by Stuart Woods
Todd ran out of the hangar and looked at the parked airplanes, running along the line. There were plenty of Cessnas, as usual, but he didn’t see a 182 RG. Then he turned and looked toward the runway, where a Cessna was beginning its takeoff roll. He watched it lift off and then saw the landing gear come up. He squinted, but it was too far away to read the registration number on the side. He kept watching it as it climbed, until it began making a turn to the east and disappeared.
Todd ran back to the paint-shop office. “Can you tell me what tail number you painted on that airplane?” he asked.
“Sure,” the man replied, and gave him the number.
“Do you have a name and address for the owner?” Todd asked. “I’m looking to buy a nice 182 RG.”
The man looked through some papers stacked on his desk. “Yeah, here’s the FAA form. I’m afraid he’s from Arkansas, though, and he told me he was headed home.”
“Let me make a note of this, and I’ll call him,” Todd said, scribbling down the information. He thanked the man, then ran for his car.
BART CROSS TAXIED HIS Beech Baron to the ramp at Double Eagle Airport, then ran through his shutdown checklist and cut the engines. He got his luggage out of the rear compartment, then went into the FBO to arrange for parking and fuel. Shortly after that he was on his way to Albuquerque International Airport to pick up the Mercedes station wagon.
27
Todd gunned his red Taurus and headed for the interstate. Teddy, if he wasn’t really going to Arkansas, would likely be headed for Las Vegas, the second of his airport guesses, and Lauren would be driving there to meet him. She had at least a half-hour head start-more like three-quarters of an hour. He turned onto the I-25 and set his cruise control at seventy-five. This was no time to get stopped by the state patrol.
TEDDY LANDED at Las Vegas after a forty-minute flight and taxied up to the little municipal terminal. He gave his fuel order to a lineman, then went inside to the front desk, where a man sat behind the counter. “Good afternoon,” he said.
“Hey,” the man replied. “You just refueling? Anything else we can do for you?”
“I’d like to hangar my airplane,” Teddy said. “Do you have any space?”
“I’ve got a T-hangar that might work for you,” the man said. “Let’s go take a look.” He led the way to an old Jeep, and they drove along a line of hangars and stopped at the last one. The man unlocked a padlock and pulled up the bifold door. “You’ve got power, but if you want heat, you’ll have to furnish your own heater.”
Teddy looked around. The hangar was ideal-clean and conveniently located.
“The price includes pull-out service when you need the airplane, or I’ll give you a key and you can pull it out yourself, if you feel like it.”
Teddy asked the price, negotiated and took the hangar for a three-month period. “I’d be grateful if you’d keep this confidential,” he said to the man. “The tax man might be around.”
“Sure thing,” the man replied, grinning.
They drove back to the terminal, and Teddy paid in cash for the rental and the fuel and collected his hangar key, then went over to the little airport restaurant to have a cheeseburger and to wait for Lauren to catch up. He looked at his watch and figured he had an hour to wait. When he had been there for forty-five minutes, he ordered a burger for her and had it put into a bag.
She arrived on time, and he drove back so that she could eat her burger on the way to Santa Fe.
TODD HAD PASSED Santa Fe and had been on the road for an hour and a half when he saw the tan Grand Cherokee approaching in the opposite lane, with a man driving and a woman in the passenger seat. He had just passed the exit for Serafina, and he didn’t know how far it was to the next exit. He was about to drive across the meridian of the four-lane highway when he checked his mirror and saw a car approaching from behind him with something on the roof. He switched off the cruise control and let his speed drop, while cursing his bad luck. It was a state patrol car, and it stayed behind him all the way to the Los Montoyas exit, where he was able to make a U-turn and head back toward Santa Fe. He put his foot down, then turned the cruise control on again at ninety. He hoped the police car was the only one in the sector.
