Free Santa Fe Edge by Stuart Woods Page B

Lance Cabot’s office at the Central Intelligence Agency.
    “Todd,” Lance said, “what I have to say to you—indeed, our entire conversation—is limited to the three of us. Do you understand?”
    “Certainly,” Todd replied.
    “We have reason to suspect that Teddy Fay may not be entirely dead.”
    “I can’t say that I’m surprised,” Todd replied. “When I pumped those rounds into his airplane’s wing it occurred to me that he might be able to make an airport or a field, then disappear.”
    “He must still have the airplane,” Holly said, “because I saw it at the Vero Beach Airport the first time I saw him.”
    “Did you get the registration number?” Todd asked.
    “No,” she replied, “because I had no reason to suspect him at that time. In any case, it would have been changed by now.”
    “It’s a Cessna 182 RG, isn’t it?”
    “I can’t remember whether it had fixed or retractable gear,” she said.
    Holly told him of each encounter she had with Teddy in Orchid Beach, giving him every detail she could recall.
    “Did anybody die while he was there?” Todd asked.
    “There was a series of murders of women at the time,” Holly replied.
    “That’s not Teddy’s thing,” Todd said. “He kills only for very good reasons—or what he believes to be good reasons.”
    “I agree. There was one death with which he may very well have been involved. The victim was a retired army colonel named James Bruno, and Teddy’s girlfriend had once been a victim of rape by Bruno, so he had a very good reason to kill. He was fortunate that the death was declared a suicide.”
    “He never bothered to make a killing look like a suicide before,” Todd pointed out.
    “No, but in this case he didn’t want to run, so an apparent suicide was the best way to dead-end the investigation.”
    “Give me the best physical description you can of Teddy,” Todd said.
    “Six feet, a hundred and sixty pounds; wiry, athletic build; gray hair, probably bald or balding, but he wore a hairpiece when I saw him, and a very good one that I didn’t suspect. I don’t remember an eye color, and he had no other distinctive features. That’s why he’s so good at disguises.”
    “Am I going to have any help?”
    “No,” Lance said quickly. “Just Holly by phone. We’re going to carry you on the Agency’s rolls as active but on extended leave. You’ll have an Agency laptop and communications equipment and the usual access to our computers here in Langley. If there’s anything you can’t dig up on your own, Holly will do it for you.”
    “All right.”
    Lance handed him a slip of paper. “You can draw this in cash, and you can use your Agency credit cards.”
    “I want a light airplane,” Todd said. “That’s how Teddy travels, and I want to travel the same way.”
    “Holly will arrange that for you. No jets, however.”
    “I’m not trained for jets,” Todd said, “but I’d like something fairly fast.”
    “I can do that,” Holly said.
    Lance stood up and offered his hand. “Good luck,” he said.
    Todd shook the hand. “One thing: You didn’t tell me what you want me to do when I find Teddy.”
    Lance walked him to the door. “I didn’t hear the question,” he said, closing the door behind them.

16
    C upie Dalton and Vittorio sat in Vittorio’s SUV down the street from the Inn of the Anasazi and waited for James Long to show. It was nearly nine A.M. when Long walked out of the hotel and into his car, a silver Lincoln Town Car that the valet had brought around.
    “Well, at least he’ll be easy to follow,” Cupie said. “Let’s go, and keep well back.”
    “Cupie,” Vittorio said, “I don’t have to be told how to run a tail.”
    “Right.”
    “You keep doing that, and I’m going to have to scalp you, as unrewarding as that would be.”
    Cupie rubbed his bald head. “I like it where it is,” he said.
    Long drove directly to the soundstage where Susannah Wilde’s film was being shot,