by Stuart Woods
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication.
Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
This book is for Bonnie Piceu and Paul Dietz.
1
Ed Eagle sat at his breakfast table and watched his new wife, Susannah Wilde, cook his breakfast. He was a lucky man, he thought.
She set down two plates of huevos rancheros and joined him.
“What are you doing today?” he asked. He was concerned that she might become bored, and he didn’t want that.
“I’m having lunch with a producer I worked with a few years back, Dan Karman. You remember that novel I bought a few weeks ago?”
“Yes, sure.”
“Danny’s written a screenplay based on it, and we’re going to talk about shooting it in Santa Fe.” Susannah was a well-known actress.
“Sounds great,” Eagle replied, and he meant it. He didn’t want her spending a lot of time in L.A., shooting a movie.
“What are you up to?” Susannah asked.
“The usual. I’m having a first meeting with a man who’s been charged with murdering his wife. It happened early this morning.”
“You meet such nice people in your work,” she said.
“Oh, this one’s quite a nice fellow, I’m told, and he might even be innocent.”
“I thought all your clients were innocent.”
“He’s not my client yet,” Eagle replied. “If he’s not innocent now, he will be by the end of the day.”
Susannah laughed. “That’s my Ed,” she said, pouring him a second cup of coffee. “Do you remember a film producer named James Long?”
Eagle put down his coffee. “I certainly do,” he replied. “He’s the guy who furnished Barbara’s alibi in her trial for murdering those people at the Hotel Bel-Air, when she thought she was murdering me.”
“Long has his own production company, backed by inherited wealth, and Danny thinks he might be a good choice to get this film made. How would you feel about that?”
Eagle shrugged. “I don’t have anything against the guy,” he said. “I suppose he’s as much Barbara’s victim as I. She drugged him, left the house, shot those two people, then returned before he woke up. He thought she was in bed with him the whole time, and testified to that.”
“Long might be the best way to go,” she said. “He puts up a big chunk of the production money, then raises the rest from private investors, so he doesn’t have to take any crap from a studio.”
“Sounds good, but how does he distribute?”
“He has a good track record for making successful films on moderate budgets, so the distributors look on him favorably. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I liked the novel,” Eagle said. “I hope you get a good screenplay.”
“You can read it tonight,” she said, clearing the table.
AN HOUR LATER Eagle sat in the attorneys’ visiting room at the Santa Fe Municipal Jail, waiting for his prospective client. He read through a single-page report put together by an associate in his firm.
Terrence Hanks, known as Tip, is a twenty-nine-year-old golf professional, born in Delano, Georgia, a small town, and educated in the public schools and on a golf scholarship at Florida State University. He got his PGA Tour card six years ago and moved to Santa Fe two and a half years ago, building a house out at Las Campanas.
Ten months ago he married Constance Clay Winston, the ex-wife of another golf pro, Tim Winston. She and Hanks were having an affair while she was still married to Winston.
Yesterday, Hanks returned home after uncharacteristically missing the cut at a tournament in Dallas. His story is that he found his wife in their bed, dead of a gunshot wound to the head. He called 911.
The police found a handgun near the bed that had Hanks’s fingerprints on it and charged him with murder. He was referred to you by his personal attorney, Earl Potter, who, as you know, doesn’t do criminal work.
Hanks is a relatively successful tour player, earning an average of a little over a million and a half dollars a year since getting his card, so he can afford representation.
Precious little information, Eagle thought, but it was a start. He looked up to see a young man being escorted into the room, and he waited while he was unshackled. He was maybe six-one, a hundred and seventy, tanned and freckled, with a mop of sun-bleached hair that reminded Eagle of a younger Jack Nicklaus.
Hanks stuck out his hand. “I’m Tip Hanks, Mr. Eagle,” he said, and his handshake was cool, dry and firm.
Eagle shook the hand. “Call me Ed,” he said, “and have a seat.”
“Earl Potter speaks highly of you,” Hanks said.
“Earl’s a good lawyer and a good fellow,” Eagle replied. “Tell me how you ended up in here, and please remember, everything you say to me is privileged—that is, I can’t disclose what you say to anyone, and no court can force me to do so, unless I believe you intend to commit a crime, in which case I’m bound to report that to the court.”
“Earl has already explained that to me,” Hanks replied. “I’d like you to represent me, if you’re available.”
“Did Earl also explain that if you admit guilt to me, I can’t put you on the stand to testify that you’re innocent?”
“He did, and I understand that, too. For the record, I’m not going to admit guilt, because I’m completely innocent of killing my wife. Will you represent me?”
“Tell me what happened this morning, and then we’ll talk about representation.”
“I played in a charity tournament in Dallas, starting with the pro-am on Wednesday. I played badly, and I missed the cut. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, I’m a golfer.”
“I had planned to fly home yesterday, but I had a couple of drinks with two other guys who also missed the cut, and that turned into an early dinner. We finished about seven, and I went to my room, called my wife and told her I’d be home around noon today. Then I got into bed and turned on the TV. I woke up about three A.M. with the TV on, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Finally, around four A.M. I got up, got dressed and went to the airport.”
