Stuart Woods - Santa Fe Edge

“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.

Todd 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.

Bart 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.”