by Stuart Woods
“All right.”
Lance handed him a slip of paper. “You can draw this in cash, and you can use your Agency credit cards.”
“I want a light airplane,” Todd said. “That’s how Teddy travels, and I want to travel the same way.”
“Holly will arrange that for you. No jets, however.”
“I’m not trained for jets,” Todd said, “but I’d like something fairly fast.”
“I can do that,” Holly said.
Lance stood up and offered his hand. “Good luck,” he said.
Todd shook the hand. “One thing: You didn’t tell me what you want me to do when I find Teddy.”
Lance walked him to the door. “I didn’t hear the question,” he said, closing the door behind them.
16
Cupie Dalton and Vittorio sat in Vittorio’s SUV down the street from the Inn of the Anasazi and waited for James Long to show. It was nearly nine A.M. when Long walked out of the hotel and into his car, a silver Lincoln Town Car that the valet had brought around.
“Well, at least he’ll be easy to follow,” Cupie said. “Let’s go, and keep well back.”
“Cupie,” Vittorio said, “I don’t have to be told how to run a tail.”
“Right.”
“You keep doing that, and I’m going to have to scalp you, as unrewarding as that would be.”
Cupie rubbed his bald head. “I like it where it is,” he said.
Long drove directly to the soundstage where Susannah Wilde’s film was being shot, parked in the parking lot and entered the building.
“He’s going to be there all day,” Vittorio said.
“Maybe not,” Cupie replied.
“So, where’s he going to go?”
“Maybe he’s going to have lunch with Barbara,” Cupie said.
“That would certainly make life easy for us, wouldn’t it?”
“Sure would,” Cupie agreed. “Vittorio … ?”
“What?”
“From my brief conversation with Ed Eagle about Barbara, I got a vibe that wasn’t there when we worked for him before.”
“What kind of vibe?”
Cupie sighed. “Have you ever killed anybody?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I think that’s what Eagle is going to want done.”
“Did he say that?”
“No, I told you it was just a vibe.”
“You want to kill somebody based on a vibe?”
“Oh, no. When he wants it done he’ll say so, or find some other way to make it perfectly clear.”
“Have you ever killed anybody, Cupie?”
“Twice, both times when I was on the force, with my service revolver. Both of them were shooting at me.”
“Anybody else?”
“No. All right, I answered your question, now you answer mine.”
“Yes.”
Cupie turned and looked at Vittorio. “Yes, you’ve killed somebody?”
“I’m not going to tell you again.”
“Under what circumstances?” Cupie asked.
“Which time?”
“When you were a cop.”
“I was never a cop, Cupie.”
“All right, the first time.”
“I was fourteen, and a man who lived with us was beating up my mother.”
“And?”
“And I took him by the hair, cut his throat with my hunting knife and scalped him.”
Cupie blinked. “You actually scalped a man? How did you know how to do that?”
“Cupie, I’m an Apache. You might call it cultural memory. Anyway, I’d seen it done a couple of times on the reservation.”
“I didn’t know that sort of thing was still being done,” Cupie said.
“It isn’t, much. I said I was fourteen.”
“How about other Apaches?”
“When someone wants to make a point, I guess.”
Cupie gulped. “How about the second time?”
“I shot a man in the face with a shotgun.”
“Why?”
“He was coming at me with a knife.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Anybody else?”
“Two others.”
“Jesus, Vittorio.”
“Jesus had nothing to do with it.”
“Who were these people?”
“They were both white men. The first two were Apache.”
“Why did you do them?”
“They were both trying to kill me. The first one, I thought I might be a better knife fighter than he was. I was right.”
“And the other one?”
“That one was more complicated: I was sleeping with his wife.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, Vittorio.”
“Ex-wife, actually.”
“Okay.”
“He put out the word that he was going to kill me. I was out behind the house, putting in some fence posts, and I heard his car drive up. He yelled my name and said something uncomplimentary. The back door was open, and I heard him kick the front door open. I was unarmed at the time.”
“What did you do?”
“I stood by the back door, pressed against the wall. I figured when he’d had a look around inside he’d see the back door open and come outside. He came out slowly. The first thing I saw was the gun in his hand. I let him take another step, then I hit him in the head with a fence post.”
“That’s a pretty good-sized piece of wood, isn’t it?”
“Bigger than a baseball bat. I caught him across the forehead—he was shorter than I thought—and that did it. I didn’t have to hit him again. Then I called the sheriff.”
“Why did you do that?”
“You ever tried to get rid of a body?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“It’s harder than it sounds. If you put it in a river or lake, it comes up, eventually. If you bury it in the ground, the coyotes dig it up. If you put stones on top of the grave to prevent that, then it looks like a grave, and that makes you look guilty. I was defending my life, so I called the sheriff.”
“What happened?”
“He’d already heard reports that the guy was looking to kill me, so I didn’t have to prove that. And the guy’s gun went off when I hit him, so you could say he’d shot at me. And the fence post had his blood and brains all over it, so my story was obviously true.”
“So, you walked?”