TEDDY SAW THE TAURUS carrying Todd Bacon coming and watched him pass, then disappear in his rearview mirror. He got off the interstate at the next exit, opened the glove compartment and handed Lauren a map. “Navigate me to Santa Fe on the surface roads,” he said. “We just passed Bacon going the other way, and he saw me.”
She opened the map and told him to take the next right. When they got to Santa Fe, Teddy drove to the dealer where he had bought the Grand Cherokee, found the same salesman and made a deal to trade for a very nice, low-mileage Volvo station wagon with four-wheel drive and winter tires.
“I’m not going to let this guy run me out of Santa Fe,” he said to Lauren as they drove toward home. When they arrived there he went immediately to his computer and went through the Agency mainframe to access the New Mexico Department of Motor Vehicles and started making changes.
TODD GOT OFF the interstate at the Santa Fe exit, surprised that he had not caught up with Teddy’s Grand Cherokee. He drove into town on Old Pecos Trail, checking every parking lot for the SUV but not seeing it. He drove back to La Fonda, parked the car, went upstairs and got on his computer. He logged in to the Agency mainframe and accessed the New Mexico DMV. He did a search for tan Grand Cherokees and found four registered in Santa Fe. He looked away for a moment to find a pad to write on, and when he returned his attention to the computer screen there were only three Grand Cherokees. He could have sworn there had been four a moment before, but he wasn’t positive. He jotted down the names and addresses of the owners and went back to his car. He was going to start running them down now.
TEDDY HAD CHANGED the owner’s name and address to one in Albuquerque. Now he changed the name and address of the Volvo to a Taos owner, then exited the Agency mainframe.
Lauren, who had been watching over his shoulder, said, “That was very slick.” She kissed him on the neck.
28
Bart Cross found the Mercedes station wagon, transferred his luggage from the taxi and drove out of the airport area to I-25 and headed north to Santa Fe.
He had flown Jim Long to the city a couple of times when he was shooting films here and had once stayed for three weeks, when he and a stuntman had driven a stagecoach in a western, so he knew the town pretty well. He drove through downtown and around the Plaza, just to get a look at it again, then picked up some food for dinner and headed north on the road to Taos and turned off at the sign for Las Campanas. He followed the road map Barbara had given him and found the house and guesthouse with no problem. He put the station wagon in the garage as instructed, put his clothes away and heated up the roast chicken he had bought for dinner. While it was warming, he found the liquor and poured himself a bourbon over ice. He had just turned on the TV for the news and sat down with his drink when he heard car doors slamming outside.
“THERE’S A LIGHT ON,” Vittorio said as they pulled up at dusk.
“She’s finally come home,” Cupie replied. He got out of the car, pulled his Smith & Wesson snub-nosed.38 from the holster, checked that it was loaded and snapped the cylinder shut. He did not return it to the holster.
“Stand beside the front door and cover me,” Vittorio said, then stepped up to the front door and used the knocker.
BART ALREADY HAD a gun in his hand. He looked through the little window in the door and saw an Indian in a flat-brimmed black hat. He leaned on the wall next to the door, the gun in his fist, and opened the door a foot or so with his left. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Vittorio said, “but I’m looking for Mrs. Keeler, who rents this house.”
“I’m a subletter,” Bart said. “There’s no one else here.”
“May I ask how you came to sublet the place?” Vittorio asked pleasantly.
“There was
an ad on a bulletin board where I work, at a film studio in L.A. We did the deal over the phone. She was in San Francisco.”
“How long will you be subletting?” Vittorio asked.
“Till the end of the month-longer if my work here calls for it. Will you excuse me? My dinner’s getting cold.”
“Of course. I’m sorry to have troubled you,” Vittorio said. He turned to go back to the car.
Bart watched through the window in the door as another man fell in behind the Indian, and saw him returning a pistol to its holster. He locked the door, found the cell phone Eleanor Keeler had given him and called the number he had memorized.
BACKIN THE CAR, Cupie slammed his door. “Now can we stop coming out to this place all the time, please?”
“All right, all right. Sounds like Barbara doesn’t need her house anymore. You think she’s really in San Francisco?”
