Doing Hard Time (7 page)

“There’s a motel over there, if you want to get a night’s rest,” Teddy said. “If you don’t want to add the 100LL to your tanks, I’ll drive over to Gallup and get you fifty gallons of Jet A in jerry cans.”

Strunk thought about that. “Is that your 182 out back?”

“Sure is. It’s a retractable.”

“Nice one.”

“Thanks. I do all my own maintenance, and I put a Garmin glass panel in it.”

“I saw that.”

An idea was forming in Teddy’s mind, and he thought that all he had to do to make it work was nothing.

“Now, that is my kind of airplane,” he said, “and you’ve made it beautiful. How old is it?”

“One of the last dozen manufactured, before they shut down, then started up again,” Teddy said.

Strunk asked some questions about the avionics and seemed satisfied with the answers. “Would you consider a trade?” he asked.

“You mean a swap? Mine for yours?”

“That’s exactly right. I’ll give you the deal of a lifetime.”

“You mean you want to take a bath on that like-new turboprop, just to get back into an airplane you feel comfortable in?”

“I can afford the bath,” Strunk said. “I’m an impatient man, and I’m what you might call a highly motivated seller. Can I see your logbooks?”

Teddy went to the office closet and retrieved a nylon briefcase. “All the records are in there,” he said, handing it over.

“Mine are in a leather bag on the rear seat,” Strunk said. “You go have a look, then we’ll talk.”

The two men perused each other’s logbooks, and Teddy began to get excited. The Mirage had had only a hundred hours on it when the conversion to turboprop took place, and only twenty-two hours since. He put down the bag and walked back to the l82.

“Satisfied?” Strunk asked.

“It’s a very nice airplane,” he said.

“Let me make you an offer,” Strunk said, scratching his head. “You give me your airplane and half a million dollars cash, and you’ve got yourself a brand-new, almost, JetPROP.”

“Any liens on it?” Teddy asked.

“None. I pay cash for everything. Tell you what, if you haven’t got the half million in cash, I’ll give you a short-term loan with a balloon in a year—give you time to arrange financing.”

“I pay cash for everything, too,” Teddy said, “but I’ve only got four hundred grand on me.”

Strunk laughed loudly. “On you?”

“In a deposit box not half a mile from here,” Teddy said.

“I hadn’t reckoned on that big a bath,” Strunk replied.

“It’s the best I can do,” Teddy said. “Or you can take a bus back to Las Vegas and send somebody over here to fly your JetPROP back to you. After seeing that landing, I don’t think you ought to do it yourself.”

Strunk held out his hand. “You go get your four hundred grand,” he said, “and we’ll download some paperwork from the Internet and make it official.”

And so the deal was done. Two hours later, after a title search and the signing of a bill of sale and the relevant FAA documents, Strunk started the engine of the 182 RG, raced down the airstrip, and headed west.

Teddy climbed into his new JetPROP and looked at the panel. It had the latest Garmin 1000, three-screen system; it was just beautiful.

Teddy found the operator’s and avionics manuals in the rear of the airplane, went back into the filling station, settled into the leather armchair, and turned his photographic memory to the memorization of everything. He paused once, to close the filling station, then went back to reading. As darkness arrived, he closed the manuals, locked up, and walked across the road to where Sally was waiting with his dinner and a bottle of bourbon.

“I bought me a new airplane,” he said to her as he took the first bite of her meat loaf.

Sally sighed. “Well,” she said, “I guess that means you’ll be moving on, Billy.”

He nodded silently and sipped his bourbon.

“You know,” she said, “you’ve never talked about your past, but I think it must be one hell of a past.”

“You won’t get an argument from me about that,” Teddy said.

“And I expect that’s all you’ll say about it.”

Teddy nodded.

“I sort of thought you might be on the run from somebody or something. Maybe robbed a bank.”

“We’re all on the run from something,” Teddy said. “But I’ve never robbed anybody.”

Sally put the dishes away. “Well, come on to bed, honey, and I’ll give you a real send-off.”

And she did.

Stone and Dino were having a late-afternoon drink on the terrace beside the pool when they heard the beeping of a car horn, and a moment later, Peter, Ben, and Hattie appeared, looking mildly disheveled. Hugs, kisses, and greetings were exchanged by all, and the kids took a seat.

The butler appeared. “May I get you all something to drink?”

The kids ordered beers.

“And what luggage do you wish unloaded?” the butler asked.

“Everything in the boot of the car,” Peter replied. “We’ll sort out which rooms later. Don’t even open the trailer. We’ll have to figure that out later.”

The butler disappeared and a steward materialized with the beers, which were quickly depleted and replaced.

“So,” said Stone, when they had quenched their initial thirst, “tell us about the trip.”

“It was fabulous,” Hattie said.

“It was long,” Ben interjected.

“It was very interesting,” Peter said.

