by Stuart Woods
“I’ll need to depose Ms. Jepson and get her to sign an affidavit confirming her story, then I can take it to a judge with a petition to invalidate the will and reinstate the original version. If he signs off on it, then we can submit the original will for probate. Our fallback position would be to get the will declared invalid and reinstate the earlier version.”
“Mr. Waters, I direct you to do just that,” Barbara said, “and along the way I’d like to see that bitch Lee Hight disbarred for her part in the conspiracy.”
“That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Keeler, because Ms. Hight died of breast cancer last month. I suspect that is one reason that Ms. Jepson has come forward, since telling her story relieves her conscience and doesn’t punish anyone.”
“One other thing, Mr. Waters,” Barbara said. “I want you to hold this in absolute confidence. I do not want the press to get wind of it. Is that clear?”
“I’ll do everything I can, Mrs. Keeler, but at some point this will become a matter of public record, and given the prominence of Mr. Keeler, someone is going to notice.”
“I’m going to give you my cell phone number,” Barbara said, “and you are not to share it with anyone else.” She gave him the number. “I do not wish to be contacted by anyone but you, and should the press contact you, you are to make no comment without my authorization. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly clear, Mrs. Keeler. I’ll be in touch.” They both hung up.
Barbara leapt from her chair and did a little dance around the room, then fell back into the chair, laughing and crying. She was going to get, at least, hundreds of millions out of this! Then she stopped and began to think.
As far as she knew, her absence from the Mexican prison was not known north of the border. If she now murdered Ed Eagle, the whole story of her divorce from him and her arrest and imprisonment in Mexico might very well come out in the news reports of his death, and she might be either charged with his murder or extradited to Mexico and prison.
“Shit!” she screamed. She was going to have to lie low until the will was probated, and probably for some time after that. She picked up the phone and called her new friends, Hugh and Charlene Holroyd.
“Ellie, how are you?” Charlene asked. “Hugh, pick up the extension.”
“Hey there, Ellie,” he said. “We’ve missed you.”
“I’m very well, thanks,” Barbara replied. “Do you suppose you could put me up for a little while?”
“Of course. You can have your old room back,” Hugh said.
“Or if you’d like more space, take our guesthouse. You can visit us whenever you like,” Charlene added.
“The guesthouse sounds wonderful,” Barbara said.
“Where are you now?”
“In Santa Fe.”
“Well, come on over here,” Hugh said. “May we expect you for cocktails?”
“You certainly may,” Barbara said. “I’ll see you then.” She hung up, lay back in her chair and sighed.
It would be fun to see the Holroyds, but she had been so looking forward to killing Ed Eagle.
43
Teddy Fay sat down at his computer and logged in to the Agency mainframe, first establishing his own computer’s position in Elmira, New York. He went to the personnel files and pulled up Todd Bacon’s service record.
Young Bacon, he learned, had been born in Charleston, West Virginia, to a single mother, had been a star athlete and valedictorian of his high school class, and had attended Columbia University on a full academic scholarship, majoring in languages while playing football and rowing for his school. He had been recruited for the CIA by a professor there and had graduated summa cum laude. He was perfect for the Agency.
He had excelled in every area of his training at the Farm and had had three foreign postings since. In Panama, after Teddy had assassinated the station chief, who had recognized him in a bar, Bacon had been made acting station chief.
It was shortly after Bacon’s promotion that he had crossed Teddy’s trail on Cumberland Island, in south Georgia, and had managed to put some bullet holes in his airplane’s wing. Teddy was uncertain how or why Bacon had made the leap from Panama to Georgia, but he had to believe that the young agent was pursuing him.
Teddy thought he could see the fine hand of Lance Cabot in all this, and that meant Holly Barker as well. This was irritating, since Teddy, after faking his death, had enjoyed being dead. He could not believe that it was in the Agency’s interests to pursue and kill him. The media had bought the story of his death, and it would be embarrassing if it was learned that he was still alive. Probably Cabot was just tidying up a messy corner of his realm as deputy director of operations, and if so, Holly Barker would be involved too, since she was his assistant deputy director.
He went to the interoffice e-mail program and addressed a message to her.
My Dear Holly,
It was so very good to encounter you in Florida recently. I had thought that since we were not at loggerheads there, you and your superior were prepared to let sleeping dogs lie, as it were. However, the presence of your representative in my last city of residence, and his ingenious but ineffectual attempts to locate me, has told me that someone at Langley wishes to put me permanently to sleep. That is regrettable, and not just for me.
You may tell your superior(s) that I am now reestablished in another part of the world, and should your young protégé, or anyone else, pursue me, I will be forced to put him out of his misery and to do so in a very public manner, requiring distasteful explanations to be made.
I should think that your young man could be more useful to the Agency alive and that he might better be employed elsewhere. If your superior(s) can see the way clear to preserve your agent’s good health and not to send others after him, I will promise to henceforth live very quietly. If not, things could get very, very messy.
You may respond to this missive at your internal box number 100001.
Hugs and kisses,
T.
Teddy gave his e-mail a high-priority rating and inserted a sender’s line not his own.
