Doing Hard Time (4 page)

“But why is it following us?”

“Maybe it wants to mate with our car,” Ben offered.

“Oh, come on, guys,” Hattie said. “When are you going to stop talking about a car following us? You’re just being paranoid.”

“We’re not paranoid if there’s an actual car following us,” Peter said.

“Well, I’ll give you this,” Hattie said. “It never seems to catch up, and it never drops out of sight.”

“It’s following us,” Peter said.

• • •

Back in New York, Stone called Mike Freeman, CEO of Strategic Services, the second-largest security company in the United States, and a partner in The Arrington. “You feel like a trip to L.A. to see how the hotel is doing?” Stone asked.

“You just want to check up on Peter,” Mike said.

“It could be like spring break,” Stone said.

“You forget I’m British. What’s spring break?”

“It’s a week or two of vacation, when college kids go somewhere and get drunk.”

“You make it sound like such fun,” Mike said. “When do you want to go?”

“We can go anytime we like,” Stone said. “You have a big, fast airplane.”

“That’s true,” Mike said. “It does kind of sound like fun, and we can check up on our movie studio and see how it’s doing. How about tomorrow morning?”

“Perfect,” Stone said. “That’ll give me a chance to clean up my desk before we go. And we’ll get there right after Peter.”

“You sure you don’t want to take your airplane?” Mike asked.

“It’s a lot slower than your airplane,” Stone pointed out. “And we’d need to stop at least twice for fuel. We could overnight in Santa Fe and check up on how Ed Eagle is doing.”

“Let’s take my airplane,” Mike said. “Two days of traveling is too long.”

“Especially when you’ve got a Gulfstream Five,” Stone said.

“All right, pick me up at nine tomorrow morning.”

“Where, home or office?”

“It’s the same place. Call me when you’re five minutes away.”

“Done.” Stone hung up and buzzed Joan. “Mike and I are going to L.A. tomorrow morning.”

“To work or play?”

“Some of both. We have to find a way to make the trip tax-deductible.”

“You’re just going to check on Peter and Ben and Hattie, aren’t you?”

“What, you think I’m an overprotective father?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s clean up any work I have left, so I won’t have to worry about it.”

“You never worry about work. Hang on, call coming in.” She put him on hold, then came back. “Dino on two for you.”

Stone pressed the button. “Hey.”

“I was just thinking,” Dino said, “I’ve got some vacation time coming. Why don’t we go out to L.A. and have some fun?”

“What about Viv?”

“She’s running a protection detail for some business guy who’s headed to Miami for a few days.”

“That’s convenient. Actually, I was about to call you. Mike and I just talked about going to L.A. You want to go to check up on Ben, don’t you?”

“Well, as long as we’re out there, we can check up on the kids.”

“Yeah, okay, as long as we’re going to be out there anyway, why not?”

“When?”

“Be here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. We’ll pick up Mike on the way.”

“We taking your airplane or his?”

“His.”

“Right, you’re on.” Dino hung up.

Hattie checked her rearview mirror for the thirtieth time in the past two hours, and the dot was still there. Abruptly, she turned off at the next exit.

“Where are you going?” Peter asked, waking from his doze.

“Route 66,” she replied.

“Like the jazz tune?”

“Right. We’ll pick it up somewhere around Amarillo.”

“Then Gallup, New Mexico,” Peter said, remembering the lyric. “But wouldn’t we make better time on the interstate?”

“No doubt, but the dot in the mirror has been there all morning, and I’m tired of looking at it. If it’s a semi it will stick to the interstate, and we’ll be rid of it.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“A car would probably still stick to the interstate, too,” she said, “but if it follows us I’m going to stop and buy a gun.”

“Where would you buy a gun?”

“How about at a gun store?”

“Isn’t there a waiting period?”

“Then we’ll look for a gun show, where the waiting period doesn’t apply, according to every news report I hear.”

“Hattie, aren’t you being just a tiny bit paranoid?”

“More than a tiny bit.”

“Okay,” Peter said, and tried to go back to sleep.

• • •

In the late afternoon, Ben was driving and Hattie was asleep in the backseat. Peter awoke from a doze. “Where are we?”

“Almost to Gallup,” Ben said. “I got off Route 66 a couple of miles back and turned south, to see if the dot follows us.”

“The dot is still there?”

“It turned up an hour ago, as if it had been waiting just over the horizon.”

“I’m beginning to think that Hattie’s idea of buying a gun isn’t such a bad one.”

“I’ve got my dad’s old .38 Special in my bag,” Ben said.

They hit a bad pothole in the old two-lane highway, and there was a
pop
, followed by a fluttering noise.

“Shit!” Ben spat. “I didn’t have time to avoid that one. Now we’ve got a blowout.” He pulled over at a wide place on the shoulder, and they got out of the car.

Hattie sat up. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“We’ve got to change a tire,” Peter answered. “Go back to sleep.”

“Gladly,” she said, and sank back into the seat.

