Stuart Woods - Santa Fe Edge

I’ll follow every lead in Santa Fe tomorrow and report on anything I find. I tried to find a photograph of Lauren Cade in the records of the Florida State Police and motor vehicles department, to no avail. I guess you were right about our friend’s ability to scrub items on databases.

Todd

HOLLY, WORKING LATE at her desk as usual, read the e-mail, and it was nothing less than she had expected. Teddy was a chameleon with endless bags of tricks, and she wasn’t entirely sure that Todd understood who he was up against. Still, he was a resourceful young man who wanted to further impress Lance Cabot, so he was highly motivated.

TODD GREW HUNGRY around dusk, so he showered and changed and stopped at the concierge’s desk in the lobby.

“May I help you, sir?” the young woman said.

“Yes. Can you recommend a very good restaurant for dinner outside the hotel? Something with local color?”

“I’d recommend either Santacafé or Geronimo,” she said. “I suppose Geronimo has more local color.”

“Can you book me a table for one, please?”

She called the restaurant and spoke to them, then turned to Todd. “They have no tables, but you can dine in the bar; you won’t need a reservation there.”

“All right. Thanks.” Todd turned toward the garage, then turned back.

“Can you give me directions?”

“It’s very easy. Turn right out of the parking lot, then drive toward the cathedral and take your next right. Go straight at the traffic light, then take your first left onto Canyon Road. Geronimo is about halfway to the top, and they have valet parking.”

TEDDY AND LAUREN were seated at a corner table at Geronimo, Teddy in his preferred gunfighter’s seat with his back to the corner. He saw a young man enter the restaurant and walk straight through the dining room toward the bar. Bells went off in Teddy’s head. He never forgot a face, but where had he seen this one?

A waitress approached with menus and asked if they’d like drinks. Lauren ordered and waited for Teddy to place his order, but he seemed lost in thought. “Teddy?”

“Oh, sorry. A margarita, please, straight up with salt.” The waitress left.

“Give me just a minute,” he said to Lauren. “I have to think about something.”

“Sure,” Lauren said. She watched as he seemed to go almost into a trance: eyes closed, face expressionless.

Teddy reversed the video recorder in his brain and watched the young man enter the restaurant again, then again. Now he had the face fixed in his mind. Panama City. He had been on his motorcycle and he had just shot the Agency station chief on the street outside the American Embassy, when he’d looked up at the windows of their offices. The young man had been standing at a window. Teddy had seen him before in a local bar. He was Agency. Teddy opened his eyes.

“Everything okay, Teddy?” Lauren asked.

“No,” Teddy said. “Not entirely. There’s someone from the Agency in this restaurant right now.”

“Someone you worked with before?”

“No, he’s much younger than I. He worked in the Panama station only a couple of months ago, and he turned up on Cumberland Island when I was dealing with a problem. There was something of a chase, but I took off from the beach. He put a couple of holes in the airplane that I had to fix later, before I went to Orchid Beach.”

“Is he here looking for us?” she asked.

“Very possibly,” Teddy said.

“But there’s no way he could have traced us here.”

“There’s always a way. I could have made a mistake.”

“Do you want to leave? Should we run?”

“No,” Teddy said. “I have a better idea. Let’s just relax and enjoy our dinner.” They ordered, then Teddy excused himself to go to the men’s room.

TODD BACON SAT at the bar, sipping a margarita. There was a couple at a table near the bar, and it occurred to him that they were a fit for Teddy Fay and Lauren Cade. He was sixtyish and slim and wore an obvious toupee. She was much younger, blond and attractive. He summoned the bartender and lowered his voice. “Do you know the couple to my left?”

“Yes,” the man replied. “They’re the Hamptons, regular customers.”

“For how long?”

“Ever since I’ve been here, and that’s two years.”

Todd nodded. Well, that would have been too easy. A man walked past him and into the men’s room. A couple of minutes later he walked out and past Todd again. He appeared to be in his early fifties, dark hair, gray at the temples. That matched the description of the man in the 182 RG that was given to him by the young woman at the airport.

Todd shook his head. Now he was getting paranoid. Everybody was looking like Teddy Fay.

TEDDY TOOK HIS SEAT in the dining room.

“Everything all right?” Lauren asked.

“Suspicions confirmed,” he replied.

Todd Bacon slept later than he had meant to, then ordered breakfast from room service. He still had one lead to follow, and he finished breakfast in a hurry and showered.

Ten minutes later, he was driving out Cerrillos Road, looking for Adobe Moving and Storage. He found it and turned into the parking lot. A middle-aged man was behind the counter.

“Good morning,” Todd said to the man. “I wonder if you could help me?”

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“A couple of days ago you had some boxes arrive here from Vero Beach, Florida. Can you find that shipment in your records?”

The man turned to his computer. “ Vero Beach, Florida,” he muttered to himself. “Yes, here it is.”

“Can you tell me to whom the shipment was addressed?”

The man peered at the screen. “No name.”

“No name? How could you deliver it?”

“The boxes, four of them, were addressed to us, and identified by a number.”

“Can you tell me to whom you delivered the boxes?”

“We couldn’t deliver them; we had no name and address. I remember they were picked up here at the office by a woman.”

“Can you describe her?” Todd asked.

“Fairly tall, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Also a baseball cap and dark glasses. I helped her load the boxes into her car.”

“What kind of car?”

“A Lincoln Town Car, I think, silver color.”

“Can you remember anything else about her?” Todd asked.

“No, just that she was very nice. She might have been pretty without the cap and the sunglasses.”

“Thank you,” Todd said and left. A silver Town Car-that’s what the man with the 182 RG had rented. He drove back to the airport to the FBO. The same young woman was behind the desk.

“Morning,” Todd said. “We spoke yesterday.”

“I remember,” she replied.

“You said that the man with the 182 RG had rented a Lincoln Town Car?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Could I have a look at the car?” he asked.

She turned to her computer. “I’m afraid it was rented again. Left half an hour ago.”

“Do you have the credit card information on the man who rented it?”

She looked again. “Paul Janzen, Atlanta, Georgia.” She gave him the address and phone number.

“What kind of credit card?” Todd asked.

“I only have the number,” she said, and to his surprise, she gave it to him.

“Thank you so much,” Todd said, and left, excited now. Back in his own car he dialed the phone number of Paul Janzen. A pizza parlor answered. He called information, but no Paul Janzen had a number in Atlanta.

He drove back to his hotel, sat down at his computer, got into the Agency mainframe and ran the credit card number. To his surprise, it existed but there was no name for it, just the number. Very odd. He got into the FAA database and did a search for Janzen but got nothing.