by Stuart Woods
“Long is in the BMW,” Cupie said, “and he appears to be alone. Let’s follow and look for an opportunity to brace him. I don’t think this is the place for it.”
“Whatever you say,” Vittorio replied.
They got back into Cupie’s car and waited for Long’s BMW to pass them, then they fell in behind at a reasonable distance. Long headed in the general direction of Centurion Studios, then, after a mile or so, pulled into a gas station, got out and began to refuel his car.
“Now,” Cupie said, pulling into the station and parking to one side. He and Vittorio got out and approached Long, who was leaning against his car and talking on his cell phone while the pump did the work.
“Good morning, Mr. Long,” Cupie said. “Remember us?”
“I’ll call you back,” Long said, and closed his phone. “How could I forget?”
“We won’t take much of your time,” Cupie said. “We just want to inform you of some of the evidence against you that the police will soon be pursuing.”
“What are you talking about?” Long said, looking nervous.
“We can demonstrate to the police that you abetted the escape of Barbara Eagle from a Mexican prison, then flew her to Yuma in Bart Cross’s airplane,” Cupie said.
“I abetted no one in anything,” Long replied, but he didn’t move.
“We’ve got the pages from Bart’s airplane logbook, mentioning both your names and your destinations,” Vittorio said. “That, of course, led to an attempt on Ed Eagle’s life by Bart. You introduced Barbara to him, remember? Then, there’s the matter of Barbara’s murder of Bart. You’re up to your neck in all this, Mr. Long.”
“You guys are not cops,” Long said.
“I used to be,” Cupie said, “and I know lots of guys who still are, even one in Burbank who’s investigating Bart’s murder.”
“What do you want from me?” Long asked.
“We want Barbara,” Vittorio said. “And if we can’t find her ourselves, then we’ll just have to go to the police with our evidence, and they’ll start talking to everybody involved, including you. So, it’s down to you or Barbara. What’s it going to be? You can do yourself a favor by telling us now where she is.”
“I don’t know where she is,” Long said. “I threw her out of my house after I learned of Bart’s death. I don’t know where she went.”
“But you know where she’s going to end up, don’t you?” Cupie asked. “You’re her only friend in the world; you’ve helped her at every turn. You know what she’s up to.”
“She’s obsessed with Ed Eagle,” Long said. “I don’t have to tell you that. I drove her to LAX, so I assume she took a plane somewhere, probably to Santa Fe.”
“And once she gets to Santa Fe, where will she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Looks like our next call is to the Burbank police,” Cupie said.
“She told me she met a couple at a spa in Tucson who live near Los Alamos,” Long said. “Name of Holroyd. That’s all I know. Maybe she’s there, but I can’t tell you for sure.”
“And how do you get in touch with Barbara?” Cupie asked.
“She uses throwaway cell phones,” Long said.
“Give me the number,” Cupie said.
Long recited a number while Cupie wrote it in his notebook. “This better be correct,” he said.
“It was working as recently as a few days ago,” Long said. “You’ll keep me out of this?”
“That’s not up to us, Mr. Long,” Vittorio said, “but if the information you’ve given us is correct, we won’t bring the police into it. The Burbank department has Bart’s logbook; they’ll be calling on you eventually. You’d better get your story straight and call your lawyer. Or take a prolonged vacation in Mexico.”
The gas pump stopped.
“Your tank is full, Mr. Long,” Cupie said. “Good luck.” Vittorio and Cupie walked back to Cupie’s car and got in.
“Well,” Vittorio said, “we’ve got more to go on now than we’ve had so far.”
“Too fucking right,” Cupie said, looking at his watch. “We can still make the six thirty flight to Albuquerque.”
46
Teddy Fay logged on to the Agency mainframe, apparently from Billings, Montana, and checked the mail for box 10001.
Message received and understood.
The e-mail was unsigned, but it was from Lance Cabot’s mailbox. Still, it was inconclusive: Was he off Teddy’s back? Or did he understand but not give a shit? This wasn’t good enough.
“Any news?” Lauren asked as she came from the kitchen.
Teddy showed her the message.
“That’s great!” she said.
“It could mean anything,” Teddy responded. “Lance Cabot, Holly’s boss, is a very tenacious young man, and at times, he can be reckless.”
“What’s your next move?” she asked.
“Well, it’s clear I’m going to have to make one. I can’t just sit back and wait to see what happens.”
“That sounds ominous,” she said.
“Not necessarily. I’m going to give Lance until tomorrow to communicate with his agent, then I’m going to go looking for young Todd Bacon.”
“What will you do when you find him?” Lauren asked.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Teddy replied. He went to the command level of the e-mail program and checked Holly Barker’s trash box. There were four discarded messages from Todd Bacon, and Teddy read them, chuckling at the report about the GPS tag he had placed on Teddy’s Volvo. The first message mentioned La Fonda.
Teddy then hacked into the central computer of the company that supplied rental cars to the Santa Fe Jetcenter and found that Todd had rented a red Taurus there, but Teddy hadn’t seen that car on the day when Todd was following him. He went further and found that La Fonda used the same company, and that Todd had exchanged the Taurus for a silver Toyota. He made a note of the license plate.
