Santa Fe Edge

37

Todd Bacon sat in his hotel room, staring at his computer screen. He had reported in, told Holly Barker that her idea had worked but that he had lost Lauren Cade. She had not been pleased, and he wasn’t pleased with himself, either.

Now he was faced with new difficulties. Lauren, knowing that she had been spotted, would go to ground, and what’s more, she now knew what he looked like. He didn’t even know if it had been she in the Volvo station wagon; that was just a guess.

Nevertheless, he logged on to the Agency mainframe, accessed the New Mexico DMV records and did a search for green Volvo station wagons. They were apparently popular in the state, because the search turned up fourteen of the cars in green, none of them in Santa Fe. There was, however, one in Taos that had been registered the day he had spotted Teddy in the Grand Cherokee. That would have been the day he would have traded cars, and Teddy certainly knew enough about the Agency’s computers to hide the trade.

This was a lead so slim that it hardly qualified as a lead, but it was all he had. The Taos car was registered to a Walt Gooden. A quick call to 411 confirmed that no one by that name had a phone in Taos, nor did he, after another check, have one in Santa Fe. Well, Teddy wouldn’t have registered the car in the alias he was using, would he?

Todd continued to deduce. If Lauren had gone to ground after being spotted, would Teddy have done the same? And if so, what might cause one of them to leave wherever they were living? They weren’t going to run-they had already demonstrated that. But they could just wait him out. After all, Todd wasn’t going to spend the rest of his career on this job, no matter how important it was to Lance Cabot.

Food. They had to eat. Maybe one of them would leave to buy supplies-not only a meal but groceries. Todd reasoned that they would not go just to a convenience store, where choices would be limited, but to a proper supermarket, where they could find a large enough variety to keep them in good meals for an extended time, maybe a week or ten days.

In his travels around Santa Fe Todd had seen only one large supermarket, though certainly there must be more. He had seen a large Albertsons in a shopping center with a big parking lot. It was as good a place to start as any. He went down to the garage and started to get into his rented red Taurus, then stopped. Teddy had already seen that car. He went into the hotel, to the rental car desk, and exchanged the Taurus for a silver Toyota, then drove to where he had seen the Albertsons store.

A sea of cars greeted him. He figured if they were going to shop for groceries, they would park as close to Albertsons as possible, so he started at the front door and began driving slowly up and down the rows of parked cars, checking for Volvo station wagons. He found a silver one and a white one but no green one. He continued to look.

Finally, he had covered the entire parking lot without finding the car he was looking for. He’d come back tomorrow and start again. Then, as he was driving back toward the supermarket, he saw a green Volvo station wagon, empty. He checked the plates: New Mexico, Santa Fe County. He double-parked, got out of his car and tried a door on the Volvo. Locked. He walked slowly around the car, looking inside. He saw a map of the state and nothing else.

Todd returned to his car, opened the trunk and opened a case he traveled with. He chose two items, closed the case and the trunk, and returned to the Volvo. He looked around for cops or someone paying attention to him, found no one, then dropped to the ground, crawled halfway under the car, far enough that no one could reach unless they crawled as far as he had, and attached the little box magnetically to the frame. He pressed a button on the side and watched a red light start to flash. It would continue for two minutes.

He got up from under the station wagon, went back to his car, drove a hundred yards away and stopped. He switched the GPS device on and pressed the button for current location. The device took a moment to locate itself, and then a map of Santa Fe appeared. He pressed another button, and a red light on the map began to flash. It had nailed the location of the green Volvo station wagon. Now he didn’t have to closely tail the car; when it moved, he could follow at an unseen distance.

He found a parking space and sat in the car, waiting.

BARBARA WAS WATCHING television in Jimmy’s study when he came home from the studio. “Hi,” she said.

He didn’t reply but went to the bar, poured himself a stiff drink, then flopped down in his easy chair.

“Something wrong, sweetie?” she asked. He hadn’t even offered her a drink.