His father knew from experience that Peter’s use of “very” was not hyperbole. The young man used the language precisely, not like a student. “Tell me about the interesting part,” Stone said.

Peter took another swig of the beer and burped. “We were followed,” he said.

“By what? Gangs of teenaged girls?”

“Well, of course, but more than that—by Russians.”

Stone and Dino both sat up straight.

Peter told them about the dot in the rearview mirror and their attempts to lose it. “Finally,” he said, “when we had the blowout and made it into this wide place in the road called Mesa Grande, the guy changing the tire made a discovery.” He rooted around in a pocket, came up with the device, and handed it to Stone, who handed it to Dino.

“GPS tracker,” Dino said. “That explains why you couldn’t lose them.”

“How did you find out they were Russian?” Stone asked.

“We left the car with this guy at the filling station, who had to call the Porsche dealer in Albuquerque to order a replacement tire, then we took our bags across the road to the motel and checked in. We had dinner at the diner at the motel and went to bed, and the next morning, when we were loading our luggage back in the car, the filling station guy showed me that, said he found it in the wheel well when he changed the tire.”

“Then why didn’t you see it when you put the temporary wheel on?”

“He said it was covered in mud and dust from the road. That would have made us miss it. Then he told us that two Russian guys showed up in a black Lincoln Navigator, and they had the GPS tracking equipment and an antenna on their dashboard. They were talking about us in Russian.”

“How would some pump jockey in a Podunk New Mexico town know what they were saying in Russian?” Stone asked. He was now getting concerned.

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know, but this guy was no ordinary pump jockey, he was very smart. He told me his name was Billy Burnett, asked me your name, and said he had heard of you from somewhere.”

“From where?” Stone asked.

“He didn’t say, he just seemed familiar with you.”

“Describe him.”

“Late forties, five-nine or -ten, one seventy, unlined face, nice smile, short, thick, dark hair going gray, fit-looking, wiry, sort of. He had what I guess you’d call a desert tan, though he wasn’t all leathery like people get who are exposed to that kind of sun for a long time.”

“Accent?”

“Sort of local, I guess. He sounded like the other people we talked to in New Mexico.”

“He was a local and he had a desert tan, but not for very long? And he knew me?”

“Not knew you, exactly, but knew who you were.”

“What did he say, exactly, about me?”

“I don’t remember exactly what he said, I just got the impression that he knew who you were, not necessarily that he’d met you.”

“Let’s get back to the Russians,” Dino said. “What happened to them?”

“That’s the weirdest thing,” Peter said. “Billy Burnett said he’d had a word with them, and they turned around and headed back in the direction they came from, and that we wouldn’t be bothered by them again.” Peter shrugged. “And we weren’t bothered by them again.”

“Okay, let’s summarize,” Stone said. “You’re tracked more than halfway across the country by two Russians in an SUV with pretty sophisticated equipment. They follow you to this Mesa Grande place, where they caught up with you, then this pump jockey has a word with them, and they turn around and go home. Is that it in a nutshell?”

“In a nutshell,” Peter said.

“Well, I don’t buy that,” Dino said.

“Neither do I,” Stone echoed.

“I’m not trying to sell it to you,” Peter said. “It’s just all I know.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Dino said.

“Did I say that it made sense?” Peter asked.

Stone spoke up. “I’d like to meet this guy, this . . .”

“Billy Burnett.”

“Well, maybe you’ll get to. He said he might get to L.A. and I gave him my cell number.”

“Peter,” Stone said, “if you hear from this guy, I want to know about it
immediately
.”

“Okay, Dad, but don’t get the idea that he’s some kind of threat to us. He was extremely helpful, didn’t overcharge us, helped us out with the Russians, and I’m glad I met him.”

“Nevertheless,” Stone said. He looked up to see Emma Tweed and an extremely tall, extremely beautiful young woman coming up the path from the old guesthouse. “Ah, here are our dinner guests,” he said. “Ben, you’re on deck.”

“Huh?” Ben asked.

“Look sharp, kid,” Dino said. “You’re about to meet somebody.”

“None of us looks very sharp right now,” Peter said. “May we be excused to shower and change?”

“Run before they get here,” Stone said, “and don’t be long.”

The kids fled before Emma and Tessa reached the terrace.

“Who was that?” Emma asked, as she pecked Stone on the cheek, “and why are they running?”

“That’s Peter, Ben, and Hattie, and they’ve been driving all day and requested permission to freshen up before meeting you two. This must be Tessa,” Stone said, offering a hand.

Emma made the introductions, and the two sat down and ordered drinks. “You all looked so intense as we approached,” she said. “What was that about?”

“A great mystery,” Stone replied.

Teddy, after exhausting himself with Sally, slept dreamlessly, then awoke early and began to think.

His first problem was to restore his cash liquidity, and he didn’t have a bank account to wire to from his Cayman Islands bank, where much of his tidy fortune resided. And he could hardly ask Tom Fields or Sally to receive it for him; that could get very messy.