HOLLY BARKER SAT at her desk, making notes for a report she had to write on a recent Agency operation, when her computer made a chiming noise and a box appeared on her screen, reporting that she had received a high-priority internal message from the director. She opened and read it with growing consternation, then printed it, saved the message and went next door to Lance Cabot’s office.
“A moment?” she asked from his open door.
“Come in,” Lance replied, not looking up from his desk.
Holly closed the door behind her, which got his attention, then sat down and passed the message across his desk.
Lance began to read it, and she saw a tiny flicker of something on his usually impassive face. When he finished, he put the message down. “I don’t believe it,” he said.
“You’ll notice that the e-mail appears to have been sent from the director’s computer,” Holly said.
“The gall!” Lance said, with more emotion than she had ever seen him display. “He broke into our mainframe and into the director’s mailbox!”
“Looks that way,” Holly said. She leaned forward. “Lance, what is your response going to be?”
“Response? You think I’m going to respond to this?”
“It’s addressed to me. I’ll respond, if you like. He’s apparently created an internal mailbox for himself.”
“When did you last hear from Todd Bacon?” he asked.
“This morning. I’m afraid Teddy is running rings around him.”
“Should we send someone to help him?”
“Lance, read the message again.”
“I’ve read it twice.”
“Then you understand that he is going to start killing again. Do you want that?”
“Of course not.”
“Please remember,” Holly said, “that Teddy is professionally and personally very well equipped-perhaps as much as anyone in the Agency-to eliminate
anybody who tries to get to him, and he’s right: If he starts to do that, then explanations are going to have to be made.”
“Are you telling me that Todd can’t handle this?”
“I have a high opinion of Todd,” Holly said. “He is certainly a rising star here and could succeed at any number of assignments. He could also get dead on this one. In fact, I’m surprised that since Teddy so obviously knows about him, he isn’t dead already.”
“Do you believe, as he implies in his message, that Teddy has moved on from Santa Fe?”
“That’s what he does when he thinks he might be discovered: He moves on. I have no reason to doubt him.”
“Todd found him once. He could find him again.”
“That could very well be the worst possible thing that could happen, both to Todd and to you and, by extension, to me.”
“So, Holly, you’re worried about your hide?”
“In dangerous situations, Lance, I always worry about my hide.”
“Not the mission?”
“This isn’t a mission, it’s a vendetta, and vendettas can always turn around and bite you on the ass.”
“I’ll give it some thought.”
“Do you want me to respond to the e-mail?” Holly asked.
“Yes. Say, ‘Message received and understood.’ ”
“Is that a threat or are you agreeing to his terms? We’d better be clear.”
“I don’t want to be clear,” Lance said. “I want him to worry.”
“Then respond to the message yourself,” Holly said, standing up and walking out.
44
Vittorio and Cupie spent their entire day touring Santa Fe ’s hotel parking lots, motel parking lots, shopping malls and the Plaza. They had spotted two tan Mercedes wagons, both driven by people who were not Barbara.
They returned, dejected, in the late afternoon, and Cupie poured them both a drink. “Maybe we can’t protect Ed Eagle,” he said as he sank into the recliner next to Vittorio’s.
“You going to fink out on me?” Vittorio asked.
“No. We both have an obligation to Eagle, because we let him nearly get killed while we were on the job.” He sat silently for a moment, then picked up the phone on the table between the two chairs and called a number.
“Detective Santiago,” a voice said.
“Dave, it’s Cupie Dalton.”
“Hey, Cupie. Twice in one week. That’s something.”
“Dave, you remember the Bart Cross killing.”
“Sure.”
“Did you find anything interesting at his residence?”
“In the way of evidence? Not much. His killer was a pro, I’d bet on that.”
“Did you take any personal stuff from his house, like a diary?”
“Nah, there was no diary. Come to think of it, there was an airplane logbook.”
“Now, that’s interesting,” Cupie said.
“Why?”
“Well, I’m trying to put together a picture of his last few days, in connection with a protection job I’m working on. I think he might be the guy who tried to kill a client of mine, put him in the hospital.”
“I see.”
“Could you copy the last, say, four pages of the logbook and fax or e-mail them to me?”
“Sure, I guess so. Which do you prefer?”
“E-mail, if you can scan them.”
“Give me a few minutes,” Santiago said. “You’re buying lunch, right?”
“Wherever you like, Dave. I’ll take you to the Brown Derby, if you like.”
“Cupie, you know very well the Brown Derby closed twenty-five years ago.”
“Okay, you can name the place.”
“Spago Beverly Hills.”
“Done.”
“What time?”
“Not today, Dave. I’m in Santa Fe on a case. As soon as I get back. I promise.”
“Okay. You’ll have the pages shortly.”
Cupie gave him his e-mail address and hung up.
“What are you looking for?” Vittorio asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Cupie replied. “Anything. I’m desperate.”
They drank their drinks, then Cupie’s laptop made the little chiming noise that signaled a new e-mail.
“Incoming,” Cupie said, getting out of his chair and setting his drink down on the desk, next to his laptop. He pulled up Dave Santiago’s e-mail and opened the attachment, then connected his laptop to Vittorio’s computer and printed it.
