Doing Hard Time (Stone Barrington)

by Woods, Stuart

  • • •

  Stone and Emma arrived shortly before noon and found a tall, slim woman in her mid-thirties putting office supplies into her desk drawers and a storage closet. She moved the pencil between her teeth to her bun. “I expect you’re Mr. Barrington and Mrs. Tweed,” she said, with a soft, Southern accent. “I’m Ruth Pearl, the new office manager around here. The kids—that’s how I think of them—are out on a studio tour, but they should be back soon, and they want to take you to lunch at the studio commissary. A table is already booked. May I show you around the bungalow?”

  “Thank you, yes,” Stone said. They followed her into Peter’s office and editing suite, then Ben’s office, then Hattie’s studio, which was soundproofed and contained some professional recording equipment.

  “This is astonishing,” Emma said.

  • • •

  The kids returned to the bungalow, excited, then they all went to lunch in the golf carts.

  • • •

  Teddy finished his lunch with Charmaine, then she escorted him to the poker table, where three of last night’s players were just sitting down. Teddy ordered $50,000 in chips and took his seat. This time he would be paying attention.

  Teddy sent his new luggage down with a bellman, then he went to the casino, to the cashier’s cage. He had played poker for three days and had come out sixty thousand dollars ahead. He asked the cashier for the money and his earlier deposit in cash, and handed her an empty briefcase. She made a phone call, then left with Teddy’s briefcase.

  After a moment’s wait a beefy man in a black suit appeared in the cage and stuck his hand between the bars. “Mr. Burnett, I’m Pete Genaro. We spoke on the phone.”

  “Of course,” Teddy said, shaking the man’s hand.

  “The cashier is getting your cash now, but I’m concerned about your leaving the hotel with it. I’d like to send a security man to the airport with you and see you safely off.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Teddy replied.

  “I don’t want to pry unnecessarily,” Genaro said, “but we ran a little check on you, and although we came up with a couple of dozen William Burnetts, I don’t think any of them is you.”

  “Probably not,” Teddy said. “I keep a low profile.”

  “Where are you from? Originally, I mean.”

  “I was a military brat,” Teddy replied. “I was born on a base and lived all over the place on other posts.”

  Genaro sighed. “I see. The casino is, naturally, concerned with dealing with folks who might not be on the up-and-up.”

  “I didn’t know that playing poker was a crime,” Teddy said. “Or is it just winning?”

  “We’re happy for our players who win,” Genaro said. “It’s good advertising for us when somebody walks away with a lot of money, but can you give me a Social Security number?”

  Teddy recited from memory the account number he had set up, and Genaro wrote it down. He sat down at a computer and ran it, then he turned back to Teddy.

  “Well, you exist, and you don’t have a criminal record. That’s good enough for us.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Genaro.”

  The cashier appeared with Teddy’s briefcase and let him peek inside. “It’s been machine-counted,” she said. “Would you like to count it again?”

  “You have an honest face,” Teddy said. “I’ll trust you.”

  He shook hands with Genaro again.

  “We look forward to having you back soon, Mr. Burnett,” the man said. “Just call me, and I’ll comp another suite for you.”

  “Thank you.” He turned to go and found Charmaine standing there with a large man in a dark suit.

  “We’ll accompany you to the airport,” she said.

  They left the casino and got into the Rolls that had met him when he arrived. The security man sat in the front seat.

  “Well,” Charmaine said, “you had quite a run at the poker table.”

  “I did all right,” Teddy said. He took an envelope from an inside pocket. “This is just a little expression of gratitude from me, for all your help and your company.”

  The envelope disappeared into an inside pocket of her suit. “You’re very kind. I hope I’ll see you back sometime soon.”

  “Funny, that’s what Pete Genaro said. I think he wants to get some of his money back.”

  She laughed. “Probably. I’d like to see you again on a personal basis, too.”

  “Do you ever come to L.A.?”

