Doing Hard Time (11 page)

Fields went to the office and dialed Billy Burnett’s number.

“Is that you, Tom?” Billy said.

“That’s right, Billy.”

“What’s up? You and the wife and Bobby okay?”

“Yeah, we’re okay. I found something pretty weird out behind the airstrip, though.”

A moment’s silence. “What did you find, Tom?”

“Well, this feller came by here looking for a couple of friends of his driving a Lincoln Navigator. He found this indentation in the ground out back, so I got the backhoe out and did some digging, and sure enough, there’s a car buried out there, upside down.”

“I see,” Billy said. “Can you describe the man for me?”

“I’d say about thirty-five, six-two, well built, sandy hair. Had an accent of some kind—I couldn’t place it, but his English was good.”

“I see.”

“You want to tell me about this, Billy?”

“Tom, to tell you the truth, I don’t think you want to know.”

“What do you think I ought to do? Should I call the sheriff or the state police?”

“Anybody in the car you found?”

“I haven’t looked.”

“Tom, you could call the police, but if you do, your life and your business are going to be disrupted for weeks, maybe months to come. My best advice is to fill up the hole, walk away, and put it out of your mind.”

“Who were those two fellers, Billy?”

“They were very bad people who followed that boy and his friends I ordered the tire for. They were going to hurt them. They tried to kill me.”

Fields thought about it for a minute. “Well,” he said, finally, “I don’t reckon they’re worth digging up, then.”

“Thank you, Tom. My best to your wife and Bobby.”

Fields hung up, went outside, and started up the backhoe.

• • •

Teddy had no sooner hung up than his phone rang again. The caller ID said
PRIVATE NUMBER
. “Hello?”

“Is this Billy Burnett?” An accented man’s voice.

“I’m sorry, you’ve got a wrong number.” He broke the connection, but the phone immediately rang again.

“Hello?”

“Billy? It’s Charmaine.”

“Hey, there. Can I call you right back?”

“Sure.” She gave him the number.

Teddy hung up, opened the cell phone, and removed the SIM card, then he broke the card in half, stomped on the phone several times, and put the pieces in the wastebasket. He got another throwaway phone from his briefcase and called Charmaine back.

“I thought I might come down to L.A. tomorrow,” she said. “Would you like that?”

“I certainly would. What time will you arrive?”

“Let’s see, I guess around six-thirty or seven.”

“Well, meet me at a restaurant called Michael’s, on Third Street, in Santa Monica. You can Google it for the exact address.”

“I’ll do that,” she said. “Can you put me up for a night or two?”

“You betcha,” Teddy said. “Oh, let me give you a new phone number, the old phone broke.”

Igor sat in the parking lot of the Gallup airport. He got out his cell phone and called the Albuquerque Flight Service Station. He was connected to a briefer by an automated system.

“Gallup Flight Service.”

Igor filed an IFR flight plan to Phoenix Sky Harbor, and when he was done, the briefer said, “Anything else I can do for you?”

“Tell me, is there any way you can look up a tail number and tell me if there was a flight plan filed, say, a week ago, for that number?”

“What’s the number?”

“November one, two, three, tango, foxtrot. A JetPROP.”

“Hang on a second.” The sound of typing could be heard. “Where from?”

“Probably a VFR takeoff and he opened his flight plan in the air.”

“I’ve got a couple of flight plans for that number: one from Las Vegas, New Mexico, to Albuquerque Golden Eagle, then another one from there to Santa Fe, then one from Santa Fe to Gallup, but he canceled in the air short of Gallup. That’s it.”

“Thanks so much,” Igor said, then hung up. He got on his laptop, went online and to a program called FlightAware. He typed in the tail number, and a message said that no aircraft with that number was currently in the air. He started at the end of the week before and worked backward, but found no trace of the airplane leaving the Mesa Grande area. Billy Burnett had not turned on his transponder: smart. He did, however, catch the airplane two days later, landing at Las Vegas International, and three days after that, departing. Burnett turned off his transponder after leaving Las Vegas airspace, though, and he could have gone anywhere, so Igor didn’t know where to look next.

Igor checked his watch: just after two
PM
. He calculated the time in Paris, then dialed a number.

“Who is this?” an annoyed man asked.

“It’s Igor, in New Mexico.”

“Ah, Igor,” Majorov said. “Did you find Ivan and Yevgeny?”

“Yes. They’re buried in the desert at Mesa Grande, inside the Navigator.”

A baffled silence. “You’re not making any sense.”

“Someone killed both of them, then put them in their car, dug a large hole with a backhoe, and pushed the car into it. Then he filled up the hole again. I had a man dig down until we found the car.”

“Holy shit. What did you do then?”

“I got the hell out of there. I expect the man called the police.”

“Do you have any idea who did this?”

