by Stuart Woods
“Got a pencil?”
“Yes.”
“Write down a new number.” He gave it to her. “Then wait a little while, and tell Genaro that you heard from me. Give him the number we’re talking on now. They may check your iPhone for recent calls from this number, so delete them all but this one. Find a Radio Shack and buy a throwaway cell phone, then call me at the new number from that phone, next time you want to talk.”
“All right.”
“I think we’d better cool it for a while, until the heat from Majorov is off.”
“I think so, too.”
“Call me whenever you like, but do it from the throwaway. I’d certainly like to know if you have any further contact with Majorov.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Just relax and live your life as usual.”
“I miss you,” she said.
“I miss you, too,” Teddy replied. “We’ll get together again, don’t worry. I’ll call you in a few days on the throwaway number.”
They both hung up, and Charmaine stretched out on the bed and tried to nap, but she couldn’t stop trembling.
Todd German arrived at Los Angeles International, rented a car, and, using the onboard GPS system, drove to Shutters and checked in. He hung up his clothes, then went online and found a Santa Monica funeral parlor advertising basic services and had a short conversation with them about services and rates. He told them he’d call back later in the day.
That done, he went down to the garage and drove to the West Los Angeles police station. He gave the name of the detective he had spoken to, and after a fifteen-minute wait, a skinny, sandy-haired man in his mid-thirties appeared.
“My name is Detective Sanders,” he said. “Please come with me.”
He was escorted to a small room containing only a table and four chairs. He was told to have a seat, and Sanders left. He came back ten minutes later with another man, short, dark, and muscular. Gym rat, Todd figured. The man’s name was Gonzales.
“Mr. German,” Sanders said, tossing a thin file folder on the table, “what is your connection to Igor Smolensky?”
“I believe we went over that on the phone,” Todd replied.
“Go over it again for me,” Gonzales said. “Please.”
“We both work for Amalgamated Enterprises, in Phoenix. Mr. Smolensky was my immediate superior.”
“What kind of company is that?”
“It’s an international conglomerate made up of about three dozen businesses in various countries.”
“Any of these businesses connected to any kind of criminal organization?”
Todd made a show of looking surprised. “Of course not. Neither Mr. Smolensky nor I would be employed there, if that were the case.”
“Reason we ask,” Sanders said, “is the circumstances of Mr. Smolensky’s death fit a pattern associated with criminality. He was lured from his room down into the garage. He left so quickly that he didn’t even bother to put his ID or money in his pockets. He was disarmed—he was found with a semiautomatic pistol—placed in the trunk of his car, and shot in the head with a small-caliber weapon. His death had all the hallmarks of a mob killing.”
“If that’s so, then there must have been a case of mistaken identity,” Todd said. “Igor was a straight arrow. He belonged to the Phoenix Kiwanis Club, for God’s sake.”
“How about you, Mr. German? Do you have any criminal associations?”
“Certainly not.”
“Now that Mr. Smolensky is dead, are you going to get his job?”
“I don’t know—it’s possible, I guess, or they could send someone in from the outside. I’ve been there less than a year.”
“Where were you before that?”
“I was a student at the University of Phoenix.”
“That’s some sort of Internet school, isn’t it?”
“No, but it’s a for-profit university.”
“What did you study there?”
“I got a bachelor’s in economics and an MBA.”
“How old are you, Mr. German?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Where are you from?”
“I was born in Phoenix. I’ve lived there all my life.”
“Where are your parents from?”
“My father was born in East Germany, my mother in Russia.”
“Are you acquainted with something called the Russian Mafia?”
“Only from bad television shows. I’d like to claim Mr. Smolensky’s body.”
“Does he have any living relatives?” Gonzales asked.
“No—at least, not according to his employment records.”
“Wife?”
“No, he was single.”
“Was he gay?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Was he screwing anybody in the office?”
“Not to my knowledge. It’s a small office. There’s only one woman working for us, and she’s married. How do I go about claiming the body?”
Sanders removed a list of names from his folder and slid it across the table. “This is a list of people who checked out of Shutters on the morning that Mr. Smolensky was murdered. Do any of them ring a bell?”
Todd looked at the list: at the top was Billy Burnett. “No, none of them rings a bell. Now, how do I claim Mr. Smolensky’s body?”
“We’ll give you a document,” Sanders said. “You give that to a funeral home, and they’ll pick up the body from the city morgue. After that, what’s done with him is up to you.”
“Was there an autopsy conducted?”
“Yes. The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head. There were no other signs of violence on the body.”
“Will this murder be solved?”
Gonzales sighed. “I’d say the chances are about fifty-fifty, under the circumstances.”
“What are the circumstances?”
“Out-of-town visitor, no local connections, no witnesses, no DNA, no forensic evidence, except for the bullet that killed him.”
