by Stuart Woods
“How much?”
“Let’s see, a hundred and twenty-five for—”
“A hundred and twenty-five dollars?”
“That’s for the ticket, plus the towing charge—that’s another one-fifty.” He checked his computer. “Oh, and you’ve got a few other tickets.”
Calhoun’s heart sank. “How much?”
“Let’s see, there’s eleven at one-twenty-five each, plus late-payment charges, comes to twenty-nine hundred bucks. Cash or credit card?”
Calhoun handed over a card. “I haven’t got that much cash on me.”
The cop ran it. “Sorry, it didn’t work. You got another one?”
What was going on here? He paid his bills on time. The second card worked. He signed the slip and was given the keys.
“Fourth floor, space 103,” the cop said.
“Where’s the elevator?”
“Out of order. The stairs are over there.”
Calhoun trudged up the four airless flights and found his car. It was blocked in by two others.
“Help!” he yelled repeatedly. No one around, no keys in the cars. He went back down the stairs to the window. “My car is blocked in by two others.”
“Sorry about that.” The cop picked up a phone and paged somebody, then hung up. “He’s on the way.”
Calhoun trudged up the four flights again, and by now he was light-headed, as well as soaking wet. He got to the fourth floor just as the second car was moved, but he didn’t make it to the Bentley. His knees buckled, and the lights went out.
He woke up in an ambulance, the siren going, an oxygen mask strapped to his face. The ambulance came to a stop.
Calhoun lifted the mask “Where am I?”
“Bellevue Hospital,” the EMT said.
46
Calhoun was taken into the emergency room and put on an examination table in a curtained-off cubicle. A doctor who appeared to be a recent high-school graduate examined him and strapped a blood pressure cuff to his left arm. He pressed a button and the cuff inflated.
“Ow!” Calhoun yelled. “Too tight.”
“Sorry about that,” the kid said. “No adjustment available. Just relax and enjoy the calm.”
The calm was a cacophony of screams, curses, and shouts of “Nurse!” A woman with a clipboard showed up, asked for the name and phone number of his doctor, then sat down next to his table and took an incredibly detailed history.
“I’m hot,” Calhoun said. “Can you make it cooler in here?”
“Sorry about that—it gets a little cooler for a minute when someone opens the outside door.”
“Can you prop the outside door open?”
“I never thought of that,” she said. She left and didn’t come back; it never got any cooler. The blood pressure cuff automatically reinflated every three minutes. The young doctor came back after an hour and a half and checked the recorded tape. “Your blood pressure is elevated,” he said. “One forty-five over ninety.”
“It usually is,” Callhoun said. “What’s wrong with me?”
“You may have had a heart attack,” he said. “What were you doing when you fainted?”
“I had just climbed four flights of stairs twice,” Calhoun replied.
“Any chest pains?”
“No, I just got dizzy.”
“Well, we’ll keep you on the machine for a while.”
Calhoun checked his watch: after four o’clock. “Can I get out of here now?”
“We can’t discharge you until your doctor arrives and signs you out.”
“But I feel fine,” Calhoun lied.
“We aren’t going to discharge you only to have you collapse and die on our doorstep.” He left the cubicle.
Calhoun tried to sleep but could only doze fitfully. His cell phone rang; it was still on his belt. “Hello?”
“Don, it’s after four. Where are you?”
“I’m in the emergency room at Bellevue.”
“What’s wrong?”
She wouldn’t be too concerned, he thought; after all, there was eight hundred grand in the safe, and she had the combination. “I had to climb eight flights of stairs at the police garage, and I passed out. There’s nothing wrong with me, but they won’t discharge me until my doctor comes and signs me out. Call him, will you, and tell him to get his ass down here?”
“Okay.”
“And will you go to the garage and get the car out? I’ve already paid twenty-nine hundred bucks for the tickets and fines.”
“Will I have to climb eight flights of stairs?”
“Only four—I had to climb them twice. Make sure they send somebody up there to get the other cars out of the way.” He gave her the address.
“Queens?”
“Don’t ask. Tell them I’m the guy the ambulance took away. They’ll remember that.”
“Okay.”
“Then come and pick me up here. The doctor will have had time to get here by then.”
“All right.” She hung up.
The blood pressure cuff inflated again. Three hours passed, and Cheree finally showed up.
“What took you so long?”
“They had moved the car to the Manhattan garage, and I had to start all over there.”
“Where’s my doctor?”
“In the Bahamas,” she said.
“Shit!” He pressed the call button, but no one came. “Go out there and find the doctor—the one who looks like a high-school kid—and get him in here.”
Cheree left and came back half an hour later with a young Asian doctor. “Yours has gone off duty. Will this one do?”
“Yes, thank you. Doctor, unhook me from this thing. I’m leaving.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but your doctor hasn’t arrived to sign you out.”
“He’s in the Bahamas, and I’m not waiting until he gets back.” He clawed at the blood pressure cuff, but it was inflating again. “Get it off me!”