LATE THAT NIGHT, Teddy put a few things into a case, then drove to La Fonda, only five minutes away. He entered the hotel parking garage and began looking for a silver Toyota. He found two, and the second one had the correct plate number.
Teddy opened his case and removed a later version of the same tracking unit that Todd had placed on the Toyota. He fastened it in place under the car, then closed his case and left the garage. Back in his car, he turned on the handheld GPS unit and got a response from the Toyota.
Good, he thought. Now he could choose the time and place of his meeting with Todd.
TODD WAS, at that moment, in bed with Dolly in his hotel room, doing one of the things that she clearly loved most. After he had brought her and himself to a screaming climax, he lay back in bed with her head on his chest and ran his fingers through her thick hair.
“What’s become of your friend Ellie Keeler?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Dolly replied. “I haven’t heard from her.”
“That name is familiar. Is her first name Eleanor?”
“Yes.”
“How did you meet her?”
“She rented the guesthouse next door to Tip’s place when I was living in his guesthouse. She knocked on the door, and I gave her a drink.”
“I’ll bet that’s not all you gave her.” Todd chuckled.
She reached up and slapped him lightly across the face. “Behave yourself,” she said.
“I was thinking, why don’t we get together again? She was quite something.”
“Yes, she is, isn’t she? I’d like that.”
“Do you know how to get in touch with her?”
“I have her cell phone number,” Dolly replied. “I’ll call her in the morning, if you like.”
“Tomorrow night is good for me,” Todd said. “I’ll take the two of you to dinner, if you can get hold of her.”
“I’m sure she’d like to get hold of you,” Dolly laughed.
“And you as well,” Todd said.
VITTORIO AND CUPIE got back to Vi
ttorio’s house late, after stopping for dinner on the way from Albuquerque Airport.
Vittorio found the Los Alamos section of the phone book and looked for the name “Holroyd.” There was only one listing.
“It’s on Big Bowl Road,” he said.
“Do you know it?”
“Yeah. A zillion years ago the mountain where Los Alamos is was an active volcano. One day the thing exploded, blowing the top off the mountain and sending pieces of it as far away as Kansas. The result was that a big, shallow bowl of a valley was formed where the top of the mountain used to be, and that’s where Big Bowl Road is. It’s very beautiful up there.”
“Well, tomorrow, why don’t we do some sightseeing?” Cupie suggested.
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“Is there a house number?”
“Yes, 1228. That’s part of the new federal plan to give every house in the U.S. a street address, for the emergency services, in case they have to find it. It means that the Holroyd house is twelve-point-twenty-eight miles from the nearest intersection with a main road, so it shouldn’t be hard to find.”
“Now,” Cupie said, “we have to talk about what we do if we find her.”
“Yeah,” Vittorio replied. “I guess we do.”
BARBARA HAD REACHED the Holroyds’ house in time for dinner, and their cook had done some of her best work. They feasted on venison that Hugh had shot near his house.
“There’s plenty of it up here,” he said. “All you have to do is conceal yourself, make sure you have a clear field of fire and wait. One will come along soon.”
“Hugh, how long have you two lived up here?”
“Seven years,” Holroyd said, “though we travel a lot. We also kept our place in San Francisco.”
“That’s where I live, too,” Barbara said.
“Wait a minute: Keeler. Were you married to Walter Keeler?”
“Yes, I was,” Barbara replied.
“I read about his death in that awful accident,” Hugh said. “I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you. Did you know Walter?”
“Yes. I did some business with him, supplied aluminum avionics trays for the units he manufactured. I liked him.”
“So did I,” Barbara said.
“I knew his lawyer, too-Joe Wilen?”
“Oh, yes,” Barbara said. “I knew him, too.”
“I didn’t like him as much as Walter, though. He tried to screw me on a deal once.”
“He did the same for me,” Barbara said. She told them about how Wilen and his associate had changed her husband’s will.
“Well, I hope you finally get everything that’s coming to you,” Hugh said.
“I usually do,” Barbara replied.
47
Ed Eagle was pushed in a wheelchair to the door of the hospital, and a cop held the car door open for him. Susannah got behind the wheel, then the cop got into the unmarked car behind them and followed them home.
Ed walked into the house and looked around. “God, but I’ve missed this place,” he said.
Susannah helped him off with his coat. “And you’ve been missed here, too.” The first couple of nights after he was hospitalized, she had slept on a cot near him, but when he was better she had gone home nights.
“Do you want to lie down?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “I want to call the office and tell them I’m still alive.” He went into his study, called his secretary, got a few phone messages and told her he’d be back at work the following Monday.
Susannah made them lunch and sent sandwiches out to the two cops, who sat in their car, the motor running, the heater turned up.
“Do you feel safe?” Susannah asked.
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
“She’s still out there somewhere,” Eagle said. “I wonder where Vittorio and Cupie are.”
“I had a call from Cupie yesterday. He said they were making a quick trip to L.A. He didn’t say why.”
CUPIE AND VITTORIO DROVE up the winding mountain road to Los Alamos, drove through the town and out the other side.
