Santa Fe Edge

by Stuart Woods

  “Raoul, it is good to see you,” the deputy said, embracing the lawyer warmly.

  “Benicio, it has been too long.”

  A large breakfast was brought by servants while the two men chatted amiably about fast horses and brave bulls. When the garden had been cleared of servants the deputy sat back, folded his hands and simply nodded.

  “Benicio,” Estevez said, “I wish to bring to your attention a very serious matter which could cause a great deal of trouble both domestically and internationally for your ministry.”

  The deputy made a concerned face and nodded again.

  “More than three years ago two American women made the acquaintance of a young man who subsequently beat and raped both of them. One of them got her hands on a knife and killed him, then removed the penis from the corpse.”

  “Ahhhh,” the deputy said, nodding.

  “I knew you would know of this, Benicio. The woman who wielded the knife is now dead, but her sister, in the midst of an angry divorce, was kidnapped by operatives of her husband and taken aboard a yacht into Mexican waters, where it was met by a police boat. After a brief and highly prejudicial trial the woman was convicted and sentenced to a prison term at the El Diablo prison in Tres Cruces, run by a Capitán Pedro Alvarez.

  “There she was raped and otherwise sexually abused by Alvarez on nearly a daily basis. Finally, unable to bear further ill treatment, she managed to drug the capitán and escape through a window from his apartment. She eventually made her way back to El Norte, and now her former husband, who has political influence, has intrigued to have her extradited from the United States and returned to prison.

  “The woman, formerly known as Barbara Eagle and now as the recent widow of Walter Keeler, a very wealthy man from San Francisco, has inherited his wealth and is in a position to fight the extradition in the most public and time-consuming manner. Once her story is told and retold ad infinitum by the media on both sides of the border, both our countries will be faced with the worst sort of publicity, and in the end, she might well avoid extradition.

  “I believe it would be to the advantage of both your ministry and Mrs. Keeler if you could suggest a discreet resolution to this affair. Mrs. Keeler understands that such a resolution would involve considerable expense and would see that your ministry does not suffer the costs.” Estevez sat back in his chair and waited for the deputy to speak.

  “Where is the woman at this time?” the deputy asked.

  “It is my understanding that she has left the United States, possibly for Italy.”

  “So, that would complicate even further any attempt to return her to Mexico.” It was not a question.

  “I am very much afraid that it would.”

  “The prison warden, Alvarez, has already been dealt with,” the deputy said. “He is now supervising a prison work program in the jungles in the south of the country, and all records relevant to the woman have been removed from his former office. It is as if she was never there.”

  “I see,” Estevez replied.

  “I believe the simplest solution to our mutual problem would be if our president issued a pardon.”

  “My client would be extremely grateful if that could be effected, Benicio.”

  The deputy produced a notebook. “What is your client’s full name?” he asked.

  “Eleanor Eagle Keeler,” Estevez replied.

  “What time is your flight home?” the deputy asked.

  “At one P.M. from the general aviation terminal,” Estevez replied.

  “And the aircraft registration number?”

  Estevez gave it to him.

  “I calculate that the costs of this transaction will come to”-the deputy did some quick counting with his thumb against his fingers-“two million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” He wrote something on a page of his notebook, tore it off and handed it to Estevez. “Here is an account number.”

  “Will you excuse me for a moment while I telephone?” Estevez asked.

  “Of course. I will go and put on a necktie for the office while you call.”

  Estevez made the call and waited for the deputy’s return.

  “The funds will be in the account by the time you reach your office,” he said.

  “Oh, good. Upon verification the pardon will be prepared, signed and delivered to your aircraft in time for your departure. Come, walk with me to our cars.”

  Estevez fell in step with him, and the two men linked arms. “There is one further step I would be very grateful for,” Estevez said.

  “Please.”

  “If you could telephone the United States attorney general, explain that Mrs. Keeler has been pardoned and is no longer a fugitive in the U.S. and that her extradition warrant should be canceled, then she could resume her normal life immediately.”

  “Consider it done, Raoul.” The deputy stopped at his open limousine door and offered his hand. “It is always good to see you, Raoul, and, of course, always a pleasure to do business with you. Go with God.”

  Estevez shook his hand and got into his own limousine, where his associate waited.

  “How did it go?” she asked, placing a hand on his thigh.

  “Perfectly and profitably,” Estevez replied, adjusting his position so that her hand could better reach its target.

  58

  Barbara put down the telephone at the pool of her cottage at a private club in Nassau.

  Charles sat beside her on the double chaise. “You’re smiling. Good news?”

  “Very good news,” she replied. “For us both.”

  “Ellie, I don’t think I can receive good news properly until I understand why you are unconcerned with my employment status. I do need the job, you know, and I can’t relax here while worrying about it.”

  “Would you like a promotion at your firm?” she asked.