“He didn’t even run me in, he just told me to try to stay out of situations where I might have to do that again. And I’ve tried to take his advice.”
“So, what are you going to do if Eagle asks us to off Barbara?”
“I don’t know,” Vittorio said, sounding thoughtful. “God knows she needs it.”
“Yeah,” Cupie replied, “she does.”
17
Cupie and Vittorio sat in the car straight through lunchtime, and James Long never showed himself. Around two o’clock they drove to a sandwich shop and came back to the studio with their food. Long’s car had disappeared from the parking lot.
“Shit,” Cupie said. “We were gone, what, twenty minutes?”
Vittorio put the SUV into gear and drove away from the studio.
“Where are we going?”
“I want to see if he went back to the hotel,” Vittorio said, “but …”
“Why would he go back to the hotel?”
“I don’t know, but where else are we going to look?”
“The airport, maybe?” Cupie offered.
Vittorio took a hard left and gunned it. “All right, the airport. Albuquerque or Santa Fe?”
“Long doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would fly commercial,” Cupie said. “Santa Fe.”
They drove to Santa Fe Airport, parked the car along the fence and looked around. “Where do they park the rentals?” Vittorio asked.
“I don’t know, but guys who fly in private airplanes drive their cars onto the ramp and aban
don them.”
They walked over to the Santa Fe Jetcenter and peered through the fence and out onto the tarmac. The Lincoln was parked on the ramp, and the trunk was still open. A Citation was taxiing away from the FBO.
“He’s going back to L.A.,” Vittorio said.
“Does that mean Barbara is still in L.A.?” Cupie asked.
“Why would she be in L.A.?” Vittorio asked.
“I don’t know,” Cupie said, “but that’s the last place I saw her. I told you about seeing her in Venice.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t make any sense, not if she wants to kill Ed Eagle.”
“Maybe Long’s not in touch with her,” Cupie said.
“I thought we’d already decided that Long is the only person in the world who would spring her from that prison. After all, he’s helped her before.”
“Maybe she’s staying at his house in L.A.,” Cupie said. “She’s done that before, too.”
“That might explain why Long is headed back to L.A.,” Vittorio said. “He wants to get laid.”
“If he wants to get laid, why did he leave her and come to Santa Fe?”
“I think we should operate on the premise that Barbara is in Santa Fe,” Vittorio said. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense, given what we know about her, and if she’s not here she will be, when she gets around to taking a shot at Ed Eagle.”
“Okay, I buy that,” Cupie said. “If you were Barbara, and you were lying low in Santa Fe, waiting for an opportunity to kill Ed Eagle, where would you lie low?”
“Not a hotel,” Vittorio said. “Too expensive. An apartment maybe, or a house, but something nice. After all, she’s been in prison for months. She’ll want some comfort.”
“If she’s in an apartment or a house, she probably found it in the New Mexican,” Cupie said.
“Why not one of those real estate magazines that are all over town?”
“She wouldn’t look there for a rental,” Cupie said. “Those are for sales.”
They got back into Vittorio’s SUV and drove to the newspaper’s office. Cupie bought ten days of back issues and took them back to the car. He handed Vittorio half of the papers. “Look for something comfortable, not too big and furnished,” he said.
Vittorio began opening the papers to the real estate section. “Here’s one,” he said, circling an ad.
“Let’s go through them all,” Cupie said.
They spent most of an hour cutting out and dating ads for possible houses and apartments, then sorted through them, finding seven likely properties.
Cupie went through them again, checking the dates. “There are ads for three houses that stopped running in the past couple of days,” he said. “That means they’ve been rented.” He handed the ads to Vittorio.
“Two of them are from the same agent,” Vittorio said. He got out his cell phone and called the agent’s office and asked for her.
“Hello?”
“This is Sergeant Rivera at the Santa Fe Police Department,” Vittorio said.
“How can I help you, Sergeant?”
“You ran ads for two rental houses in the New Mexican,” he said.
“More than two,” she replied. “I specialize in rentals.”
“There are two that you stopped advertising: one in Tesuque, one at Las Campanas.”
“Yes, both those have been rented.”
“Can you give me the renters’ names?”
“Let’s see,” she said. “The Tesuque place went to a Mr. and Mrs. Torrance, and the Las Campanas house—it was a guesthouse—went to a Mrs. Keeler, from San Francisco.”
“Can you describe Mrs. Keeler?” Vittorio asked.
“Five-six or -seven, slim, auburn hair, very attractive.”
“Thank you so much,” Vittorio said and hung up. He turned to Cupie. “What was that guy’s name that Barbara married in San Francisco?”
Cupie screwed up his face. “Walter something, electronics zillionaire. I can’t think of the last name.”
“Could it have been Keeler?” Vittorio asked.
“It could have been, and it was!” Cupie said.
The two men exchanged a high five.
“Let’s get out to Las Campanas,” Vittorio said.
18
Barbara dressed carefully in casual but elegant clothes: tight silk pants and a tight cashmere sweater that showed off her cleavage.
