by Stuart Woods
“Where are you going?” Peter asked, waking from his doze.
“Route 66,” she replied.
“Like the jazz tune?”
“Right. We’ll pick it up somewhere around Amarillo.”
“Then Gallup, New Mexico,” Peter said, remembering the lyric. “But wouldn’t we make better time on the interstate?”
“No doubt, but the dot in the mirror has been there all morning, and I’m tired of looking at it. If it’s a semi it will stick to the interstate, and we’ll be rid of it.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“A car would probably still stick to the interstate, too,” she said, “but if it follows us I’m going to stop and buy a gun.”
“Where would you buy a gun?”
“How about at a gun store?”
“Isn’t there a waiting period?”
“Then we’ll look for a gun show, where the waiting period doesn’t apply, according to every news report I hear.”
“Hattie, aren’t you being just a tiny bit paranoid?”
“More than a tiny bit.”
“Okay,” Peter said, and tried to go back to sleep.
• • •
In the late afternoon, Ben was driving and Hattie was asleep in the backseat. Peter awoke from a doze. “Where are we?”
“Almost to Gallup,” Ben said. “I got off Route 66 a couple of miles back and turned south, to see if the dot follows us.”
“The dot is still there?”
“It turned up an hour ago, as if it had been waiting just over the horizon.”
“I’m beginning to think that Hattie’s idea of buying a gun isn’t such a bad one.”
“I’ve got my dad’s old .38 Special in my bag,” Ben said.
They hit a bad pothole in the old two-lane highway, and there was a pop, followed by a fluttering noise.
“Shit!” Ben spat. “I didn’t have time to avoid that one. Now we’ve got a blowout.” He pulled over at a wide place on the shoulder, and they got out of the car.
Hattie sat up. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“We’ve got to change a tire,” Peter answered. “Go back to sleep.”
“Gladly,” she said, and sank back into the seat.
They had to unload their suitcases to get at the spare, which turned out to be a strange-looking emergency tire.
“How far do you think we can get on that thing?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll look it up in the manual when we’re done,” Peter replied.
They changed the tire and put the old one in the U-Haul, then returned their luggage, but not before Ben had taken a long look down the highway behind them, then retrieved the .38 from his suitcase and tucked it into his belt. “The dot is still back there,” he said, “but it stopped when we did.”
Peter was looking in the driver’s manual.
“How far is the tire good for?” Ben asked, starting the car.
“A hundred miles,” Peter replied, “at fifty miles per hour.”
Ben sighed and pulled back onto the highway. “We’ll try to replace the tire at the first place we come to. We need gas, too,” he said.
“We just passed a sign for an Esso station.”
“An Esso station?”
“Yep. We should be able to get some very old gasoline there. It’s five miles ahead.”
Shortly they passed a sign announcing their entry into Mesa Grande, New Mexico. The Kiwanis Club met at Sally’s Diner on Tuesday evenings, it said.
“Up ahead, on the right,” Peter said.
Ben pulled into the service station, which had a sign on the pumps saying, “Independent.” A wiry-looking man in his fifties strode out of the office and walked around to the driver’s window.
“Yessir?” he said.
“Fill ’er up,” Ben told him, and they got out of the Cayenne to stretch their legs. Hattie woke up and went to the ladies’ room. The tank full, the man began to clean the bugs off the windshield.
“You had a flat, did you? We can fix that for you,” he said as he worked.
“A blowout,” Peter replied. “Can you fix that?”
“I guess not,” the man said. “Let’s take a look at it.”
Peter opened the U-Haul and took out the wheel with its ruined tire.
The man looked at it closely. “That would be from that pothole about five miles back,” he said.
Peter and Ben laughed aloud. “Must be good for business,” Peter said.
“I’ve hit it myself,” the man said. “I reported it to the county, but they’re slow to move.” The man pointed across the road. “I suggest you go over to the diner and speak to Sally, who can fix you up with some rooms.”
“Can you replace the tire?” Peter asked.
“No, and neither can most tire dealers in the state,” the man replied. “It’s a high-performance Pirelli.” He glanced at his watch. “If I hurry, I can get the Porsche dealer in Albuquerque on the phone before they close at six, and they can put a tire on the Greyhound bus to us tomorrow morning. I can have you out of here by noon.”
“Sounds good,” Peter said, eyeing the motel across the road with doubt. “Tell me about the motel,” he said.
“It’s the cleanest, homiest, most comfortable motel in town,” the man said. “It’s also the only motel in town, but don’t be put off by that. Sally will take care of you, and she’s a good cook, too.”
“Great,” Peter said. “You order the tire, and we’ll walk across the road.”
He followed the man’s directions to pull the car over and unhook the U-Haul, then handed him the keys. “My name is Peter Barrington,” he said, offering his hand.
The man wiped his palm on his coveralls and shook Peter’s. “My name’s Billy,” he said.
The three young people each grabbed a suitcase and walked across the road, while Billy phoned the Porsche dealer and ordered the tire.