“You’d better do as he says, Doctor,” Cheree said, “or he’ll have a heart attack.”
The doctor complied. “You’ll have to check yourself out and sign a form releasing the hospital from any liability.”
“Gladly,” Calhoun said. “Get me the fucking form.”
The doctor came back half an hour later with a clipboard. “Haven’t I seen you on TV?”
“Maybe.” Calhoun signed the form and got up.
“Oh, yeah, you’re that crazy preacher. I’m surprised you didn’t have a heart attack years ago.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Calhoun said. He grabbed Cheree and made his way outside. “Where’s the car?”
“In a garage six blocks from here. It was the closest place I could find.”
47
Stone stopped into the estate office to use the copying machine, and Major Bugg spoke up. “I’m glad to see you. The housekeeper has told me we need two additional housemaids to accommodate all the guests and for their offices. We can hire part-timers until things return to normal.”
“All right, go ahead,” Stone said, then returned to his desk.
Bugg waited until he had left. “You ran the ad, didn’t you?” he asked his assistant.
“I’ve got four applicants coming in this morning,” she said.
“Good. Hire the first two who seem acceptable. I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
“Certainly.”
—
The following morning Calhoun got out of bed feeling exhausted. The phone rang. “Hello?”
A man with a British accent said, “Dr. Don, this is Edgar Furrow, in Beaulieu.”
It took Calhoun a moment. “Oh, yes.” Furrow was a follower, a local builder who had done an inspection on Curtis House when he was trying to buy it. “Edgar, how are you?”
“Just fine.
I read about your troubles with this Barrington fellow, and I’m sorry for it.”
“Thank you.”
“My daughter, Sadie, has just gotten a job at Windward Hall as a housemaid. She’ll be working there for the next three months, at least.”
“That’s very interesting, Edgar.”
“I’d hoped you would think so. If you like, I can get her to give you written reports on what goes on there.”
“I’d like that very much, Edgar. Have Sadie e-mail them directly to me.” He gave the man his e-mail address, then hung up.
He went in to breakfast, and Cheree set down his bacon and eggs. “It’s time for us to go to Rio,” he said to her.
She sat down and stared at him. “Are you serious?”
“Can’t you see? Everything is going to hell. I’ve been arrested three times, we’ve been thrown out of England, this apartment has been searched, and it’s all because of Barrington. I suspect that thing yesterday with the car had something to do with him, too, though I don’t know what.”
“But Rio?”
“We may not have to stay long, but that’s why I bought the apartment there, in case we had to get out in a hurry. It’s completely furnished, and the freezer is full of food.”
“When had you thought of going?”
“Immediately. Well, almost immediately. Don’t worry about packing a lot, you can shop for new clothes there.”
“All right,” she said, “as long as it’s temporary. After all, they’re not after me.”
“You’re next,” he said. He finished breakfast, went into his study, and found a phone number on his computer. He hesitated before making the call, because the man scared him: he was so bland and nondescript-looking but he was lethal, and Calhoun always had the feeling that he could turn on him at any moment.
“This is Al Junior,” he said.
“This is Dr. Don. I need you for a special job.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You’ll need to leave the country. It could take a few days or a few weeks.”
“How many weeks?”
“Two should be enough. I need you in New York tonight, and bring your passport. How early can you get here?”
“I can get a flight this morning,” he said. “I should be there by eight o’clock.”
“Then I’ll meet you at Kennedy. Book yourself on a night flight to London. They usually have one around ten o’clock, and your luggage will go straight through. Don’t bring any tools with you—those will be provided at the other end.”
“I see. I’m going to need fifty thousand in cash up front and another fifty when I’m done. More, if it takes longer than two weeks.”
“I’ll meet your flight from L.A. and give you the first payment. Be sure you declare the cash with customs. I know from experience: forgetting that can be expensive. E-mail me your flight times, and take your cell phone with you, it will work there.”
“Will do.”
They both hung up.
Calhoun dreaded meeting the man.
They met at the gate, went to a nearby bar, and found a corner table out of earshot of other travelers.
“Details, please,” Al Jr. said.
Calhoun took a deep breath. He had used Al Jr. only once before, for the job on the magazine writer’s car. He ran a pawnshop that had a big gun business in L.A.; word was he had inherited both the business and his sideline from his father, Al Sr. “The last name Barrington: Stone, the father, Peter the son.”
“Got it.”
“When you arrive in London rent a car and drive to a village called Beaulieu.” Calhoun pronounced it for him, then gave him a page ripped from a driving atlas of Britain. “There are two houses south of the village, here and here. The properties are next door to each other. The Barringtons live in the one to the north, Windward Hall. The son is making a film at the one to the south, Curtis House. It’s been mentioned in the entertainment pages.