“So you have nothing at all to go on?” Todd didn’t really care, but he thought he should make a show of it.
“That’s about the size of it,” Sanders said. “We were hoping you might give us something to go on. Why was Smolensky in L.A.?”
“I don’t know—he left without telling me, said he’d be back in a couple of days. I don’t know of a business reason for his trip. It could have been personal, I guess.”
“Did Smolensky know a woman here, or a man?”
“I have no idea.”
Sanders took a document from the file folder on the table, signed it, and handed it to Todd. “This is what you need to claim the body.” He gave Todd a card. “Please call us if any further information comes to light.”
“I’ll do that,” Todd said, then he got out of there.
He entered the address of the funeral home into the GPS unit and drove there. He was seen immediately by a gray man in a black suit.
“How may we help you?” the man asked.
“An associate of mine was murdered. His body is at the city morgue.” Todd handed him the document. “I’d like you to collect the body, have it cremated, and deliver the ashes to me at Shutters, a hotel on Santa Monica Beach. What is your customary fee for such services?”
The man took a form from his desk drawer and began checking off items. “Hearse, pickup, body preparation, cremation container . . . Would you like to see a selection of urns?”
“No, thank you, just use whatever container is customary.”
“An urn is customary.”
“Do you have such a thing as a cardboard box of an appropriate size?”
“Yes.”
“That will do.”
The man added up some figures with a small calcu
lator and wrote a number at the bottom of the page. “Twelve hundred and seventy dollars,” he said, sliding the paper across the desk.
Todd counted out the money in cash and was given a receipt. “When will I have the ashes?” he asked.
The man looked at his watch. “By noon tomorrow.”
Thank you,” Todd said, and left as quickly as possible. Back at the hotel, he booked himself on an early afternoon flight to Las Vegas.
Stone, Dino, and Mike Freeman had dinner together in the dining room of the house at The Arrington. It was raining outside.
“I met Billy Burnett,” Stone said. “Or rather, Billy Barnett—it seems that Peter got the name wrong.”
“You know,” Mike said, “changing your name by one letter can be a very effective means of not being found. Most of the legwork in tracing people these days is done by computer. If you enter ‘Billy Burnett,’ maybe he turns up with a telephone listing or even an address, but computers are literalists: enter ‘Billy Barnett,’ and it will look for that and only that.”
“That’s interesting, Mike,” Stone said, “but Billy whatever-his-name-is is not Teddy Fay.”
“Why do you sound so certain?”
“Because Billy is younger, slimmer, fitter, and has more hair and a firmer jaw than Teddy.”
“Well, slimmer and fitter can make you look younger, and so can a face-lift. Hair can be transplanted and a firmer jaw can be gained with implants, usually slivers of cadaver bone. How about height?”
“I think Billy is taller than Teddy.”
“Losing weight can make you look taller, so can lifts in your shoes.”
“You’re not going to let go of this, are you?” Stone asked.
“I’m just pointing out the obvious,” Mike said. “I’m willing to accept that the two men are not the same person.”
“There’s something you’re both forgetting,” Dino said.
“Okay, what’s that?” Stone asked.
“You’re forgetting who Teddy Fay is.”
“Who is he?” Mike asked.
“He’s a guy who spent twenty years or so outfitting intelligence agents so that they would be unrecognizable as who they are. That means passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards—all the paper that a person usually carries. One of our computer kids at the NYPD told me that it’s possible, even easy, if you’re a good enough hacker with good enough equipment, to go into other computers and manufacture credit reports with long histories of charge accounts, addresses, loans, et cetera. He posits that if a hacker were really, really smart, he could hack into State Department computers and create passport records that would be indistinguishable from the real thing, so that a fake passport wouldn’t set off alarms at an airport.
“Now, if he could do all that for CIA agents in the field, he could do it for himself, couldn’t he? And if you start looking for him, how are you going to get past all that custom-created background?”
“Fingerprints or DNA,” Mike replied.
“When Teddy left the Agency,” Dino continued, “he erased his fingerprint records from the CIA and FBI computers and erased every photograph of him on record.”
“That makes it tougher.”
“And who are you going to compare his DNA to? One of his old identities? Somebody who doesn’t exist anymore?”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Mike said, “I’d really like to hire this guy.”
Stone and Dino burst out laughing. “I don’t think he’s job hunting,” Stone said.
• • •
Todd German woke late, had breakfast in bed, and watched an old movie on TV. At eleven-thirty, a package was delivered to his room. He took it into the bathroom, opened it, and looked at the contents: a gray, pulpy substance. He emptied the box into the toilet and flushed it. “Sorry, Igor,” he said aloud. “Think of it as a burial at sea.”
He got dressed and packed and drove to LAX to catch his flight to Las Vegas.