• • •
The call made, Billy drove the Cayenne into the garage and onto the hydraulic lift. Might as well get that wheel taken care of now, he thought. He hosed it down to wash the dust away, then spun off the studs and set the wheel on the shop floor. There was some mud and dirt caked in the wheel well, and he turned his hose on that, too, dissolving it to run down the drain.
Then Teddy saw something he didn’t expect. Way forward in the wheel well, the hose had revealed a black box, perhaps one inch by two and an inch thick. A two-inch antenna sprouted from the upper end of the box.
He knew what that was, because he had invented a GPS transmitter very much like it in his time at the CIA and installed many of them. The question was: Where and in whose hands was the receiver?
Stone sat in the jump seat of the Gulfstream jet and watched the two pilots join the VOR A instrument approach for runway 21 at Santa Monica Airport. He knew from experience that the controllers usually vectored you onto final approach a couple of thousand feet high, and he wanted to see how the two pros would get the airplane down to final approach altitude while, at the same time, slowing it to final approach speed. He always had a hard time with that in his own airplane, but the Gulfstream pilots did it brilliantly, and they touched down exactly where they were supposed to at the exact speed they were supposed to.
A quick turn into Atlantic Aviation, and they were there. As the engines shut down, one of the Arrington’s fleet of Bentley Mulsannes eased to a stop near the foot of the airplane’s airstair door, and the trunk lid silently opened.
With their baggage unloaded into the car, the three men piled into the Bentley, and they started for the hotel. They had not reckoned on what the widening of I-405 would do to the afternoon traffic, and they crept along the few miles to the Sunset Boulevard exit. Once there, they were on Stone Canyon Road in a flash, then turning through the gates of the splendid new
hotel. An Arrington security guard was there to identify them and wave them through without the usual stringent procedures, and they arrived at Stone’s house five minutes later.
The grounds were laid out among gardens, and no building was more than two stories high. The effect was more of a luxurious neighborhood than a hotel, and it was more inviting.
The Arrington was built on a large tract of land that had been assembled over several decades by the late movie star Vance Calder, to whom Arrington had been married before his death. Stone had helped Arrington turn what had been her home and property into America’s premier super-luxury hotel, and one of the provisions in the initial contract was that the hotel company would build her a new house on the property. After their marriage and her death, Stone had inherited the house.
The butler quickly directed the three hotel bellmen in distributing their luggage. In his suite, Stone unpacked and hung up his suits, then changed into cotton trousers and a short-sleeved shirt and took a glass of iced tea out to poolside behind the house.
He read the day’s L.A. Times while sipping his iced tea and soon fell into a doze in the comfortable high-backed wicker armchair. A moment later he was half-awakened by a splash behind him, then by the sound of someone doing laps in the pool. That would not be Dino, he thought, and probably not Mike Freeman, either. He swiveled the chair slowly around to face the pool and was greeted by the sight of a woman’s legs disappearing under the water. There had been a flash of her body above the legs, and it wasn’t wearing a swimsuit.
He watched until she surfaced and began breaststroking toward him, apparently not noticing his presence.
“Good afternoon,” he said finally.
She stopped dead in the water and her gaze found him in his chair. “Who are you?” she demanded. “And what are you doing here?”
“I am Stone Barrington, and I am sitting, drinking iced tea, and reading the newspaper. It’s clear what you are doing, but not who you are or why you are swimming in my pool.”
“Your pool?” she asked, with the withering certainty of someone who knows herself to be in the right.
“All right, I’ll repeat myself: my pool.” He nodded toward the house. “Right behind my house.”
“Well then,” she said, “I will get out of your water, if you will be kind enough to turn your back.”
Stone smiled. “Certainly not. I intend to enjoy all the fruits of my property.”
“Swine!” she said, then turned, swam to the steps, and regally climbed them, displaying broad shoulders and slim hips in all their glory. She walked to a chair where she had left her things, dried herself and her blonde hair slowly with a small towel, then slipped into a terry robe. Ignoring him, she turned to go.
“As long as you’re decent, you may as well join me for a drink,” Stone said.
She stopped and turned toward him “Oh, now I understand. You’re Arrington Barrington’s husband.”
“Widower,” Stone corrected her.
“All right,” she said, and began to walk around the pool toward him. “I’ll have a piña colada.”
Stone picked up the phone beside him and said, “Two piña coladas,” then hung up and rose to greet her, offering his hand. “And your name?”
“Emma Tweed,” she said, and her accent was British.
“Please sit down. Your drink will be here shortly. What brings you to The Arrington, Emma?” he asked. “And all the way from London?”
“I was tired of the London winter, and I was reliably informed that this is now the best hotel in the United States.”
“I like to think of it as the best hotel in the world,” Stone said, “but thank you.”
“How modest,” she said. “One would think that you had invented the place.”
“Well, it was my idea, but a large group of talented people invented it. I just offered guidelines.”
The butler appeared with their drinks on a silver tray and served them, then vanished.
She raised her glass. “To your guidelines,” she said.
“Tell me, why are you able to leave London at the drop of a hat? Do you not have to earn a living?”
“I earn a very nice living as a fashion designer,” she said, “but since I own my company, I am able to come and go as I please. Actually, I can work anywhere. You might say my work is portable.”
“How nice for you. What do you design?”
