to kill him the night he broke in. That single shot, so far off target, had been meant to scare him, slow him down and give Munch a chance to escape.
But then, what had he been doing there? Obviously it hadn’t been a random B and E.
Liz continued to look unhappy with the status quo.
“Cheer up, Liz,” he said. “I got a feeling. This guy is gonna have the answers.”
“And if you find him, and he does have some answers—who located him?”
“You. And Tonda.” He had to give her credit where it was due.
“And why did she take the time to help us out?”
“’Cause she trusts you. And she doesn’t trust me.”
“We’re just lucky I didn’t completely destroy the relationship I’ve been building with her for over a year. She’s so close to quitting the life. So close.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.” Tonda probably said whatever Liz wanted to hear.
Liz cleared her throat. “She’s pregnant, you know.”
“No. I didn’t know that.”
“She says the father is stepping up, taking responsibility, treating her right. Then he sends her out on the street to give blow jobs, telling her she can’t catch any diseases that way. Stepping up my... Okay, I’m done. Off my soapbox.”
Hudson didn’t really understand where she was coming from, but he admired her dedication. He would try harder to be supportive of the work she did and the attitudes she displayed.
If he ever got the chance. She was still pretty angry with him for breaking up her meeting with the prostitutes.
The possibility that, after they’d exonerated themselves, he and Liz would go their separate ways seemed wrong. He caught himself every few minutes visualizing some scene in the nebulous future when he was free from this cloud of suspicion, enjoying some simple pleasure like eating barbecue or fishing on the lake...and there would be Liz in his vision, laughing with him, getting barbecue sauce on her chin, sunning in a bikini.
They’d shared so much. They’d...okay, they’d bonded. Yeah, they looked at things differently sometimes, but they also saw things the same. Like hummingbirds. And sex. And flamenco music. And sex. How could they just walk away from that without at least trying to make it work?
“There it is,” Liz said, breaking into his anguished thoughts. “The Bella Breeze Motel. It’s not exactly bella, is it?”
The motel in question was a small, two-story L-shaped building that might once have been white, with trim a sickly shade of pink. One of the apartments had boarded-up windows. A black, sooty stain billowing out along the roofline suggested there had been a fire. The pitted blacktop parking lot was mostly empty except for a couple of beater Chevys and a multicolored El Camino. One lonely bicycle was chained to a post, its front wheel missing.
Joe pulled the car into a parking space in the farthest corner of the lot. “Hudson, maybe you should wait in the car with Liz. Munch knows your face.”
“I’m
wearing shades and a hat. And I’ll stand behind you. Liz, you keep an eye on us while we try to find this joker.”
“Are you just gonna knock randomly on doors?” she asked.
He shrugged. “We’ll try the manager first.”
Joe and Hudson exited the car. Hudson got a strange feeling in his gut as he walked away. Logically, he knew Liz would be okay. The car was a damn fortress.
“She’ll be fine,” Joe said, obviously sensing Hudson’s unease.
They headed for a door with the word Manager in English and Spanish crookedly written in what looked like Magic Marker. They knocked. Inside, a TV was blaring on a Spanish-language station. After a few moments, the door was yanked open by a Hispanic man in a sweaty work shirt. He said nothing, merely glared at them.
“Sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for someone who lives here named Munch?” Joe asked politely. Hudson stood behind and slightly to the side, keeping his profile to the manager to lessen the chance he’d be identified.
“You cops?” the manager asked suspiciously.
“No, sir. Actually, I’m his new lawyer. Trying to keep him out of trouble.”
“Who’s he?” The manager jerked one thumb toward Hudson.
“My paralegal.”
It was all Hudson could do not to laugh out loud. Joe was a smooth liar. With his clean-cut looks, anybody would believe he was an attorney.
“Munch is in the last unit upstairs, on the right,” the man said indifferently. “If you get him to answer, tell him to clean his place up. Guy never takes his trash out. Neighbors are complaining about the smell.”
Joe and Hudson exchanged a meaningful look.
The queasiness in Hudson’s stomach kicked up a notch. Was Munch a hoarder? Or something worse?
As they made their way up the metal staircase to the upstairs walkway, Hudson heard a thunk thunk noise behind him. He whirled around and Liz ran right into him.
“Sorry,” she said automatically, backing up a step.
“Liz. You’re supposed to be—”
“I’d rather be with you guys. It’s creepy by myself in that car. Everybody’s staring at it.”
