by Stuart Woods
“I don’t have any insurance.”
“Get some liability, at least twenty million. It’s fairly cheap. When complainants spot somebody wealthy, you become a target, no matter how right you are. I can arrange the insurance, if you like.”
“Please.”
“On the New York apartment and the Palm Beach house, as well?”
“Yes.”
“But don’t buy a gun,” Stone said emphatically.
“If that’s your best advice.”
“It is.”
—
THEY WERE CALLED to dinner, and Stone was seated between Susannah and Theresa, so he and Laurence didn’t pursue their conversation.
“Laurence, I see we both have had the attention of People magazine this week,” Susannah said.
“Of course, you’re Susannah Wilde. Your new picture looks interesting.”
“The difference between us is that I pursued the publicity, but you didn’t.”
“Tell me, does the reach of these magazines and tabloids extend to a place as remote as Santa Fe?”
“It doesn’t matter where you are,” Susannah replied. “Everybody with a cell phone camera is a stringer.”
“What’s a stringer?”
“A part-time reporter.”
“Ah.”
“I should think you’d be acquainted with that sort of journalism, coming from a place where tabloids have such a huge circulation.”
“Certainly that’s true of England, but somehow I’ve never come to their attention until now. Any advice?”
“Be courteously rude to them when they approach, and tell them nothing. People in my business have to be polite to them, because the public do read those papers—they’re available at every supermarket checkout. But you’re a private citizen, and if you communicate it to them that you expect to be treated as such, they’ll eventually get the idea. Above all, don’t smash any cameras or throw any punches. They love that sort of thing, and you’ll end up in court, as so many celebrities have.”
“And make no mistake about it,” Ed said, “you are now, officially, a celebrity.”
“That’s an alarming idea. I had thought Santa Fe would be out of that particular loop.”
“Alaska might be out of that loop, but hardly anywhere else in the United States or Europe,” Ed replied. “Just ignore them and be uncommunicative, as best you can.”
“Thank you, I’m grateful for the advice.” He turned to Theresa. “See what you’ve gotten yourself into?”
“I’m not complaining,” she said.
“Did you have any problems in Los Angeles?” Stone asked.
“We were spotted getting out of an Arrington Bentley at Spago, but we escaped out the back way after lunch. Our driver and the hotel staff seemed to handle it all very well, and we didn’t have any problems on departure. Mind you, we left the hotel before dawn and took off very early. And we didn’t have any problems in Napa.”
“Perhaps they haven’t figured out yet that you have an airplane, so they didn’t cover Santa Monica or Burbank.”
“I hope they never figure it out,” Laurence said.
24
A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER Laurence got a call. “Hello?”
“Mr. Hayward, this is Chris, from Strategic Services.”
“Good morning, Chris.”
“I wanted you to know that we’ve completed your installation, and when you return, I’d be happy to come back and take you through it.”
“That may be a while.”
“In that case, let me e-mail you a short video that you can watch on your cell phone, then I’ll call you back and walk you through installing the app to operate it.”
“All right.”
“Just hang up, and when you get it, tap on the arrow.”
Laurence did so, and a moment later he was watching a tour of his apartment, featuring close-ups of nearly invisible cameras and a voiceover by Chris, showing how to operate the system. He hung up and waited, and Chris called back.
“I hope that gave you an idea of the system’s capabilities.”
“It certainly did.”
“If you’ll give me a four-digit code, I’ll program the system to allow you to operate it.”
Laurence gave him a code.
“Now let me walk you through downloading the app to your iPhone.”
Five minutes later, Laurence was in full control of the system. He switched from one room to another, zoomed in and out, and watched Marge at her desk. Theresa looked over his shoulder.
“That’s amazing,” she said.
He called Chris back. “It worked beautifully,” he said. “Now, I have two other houses, one in Palm Beach and one in Santa Fe. Can you install the same system in both?”
“We certainly can,” Chris replied. He wrote down the addresses.
“We’re in Santa Fe now, so you might do that one first.”
“We’ll be there the day after tomorrow,” Chris said.
Laurence hung up. “There, I feel better now.”
—
EXCEPT HE DIDN’T feel all that much better. That afternoon, he drove into Santa Fe to a gun shop he had passed before. After a few minutes of looking, he chose a small 9mm pistol and filled out the form for a background check. While he waited for a response, the salesman took him to the shop’s indoor firing range and taught him the basics of using the weapon.
“Any other advice?” Laurence asked.
“Yes. Don’t shoot anybody. Even if you’re right, and if you remain safe, you’ll be in for a lot of bother, and it’s not worth it. That’s unless the other guy shoots you first, then you don’t have a choice.”
Half an hour later, Laurence left with his gun in a hip holster and a box of cartridges, an extra magazine, and a cleaning kit in a bag.
Once home, he put the pistol and cartridges in the back of a bedside drawer, where Theresa would be unlikely to see it.
—
ALMOST SIMULTANEOUSLY, an editor at a tabloid, the National Inquisitor, took a phone call in his Miami, Florida, office. “This is Pat Bolton,” he said.