“That’s what I heard the guy say,” Cupie replied. “If he did the sublet deal on the phone, he would have been calling a San Francisco number, if that’s where she was. And by the way, he had a gun in his right hand, out of sight.”
“Did you see it?”
“No,” Cupie said. “I smelled the oil.”
BARBARA GOT TO the cell phone in her purse on the fifth ring. “Yes?”
“It’s me. I’m at the house. There were two men just here looking for you: an Indian and a fat guy, like you said.”
“That’s Vittorio and Cupie Dalton,” she said. “What did you tell them?”
“That I saw an ad on a bulletin board at the studio and called you in San Francisco and sublet the place. They asked how long I would be here, and I said until the end of the month, maybe longer, if work required. They left peaceably, and I saw Dalton putting away a gun as he went.”
“If they come back again, kill them, and I’ll pay you another ten grand,” she said.
“Hey, wait,” Bart replied. “Let’s not litter the landscape out here with corpses before I get the main job done.”
“They’ve seen you now. It would be in your interests to kill them as quickly as possible.”
“We’ll see. I’m not ready to commit to that right now.”
“They work for Eagle,” she said. “When it’s done, they’ll come looking for you, and I don’t want them to find you.”
“Look, lady, I don’t want this job to spin out of control. Jim will cover my alibi that I’m working for him here.”
“We’ll see. I’ll mention it to him. He’s coming back there in a few days to see how his shooting is going.”
“Tell him to find me some work here when he comes,” Bart said. “That’ll help with my alibi.”
“All right.” She hung up.
VITTORIO AND CUPIE SAT in the Blue Corn Café on Water Street and ate dinner.
“I think he’s a hit man she hired,” Vittorio said.
“Why do you think that?” Cupie asked.
“That’s just how it smells,” Vittorio said. “It doesn’t make any sense for Barbara to be in San Francisco, or to sublet the house before she’s done with Eagle. We need to keep an eye out for this guy.”
“I didn’t see him,” Cupie said. “What does he look like?”
“Six-two, dark hair, thirty-five to forty, athletic; wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a western-style shirt.”
“I didn’t see a car.”
“In the garage,” Vittorio said. “We don’t know what kind. That’s a disadvantage for us.”
“Jesus, this food is hot,” Cupie said, wiping his sweaty face with his napkin.
“It’s the peppers,” Vittorio replied. “Better get used to it while you’re in Santa Fe.”
“I’ll never get used to peppers,” Cupie said.
“We need to be at Eagle’s house early tomorrow, before he leaves for work. That’s a vulnerable time for him.”
“You think this guy has already got him staked out? Looks like he just got here.”
“No way to know,” Vittorio said.
TODD BACON GOT BACK to his hotel room hot and tired. He had chased down three Grand Cherokees, owned, respectively, by an old lady, a local doctor and a couple in their seventies. He had been to the Las Vegas Airport and talked with the man who ran the place, who told him he hadn’t seen any Cessnas that day and that he hadn’t had any hangar space for rent.
That didn’t make any sense at all. There was no other airport where Teddy Fay could have taken his airplane except Las Vegas, given the direction he had flown in and the fact that Lauren Cade had obviously picked him up there. He still hadn’t gotten a decent look at either of them, and the Grand Cherokee had just melted away in Santa Fe.
This was driving Todd nuts.
29
Shortly before dawn Vittorio had scrambled up the hill above Eagle’s house and placed himself in a nest of good-sized rocks. He had a hunting rifle with a big scope by his side, already sighted for the distance. Cupie was down the road below the house, in some other rocks, positioned to fire into an automobile racing down the hill from Eagle’s place.
They were using handheld radios the size of a Snickers bar, and Cupie pressed the push-to-talk button. “Are you sure this is the best place for me?” he asked. “I can’t see a goddamned thing.”
“You can see the road in both directions, can’t you?” Vittorio replied.
“Well, yeah.”