At dusk she turned out the lights in her guesthouse and walked up to Dolly’s place, bearing a good bottle of wine. As she reached the door it occurred to her that she should have left a light on for her return home, but then it didn’t really matter, as she kept a small flashlight in her purse. She knocked on the door.
Dolly opened it, smiling. “Hi, there,” she said. “Come on in.” She was dressed similarly to Barbara but wearing a small apron.
“I don’t know what you’re cooking, but I brought some wine,” Barbara said, offering it.
“Zinfandel,” Dolly said, reading the label. “Perfect. We’re having a veal stew. Would you like something to drink?”
“Do you have bourbon?” Barbara asked.
“Bought some this afternoon,” Dolly said, going to the little bar and holding up a bottle of Knob Creek. “Tip drinks this, so it must be good.” She poured some over ice.
“My favorite,” Barbara said, accepting the drink. “Tip seems like quite a fellow,” she said. “I was very impressed with that last putt of his. He must do very well.”
“Yes, he does. He’s won only a few times on the tour, but he’s usually in the top ten, sometimes in the top five. I don’t think the public understands how much money a pro can make playing that kind of golf regularly and finishing high up consistently.”
“How much can he make?”
“A million or two a year, maybe.”
Barbara whistled. “I hope he’s paying you well.”
“He is, and he just added this house to my compensation package.”
“Is he single?”
“Yes. He was widowed recently. His wife was either murdered or committed suicide, I’m not sure which.”
“In that house next door?” Barbara asked.
“Yes, in their bedroom. Tip came back from playing a tournament in Dallas and found her.”
“He must be very shaken up, but he played so well in Houston.”
“He seems oddly serene,” Dolly said, “but I think he’s just a stoic. That’s my read on him, anyway.”
Dolly sat down beside her on the sofa with her drink. “Dinner’ll be ready in half an hour. There’s nothing left to do but serve it.”
Barbara started to say she was hungry, but she stopped in mid-sentence. She’d heard a car drive up and stop nearby, and now she heard two car doors close. She got up and peered through the little window in Dolly’s front door. “A car,” she said. “Two flashlights.”
VITTORIO STOPPED THE SUV at the locked gate of the main house, and he and Cupie got out. He handed Cupie a compact flashlight. “These are very good,” he said. “Lithium ion batteries: They’re bright enough to temporarily blind a man in the dark.”
They climbed over the low gate. “Let’s have a look at this guesthouse,” Vittorio said.
“Pretty dark,” Cupie replied. “No lights, and the garage door is closed.”
They reached the house and walked around it, shining their lights through windows. “Very neat and clean,” Cupie said. “Doesn’t look like anybody lives here.”
“Not even a toothbrush in the bathroom,” Vittorio replied. “Why don’t we ask at the house next door? There are lights on there.”
Cupie went ahead. “Let me do it,” he said. “You’re too scary on a dark night.”
“I HAVE TO TELL YOU,” Barbara said. “One of the reasons I’m in Santa Fe is that I’m being stalked by a man I went out with after my husband died. It would be just like him to show up here or to send a private detective to find me. Looks like two men coming this way.”
“Go into the guest
room and close the door,” Dolly said. “If they come here I’ll handle it.” She put Barbara’s drink in the kitchen sink and her own on the counter. The doorbell rang.
Dolly went to the door, switched on the porch light and opened the door a foot, keeping her boot jammed against it. A plump, baby-faced man in a tweed topcoat and tweed hat stood there. A few feet behind him, in the shadows, stood another man wearing a flat-brimmed hat that partly hid his face.
Cupie swept off his hat and smiled. “Good evening. I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I’m looking for the woman who lives next door, a Mrs. Keeler.”
“No one lives next door,” Dolly said. “The place is owned by some people from New York, but they’re only here in the summer.”
“I’d heard that this Mrs. Keeler had rented it in the past couple of days, and it’s important I get in touch with her on a business matter. Some papers have to be signed.”
“I’d know if it had been rented,” Dolly said, “and it hasn’t. In fact, I spoke to the woman in New York this morning, and she told me they had taken it off the rental market.”
“Are you alone here, ma’am?”
“No, the main house is occupied,” she said. “Is there anything else?”
“I wonder if I could use your telephone?”
“I haven’t had it turned on yet,” she said, “and cell phones don’t work out here. Good night.” She made to close the door, but he stuck a hand through. “Here’s my card,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you would give me a call, if someone turns up in the house.”
“Sure,” Dolly said. She took the card, closed the door, locked it and turned off the porch light.
Barbara edged into the room. “Everything all right?”
“Shhh,” Dolly said, waving her back. “They haven’t gone yet. I can still see their flashlights.”
A minute passed and she heard car doors slam, then the car’s headlights came on and it turned around and went back the way it had come. “Okay,” Dolly called out. “The coast is clear.”
Barbara came back into the living room. “That was scary,” she said.
“The guy at the door wasn’t very scary, but he had a friend, and he was.”
“Did they give you a name?” Barbara asked.