“Where’s that?”
“West out I-20, an hour and a half from where you’re at,” he said. “Hang on a second. Something is happening.”
He went away for much longer than a second, then came back and said, “They’re moving her to the Parker County jail in Weatherford, for Marshal Davenport, who will interview her there. Davenport is on his way. Weatherford is about an hour from where you’re at.”
“Where did you get this from?”
“Monitoring the cop frequencies. Since Poole and Box startedrunning, there wasn’t anybody who was going to find them and move them other than the highway patrol, so I’m listening in,” the College-Sounding Guy said. “Although nobody’s calling it the highway patrol, they call it the DPS.”
“That’s short for Dipshits?”
“Could be, but it’s actually the Department of Public Safety,” the College-Sounding Guy said.
“Anything about Poole?”
“Nothing that I’ve heard. I think they only got her,” the College-Sounding Guy said.
“Now what?” Annie asked.
“I don’t have anything to do with that. You might want to talk to the Boss.”
They called the Boss, got switched around from the original person who answered the phone to the man himself, and after some discussion, the Boss asked, “There is very much money involved here. Is there a chance to, ahm, to retrieve the Box lady?”
“Don’t see how, right now. We could go take a look,” Annie told him.
“If you try, we pay you two hundred thousand dollars. If you succeed, and get the money back, we pay you another two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“We will take a look,” Annie said.
—
ANNIE HADthe phone on speaker and Rosie and Kort had been listening. When the Boss went away, Kort asked, “What do you mean,take a look? Are you crazy? Is he talking about shooting cops to get Box?”
“Not necessarilyshootingcops,” Rosie said.
“Listen, there’s only one thing to do,” Kort said. “We pretend to take a look, and call the Boss and tell him there’s no way to get at her. Too many cops, all over the place. I mean, the Boss wouldn’t want us shooting cops. Nobody cares about these criminals like Poole or Darling or even Darling’s old lady, but they care about other cops. If we shoot cops, and they find out it goes back to the Boss, then the Boss is in big trouble. They’ll go down there and kill him.”
“You forget one thing,” Annie said.
“What?”
Rosie: “There’s four hundred and fifty thousand dollars on the table.”
“Four hundred and fifty thousand, for shooting it out with the Texas cops?” Kort was incredulous. “You guys must be rich already. What’s that money mean if you’re dead?”
“You’d be surprised. They pay us okay, but we aren’t getting rich. We drive from Galveston to Charleston dropping off the load, we get twenty thousand per run, two hundred thousand a year,” Annie said. “Costs us a hundred thousand just to stay on the road. If we do it for too long, we’ll get caught. We want to retire before that happens. Two hundred thousand... that’s worth thinking about. Four hundred and fifty thousand if we get the money back... we won’t be able to retire, but we’ll be a lot closer to it.”
“That would be excellent,” Rosie said. “Move to Palm Springs, play some golf, take it easy.”
“This is fuckin’ nuts,” Kort said.
Annie said, “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. It won’t hurt to look, and if we can find some way to recover Box, that’s all...” She groped for a word, and finally said, “Upside.”
—
ONCE BOXspoke the “lawyer” word, the questioning had to stop. When he was sure there were no cameras or recording equipment running, Lucas tried non-subtle extortion: “I’m not going to ask any more questions until a lawyer talks to you, but I’ll tell you, Dora. You’re implicated in the murder of five people back in Biloxi. You were living with Poole, you knew he was a fugitive, even if we don’t get him, we’ve got you. We’ll take you back to Mississippi and let those people deal with you—and Mississippi can be pretty goddamn primitive when it wants to be, after a mass murder. You aren’t walking on this one. Not without some help, and that’s help we could give you.”
Box looked at him, hate in her eyes, and Lucas began to believe that she might once have cut somebody’s head off. She said, “Lawyer.”