They had to unload their suitcases to get at the spare, which turned out to be a strange-looking emergency tire.

“How far do you think we can get on that thing?” Ben asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll look it up in the manual when we’re done,” Peter replied.

They changed the tire and put the old one in the U-Haul, then returned their luggage, but not before Ben had taken a long look down the highway behind them, then retrieved the .38 from his suitcase and tucked it into his belt. “The dot is still back there,” he said, “but it stopped when we did.”

Peter was looking in the driver’s manual.

“How far is the tire good for?” Ben asked, starting the car.

“A hundred miles,” Peter replied, “at fifty miles per hour.”

Ben sighed and pulled back onto the highway. “We’ll try to replace the tire at the first place we come to. We need gas, too,” he said.

“We just passed a sign for an Esso station.”

“An
Esso
station?”

“Yep. We should be able to get some very old gasoline there. It’s five miles ahead.”

Shortly they passed a sign announcing their entry into Mesa Grande, New Mexico. The Kiwanis Club met at Sally’s Diner on Tuesday evenings, it said.

“Up ahead, on the right,” Peter said.

Ben pulled into the service station, which had a sign on the pumps saying, “Independent.” A wiry-looking man in his fifties strode out of the office and walked around to the driver’s window.

“Yessir?” he said.

“Fill ’er up,” Ben told him, and they got out of the Cayenne to stretch their legs. Hattie woke up and went to the ladies’ room. The tank full, the man began to clean the bugs off the windshield.

“You had a flat, did you? We can fix that for you,” he said as he worked.

“A blowout,” Peter replied. “Can you fix that?”

“I guess not,” the man said. “Let’s take a look at it.”

Peter opened the U-Haul and took out the wheel with its ruined tire.

The man looked at it closely. “That would be from that pothole about five miles back,” he said.

Peter and Ben laughed aloud. “Must be good for business,” Peter said.

“I’ve hit it myself,” the man said. “I reported it to the county, but they’re slow to move.” The man pointed across the road. “I suggest you go over to the diner and speak to Sally, who can fix you up with some rooms.”

“Can you replace the tire?” Peter asked.

“No, and neither can most tire dealers in the state,” the man replied. “It’s a high-performance Pirelli.” He glanced at his watch. “If I hurry, I can get the Porsche dealer in Albuquerque on the phone before they close at six, and they can put a tire on the Greyhound bus to us tomorrow morning. I can have you out of here by noon.”

“Sounds good,” Peter said, eyeing the motel across the road with doubt. “Tell me about the motel,” he said.

“It’s the cleanest, homiest, most comfortable motel in town,” the man said. “It’s also the
only
motel in town, but don’t be put off by that. Sally will take care of you, and she’s a good cook, too.”

“Great,” Peter said. “You order the tire, and we’ll walk across the road.”

He followed the man’s directions to pull the car over and unhook the U-Haul, then handed him the keys. “My name is Peter Barrington,” he said, offering his hand.

The man wiped his palm on his coveralls and shook Peter’s. “My name’s Billy,” he said.

The three young people each grabbed a suitcase and walked across the road, while Billy phoned the Porsche dealer and ordered the tire.

• • •

The call made, Billy drove the Cayenne into the garage and onto the hydraulic lift.
Might as well get that wheel taken care of now
, he thought. He hosed it down to wash the dust away, then spun off the studs and set the wheel on the shop floor. There was some mud and dirt caked in the wheel well, and he turned his hose on that, too, dissolving it to run down the drain.

Then Teddy saw something he didn’t expect. Way forward in the wheel well, the hose had revealed a black box, perhaps one inch by two and an inch thick. A two-inch antenna sprouted from the upper end of the box.

He knew what that was, because he had invented a GPS transmitter very much like it in his time at the CIA and installed many of them. The question was: Where and in whose hands was the receiver?

Stone sat in the jump seat of the Gulfstream jet and watched the two pilots join the VOR A instrument approach for runway 21 at Santa Monica Airport. He knew from experience that the controllers usually vectored you onto final approach a couple of thousand feet high, and he wanted to see how the two pros would get the airplane down to final approach altitude while, at the same time, slowing it to final approach speed. He always had a hard time with that in his own airplane, but the Gulfstream pilots did it brilliantly, and they touched down exactly where they were supposed to at the exact speed they were supposed to.

A quick turn into Atlantic Aviation, and they were there. As the engines shut down, one of the Arrington’s fleet of Bentley Mulsannes eased to a stop near the foot of the airplane’s airstair door, and the trunk lid silently opened.

With their baggage unloaded into the car, the three men piled into the Bentley, and they started for the hotel. They had not reckoned on what the widening of I-405 would do to the afternoon traffic, and they crept along the few miles to the Sunset Boulevard exit. Once there, they were on Stone Canyon Road in a flash, then turning through the gates of the splendid new hotel. An Arrington security guard was there to identify them and wave them through without the usual stringent procedures, and they arrived at Stone’s house five minutes later.