Santa Fe Edge (14 page)

Todd thought about flying down there, but it was only fifty miles; it would be almost as fast to drive. He got his car from the garage and drove south through town to I-25. He set his cruise control at five miles an hour under the speed limit and tried to stay awake.

TEDDY AND LAUREN LEFT their rented house and drove out Old Pecos Trail.

“How long a drive is it?” Lauren asked.

“An hour or so. Then it will take you at least two hours to drive to Las Vegas and pick me up.”

“I’m sleepy,” Lauren said, moving her seat back to a reclining position. “I’m going to take a nap.”

Teddy set his cruise control at five miles an hour over the speed limit and let the SUV take care of itself. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, and soon he began overtaking a red Taurus ahead of him, driven by a man alone. He moved to the left lane and let his car overtake the other. As he passed it, he caught a glimpse of the driver’s profile. It was the young Agency man, Todd Bacon, whom Teddy had seen at Geronimo a couple of nights before. He put on a baseball cap and increased his speed.

TODD WATCHED the Jeep Grand Cherokee sail past him and thought nothing of it. If there’d been a couple inside he would have been more interested.

TEDDY KEPTHIS speed up all the way to his exit from the interstate, and by that time Bacon’s car was out of sight. It was unlikely that they’d be heading to the same destination. He drove to the airport and, in the parking lot, woke up Lauren. “We’re here,” he said. “Do you want some coffee before you start for Las Vegas?”

“No,” she replied, stretching. “I’m fine.” He got out, and she moved to the driver’s seat. “See you there,” she said, then pulled out of the parking lot and headed back toward the interstate.

TODD REACHED HIS EXIT and turned toward Double Eagle Airport. Halfway there he passed the Grand Cherokee he’d seen earlier, but this time it was driven by a woman. The two cars passed too quickly for him to get a good look at her.

AT DOUBLE EAGLE, Teddy went to the paint shop and found his airplane sitting on the ramp. He inspected the paint job on the new tail number, then went into the office and paid his bill, getting a five percent discount for cash. He went back to the airplane, did a quick preflight, checking the tanks to be sure the fuel he’d ordered was aboard, then Teddy got into the Cessna, started the engine and began running through his checklist.

TODD PARKED HIS CAR and walked past the FBO and onto the ramp, to check the place out. A Beech Baron was landing, and he watched it touch down, then he turned and began walking to the FBO. Then he saw something that interested him. There was a paint shop on the field, something that hadn’t been mentioned in his airport guide.

He walked into the hangar and saw a small glassed-in office to one side, where a man worked at a desk. He rapped on the door. “Good morning,” he said.

“Morning,” the man replied. “Can I help you?”

“I was just wondering, have you had a Cessna 182 RG in recently for some paint work?”

“Yeah, I had a customer who wanted his tail number changed.”

Todd tried to control his excitement. “When was that?”

“He paid his bill less than half an hour ago,” the man replied. “He might still be on the line.”

Todd ran out of the hangar and looked at the parked airplanes, running along the line. There were plenty of Cessnas, as usual, but he didn’t see a 182 RG. Then he turned and looked toward the runway, where a Cessna was beginning its takeoff roll. He watched it lift off and then saw the landing gear come up. He squinted, but it was too far away to read the registration number on the side. He kept watching it as it climbed, until it began making a turn to the east and disappeared.

Todd ran back to the paint-shop office. “Can you tell me what tail number you painted on that airplane?” he asked.

“Sure,” the man replied, and gave him the number.

“Do you have a name and address for the owner?” Todd asked. “I’m looking to buy a nice 182 RG.”

The man looked through some papers stacked on his desk. “Yeah, here’s the FAA form. I’m afraid he’s from Arkansas, though, and he told me he was headed home.”

“Let me make a note of this, and I’ll call him,” Todd said, scribbling down the information. He thanked the man, then ran for his car.

BART CROSS TAXIED HIS Beech Baron to the ramp at Double Eagle Airport, then ran through his shutdown checklist and cut the engines. He got his luggage out of the rear compartment, then went into the FBO to arrange for parking and fuel. Shortly after that he was on his way to Albuquerque International Airport to pick up the Mercedes station wagon.

27

T
odd gunned his red Taurus and headed for the interstate. Teddy, if he wasn’t really going to Arkansas, would likely be headed for Las Vegas, the second of his airport guesses, and Lauren would be driving there to meet him. She had at least a half-hour head start—more like three-quarters of an hour. He turned onto the I-25 and set his cruise control at seventy-five. This was no time to get stopped by the state patrol.

TEDDY LANDED at Las Vegas after a forty-minute flight and taxied up to the little municipal terminal. He gave his fuel order to a lineman, then went inside to the front desk, where a man sat behind the counter. “Good afternoon,” he said.

“Hey,” the man replied. “You just refueling? Anything else we can do for you?”

“I’d like to hangar my airplane,” Teddy said. “Do you have any space?”

“I’ve got a T-hangar that might work for you,” the man said. “Let’s go take a look.” He led the way to an old Jeep, and they drove along a line of hangars and stopped at the last one. The man unlocked a padlock and pulled up the bifold door. “You’ve got power, but if you want heat, you’ll have to furnish your own heater.”

Teddy looked around. The hangar was ideal—clean and conveniently located.