  “Frequently,” she said. “Is that where you live?”

  “Not exactly, but I’ll be spending some time there.” He gave her his cell number. “I’d like to hear from you.”

  “Then you will,” she said, tucking the number into her bra.

  The Rolls pulled up to his airplane. “We had it washed and refueled,” Charmaine said.

  Teddy leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. “You think of everything. When you come to L.A., it’ll be my turn.”

  He loaded his luggage, said his goodbyes, and started the engine. “Vegas ground, N123TF,” he said into the radio, “requesting a VFR departure.” He taxied to the active runway, was cleared for takeoff, then turned southwest toward the Palmdale VOR. As he approached it he called SOCAL approach and requested a VFR clearance for the Kimmo Two arrival, which terminated at Santa Monica, and in less than an hour he was setting down at the little airport by the sea.

  The airplane secured, he rented a car at Atlantic Aviation and asked for a recommendation for a hotel on the beach.

  “How much do you want to spend?” the woman at the desk asked.

  “I’d like something high-end,” he said. Teddy had always been a little tight with his money, but he had enjoyed the hotel in Las Vegas, and he thought he’d spring for something comfortable in Santa Monica before he found a rental.

  She made a reservation for him at a hotel called Shutters, on the beach, then pulled out a map. “It’s right here where Pico Boulevard meets the beach.”

  Teddy drove to the hotel, which was beautiful and across the road from the beach. He checked into a suite, unpacked, and called the concierge to arrange a massage.

  • • •

  Pete Genaro’s phone rang. “Genaro.”

  “It’s Vinnie,” a man’s voice said.

  “Where did he go?”

  “I checked, but he didn’t file a flight plan—just took off. He could be anywhere.”

  “Okay,” Genaro said. He hung up and tapped in a number.

  “This is Charmaine.”

  “Did you find out where Mr. Burnett was headed?”

  “I asked him where he lived, but he avoided answering. He did say he would be in and out of L.A. for a while. I asked him for a phone number, but he gave me the same cell number you have.”

  “Yeah, I ran that. It was a throwaway.”

  “I didn’t feel that I could push him any further.”

  “You got any plans for one of your L.A. trips?”

  “I could go whenever you like.”

  “Give him a couple of days, then call him and tell him you’re coming into town. I want to know more about this guy. I watched him on the cameras, and he’s one hell of a poker player. I had the impression that he could have walked away with a lot more of our money if he’d put his mind to it.”

  “I’ll give him a call, then.”

  • • •

  The following morning in Paris a phone rang in an office building, and Majorov answered. “Yes?”

  “It’s Andrei. I’ve been through all the GPS tracking tapes.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  “We lost Ivan and Yevgeny at a little town called Mesa Grande, in New Mexico,” the man said.

  “What do you mean, ‘lost them’?”

  “I mean that, as far as GPS is concerned, they vanished into thin air.”

  “You mean they removed the tracker from their car?”

  “I don’t know, maybe it failed. They stopped in the town, maybe fo
r petrol, then the recording shows they left the main road and drove into the desert a few hundred feet, then the signal was lost. I had a look at the satellite map, and there is nothing there.”

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing there’?”

  “The town has maybe half a dozen buildings, mostly on the highway. Where the signal disappeared, there is nothing but desert.”

  “What about the Cayenne?”

  “It was in Mesa Grande overnight, then continued to Los Angeles. It has been on the grounds of The Arrington for two days, hasn’t moved, but I can’t find the car by satellite.”

  “Could they have removed the tracker from the car?”

  “It’s possible, but it’s unlikely that they would find it, unless they were looking for it. It would have been placed in a wheel well.”

  “I want Ivan and Yevgeny found,” Majorov said. “What’s the nearest place we have somebody?”

  “Phoenix, Arizona. We could have somebody there tomorrow morning. He could fly into Gallup, which is only a few kilometers from Mesa Grande.”

