Texas Tango: A Flint Rock Novel (5 page)

Ava
smiled,
a spontaneous wide smile.
 
“I like the way you think Flint.
 
It’s a short list.
 
In fact no one has refused, but three people were hard of hearing and had trouble with focus.
 
They came for only two appointments and did not return.”

Ava sat at her computer and typed.
 
Flint looked at the titles of the spines of books on her rich wooden shelves,
then
stared through the glass wall at the wet central Texas landscape.
 
When the page emerged from Ava's printer, she stood and handed it to him.

Ava’s phone sounded.
 
It was Laura calling to reschedule her psychoanalysis appointment.
 
Ava had phoned all of her clients before 8:00
A.M.
 
She decided to clear her calendar for the following week.
 
She rearranged appointments for all but nineteen who did not answer.
 
Perhaps they had stayed up late seeing the old year out.
 
She had left messages for them.

Seconds after Ava hung up, her phone rang again.
 
It was another call back from a client asking to reschedule.
 
Flint watched Ava’s body become more erect.
 
Her voice tone stayed friendly but he heard a slight change.
 
No suggested time was agreeable for the person to whom Ava was talking.
 
By the time Ava hung up, Flint knew she did not like the conversation.

He almost let it go, but then he couldn’t think why he should.
 
“You don’t like the last caller as much as you do Laura,” he observed.

Ava paused, looked a little surprised.
 
“Did it show that much?
 
It’s a woman whom I’ve been treating for only a few weeks.
 
A colleague retired because of ill health.
 
He recommended me to her.
 
However, something about me seems to offend her.
 
I have suggested that she find someone else.
 
I gave her names and phone numbers of three local possibilities, but she hasn't called them yet.”
 
Ava thought for a moment.
 
"Come to think of it, she is a person who doesn't really go into trance.
 
She says that she has never been able to relax."

Ava’s phone sounded again.
 
“I have several more clients to reschedule.
 
It may take me an hour or more.”

Flint knew he could enjoy the day hanging out with Ava.
 
He also knew that she was tired and stuck.
 
And he needed to talk to Zeta and Harry.
 
He gave Ava his card in case she needed his mobile phone number.
 
“I will call you in a couple of hours,” he said.

“This means you will keep helping me?”

“All I can.”

She gave him a long tight hug.
 
Flint left knowing she would not mind if he kissed her.
 
He would not have objected either.
 
But he knew that should wait.
 
Her appointment schedule demanded to be dealt with.

Chapter 5

As a surgeon worked on Bill Murphy's knee at San Leonardo Hospital on Europe Street in Naples, Flint nodded to the woman at the reception desk in the lobby of the Austonian.
 
He had already selected Zeta’s number in
his
 
electronic
address book.
 
While her phone rang, he watched chilled raindrops slide down the plate glass as he looked at Congress Avenue.

“Flint.”

“Zeta!
 
I can meet you now if you are available.”

“Can you come here?
 
It’s at 5805 North Lamar.”
 

“Yes, I know the place.
 
Might take me half an hour.”
 
But traffic was light on Saturday morning, New Year's
day
.
 
Twenty minutes later, Flint parked at the single story facility that houses Texas Ranger headquarters.
 
Harry met him in the parking lot so he could keycard him into the building
..

"Look at you!" Flint exclaimed upon seeing Zeta.
 
At 5' 4" she weighed 112 pounds.
 
She was wearing a knee length off white A-line skirt, tall cowgirl boots,
a
white blouse with a neck tab instead of a tie, a contrasting leather vest, and a light colored soft Stetson cowgirl hat.
 

"It's not her working uniform," Harry noted, "but it is unofficial Ranger attire for weddings, funerals, and group photos.
 
She and the other women Rangers normally wear slacks or jeans to work.
 
Every Ranger dresses as he or she chooses, but Stetson's and western boots are still common.
 
Zeta and I were at a New Year's party last night when the EMTs pulled you out of what was left of your car.
 
I got a few hours of sleep, but she came here when she left the party."
 

Zeta had only been on the job for three days.
 
Harry had filled her in on Ranger history and dos and don'ts.
 
She was a natural learner, an expert with firearms, thoroughly practiced in the Tang Soo Do tradition of martial arts—and she was the most intuitive computer genius in the United States and China combined.
 
At least that was Flint's opinion.

"Hey Flint.
 
How about teaching me to fly?
 
Instrument ticket too.
 
The Texas Department of Public Safety won't pay for it though."

"I'll teach you for free."

"Okay, I'm ready now, but maybe we better take care of this thing with Dr. Milan.
 
What do you think of her?"