“Yeah, something’s wrong,” he replied, without looking at her.

“What is it?”

“You remember the pilot who flew us back from Mexico?”

“Of course. What was his name?”

“Bart Cross.”

“Oh, sure. What about him?”

“I gave you his name, remember?”

“I had forgotten,” she said.

“Did you ever speak with him?”

“No. I decided he might not be the right man for the job.”

“Well, Bart is dead,” Jimmy said. “He was shot at his home last night. It’s all over the papers.”

“I haven’t read a paper today,” she said.

“There was something else in the paper,” he replied. “Somebody attacked Ed Eagle with a knife in Santa Fe yesterday but failed to kill him.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Sounds like somebody was doing you a favor.”

“Well, trying, maybe.”

“Barbara, did you hire Bart to kill Eagle? I mean, I knew you were going to do something like that, and I didn’t really care.”

“I think you know the answer to that,” she said.

“Did you hire Bart Cross?”

She said nothing, just went to the bar and poured herself a drink, then came back and sat down.

“Yes,” she said.

“And did you kill him for failing?”

“Jimmy, he made mistakes. The police would have been onto him before the week was out. He’d have given me up in a plea bargain.”

“Well, I can’t argue with that,” he said, “but I don’t like you killing a man who worked for me, somebody I liked.”

“I’m sorry. It was necessary.”

Jimmy took a deep breath and sighed. “Barbara, you’re going to have to leave here and not come back for a long time.”

“All right, if that’s what you wish.”

“I mean right now. I’ll drive you to the airport. I don’t want there to be a record of a taxi pickup here.”

Barbara stood up. “I’ll go and pack now and be ready in half an hour.”

“Thank you,” he said.

TEDDY CAME OUT OF Albertsons and saw that it had begun to snow, and he figured that if it kept up like this there would be at least six inches on the ground by morning. He put his groceries in the luggage compartment and returned his cart. Then, as he approached the Volvo, something occurred to him. He squatted and read the side of one of the tires: It was rated for mud and snow. The salesman had told him the vehicle was equipped with snow tires, and he knew that was a whole different thing. The driveway at the house was pretty steep, and in a couple of inches of snow, and with these tires, the car wouldn’t make it up.

He got into the car and headed for Cerrillos Road.

THREE HUNDRED YARDS AWAY, Todd Bacon was parked across the road from the National Cemetery, reading the local paper, when the GPS unit beeped. The Volvo was on the move.

He started the car.

TEDDY FOUND A DISCOUNT tire dealer on Cerrillos and asked if they had Pirelli 210s in stock. They did and could install them immediately and give him a small trade-in on his current tires. He was directed to drive the car into a service bay. He got out and watched as the hydraulic lift raised the car until the tires were at a working level.

He thought he’d have a look at the chassis to check for rust, so he stooped and walked under the car. He inspected everything carefully, then stopped. Something had been placed under the car; he knew it instantly, because he had designed it himself. He reached up and detached it from the frame. Good thing it had snowed, he thought. In a day or two the device would have been covered with road grime and difficult to spot.

He walked out of the service bay and looked around: no Volvos, but there was a dark green Ford wagon parked outside. He bent down and attached the device under the rear bumper, then went back into the service bay, where his car was waiting. He lowered the hydraulic lift, and when the technician came toward him, he told the man he had changed his mind.

He got back on Cerrillos Road and drove to the dealer where he had bought the Volvo, remembering that he had seen a sign offering a ten-day car exchange with no questions asked.

TODD WAS STOPPED AT a traffic light when he checked the GPS unit again. The Volvo was moving again, this time headed north. He checked his fuel and found that he had been given the car with only a quarter of a tank, so he pulled into a gas station and topped off the tank. He could catch up at his leisure.

When he got back into the car he discovered that the Volvo had departed Santa Fe to the north and was headed toward Tesuque. He followed.