  “I’m already the top-producing sales manager for the firm,” he replied. “Anything else would be a demotion.”

  “How do you get along with your general manager?” she asked.

  “He’s an ass, but there’s nothing he can do to me, except for cause, and I’ve never given him cause, until I walked out of that showroom yesterday.”

  “Would you like his job?”

  Charles thought about that. “Only if I could continue to render service to my clients, and only if I could have the pleasure of personally firing my general manager and throwing him out of his office.”

  “Then do so,” Ellie said. “Yesterday, I bought the firm.”

  Charles turned and stared at her. “My God, are you that rich?”

  “I am,” Barbara said. “Charles, I know this will seem sudden, but I think it would be very much to our mutual advantage if we married.”

  Charles fell back onto the lounge. “You are breathtaking, Ellie.”

  “If you accept my proposal I will make you a gift of the dealership and provide working capital for it. In return, you would sign a prenuptial agreement limiting your settlement, in the event of a divorce, to the firm and any money I have invested in it.”

  “That is a very generous proposition, Ellie,” Charles said. “And I think we could make each other very happy.”

  “Then why don’t we start the honeymoon right now, my dear,” Barbara said, snuggling up to him.

  ED EAGLE TOOK the phone call from his friend in the State Department. “How are you, Bill?”

  “I’m okay, Ed, but I have some rather startling news for you.”

  “Go ahead and startle.”

  “I’ve had an e-mail from the attorney general’s office. The general received a phone call today from a highly placed officer of the Mexican Ministry of Justice.”

  “They’ve extradited Barbara?”

  “No, the president of Mexico has pardoned her.”

  Eagle was dumbstruck.

  “Ed? Are you still there?”

  “Just barely, Bill,” Eagle replied. “Have you any idea how this happened?”

  “I don’t have
any details, only deductions. Have you seen the piece in The Wall Street Journal?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “You must know, Ed, that when the sort of money she has inherited comes into play, things can happen in a hurry, especially in Mexico.”

  “Are you telling me that Barbara bribed the president of Mexico?”

  “Of course not. That isn’t how it works.”

  “How does it work?”

  “My best guess is Barbara got herself a lawyer who knows people down there, and he passed a large sum of money to someone in the Ministry, who then took care of things and distributed the funds accordingly, probably in cash. That’s only a guess, mind you, but I’ve heard of other cases where this sort of thing happened.”

  “I could sue her for injury resulting from her attempt on my life, I guess,” Eagle said.

  “Come on, Ed. What would you say to a client who walked into your office and wanted to sue a billionaire?”

  “All right, all right.”

  “Ed, I’m awfully sorry about this. I did what I could.”

  “Bill, you did more than I could ever have expected. Thank you.” Eagle hung up and sagged in his chair.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Barbara called a number at the Nassau Airport and chartered a twin-engine airplane for the day. She instructed the company to file a flight plan to Georgetown, Cayman Islands, and to file a return flight plan for later in the day.

  BARBARA TOOK A CAB from the Georgetown airport to a large bank on a principal street and walked in. She approached a man at a desk in the lobby.

  “Good day, madam. May I help you?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’d like to open an account.”

  “Please be seated,” he said, holding a chair for her. “What kind of account would you like to open?”

  “A very private account,” she replied. “One with a number, not a name.”

  “Of course, madam.” He looked at his computer, selected a new account number and printed a document. “Please sign here,” he said, indicating a line at the bottom.

  “I don’t wish to sign anything,” Barbara said. She took the twenty-million-dollar cashier’s check from her purse and handed it to him.

  “Of course, madam,” the man said. “There is no necessity for a signature. Would you like a card that can draw on the account from anywhere in the world?”

  “What a nice idea,” Barbara said.

  He typed a few more keystrokes on his computer. “The card will be ready momentarily,” he said. “Would you like us to invest the funds for you, or would you prefer an interest-bearing account? Currently the rate is three percent.”

  “The latter, please.”

  He printed another document. “This will tell you how to view your account and statements online. Nothing will be mailed, since we don’t have your name or address.”

  Barbara received the credit card and her deposit receipt, put them in her purse, shook the man’s hand and left the bank. She got into her idling taxi, went to the airport and was flown back to Nassau. Upon entering the country she used the false passport she had had made in California.

  “What did you do with yourself today?” Charles asked.

  “I built an escape hatch from my life,” she replied.

  He looked at her oddly but did not question her further.

  The following day they were married. Then the Gulfstream flew them back to San Jose.

  59

  Tip Hanks stood in front of the cameras and received his silver cup and a dummy check for nine hundred eighty-nine thousand dollars. The amount would automatically be wired to his account.

  During the past few days he had set a course record and won the tournament by four strokes. He gave an interview to a television journalist, then returned to the clubhouse, showered and changed, and gave another, longer interview to a woman from The Golf Channel.