“Next right,” Vittorio said, looking at the map. After Cupie had turned, Vittorio said, “Check the odometer for the mileage. We want to drive twelve-point-twenty-eight miles.”
They wound down the road into the broad valley, Big Bowl, and as they came up on the house number, Vittorio pointed to a large stone with the name “Holroyd” etched into it.
“Now what?” Cupie asked. “We can’t just drive down the driveway.”
“There was a dirt road forty or fifty yards up the hill,” Vittorio said. “Turn around and let’s take a look in there.”
Cupie did as he was instructed, then stopped. “I think we ought to go on foot from here,” he said. “If Barbara is at the end of this track we don’t want her to see the car.”
The two men got out of the car and began walking down the road. After a hundred yards they passed a copse of piñon trees and the view down the hill opened up. They could see the Holroyd house and what appeared to be a guesthouse.
Vittorio stopped and took a small pair of binoculars from his coat pocket. He scanned the house carefully, then handed the lenses to Cupie. “Look at the corner of the guesthouse,” he said.
Cupie got the binoculars focused, then panned from the main house to the guesthouse and stopped.
“What does that look like behind the corner of the guesthouse?” Vittorio asked.
Cupie grinned. “The rear of a tan station wagon,” he said.
“Okay,” Vittorio said. “Now we have to go talk to Ed Eagle.”
LATE IN THE DAY the phone rang, and Eagle picked it up. “Hello?”
“Mr. Eagle,” a cop said, “I’ve got Vittorio and Cupie out here, and they want to see you.”
“Send them in,” Eagle said. He hung up and walked to the front door to meet them.
“Good to see you looking well, Ed,” Cupie said.
“It’s good to feel well,” Eagle replied.
“We want to apologize again for letting that guy get at you,” Vittorio said.
“Apology unnecessary,” Eagle said. “You probably saved my life by getting an ambulance here so fast.” He took them into his study and sat them down.
“Here’s what we know so far, Ed,” Cupie said. “When Barbara got away from the jail-and we still don’t know how she did that-she was met by James Long in Acapulco and flown back to the States by a pilot who worked for Long named Bart Cross. They dropped Barbara off in Yuma. Somewhere between Yuma and Santa Fe she met some people called Holroyd, from Los Alamos.
“Barbara rented a guesthouse at Las Campanas and was apparently in Santa Fe for a few days, at least. Then she went back to L.A. and hired the pilot, Cross, to kill you. After he attacked you he went back to L.A., probably thinking you were dead. Then Barbara, having heard that you were still alive, went to his house in Burbank and shot him. We were able to get hold of some pages from his aircraft logbook that confirms some of this.
“Yesterday, we went to L.A. and watched Cross’s funeral at Forest Lawn, from a distance, and after that we followed James Long to a gas station and questioned him. He talked to us, because he’s afraid he’ll be implicated both in the attack on you and the murder of Cross.”
“The son of a bitch,” Eagle said. “And we’re actually in business with him on this film Susannah is making.”
“Right. Long gave it up that he drove to LAX, and that Barbara might look up the Holroyds in Los Alamos, and this morning we drove up there and confirmed that a car like hers is parked at their guesthouse.”
“So, she’s in Los Alamos?”
“A few miles the other side,” Vittorio said. “What we need to know now is what you want to do about her. We can call the police, but the problem is, she’s not currently wanted for anything in this country. We could tell the Burbank cops that she killed Bart Cross, but there’s only the aircraft logbook to tie her to him at all, and we have no evi
dence that she hired Cross to kill you.”
“I see the problem,” Eagle said. “She’ll be wanted in Mexico for breaking prison, I assume.”
“There’s a problem there, too,” Cupie said, “because nobody seems to know she’s out of prison except the warden and a cop I know in Tijuana, who got the warden to tell him.”
“How could nobody know about a prison break?” Eagle asked.
“We believe that the warden had been screwing Barbara, or vice versa, and that she probably found an opportunity to get out through his office or his attached apartment, and that when he found her gone, he simply didn’t tell anybody. When you think about it, the only way she could be proved missing would be for the government to send some people down there and count noses. But that hasn’t happened.”
“So, getting her arrested in Mexico, the way we did before, isn’t an option?”
“Not really. And she entered the country legally, at Yuma, so right now nobody can lay a hand on her.”
“So, I’m supposed to sit around and wait for her to try to kill me again?”
Cupie and Vittorio exchanged a meaningful glance.
“What?” Eagle asked.
“The next step is entirely up to you, Ed,” Cupie said.
Eagle looked at them both. “You have a recommendation?”
“No,” Cupie said. “We don’t, and I think we should be careful what we discuss.”
Eagle gazed out the window at the landscape for a long moment. “I’m going to have to think about this and talk with Susannah about it.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Ed,” Cupie said.
48
Eagle looked up a number in his address book. “Hang on,” he said to Cupie and Vittorio. “I need to make a call to a guy I went to law school with, who works in the State Department now.”
Eagle dialed the number, a direct line that was picked up by a secretary.
“Mr. Abbott’s office,” she said.
“This is Ed Eagle speaking. I’m an old friend of Mr. Abbott’s, and I’d like to speak to him, please.”