  “Do it,” Majorov said. “I want to get to the bottom of this.”

  “It will be done.”

  Stone, Mike, and Dino played golf at the Bel-Air Country Club, where Mike was a member, and later, at the bar, Stone raised the subject of Billy Burnett.

  “Peter told me this story about losing a tire in New Mexico, and the guy who replaced it for him.” He related the whole event to Mike, who had not been present at the time.

  “So what troubles you about that?” Mike asked.

  “It troubles me that some very smart gas pump jockey in New Mexico knows me, or at least knows who I am.”

  “You’re a famous guy, Stone,” Dino said, with more than a tinge of irony. “Or maybe infamous is a better word.”

  “Okay, there are a few square blocks of New York City where my name might be familiar, but …”

  “Maybe they read Vanity Fair in New Mexico,” Dino said. There had been an article about Arrington’s death in that magazine. “Or maybe he read that journalist’s book about you and Arrington.”

  “I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t make any sense,” Stone said.

  “What are you thinking, Stone?” Mike asked. “Do you have a hypothesis?”

  “A very shaky one,” Stone replied. “I’m wondering if the guy could be Teddy Fay.”

  The other two men regarded him silently for a moment.

  “So,” Mike said slowly, “you think that the CIA’s number one fugitive, who hasn’t been heard of for a couple of years, moved to New Mexico, just in time to change Peter’s tire for him? Or do you think that Teddy Fay is following Peter?”

  “Neither of those options is a sane possibility. If it’s Teddy, it’s just an enormous coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” Dino said. “I believe in evidence.”

  “Dino, your whole life is a long series of coincidences, going back all the way to your conception.”

  “Let’s not talk about my parents’ sex life, okay?”

  “If they had conceived you on a different night, everything could have been different—you could have been a girl. Then think about the rest of your life, right up to meeting Viv. If the department had assigned her to a different precinct, you might never have met her.”

  “He has a point, Dino,” Mike said. “Stone, I know a little about Teddy Fay, but fill in the blanks for me, and from the beginning.”

  “All right: Teddy worked at the Agency for more than twenty years, nearly all of them in Technical Services. For at least fifteen of those years, he was the deputy director of the department, which meant that, when an agent was sent out on a mission, Teddy supplied all the background and equipment for him—passports, visas, clothing, weapons, secret fountain pens that do amazing things, et cetera.”

  “Well, fifteen years of that would give him all the tools he needs to disappear in America.”

  “Exactly.”

  “He killed a couple of people, didn’t he?”

  “There are rumors that he shot the speaker of the house at the time—Eft Efton. The evidence was by no means conclusive, though.”

  “How does this guy finance himself? Doing odd jobs like working at a filling station?”

  “Holly says he’s an inventor—he designed a lot of those household gadgets that you see in TV infomercials, and some of them made millions. She thinks he’s set up a way to collect the royalties into one or more offshore bank accounts.”

  “I guess that’s doable,” Mike said.

  “I actually met him once. So did Dino.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Holly Barker got sent down to an island in the Caribbean, St. Marks, where a retired CIA agent lived. I forget her name, but she and Teddy had reportedly had an affair. Dino and I went along to provide her some cover, and when we got there we met the woman’s boyfriend, a fairly elderly guy who may have been heavily disguised, but I couldn’t spot a toupee or anything else. Holly believed him to be Teddy, and she had been sent there to be sure that he never left the island alive. When he finally ran, she got off a couple of shots at him and may have wounded him, but we never knew. A couple of years ago, Holly told me that he called her at the Agency. There was a CIA officer who had become obsessed with finding him, and Teddy told her to call the guy off or he would kill him. Teddy proposed a kind of truce.

  “Holly called the man off, but he persisted, and he was found a few days later in his own bathtub, with his wrists slit. Holly got another call from Teddy, saying he was done, and that was it. Nobody heard from him again.”

  “There’s a novel in that story,” Mike said.