"She strikes me as the real deal, an original—like you."

Zeta offered Flint coffee and a chair in a room used for interrogation of suspects.
 
Harry sat also and spoke.
 
"I know a CIA agent in Italy named Bill Murphy.
 
Murphy called me from a Naples hospital a few minutes before you got here.
 
An informant of his has been killed and Murphy thinks it was connected to Ava Milan's situation."

"Did he say what the connection was?"

"No.
 
I'm not sure whether he doesn't know or isn't saying."

Flint pulled out the sheets of paper containing names that Ava had supplied and explained what they were.
 
Zeta walked to her desk, typed them into a program she had developed for quickly searching data bases to build accurate profiles of individuals.
 
Her software was a refinement of what some internet based social networks had developed to sell individual personality profiles to advertisers.

While Zeta was at her desk, Harry filled Flint in on what he had learned from Murphy about the Mafioso's mother
,
 
Gina
Francesca Lezioni.
 
He also commented on his friend Murphy's competence and reliability which he admired.
 
By the time Zeta came back after being gone slightly more than twenty minutes, the two men were reminiscing about how they had met in Marine Corps officer basic.
 
From there Flint had gone to flight training and Harry had become an intelligence specialist before he left the Marines and became a Texas Ranger.
 
Flint and Murphy
were
the right vintage to have met in the Marines but their paths had just missed each other.

Zeta returned.
 
"Flint I have sent a document to your email.
 
You can read it at your leisure.
 
It is a government report written by a CIA analyst.
 
It strongly suggests, but offers only circumstantial evidence, that Gina Francesca may have been the force behind her son's mob activities.
 
In fact, the author of the report thinks she may have had her son assassinated.
 
Dr. Milan is mentioned as a person of interest, in fact as a possible confederate who may be an information conduit between Signora Lezioni and a man from Naples who has been Dr. Milan's patient for nearly five years.
 
His name is Freddy Gambini, a name that is on Dr. Milan's list of most likely male suspects."
 
Zeta paused as she and Harry looked at Flint.
 

"You
are wanting
a reaction from me?" Flint commented when Zeta kept silent.

"Yes," responded Harry.

"I don't know enough to say impossible.
 
But it feels highly unlikely," Flint said.

"What if she passed along information without realizing it?" Harry asked.

"The info would have to have been very subtle and not something on a regular basis," Flint speculated.
 
"Any evidence that Signora Lezioni or her son knew Gambini?"

"Yes," Zeta supplied.
 
"The report says that Gambini is a cousin of the mother, therefore a more distant cousin of the son."

"Sounds like it needs to be pursued on the ground in Italy," Harry noted.
 
"You up for that, Flint?"

"I could be.
 
You offering
to come along?"

"Sounds interesting, but neither Zeta nor I will be smiled on to go.
 
Our budget is always stretched thin and the leads in this case are too tenuous to justify trips to Europe."

"One more thing," Flint said.
 
"I wonder if one of you can find out who was in the Menger bar from around 3:45
to a little after 5:00 yesterday
.
 
I mean behind the bar.
 
Especially
around
 
4:10
to 4:15."
 
Flint described Ava's leaving the card.
 
"That seems the only time someone could have observed any connection between Ava and me.
 
Unless Ava is lying.
 
They would have had to watch me leave the bar an hour later in order to have stolen the dump truck and run me off the road.
 
The waitress named Shana whom I mentioned to Harry didn't look hostile,” Flint said, “but she did walk two blocks to tell me I had forgotten the card."

"I'll check it out," Harry offered.
 
"Any chance your friend Laura is implicated in some way?"

Flint looked pensive.
 
"She is the only person who knew I would go to the Menger and leave a little after 5:00.
 
She might have told someone.
 
I haven't known her long and don't know her well.
 
Wouldn't hurt to find out more I suppose.
 
She is also a client of Ava's."
 
He spelled Laura Ann Syms’s name for Zeta, pushed his chair back and stood.

Zeta and Harry promised to call or email him anything new.
 
They parted with handshakes and well wishes.
 

Inside his rental car, Flint called a private American Airlines employee number, asked about standby possibilities to Rome.
 
Flint could fly standby free on American as a retired employee—if there were empty seats at flight time.
 
A flight was scheduled to leave in two hours from Austin through Dallas and London.
 
There were seats.
 
He picked up Interstate 35 South, grabbed an always packed carryon at his house.
 
He was in long term parking at Bergstrom Field in time to walk onto the flight as the doors were ready to close.
 
The flight attendant put him in 2B, first class.
 
He told Ava by phone he was headed to Italy.