“So,” Vittorio said, “what have you got?”
Cupie went slowly through the pages. “Seems Bart Cross kept a very meticulous logbook,” he said, “including dates and names of his passengers.” Cupie got to the last page. “Here we go: Bart flew Jim Long to Acapulco and came back the next day with Long and-bingo!-Barbara! Cleared customs at Yuma.”
“ Yuma? Why Yuma?”
“Well,” Cupie said, “if you had just escaped from jail in Mexico, you might want to land at some out-of-the-way place, right?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Vittorio said.
“Then he went back to L.A. and landed at Burbank.”
“What about after that?” Vittorio asked.
“A few days later he flew to Albuquerque! Shortly after that we saw him at Barbara’s house. Then the day of the attempt on Eagle, he flew back to Burbank. That was the day he got killed.”
“I guess Barbara didn’t take the news of Eagle’s survival too well,” Vittorio said.
“Hey, look,” Cupie said. “In the notes section he wrote down the color and tag number of Barbara’s Mercedes wagon! Arizona plate.” Cupie wrote down the plate number in his notebook. “Now we know exactly what to look for.”
“I’m getting tired of looking for tan Mercedes wagons,” Vittorio said. “Too many of them out there. We saw three today.”
“Always good to get the correct plate number, though,” Cupie replied. “We got more than that, though.”
“What else we got?”
“We know that Jim Long busted Barbara out of the Mexican jail-or at least got her out of the country after she got out.”
“That is interesting,” Vittorio said. “It’s the sort of information that might make Long willing to talk to us.”
“Tell you what,” Cupie said. “Eagle’s going to be in the hospital for a few more days. Why don’t we go to L.A. tomorrow and pay a little visit on our famous film producer?”
“We got nothing else to do,” Vittorio said.
Cupie called Long’s office at Centurion Studios.
“Long Productions,” a woman said.
“Hi. Can you tell me if and when there’s going to be a funeral for Bart Cross?”
“Why, yes,” the woman replied. “Are you a friend of his?”
“Yes, indeed,” Cupie said.
“Well, there’ll be a graveside service at Forest Lawn tomorrow afternoon at three. Got a pencil? I’ll give you instructions.”
“Shoot,” Cupie said, then wrote down everything. “Will Jim Long be there?” he asked.
“Yes, he will,” she said. “Can I tell him you’re coming?”
“Thank you, yes,” Cupie said, then hung up before she could ask his name.
“Okay, we know where Long is going to be at three tomorrow afternoon.”
“We’ll ambush him, then,” Vittorio replied.
“If anybody knows where Barbara is, it’s Jim Long,” Cupie said.
“Maybe she’ll be at the funeral.”
“Hey, I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe we can shoot her and throw her into Cross’s grave.”
The thought made Vittorio smile.
45
Cupie and Vittorio got off the airplane at LAX and took the bus to the long-term parking lot, where Cupie had left his car. He tossed their bags into the trunk, then opened an aluminum case. “I can offer you a small nine-millimeter or a snub-nosed Smith and Wesson.38. What is your pleasure?”
“I’ll take the nine-millimeter,” Vittorio replied. “
I know you ex-cops like the S and W.”
“It’s compact, and it doesn’t jam,” Cupie said, handing Vittorio the semiautomatic in its holster.
Vittorio threaded the holster onto his belt and looked at his watch. “We’d better go directly to the cemetery,” he said. “I’d like to look at the setup before people arrive.”
Cupie knew the way to Glendale and Forest Lawn. They stopped at the gate for a map, and the guard showed them where the grave site was.
“This is one hell of a big cemetery,” Vittorio said, looking at the map while Cupie drove. “Three hundred acres, a quarter of a million graves, it says here.”
“Yeah, anybody who’s anybody is buried here,” Cupie replied.
“How do you suppose a guy like Bart Cross gets buried here?”
“Long probably paid for the plot.”
They drove for ten minutes, following the map, to a corner of the cemetery where there were, mostly, lines of graves marked by flush bronze plaques.
“Over there,” Vittorio said, pointing to where a backhoe was at work.
Cupie found a parking spot, and they looked around the area. He pointed to a marble bench with a view of the grave site. “Let’s have a seat and wait.” He took a newspaper from his jacket pocket and opened it to the crossword puzzle, while Vittorio seemed to zone out, closing his eyes and looking like a statue of himself.
CUPIE POKED VITTORIO on the knee. “Here they come,” he said. A hearse leading a short procession of half a dozen cars appeared and drove up a service road near the grave site. Attendants removed the casket from the rear and placed it on a trolley, which they rolled to the graveside. They positioned the casket over the grave, while a few other cars appeared and parked. Soon there was a group of fifteen or twenty people gathered around the grave, and a minister in a dark suit began to read from a Bible.
“Not a bad turnout,” Cupie said. “I doubt if I’ll do as well.”
“There’s James Long,” Vittorio said, nodding toward the foot of the casket.
“Got ’im,” Cupie said.
They watched as the service concluded and the casket was lowered into the grave. People began walking back to their cars.