by Stuart Woods
“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 Vittorio’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 th
ey 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 evidence 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.”
“One moment, Mr. Eagle,” the woman said. “I’ll see if I can locate him.” Eagle pressed the speaker button so the two P.I.s could hear.
“Ed?”
“Bob, how are you?”
“I’m very well, and you?”
“I’m well and getting better.” He told Abbott about the attack on him.
“Wow,” Abbott said. “I guess the practice of criminal law is more dangerous than I thought.”
“In this case, Bob, the danger is in whom you choose to marry.
This is the third attempt on my life, and my ex-wife was behind all three.”
“Didn’t I read something about her being arrested in Mexico?”
“Yes, and she was sent to prison there, but she escaped.”
“Is there some way I can help, Ed?”
“I hope there is, Bob. I have reason to believe that the warden of the prison from which she escaped has not reported that fact to his superiors, so there is no police search on for her.”
“How could that happen?”
“My assumption is he just kept her on his books, and nobody outside the prison knows she’s gone. What I need is for somebody from the Mexican Ministry of Justice to go there and demand to see Barbara Eagle. When they learn she’s gone, she’ll officially be wanted.”
“Do you have any idea where she is now?”
“Two private investigators I’ve employed tell me she’s at the home of some people she knows, near Los Alamos.”
“Why don’t you call the New Mexico State Police?”
“Because she’s not wanted for any crime in the U.S. If the Mexican government makes a request for extradition, then she can be arrested here and sent back. It’ll take time, but she’ll at least be in jail while we’re waiting. Right now, we’re pretty sure she’s plotting another attempt on my life.”
“Ed,
this is the worst thing I’ve ever heard. I have a solid contact in the Mexican foreign ministry, and he will certainly know someone at Justice. I’ll call him and see if we can get an investigation going.”
“Thank you, Bob,” Eagle said. “You can understand that time is of the essence.”
“Certainly, Ed. I’ll get back to you when I know something.”
“Thank you so much, Bob.” Eagle hung up and turned to Cupie and Vittorio. “All right, we’re moving on that front. Now I suggest, Cupie, that you call whoever you can in L.A. and see if you can get them to issue an arrest warrant for Barbara. I know we’re light on evidence, but I’d like her off the street.”
“So would we, Ed,” Cupie said. “I’ll get right on it.”
“You can use the phone in the living room,” Eagle said.
Cupie went into the living room, dialed the number in Burbank and asked for Dave Santiago.
“Detective Santiago.”
“Dave, it’s Cupie Dalton. I’m going to give you an opportunity to turn that lunch I owe you into a dinner, with a very expensive bottle of wine.”
“You have my attention, Cupie.”
“I know who killed Bart Cross.”
“Are you going to share that name with me?”
“It’s two names. Got a pencil?”
“Always.”
“Her name is Barbara Eagle, and she also uses the name Eleanor Keeler.”
“Wait a minute,” Santiago said. “Isn’t that the woman who was tried and acquitted of the murder of some Mafioso at the Hotel Bel-Air?”
“One and the same.”
“And she was married to that guy, Keeler, the electronics zillionaire, who drove his car into a gasoline tanker?”
“It sounds as though you’ve been introduced to the lady.”
“No, but I read the tabloids like everybody else. Tell me why you think she killed Cross.”
“Evidence that she knew him is in the airplane logbook you’re already in possession of. The next-to-last page in the logbook.”
“Wait a minute,” Santiago said. He came back a moment later. “Okay, I’ve got it: a flight from Acapulco to Yuma?”
“That’s it. That’s proof that she knew him. The guy she was traveling with is James Long.”