“Then you can warn me when a car is coming up the hill, so I can be ready, and I can warn you when one’s on the way down the hill, having made an attempt on our client.”
“Yeah to that, too,” Cupie admitted. “I just won’t see any of the action.”
“I’ve got the action covered,” Vittorio said. “You just keep your eye on the road, and don’t get seen by anybody.”
“You expect me to hit the driver of a car, first shot, with a revolver with a two-inch barrel?”
“Okay, we’ll get you a better piece for the job. You’d have a shot anyway, if you extend your arm, brace against a rock, then cock and squeeze. Don’t try it double-action.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cupie muttered. “I’m going to bring some kind of folding chair, too. This fucking rock is incompatible with my ass.”
“You’ve got your own built-in cushion, Cupie.” Vittorio chuckled. “Quit your bitching.”
“Have you got the coffee Thermos?”
“Yes, I have.”
“I want one of my own tomorrow.”
“You had your coffee before we left,” Vittorio pointed out.
“I can’t have a second cup?”
“Tomorrow you can have all you can choke down.”
“It’s your fault if I fall asleep.”
The sun crested the mountain above the house, and the light from it worked its way across the parking area in front and eventually illuminated the front door. It was close to eight before the door opened and Eagle stepped onto the front porch, followed by Susannah. He turned, gave her a kiss and walked toward his black Mercedes, while Susannah, with a wave, went back inside.
Vittorio pressed the button. “He’s outside. Anybody coming?”
“Nobody either way,” Cupie replied.
“He’s in the car, and it’s moving. It’s a black Mercedes. Don’t shoot him.”
“No? I was looking forward to it,” Cupie growled. “Okay, he’s driving past.”
“Can he see you? He won’t like it if he knows we’re staking out his house.”
“He won’t see me. There, he’s gone, down the mountain toward Tesuque. Can we get out of here now?”
“Let me get the car, and I’ll pick you up in three minutes.”
“Bring coffee,” Cupie said.
TEDDY FAY LAY IN BED, Lauren’s head on his shoulder. They had made love-Lauren liked it best in the morning-and she had gone back to sleep.
Teddy reviewed his day. It was his practice when settling in a place, however temporarily, to immediately start work on new identity documents, so as to be prepared to run if he found himself
being pursued. He’d start that this morning.
He was being pursued, sort of, but his pursuer wasn’t certain he was still in Santa Fe. He’d had a call from the man at Las Vegas Airport: Bacon had been there inquiring about him, but the man had told him no Cessnas had landed there and that there was no hangar space available. That would have confused Bacon.
Teddy had put himself in the younger man’s shoes: He was looking for two people, neither of which he had ever had a good look at, nor did he have photographs of them. He didn’t know where they were living or what car they were driving, and their trail had gone cold. How long would Bacon hang on before giving up?
Teddy felt some sympathy for the boy. He had outfitted hundreds of young agents over his decades with the Agency, sending them out to God knew where, to die or to return, often disillusioned with the work they were doing. A few came back excited, still wanting more. Bacon would be one of those, given Teddy’s experience of him.
Teddy had given a lot of thought as to whether to kill Todd. He would, if he had to, if the boy got too close, but if he had to, if Bacon simply disappeared, as Teddy was capable of making him do, then they might send out another agent, maybe more than one, and he would certainly have to move.
Teddy liked Santa Fe, and so did Lauren, and he didn’t want to move. If he could convince Todd Bacon they were gone, then maybe they could stay; maybe they could make a real home here. Teddy missed having a home. He was a nest builder, and he always assembled the twigs necessary to make that nest. His new safe would arrive today, so he could pack away his equipment and hunker down. He was looking forward to that. He wished he had some pictures to hang. They would have to look in on the galleries on Canyon Road.
TODD BACON ENDED HIS phone call to Holly Barker, his face red and hot. She was starting to think of him as an amateur; he could tell by the sound of her voice. He could hear the exasperation as she made more suggestions.