Santa Fe Edge

4

When Alvarez awoke it was dark in his office. He stood up and groggily felt for the light switch along the wall above the sofa. Then he took a step and fell heavily on the floor. His trousers were around his ankles.

He pulled them up and buckled his belt, then, holding on to the arm of the sofa, pulled himself to his feet and found the light switch. He was alone in the office. Panicked, he went to the safe and checked the door, but it was locked. Relieved, he sank into his office chair and poured himself a glass of tequila from the open bottle on the desk. Where the hell was the woman? Then he noticed that the door to his apartment was open. Was she in his bed? He’d kill her!

He got up and staggered into the apartment, switching on an overhead light. She was not in the living room, so he went into the bedroom and turned on a bedside lamp. The bed was perfectly made. He tried the bathroom and was stunned to see a rope, one end tied to the sink pedestal, the other end hanging out the window above the toilet. He pulled it in and untied it from the sink, then returned to his office and placed the rope back on his prize saddle. Everything had to be in perfect order when his wife came home.

But where was the woman? He unlocked his office door and stepped into the hallway. No one there. Thank God the guard was gone. He went back into his office and sat down at his desk. She had escaped, and he had to do something, but what? If he sounded the alarm, he would have to explain how she got out of his office. He would be fired out of hand the moment the story hit the papers and TV. What was even worse was that he would have to explain it to his wife.

He looked at his clock on his desk: just after eight P.M. There was a knock on the office door. “Come in!” he called.

The door opened and the guard stood there, looking around the room. “My shift is ending,” she said. “Do you want me to return the American woman to her cell?”

Alvarez, borne on a cloud of tequila, improvised. “The American woman has been transferred,” he replied.

“Transferred? Where?”

“Who knows? I think the woman has connections in the government. They came, they had the proper papers, they took her away. Now go home and forget about it. If anybody asks about her you know nothing, except that she has been transferred. You don’t want to get caught in that particular flypaper.”

“That is true,” the woman said, and closed the door.

Transferred-that was it! Alvarez mopped his brow and poured himself another tequila. The woman was gone, and good riddance! He would stick to his story. There had been a telephone call from the Ministry of Justice. He was to bring the woman to his office, where she would be collected in due course. They had brought a transfer order, properly signed and stamped, and had taken her away. If anyone asked, he knew nothing further. He drank more tequila.

BARBARA AND JIMMY WERE, at that moment, having a room-service dinner on the terrace of their suite, watching the moon rise over the Pacific. Barbara kept an eye on the TV, waiting for her picture to be displayed, but it didn’t happen. What was going on?

“You still looking for yourself on TV?” Jimmy asked.

“Yes, and I don’t understand it.”

“Maybe the warden is still asleep.”

“Possibly,” she said, “Or…”

“Or what?”

“Alvarez is now in a very difficult position,” Barbara said. “I’m gone, and there’s a rope hanging out his bathroom window. What does he do?”

“Sound the alarm?”

“I’ve been gone for hours,” she said. “The Valium had to put him down for quite a while, especially when mixed with the tequila.”

“Yeah, that would do it, if he drank enough.”

“He’s a lush. He drinks all the time.”

“Then maybe he’s still out.”

“It’s been more than eight hours,” she said. “When he wakes up and I’m gone, he’s going to have to figure out what to do, and from his point of view, the absolute worst thing he could do is raise an alarm for my recapture.”

“Good point,” Jimmy said. “You’ve got that on your side.”

“He’s in control inside the prison. If I’m gone he can cover it up, at least for a while, but if his superiors know I’m out, all hell will break loose.”

“Granted.”

“And then there’s his wife,” Barbara said, smiling. “Word is, he’s more frightened of her and her father than of his bosses. She comes home tomorrow morning. If he’s smart, and he is, in a kind of reptilian-brain way, he’ll cover it up.”

“How about the money you stole from him?”

“I’d bet anything she knows nothing about it. It’s graft-bribes he’s taken over time. There was sixty-one thousand dollars and about twenty in pesos.”

“So, only you and Alvarez know about that.”

“Right, but if they catch me, everyone will know. Jimmy, we have to get out of here tomorrow morning, first thing. Call your pilot.”

Jimmy got out his cell phone. “Hello, Bart? Jim Long. I want to fly back to L.A. tomorrow morning.”

“No,” Barbara said, tugging at his sleeve.

“We have to stop somewhere on the way to L.A. What’s an out-of-the-way airport?”

Jimmy shrugged. “How about Yuma?” he said to Barbara.

“Perfect. Tell him to file for there, then he can drop me and take you back to Santa Monica.”

Jimmy passed on the request and hung up. “Bart’s good with that,” he said.

“How well do you know him?”

“Very well. He’s worked on nearly all of my films as a stunt pilot, and ferrying around cast and crew. He can do just about anything, and I put money in his pocket all the time.”

“Good, then he won’t ask too many questions about me.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Tell him I live in Yuma, and my husband doesn’t know I’ve been in Mexico.”

“Okay.”

“Does he fly to Mexico a lot?”

“All the time.”

“Good. You can give him Alvarez’s pesos.”

The following morning they drove to the Acapulco Airport and onto the ramp, stopping next to the Beech Baron and depositing their luggage with Bart, who seemed to think nothing of taking on an unexpected passenger and dropping her in Yuma.

They took off and climbed to twelve thousand feet, and headed northeast. Barbara opened her suitcase and went through all her ID-credit cards, driver’s license and passport, all genuine, all in the name of Eleanor Keeler. Her last husband had been Walter Keeler, who had died in a car crash. She had been left a tightly controlled legacy and suspected Walter’s lawyer of having screwed her out of anything more. He had, no doubt, cut off payments when she had been convicted in Mexico, but she still had a fund of several hundred thousand dollars in a San Francisco bank. It would take some doing, but she would get her hands on that.

The airplane landed at Yuma later in the day, and Barbara handed the pilot her passport. “For some reason, they didn’t give me an entry stamp when I crossed the border,” she said.

“When did you cross?”

“Three days ago. I flew private into Acapulco.”

“It’ll probably be okay,” he said.

She and Jimmy waited next to the airplane. She was nervous, and she looked for a way out of the airport. There was a midsized jet parked next to them with the engines running. Maybe she could hide in the toilet.

Their pilot came walking across the tarmac with a uniformed customs official, scaring her half to death, but the official wanted only to inspect the airplane, which took no more than two minutes, then he left.

“We’re cleared,” the pilot said, returning her passport. “It was no sweat about your entry stamp, and you’re stamped into the U.S. now.” He got her bag out of the airplane for her.

She put an arm around Jimmy’s neck and kissed him. “I’ll be in touch, baby. You just go back to L.A. and live your life. You know nothing about me.”

“Gotcha, kiddo,” he said, climbing back into the airplane.

BARBARASPENT THE NIGHT in an airport motel, then, the following morning, rented a car and drove to Phoenix, ending up in Scottsdale at the Mondrian, a fashionable hotel full of beautiful people.

She had a new life to invent now, and a long shopping list of a car, an untraceable cell phone, clothes and luggage. She started with a day at the hotel spa, including a recoloring and cut of her hair.

That night, snuggling in bed with a business executive she had met at the bar, Barbara thought of Ed Eagle. He was still out there, in Santa Fe, waiting for her.

She wouldn’t disappoint him.