“Which airport?”
“Love Field.”
“Which FBO?”
“Vitesse.”
“I don’t know it,” Eagle said. “I usually fly into Signature.”
“You’ll save money on fuel by going to Vitesse.”
“What do you fly?”
“A Piper Meridian.”
This was a single-engine turboprop, similar to the JetProp Eagle had once owned. “What time did you take off?”
“About five twenty. I was lucky with the winds, and I landed in Santa Fe at eight fifteen. My car was there, and I got home about eight forty.”
“Did you notice anything unusual when you arrived?”
“No, everything was normal, except my wife had been shot in the bed. She still had a pulse, but she had taken a bullet to the right temple, and it seemed obvious that she wasn’t going to live long. I called nine-one-one, and it took the ambulance about eight minutes to get there. Sometime during that eight minutes, she died.”
“Was there anything unusual about the bedroom?”
“It was pretty neat, and my wife’s clothes were on a chair.”
“Was that where she usually left them when you went to bed?”
“No, she has a dressing room, and she undresses in there, unless … we’re in a hurry.”
“I understand.”
“Something else: She was on my side of the bed. I always sleep on the left side, and she sleeps on the right, even when I’m away.”
“Had both sides been slept on?” Eagle asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you think she started sleeping on her usual side, then shifted to your side?”
“I’ve never known her to do that,” Hanks replied.
“Did you see the gun?”
“Yes, it was on the floor beside the bed, and the bedside-table drawer was not quite closed. That’s where I keep the gun.”
“Did your wife know it was there?”
“Yes, and she knew how to use it.”
“What sort of gun was it?”
“It was a Colt Government .380.”
“Loaded?”
“I kept it in the drawer with the magazine in and a round in the chamber, cocked, but with the safety on.”
“Were you expecting trouble?”
“I had a burglary right after the house was finished,” Hanks replied. “I suspected it was somebody who worked on the house.”
“Tell me about that.”
“It was a Saturday afternoon. I went out to the Santa Fe flea market, gone about two hours, and when I came back I went into my dressing room and found a jewelry box turned upside down. I was missing a Rolex watch, a couple pairs of cuff links and my old wedding ring. I was divorced at the time.”
“How did they get in?”
“I believe by the bedroom door opening to the outside. I had put the alarm on but hadn’t locked the house. The transom window over the door was open, and it turns out that deactivates that part of the alarm, something I didn’t know before. I think the guy came in through that door, went straight to the dressing room, emptied the jewelry box and got out in a hurry. There’s a dirt road that cuts across my property behind the house, and he could have driven in there without being seen.”
“Any luck on recovering any of the stolen items?”
“None at all. And I believe the man who shot my wife came in and left the same way. If he’d left by the front door I would likely have passed him on the way to the house. As I walked into the bedroom I heard a car drive away behind the house, and when I looked out I saw some dust raised, but the car wasn’t in sight.”
“Do you know why the police arrested you?”
“They said because my fingerprints were on the gun. But it was my gun, so you’d expect that.”
“I’ll represent you, Tip,” Eagle said, “and I think I can probably get you bail. How much equity do you have in your house?”
“It’s paid for. Am I going to be able to continue playing golf? I have to make a living.”
“I’ll try, but maybe not. But you’ll be able to practice. I’ll need a retainer of fifty thousand dollars against my hourly rate and expenses.”
“I can raise that and reasonable bail,” Hanks said. “How much do you think that will be?”
“Maybe a couple of hundred thousand.” Eagle looked at his watch. “You’ll probably be arraigned within the hour. I’ll see you in the courtroom.”
The two men shook hands, and Eagle left. This one didn’t look so tough, he thought.
2
Barbara Eagle Keeler was taken by a female guard from her cell in the El Diablo Prison for Women, east of Acapulco, Mexico, handcuffed and delivered to the office of Pedro Alvarez, the warden of the facility. It was not her first trip there.
She had been imprisoned now for nine weeks after a trial of one hour and ten minutes and a jury deliberation of half that, and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison for each of three attempted murders, the sentences to run concurrently. One of the attempted murders had consisted of Barbara’s severing with a straight razor the penis of a young man who turned out to be the nephew of a captain of police in Acapulco. This had proven an unfortunate choice of both victim and technique, and had ensured her conviction by an all-male jury, who, upon hearing the young man’s testimony, had, as one man, crossed their legs.
Before leaving the Acapulco jail for El Diablo, Barbara had been raped repeatedly by the captain and a couple of his subordinates, as the nephew had watched, but the young man had not been allowed to cut up her face, as he had wished to do.
“It is more difficult in prison for a beautiful woman than an ugly one,” the captain had explained. “You will be avenged often.”
The captain had spoken without taking into account the animal cunning that reposed in this particular woman. Barbara had survived an awful second marriage to the murderer of her first husband. She had been convicted as an accessory, though she had not known of the man’s intentions, and had served a sentence in a New York State prison, where she had been schooled in female-on-male violence and other criminal activity by other inmates and where she had been interviewed by the Santa Fe attorney, Ed Eagle, on the subject of her criminal sister, who had been married to a Hollywood film producer with a Santa Fe home.