  That night he had a steak dinner, watched TV, then turned in early. He slept late the following morning, and it was noon before he got to the airport. He drove up to his Santa Fe home at four thirty that afternoon, noticing that Dolly’s car was not parked out front. She must be running an errand, he thought.

  He walked into his home, unpacked his clothes, put the dirty things into a laundry hamper, then walked to his study next door. The room seemed oddly messy. He looked into Dolly’s office and found drawers pulled out and papers scattered around the room. His first thought was a burglary, and he went back into his study to phone the police, but he found a pink message slip stuck to the phone.

  Bye-bye, sweetie. It’s been fun.

  He was still puzzling over that when the phone rang, and he picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Tip, it’s George Herron.” Herron was his accountant.

  “Hello, George. Did you see I won the tournament yesterday?”

  “Yes, I did, and congratulations. I’m afraid I have some troubling news, though.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I looked through your accounts online today for some tax information, and I saw that your prize money had been wired into your account this morning.”

  “That is as it should be, George.”

  “The problem was that it was wired out of your account only a few minutes later to an account in Singapore, as were another seven hundred thousand dollars from a bond fund in your brokerage account. Do you have a bank account in Singapore, Tip? Because if you do we haven’t been reporting that to the IRS, as the law requires.”

  “No, George, I don’t have an account in Singapore, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Who else is a signatory on your accounts?”

  “Well, my assistant, Dolly…” Tip stopped and looked at the pink message slip. “Oh, shit,” he said.

  CUPIE ANSWERED THE TELEPHONE.

  “Cupie, it’s Dave Santiago.”

  “Hey, Dave. How are you?”

  “Not so good.”

  “Did you pick up Barbara?”

  “No, I didn’t. The D.A. wouldn’t sign the warrant. Not enough evidence and too much money.”

  Cupie’s face dropped. “I saw the newspaper piece. He was scared off by the money?”

  “Of course, he was,” Santiago replied. “Think about it. If you were the D.A. would you issue a warrant on a woman with that much money, without a murder weapon or physical evidence? You’d be looking at another O.J. trial against the best lawyers in the country. It would cost the county millions.”

  “I see your point,” Cupie said. “Thanks for trying, Dave.”

  He hung up and turned to Vittorio.

  “No warrant, huh?” Vittorio asked.

  “No warrant.”

  “I guess you’ll be going back to L.A., huh, Cupie?”

  “I guess,” Cupie replied woodenly.

  “It doesn’t have to be over,” Vittorio said. “She’ll do something outrageous again, and maybe we’ll be in on the takedown.”

  “Yeah,” Cupie said, brightening. “She’ll do that, and we’ll do that.”

  60

  Todd Bacon landed at the Manassas, Virginia, airport on Sunday night and left the keys to the Bonanza at the FBO desk for pickup by the Agency the following day. He checked into a nearby hotel for the night. Then, the following morning, he was at the Langley headquarters by eight thirty. He killed a little time in the lobby, then checked in with security and took the elevator up to the executive floor.

  HOLLY WALKED into Lance Cabot’s office.

  “What do you hear from our man in Santa Fe?” Lance asked.

  “He’s our man in Sedona now,” Holly replied. “I had an e-mail from him.”

  “Why Sedona?”

  “He didn’t say. I suppose he had some trail to follow.”

  There was a knock on the open door, and both Holly and Lance looked that way. Todd Bacon stood in the doorway.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I’m reporting as ordered.”

  Lance stared at him, uncomprehending. “Reporting for what?�
�

  “As ordered,” Todd said. “For reassignment.” He took a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket and approached Lance’s desk.

  Holly took the paper from him and read it, then handed it to Lance. “Something you want to tell me, Lance?”

  Lance read the e-mail, and his face fell.

  “That’s the e-mail you sent me,” Todd said.

  “Oh, my God,” Holly said.

  “I thought you were in Sedona,” Lance said.

  “Well, I was going there, but then I got your message. It was in my Agency mailbox.”

  Lance had turned quite red. “Have you got any vacation time coming?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’ve got two weeks,” Todd replied.

  “Take it,” Lance replied. “Go. Report for reassignment when you get back.”

  Todd looked at Holly questioningly.

  Holly made a shooing motion with her hands.

  “Can I keep the Bonanza for my time off?”

  “Yes,” Holly said.

  Todd watched as Lance fed the e-mail into his deskside shredder, then he got the hell out of there.

  “Well?” Lance said to Holly. “What are you looking at?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Holly said, rising.

  “None of this ever happened,” Lance said.

  “Of course not,” Holly replied.

  She went back to her office and started looking for something to take Lance’s mind off Teddy Fay.

  ED EAGLE GOT DOWN a suitcase from the top shelf of his dressing room and started packing.

  Susannah entered the room and watched for a moment. “Going somewhere?” she asked.