“I think it was probably a man called Billy Burnett.”

“Who is he?”

“He was working at a filling station in Mesa Grande when Ivan and Yevgeny stopped there. They had followed the Barrington boy and his friends into the town, where they had stopped for the night. Something happened, some sort of disagreement, I guess, and there was a fight. Ivan and Yevgeny lost.”

“I want you to find this Billy Barnett,” Majorov said.

“Burnett.”

“Whatever. Find him.”

“And take him out?”

“Maybe not. I think I want to talk to him myself, if he took on two of my best men and killed them.”

“I warn you, he’s not going to be easy to find. He has no fixed address, and when he left Mesa Grande I traced him on the FlightAware program flying into Las Vegas, but he left three days later and I couldn’t tell where he went. He has a cell number, and I called it, but he said I had a wrong number. I called back, and the number was engaged, and when I called back again, I got a recorded message from the phone company saying that the number didn’t exist. He probably destroyed the phone.”

“Igor, I want him found. Think of something.”

“I’ve got one chance. If I keep a watch every day on the computer, I might catch him in the air again and be able to trace him.”

“I have some business in Las Vegas, and I will be there the day after tomorrow, at the usual hotel. I’ll call you when I get there.”

“Good. In the meantime, I’ll keep watch for the tail number.” Igor hung up, turned in his rental car, and flew back to Phoenix.

The following morning he went to his office, set his laptop on the conference table, turned it on, and logged onto FlightAware. N123TF was not in the air. He called in an assistant and sat him down at the computer. “I want you to sit here for as long as you can and watch for this tail number.” He wrote it down. “When you get tired or hungry or have to go to the toilet, get someone to replace you, all day, every day. We’re going to watch the skies for that airplane. Got it?”

The man sat down, nodded, and stared at the screen.

Teddy sat at the bar, nursing a drink for nearly an hour before Charmaine showed up. She came in looking very un-Vegas, in a pretty cotton dress, her hair in a ponytail.

“Hey, there,” he said, getting down from his stool and hugging her. “Let’s get our table.” He left some money on the bar for his drink and signaled to the headwaiter that they were ready to sit down. A moment later they were at a good table in the garden, taking in the night air.

“I didn’t think I’d get down to L.A. this soon,” she said. “But fortunately, something came up that gave me an excuse.”

Teddy waited for the waiter to set down her martini and some menus before he spoke again. “Let me guess what came up,” he said.

“I don’t think you can guess.”

“My guess is Pete Genaro suggested you come see me.”

She blushed a little and stared into her drink. “Why would you think that?”

“Pete was having a little trouble categorizing me when I checked out, and my guess is, he wants to know more.”

She took a sip of her martini. “Pete said you were one hell of a poker player.”

“Maybe so, but rusty. I hadn’t played in years. That’s why I lost the first night.”

“Pete said he thought you could have won a lot more, if you’d put your mind to it. I think you were down the first night because you wanted to be.”

“You’re a smart girl,” Teddy said. “Tell you what, before you go back to Vegas, we’ll work up a little story about me for you to tell Pete.”

“I wouldn’t like to lie to Pete,” she said. “That could have repercussions.”

“You won’t be lying, you’ll be telling him what I said when you asked me some questions.”

“Well, maybe in that case . . .”

“All right, let’s get that out of the way, so we can concentrate on each other. Ask me some questions.”

“Is Billy Burnett your real name?”

“Burnett was my birth name, but I used my stepfather’s name all the way through school and in the army. After that, after my stepfather died, I changed it back to the original. And Pete has already seen proof that I exist when he ran me through his computer.”

“How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?”

She cocked her head and looked closely at him. “Forty-eight,” she said.

Teddy laughed. “That’s a very good guess.” Teddy was in his early sixties, but during his ten months in Asheville he had had some work done: he cured his baldness with hair transplants; he had dental veneers attached to his teeth; and he had his face and neck lifted and implants inserted that firmed up his jawline and changed the character of his face. No one who had seen him a year ago would ever recognize him.

“You look very fit,” she said. “Do you go to a gym?”

“No, but I exercise every day using an old book called the
Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Plans
. I’ve worked my way slowly up to the upper levels, where it’s very strenuous, but it doesn’t require any weights or other equipment. I run a couple of miles once or twice a week, too—less than I used to. It’s not good for the knees.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“At military bases all over the world. I was born on one. My father was a colonel in the army, and a couple of years after he died, when I was three, my mother was remarried to one of his friends, also an army man.”

“Did you go to college?”

“I graduated from the United States Military Academy, which I attended because all I knew was army, and because I was entitled to admission, because my father had won the Medal of Honor in World War Two.” Teddy had chosen his alias after reading an account of the events leading to his chosen father’s medal. If Pete Genaro looked there, he would learn only what Teddy wanted him to know.