“Everything from underwear to clothes to home furnishings. By the way, I’m not really trespassing: I’m staying right over there.” She pointed at a house mostly screened by plantings.
“Ah, yes, that was Vance Calder’s guesthouse. I stayed there a couple of times when he was alive. This was his pool, too, so it’s easy to understand how you could think it belonged to your quarters. How long have you been here?”
“Since yesterday.”
“And what do you think of The Arrington so far?”
“I cannot fault it on any count,” she replied. “It is everything I was told it would be.”
“I’m pleased that you are pleased.”
“How is it that you are able to drop everything and come to Los Angeles? You’re a New Yorker, aren’t you?”
“Yes, and I’m an attorney there. The hotel is one of my clients, and I serve on its board, so you might say this is a business trip—at least, that’s what I would say if I thought you were an agent of the Internal Revenue Service.”
She smiled for the first time. “That’s something like what I’ll be saying to our Inland Revenue in the UK,” she said. She drained her glass. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’m due at the spa for a little work.” She stood up.
Stone stood, too. “Would you like to join some friends and me for dinner here this evening?”
“Thank you, that sounds very nice. What time?”
“Drinks at seven,” Stone replied.
“See you then,” she said, then turned and sauntered down the path toward her accommodations.
“It was my pleasure, believe me,” Stone called after her.
She seemed to laugh, then, without turning around, gave him a little wave.
“Wear something you designed,” he called out to her disappearing back. She gave the little wave again.
Stone went back into the house, and the butler materialized. “Mr. Barrington, your son just called but said not to disturb you. He’s stopping overnight in New Mexico to get a tire changed, and he will be a couple of more days before arriving.”
“Thank you,” Stone said. “We’ll be four for dinner, then.” Unless I can get rid of Dino and Mike, he thought.
It was nearly six o’clock, and Teddy was about ready to close up and go to Sally’s for dinner, when a black Lincoln Navigator with blackened windows came to a stop beside the gas pumps. He walked out to the car and stood by the driver’s window, which was impenetrable to his gaze. He rapped on the window with a knuckle. “Can I help you?” he shouted.
The window slid down. The first thing Teddy saw was a GPS antenna stuck to the inside of the windshield and a screen mounted on the dashboard. “You can fill this tank,” the man said. “With the premium.” He was large, bald, and his companion in the front passenger seat was on the beefy side, too.
“Yessir,” Teddy said, and as he turned away toward the car’s fuel filler he heard the driver speak to his companion in Russian. One of the many skills Teddy had picked up in his time at the CIA was languages. He had a gift, not so much for speaking but for understanding them.
“You see the rented trailer over there?” he said. “It appears our prey have stopped for the night at the motel, there. This little burg is a good place to deal with them,” the driver said. “We’ll get a room for the night, then tomorrow morning we’ll wait for them on the road, kill them, and bury them in the desert. No one will ever hear from them again.”
T
eddy stopped in his tracks. “You fellas Croatian?” he asked. “That what you’re speaking?”
“We are Italian,” the driver said.
Teddy turned on the pump, unscrewed the fuel filler cap, stuck the nozzle in, squeezed the trigger, and locked it. Fuel began to flow. Teddy walked back past the driver’s window. “Scuse me, gotta take a leak,” he said to the man. “Your tank is filling up.” As he walked away from the car he heard the door open and the driver say in Russian, “He may have heard something. Take care of him.”
Teddy walked into the garage and found his duffel. He removed a small .380 semiautomatic pistol and screwed the silencer he had built into the barrel, then stuck it in his rear waistband, under his shirttail. He went into the john and waited, the pistol in his hand, facing the door, and after a minute he flushed the toilet. The door flew open, and the Russian passenger began raising his weapon. Teddy shot him once in the forehead and watched him collapse in a heap. He picked up the man’s pistol and fired it once into the wooden floor, then waited.
Another minute passed, and Teddy heard the other Russian. “Yevgeny!” he yelled.
“Come help me!” Teddy called back, in Russian.
“Can’t you do anything yourself?” the man yelled back, and Teddy could hear his footsteps. He aimed the pistol at a spot just inside the outside door and waited. A moment later the driver appeared, and Teddy shot him in the head. The man had been holding a pistol, too.
Teddy walked outside, returned the gas nozzle to its pump, got into the Navigator, and drove it into the garage. He got out, closed the garage door, and switched on the neon sign that said CLOSED over the pumps.
He was thinking fast now. With considerable effort, he hauled the two bodies to the rear of the Navigator, opened the rear door, and tossed the men’s luggage over the rear seat, then he muscled the corpses into the luggage compartment, tossing their weapons in behind them, and closed the door. Then he turned on the hose and washed their blood down the drain in the men’s room floor. He already had his plan worked out.
Teddy went next door to where the rental equipment was stored and started the backhoe. He had had some experience with the machinery when, back in Virginia, he had dug his own swimming pool behind his house. He drove the machine out the rear door of the building and into the piñon trees that grew wild behind the property, found a clear spot, and began to dig. After a couple of minutes’ work he had established a rhythm, and in about an hour, he dug the equivalent of his Virginia swimming pool in the sandy soil.