• • •
Todd had just checked into his room at the New Desert Inn when the phone rang. “Yes?”
“This is Majorov. Come up to my suite now.” He gave him the room number and hung up.
Todd changed into fresh clothes and went in search of the suite. He rapped on the door, and it was opened by a large man in a suit.
“You German?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
The man jerked a thumb in the direction of the next room. Todd walked into a book-lined study and found a man sitting behind the desk, reading a document.
“Sit,” Majorov said, then he looked up and gave Todd a long, appraising once-over. “Tell me about Los Angeles.”
Todd gave him a concise account of the events of his visit there.
“So the police have no leads?”
“No,” Todd said. “And I don’t think they’re going to find any.”
“Why not?” Majorov said. “I thought American policemen never let go of murder cases.”
“There isn’t anything to find. Billy Burnett doesn’t exist, at least, not anymore. He’s somebody else, now.”
“We have an airplane tail number,” Majorov pointed out.
“He’s already figured out that we’re trying to trace it, and he has, no doubt, already changed it.”
“Is it so easy?”
“With stick-on numbers, available at any graphics shop.”
“I see. I want you to find this man.”
“I don’t think I want that job,” Todd said.
“Your mother would be shocked.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your mother and I are first cousins,” Majorov said. “How do you think you got this job? With a degree from that . . . university?”
Todd was shaken. “She told me that all her relatives are dead.”
“She lied,” Majorov said. “Now tell me why you don’t want Igor’s job.”
“I would be very pleased to have Igor’s job, but not the job of finding this Billy Burnett.”
“Tell me why.”
“Just look at what’s happened so far: he’s killed two of what Igor said are your best men and made them vanish from sight.”
“Igor found them.”
“Only because he knew where to look. And now Igor is dead, too. Burnett is smarter than Igor, or he would be dead and Igor still alive. I have to ask myself why you have become obsessed with finding this man. Is it just revenge over this hotel thing?”
“In my business you don’t allow people to take advantage of you, and that’s what Burnett has done.”
“And he will go on taking advantage of you until you stop looking for him. In fact, what he will do, if you continue to annoy him, is to cut the process short by simply killing you.”
“You think he could do that?”
“I walked in here without being searched,” Todd said. “I could be armed with a gun or a knife. Why do you think you are invulnerable? Igor thought that.”
“You have a very smart mouth,” Majorov said. He was becoming irritated, not least because he knew the younger man was right. “Igor was paid four times as much as you,” he said, controlling his temper. “If you want Igor’s job, go do his job.”
Todd stared at him but did not reply.
“Now, I will give you a gift,” Majorov said. “There is a woman who works in this establishment who knows Billy Burnett, who spent a night in his bed at this Shutters place. She says she doesn’t know how to contact him, but she is lying. Her name is Charmaine.” He scribbled something on a sheet of paper. “Here is her address, her phone number, and the number of her room in this hotel, where she rests between shifts.” He stapled a photograph to the sheet. “And here is what she looks like.” He shoved the paper across the desk.
Todd picked it up, looked at it, and stood up. “All right,” he said. �
��I’ll need some cash.”
“How much?”
“Ten thousand dollars.”
Majorov took a small pad from his desk drawer, wrote the amount on it, and signed it. “The casino cashier will give you the money.”
Todd took the chit and left the suite.
Teddy worked until three, then went home and spent an hour going through his Barnett identity, cleaning up details, until he was satisfied that everything stood up. Something was nagging at him, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
Then he sat down with the latest issue of Flying magazine and on the last pages it came to him. He was reading an article that praised the work of Hawthorne Aircraft Painting, based at Hawthorne Airport. He picked up the phone and called them.
“My name is Barnett,” he said. “I have an airplane parked at Hawthorne that I’d like partially repainted.”
“Where is the airplane?” the man asked.
“At Million Air. It’s a JetPROP.”
“I’ll run over there and have a look at it,” the man said. “What did you want painted?”
“The airplane is red over white, with black striping. It’s fairly new, but I’ve never liked red.”
“So you want just the top color changed?”
“That’s right.”
“What color would you like?”
“I think a dark green, and I’d like the tail number in white and the stripes in a metallic gold.”
“All right, Mr. Barnett. I’ll call you back in an hour.”
Fifty minutes later, Teddy and Hawthorne Aircraft Painting had a deal, and since the shop had had a cancellation, it would be done quickly. That little bit of anxiety had vanished, and he felt much better.
He called Charmaine on her throwaway number.
“Hey,” she said. “How are you?”
“Just fine,” he replied. “I’ve got a part-time job that I’m enjoying.”
“Doing what?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“When will that be?”
“As soon as you like.”
“I’ve got a long weekend off, starting Friday.”
“What time will you leave Vegas?”
“About four.”