Upon her early release, due to a court order after a lawsuit concerning prison overcrowding, Barbara had made her way to Santa Fe, where she had looked up Ed Eagle and, in fairly short order, enticed him into marriage.
A few months later, she had made off with a large sum of his money, and, after an extensive search by two clever private detectives, she had been lured aboard a yacht in La Jolla, California, and transported to a spot in Mexican waters a few miles off Tijuana, where, by previous arrangement, the police had boarded the yacht and arrested her for the three attempted murders, two of which victimized the private detectives.
Upon transfer to El Diablo, she had established herself among her fellow prisoners as someone who would not be fucked with, as she would have put it, without violence being perpetrated upon her assailant. At the same time she had preserved her appearance and her physical fitness, and she had made it her business to be noticed by the warden, Capitán Alvarez.
Alvarez lived with his very plain wife in an apartment adjacent to his office, and Barbara had learned that the wife sometimes traveled to Acapulco to visit her mother. Twice Barbara had been ordered to Alvarez’s office, where he had raped her.
Barbara had accepted this stoically, even letting the man believe she enjoyed it, because she knew that if she fought him, he would kill her—or have it done by the guards. Now his wife was in Acapulco again, Barbara had learned through the prison grapevine, and she was back in Alvarez’s office.
The capitán was, perhaps, six-two and three hundred pounds.
“Get naked,” he had said to her, forgetting to say “please.”
He had removed her handcuffs, then closed and locked his office door. He poured himself what was, apparently, not his first shot of tequila of the morning and sipped it while he watched her undress.
Barbara had done so without hesitation, and had even managed to be alluring during the process. Alvarez had dropped his pants, sat down on his office sofa, taken her by the hair and pulled her to her knees, where she did what was expected of her. Such was her skill that it did not take long for him to reach a successful conclusion. He sagged sideways onto the sofa and, after a few minutes of her caresses, fell asleep, snoring loudly and breathing tequila into the close atmosphere of the small room.
Barbara did not waste time putting on her clothes. She went to the interior door she believed led to his quarters, opened it as quietly as possible and entered the apartment.
It consisted of a living room with a dining area, a bedroom and a bath. There were bars on the windows of the living room and bedroom, but an exploration of the bathroom revealed a small window over the toilet that had not been fitted with bars. She stood on the toilet seat and unlatched the window, which swung outward. She found herself looking a dozen feet down into an alley, which ran off a larger street to her left that a sign revealed to be Camino Cerritos. Directly across the street from the alley was an establishment named, on a large sign, Cantina Rosita.
Barbara closed the window, then inspected the bedroom. Inside a closet she found a wardrobe of dresses perhaps two sizes larger than her own, and shoes slightly smaller than her feet.
She looked through a chest of drawers and a bedside table, hoping to steal money but finding nothing except some a
wful costume jewelry. There was something else she was very glad to see: a telephone on the bedside table. She closed the bedroom door and found the phone book. Her Spanish was poor, but she managed to divine how to call the United States, so she dialed a number she knew very well, belonging to her dear friend, the film producer James Long.
“Hello?” a sleepy male voice said.
“Jimmy, it’s Barbara,” she said softly.
“Good God! I read in the paper you were in a Mexican jail!”
“I am—in a prison called El Diablo, in a little town east of Acapulco, called Tres Cruces. Write all this down.”
“Okay, I’ve got a pen.”
“Listen to me carefully,” she said. “Do you still have the same cell phone number?”
“Yes.”
“I have some clothes and some identity documents in a suitcase in the apartment over your garage, remember?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ve found a way out of here. Can you come to Acapulco?”
“Yes.”
“Charter a small airplane. I’ll pay for it. Ask the pilot to wait, for two or three days, if necessary.”
“All right, when?”
“Now, today. Book a room at the Acapulco Princess, and check in. I’ll call you on your cell when I’m ready. Tomorrow, rent a car from the hotel, drive to Tres Cruces and find Camino Cerritos and a bar called Cantina Rosita. Park near there. There’s an alley across the street. I’ll call you on your cell, then drive into the alley, and you’ll see a small window about ten or twelve feet above the pavement, on your right. Park under the window. Got it?”
He repeated the instructions.
“Buy me some hair dye, auburn, in the hotel shop, and some good scissors.”
“Okay.”
“I love you, baby,” she said. “I’ll call as soon as I can.” She hung up and returned to the office, where Alvarez still snored away, and began searching the room for useful items. There was a cabinet containing guns, but it was securely locked and grilled with ironwork. There was also a substantial safe with an electronic keypad lock.
She went to the desk and methodically searched the drawers, but the only thing of use to her was half a dozen of what appeared to be handcuff keys. She took one and put it into her mouth, under her tongue, then she looked at the sides and bottoms of the drawers, finally finding what she was looking for, taped to the bottom of a pull-out typewriter shelf. It was a piece of paper with a six-digit number written on it, and she did not doubt that it would open the safe. She also did not doubt that if she used the code now, it would cause electronic beeping that would waken the warden. She memorized the number.