  “Well,” Stone said, “I’m not going to write it. I want nothing further to do with Teddy Fay. I consider him extremely dangerous, and I certainly don’t like the idea that he may now have made my son’s acquaintance.”

  “He’s not dangerous to anybody except people who are trying to hunt him down and kill him,” Dino pointed out.

  “Nevertheless,” Stone said.

  “I’m trying to think of ways to help,” Mike said, “but if this guy is as good as you say he is, we’re not going to find him. If he contacts Peter, though, then we might have a good chance.”

  “That’s what I don’t want to happen,” Stone said.

  “Well, you’re not in charge of that. Just tell Peter to let you know if he contacts him.”

  “I’ve already done that.”

  “One final question: Suppose he is Teddy Fay, and you find him—what then?”

  Stone stared at the ceiling.

  “I want to hear this, Stone,” Dino said. “Answer the man.”

  “All right, I don’t know.”

  “How about this,” Mike said. “If you meet him, just tell him you know who he is and you don’t want him around your son.”

  “You think that might work?”

  “He obviously doesn’t want to be identified.”

  “He might take umbrage,” Dino said. “I wouldn’t want Teddy Fay taking umbrage at me.”

  “Good point,” Mike said. “Tell you what, Stone. If this guy turns up, say nothing to him out of the ordinary—just tell me. I’ll take care of scaring him off.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Stone asked.

  “It’s better if you don’t know, but I’ll tell you this: he will never know that you identified him. He’ll just think that he blew his cover accidentally.”

  “All right,” Stone said. “If I meet this Billy Burnett, and I think he’s Teddy Fay, then I’ll give you a call. I don’t want to do that unless I’m certain he’s the guy. I don’t want to turn some innocent into a victim.”

  “I understand your scruples, but if you think he might be Teddy Fay, please let me know, and I’ll handle it.”

  “You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

  “Stone, my people are not thugs, but they have ways of warning people off. The threat of exposure should be enou
gh, if he’s Teddy Fay.”

  “If he’s Teddy Fay,” Dino said, “I don’t think I’d threaten him.”

  Igor landed the rented Cirrus at Gallup Airport, then hired a car and drove south. Mesa Grande was just where it was supposed to be and looked just as it was supposed to look: dusty and a little forlorn.

  Igor had received the call from Paris and the GPS surveillance tapes that had been e-mailed to him. He had printed enough stills to help orient himself in the search for Ivan and Yevgeny in their Lincoln Navigator, but first, he thought that speaking to a few human beings might be useful. He started at the gas station.

  A teenaged boy ran out of the building and asked what would be his pleasure.

  “Actually, I just rented the car, so I don’t need any gas yet,” Igor replied. “What I could use is a little information.”

  “What kind of information, sir?”

  “A couple of friends of mine passed through here last week, and I’m trying to find them. They were driving a black Lincoln Navigator. Have you seen anybody like that?”

  “No, sir, but I only work after school. If they came by here before that, I wouldn’t have seen them.”

  “Who would have been working here while you were in school?”

  “Last week? That would be Billy Burnett.”

  “May I speak with him?”

  “I’m afraid he moved on at the end of last week. He was only here for, I don’t know, two or three weeks. He was helping us out while my uncle, Tom Fields, the owner of the place, was taking care of his wife.”

  “Do you know where Billy Burnett moved on to?”

  “I don’t know. Uncle Tom said he just got in his airplane and flew away.”

  “What kind of airplane did he fly?”

  “When he got here he had a nice Cessna 182 RG, but he swapped it with a feller for a like-new Piper Malibu that had a turboprop conversion.”

  “You remember his tail number?”

  “November one, two, three, tango, foxtrot.”

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Bobby.”

  “You’re a bright boy, Bobby, and I appreciate your help. Where’d Billy take off from? Gallup?”

  “No, sir, we got an airstrip behind the buildings, here.”

  “Do you mind showing me?”