“The price includes pull-out service when you need the airplane, or I’ll give you a key and you can pull it out yourself, if you feel like it.”

Teddy asked the price, negotiated and took the hangar for a three-month period. “I’d be grateful if you’d keep this confidential,” he said to the man. “The tax man might be around.”

“Sure thing,” the man replied, grinning.

They drove back to the terminal, and Teddy paid in cash for the rental and the fuel and collected his hangar key, then went over to the little airport restaurant to have a cheeseburger and to wait for Lauren to catch up. He looked at his watch and figured he had an hour to wait. When he had been there for forty-five minutes, he ordered a burger for her and had it put into a bag.

She arrived on time, and he drove back so that she could eat her burger on the way to Santa Fe.

TODD HAD PASSED Santa Fe and had been on the road for an hour and a half when he saw the tan Grand Cherokee approaching in the opposite lane, with a man driving and a woman in the passenger seat. He had just passed the exit for Serafina, and he didn’t know how far it was to the next exit. He was about to drive across the meridian of the four-lane highway when he checked his mirror and saw a car approaching from behind him with something on the roof. He switched off the cruise control and let his speed drop, while cursing his bad luck. It was a state patrol car, and it stayed behind him all the way to the Los Montoyas exit, where he was able to make a U-turn and head back toward Santa Fe. He put his foot down, then turned the cruise control on again at ninety. He hoped the police car was the only one in the sector.

TEDDY SAW THE TAURUS carrying Todd Bacon coming and watched him pass, then disappear in his rearview mirror. He got off the interstate at the next exit, opened the glove compartment and handed Lauren a map. “Navigate me to Santa Fe on the surface roads,” he said. “We just passed Bacon going the other way, and he saw me.”

She opened the map and told him to take the next right. When they got to Santa Fe, Teddy drove to the dealer where he had bought the Grand Cherokee, found the same salesman and made a deal to trade for a very nice, low-mileage Volvo station wagon with four-wheel drive and winter tires.

“I’m not going to let this guy run me out of Santa Fe,” he said to Lauren as they drove toward home. When they arrived there he went immediately to his computer and went through the Agency mainframe to access the New Mexico Department of Motor Vehicles and started making changes.

TODD GOT OFF the interstate at the Santa Fe exit, surprised that he had not caught up with Teddy’s Grand Cherokee. He drove into town on Old Pecos Trail, checking every parking lot for the SUV but not seeing it. He drove back to La Fonda, parked the car, went upstairs and got on his computer. He logged in to the Agency mainframe and accessed the New Mexico DMV. He did a search for tan Grand Cherokees and found four registered in Santa Fe. He looked away for a moment to find a pad to write on, and when he returned his attention to the computer screen there were only three Grand Cherokees. He could have sworn there had been four a moment before, but he wasn’t positive. He jotted down the names and addresses of the owners and went back to his car. He was going to start running them down now.

TEDDY HAD CHANGED the owner’s name and address to one in Albuquerque. Now he changed the name and address of the Volvo to a Taos owner, then exited the Agency mainframe.

Lauren, who had been watching over his shoulder, said, “That was very slick.” She kissed him on the neck.

28

B
art Cross found the Mercedes station wagon, transferred his luggage from the taxi and drove out of the airport area to I-25 and headed north to Santa Fe.

He had flown Jim Long to the city a couple of times when he was shooting films here and had once stayed for three weeks, when he and a stuntman had driven a stagecoach in a western, so he knew the town pretty well. He drove through downtown and around the Plaza, just to get a look at it again, then picked up some food for dinner and headed north on the road to Taos and turned off at the sign for Las Campanas. He followed the road map Barbara had given him and found the house and guesthouse with no problem. He put the station wagon in the garage as instructed, put his clothes away and heated up the roast chicken he had bought for dinner. While it was warming, he found the liquor and poured himself a bourbon over ice. He had just turned on the TV for the news and sat down with his drink when he heard car doors slamming outside.

“THERE’S A LIGHT ON,” Vittorio said as they pulled up at dusk.

“She’s finally come home,” Cupie replied. He got out of the car, pulled his Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38 from the holster, checked that it was loaded and snapped the cylinder shut. He did not return it to the holster.

“Stand beside the front door and cover me,” Vittorio said, then stepped up to the front door and used the knocker.

BART ALREADY HAD a gun in his hand. He looked through the little window in the door and saw an Indian in a flat-brimmed black hat. He leaned on the wall next to the door, the gun in his fist, and opened the door a foot or so with his left. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Vittorio said, “but I’m looking for Mrs. Keeler, who rents this house.”

“I’m a subletter,” Bart said. “There’s no one else here.”

“May I ask how you came to sublet the place?” Vittorio asked pleasantly.

“There was an ad on a bulletin board where I work, at a film studio in L.A. We did the deal over the phone. She was in San Francisco.”

“How long will you be subletting?” Vittorio asked.

“Till the end of the month—longer if my work here calls for it. Will you excuse me? My dinner’s getting cold.”

“Of course. I’m sorry to have troubled you,” Vittorio said. He turned to go back to the car.

Bart watched through the window in the door as another man fell in behind the Indian, and saw him returning a pistol to its holster. He locked the door, found the cell phone Eleanor Keeler had given him and called the number he had memorized.