“From the airport, call a man named Edgar Furrow, who lives in Beaulieu. He will make a hotel reservation for you. His daughter, Sadie, works at Windward Hall, and she can give you the layout. Edgar also has sources for weapons. You can call me on my cell phone if absolutely necessary, or you can e-mail me.” He gave the man a card with the number and the address.
“Anything special to tell me?”
Calhoun thought about that. “Yes. Do the son first. I want the father to know he’s dead.”
“As you wish.”
“Good luck,” Calhoun said, then walked away, feeling better, relieved.
48
Al Jr. settled down in first class, had a couple of bourbons, avoided the fish and chose the steak, washed down with two glasses of wine. He enjoyed travel at the expense of others, and he was looking forward to England.
At Heathrow an immigration officer asked him, “Business or pleasure?”
“A little of both.” He cleared customs, changed some money, then found a phone and called Furrow.
“I’ve booked you a room at the best hotel in town,” Furrow said, giving him the name and address.
“Make it a suite,” Al said. He then went to a rental car desk and asked for a Mercedes, got an E-class sedan with a GPS; he entered the hotel’s address, and half an hour later he had cleared the airport and was turning onto the motorway south. He longed for a shower, a shave, and a long nap.
At the hotel he checked in, and as he turned from the desk a large, ruddy-faced man approached him. “Al? I’m Edgar Furrow. Can I buy you some breakfast?”
“Just coffee. I had breakfast.”
They sat down in the restaurant. “I was told you might need tools. Anything special?”
“Can you obtain exotics?”
“How exotic?”
“Ideally, a smallish nine-millimeter handgun and a sniper rifle, with a fitting for a tripod and an eight-power scope, and that will break down and fit into a briefcase—both of them silenced.”
“The silencers are no problem. I’ll have to inquire about the other.”
Al gave him his cell number. “Call me after noon. I need to sleep until then.”
“Don’t you want to know the lay of the land?”
Al sat back. “Sure.”
Furrow unfolded a hand-drawn map and showed him where the two houses were located. “My daughter, Sadie, works at Windward Hall. She says there are a lot of movie people in and out of there all the time. The son and his partner work in an office in the southwest corner of the ground floor, and the father has an office next door to them.”
“How do they move between the two houses?”
“Most of them drive, both the father and the son have taken to riding horses. They take a trail through the wood here, they jump a stone wall here, then ride to Curtis House. Sometimes they go together, sometimes alone.”
“What time of day?”
“They leave Windward Hall around eight in the morning and return around six. The father doesn’t stay all day, sometimes he’ll take a ride around the Curtis property.”
“Is either of them armed?”
Furrow laughed. “You’re in Britain, where guns are rare, except for shotguns. I have a military source—the army is all over Salisbury Plain, north of here.”
“Anywhere around I can rent a horse?”
“The nearest place is ten miles or so.”
“How about a bicycle?”
“There’s a very good shop in the town, in the high street, where you can hire or buy. It’s next door to a bank.”
“I came down here from Heathrow on the motorway, past Southampton. Is that the best way back?”
“It’s the fastest.”
“Is there a back route?” He took the map Calhoun had given him from a pocket.
“You can go north across Salisbury Plain and connect with the M4
motorway west of Heathrow, here, or you can navigate cross-country.”
Al thanked the man and gave him his cell number. “Call me if there’s anything I should know.”
“Certainly.”
Al collected his luggage and found his suite; it was small but comfortable. He undressed and got into bed and was still sleeping when the phone rang. “Yes?”
“It’s me. Your tools will be ready tomorrow this time of day. Someone is modifying them to your specifications. There’ll be a box of ammo for each of them. Do you need a holster for the nine?”
“Something to wear on my belt would be good.”
“Done.”
“I don’t want to meet at the hotel again.”
“On the road toward Windward Hall there’s a pub called the Rose & Crown. Meet me there at two o’clock tomorrow in the saloon bar. It’ll be quiet at that hour.”
“I’ll find it.” Al hung up, showered, shaved, and dressed, then left the hotel, with directions to the high street. He found the bicycle shop, and it was a good one, also selling maps, travel books, and birding equipment. He asked the clerk to show him a good touring bike and selected a Raleigh five-speed. He chose a roomy set of saddlebags, as well, and picked out a large, comfortable seat. “Will you take American dollars?” he asked the clerk.
“You’ll get a better exchange rate at the bank next door,” the man said. “Your bike will be ready to go in twenty minutes. Oh, and you’ll need a lock, unless you plan to keep it indoors.”
“You have binoculars?” Al asked. “I’d like to do some birding.” He looked at some, chose a ten-power pair, and bought a tripod, as well, then he went next door, changed three thousand dollars for pounds, went back, and rode away on his new bike, whistling a tune, the binoculars and tripod in a saddlebag. He rode out of town, past the Rose & Crown, then found the gates to Windward Hall and Curtis House.
He didn’t go inside; he would do that later.
49
Calhoun was going through his files, deciding what to take with him and what to shred, when his cell phone rang. “Hello?”