“Hi, this is Chip, in Santa Fe. Do you remember me?”
“Yeah, Chip, you helped us out on that junkie actress last year.”
“That’s me. I’ve got something else for you.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You know the guy who won the Powerball a few weeks back?”
“L. B. Hayward? Right. We haven’t been able to pin him down.”
“I got him in Santa Fe.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Bolton was skeptical. “Tell me exactly how you tracked him down.”
“My mother is friends with a lady who sells real estate, Diana Zill. She came over the other night for a drink, all excited. She had just sold this big spec house out on the north side of town.”
“And you think Hayward bought it?”
“Well, it’s like this—the guy wrote a check on the spot for the full amount and moved in the same day, so he had no shortage of ready cash.”
“And that was Hayward?”
“Diana showed my mom the contract, and I got a look at it. The name of the buyer was Theresa Crane.”
“Not Hayward?”
“Haven’t you seen the spread in People?”
“Not yet, I guess.”
“Hayward’s got a girlfriend.”
“Ahhh,” Bolton said, “now that’s good work, Chip. Did you get any photographs?”
“Not yet. I was out there, but I got rousted by a guy with a flashlight, so I guess he must have some security around the place.”
“Well, I’m going to need at least one good photograph, Chip. You got the balls to get that for me? There’s a grand in it for you
, if you do.”
“Oh, I got the balls, and a camera with a long lens, too.”
“That’s the boy! E-mail it to me.” He gave him the address. “How soon can you get it for me?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Go get him, Chip!” Bolton hung up. “Sheri, bring me the new People.” She did and he flipped through the magazine and found the article. He read it twice, and there was no mention of a Theresa Crane. “Shit!!!” he screamed.
“What’s the matter, Pat?” Sheri asked.
“I’m on the hook for a grand, and the girl’s name isn’t in the piece.”
“What name?”
“Theresa Crane.”
“Who’s that?”
“You know the Powerball guy we can’t find?”
“Hayward?”
“Yeah, Hayward. This Crane is supposed to be his girlfriend, but she’s not in the People piece.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean she’s not his girlfriend, does it?”
“I guess not.”
“And if I know you, you’re not on the hook for a grand, unless she is.”
“Right. And until I get a photograph of Hayward, too.”
“So relax, either you get it or you don’t.”
“‘I don’t’ is not an option. We’re short of really good stuff this week, and Hayward is really good stuff. If he’s in Santa Fe, that would be a solid gold scoop for us. This guy won over six hundred million bucks!”
“Wow,” Sheri said. “That’s big cabbage!”
“No, it’s big bucks. That’s what our readers go nuts over.”
25
CHRIS, FROM STRATEGIC SERVICES, had already been through the house with Laurence and had pointed out where his cameras should go. Now he was looking at a plat of the twelve acres the house sat on. “We’ve got something new that will be particularly good outside,” he said.
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s basically a motion-detector camera, but it has an important new feature. If it sees motion, it rotates or pans up and down to zero in on the intruder, then it fires a very powerful strobe light for a fraction of a second. It’s like ten old-fashioned flashbulbs going off all at once and concentrated on one spot. It does two things very well—it blinds the intruder, temporarily, and it scares the shit out of him.”
“I like it,” Laurence said. “Install it.”
“I’ll order it, then work on the interior stuff today. The new stuff will be here tomorrow.”
“Great, Chris, I’ll leave you to it. Let me know if you need anything.”
Laurence went into his new study and busied himself learning to operate the house’s built-in sound system from his iPhone. That done, he chose a classical music station from New York and turned on all the speakers in the house.
Theresa came into the study. “Can you turn that down a bit, please?” she shouted.
Laurence obliged. “Sorry about that. I was learning the system.”
“The books you ordered from the Strand bookstore in New York have arrived. Shall I have them bring the boxes in here?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Two men with handcarts wheeled in fifty or so boxes and followed Theresa’s instructions to set them on the floor near the bookcases. Laurence tipped them. “Shall we put them away?” he asked.
“Sure. How would you like to do it?”
“You tell me what the books are, and I’ll put them where they should go.”
She opened the first carton. “Winston Churchill, history of the Second World War.” She began handing him the books, two at a time, and he put them on a shelf.
“Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”
They repeated the process and continued until he had a well-organized library of more than five hundred volumes in the bookcases, with plenty of room left for new books.
Laurence surveyed their work and mopped his brow. “I think we deserve a drink.”
“Just as soon as we break down all these cardboard boxes and put them out for the trash collector.”
—
THEY SAT ON the deck facing the Jemez Mountains and let the late-afternoon breeze wash over them. Then Chris came out.
“I’m pretty much finished with the indoor fixtures,” he said, “and they’re up and running. Would you like me to set up your iPhones to run the system?”
“Sure, Chris. Would you like a drink?”
“A beer would be nice,” he said, accepting Laurence’s phone and starting to work. Theresa brought him a cold beer, and he set up her phone and showed her how to run the system. One of the cameras captured them on the deck and the setting sun.
“Wow!” Theresa said. “We’re on live TV.”
“Zoom in,” Chris said.
“Wow again!”
“My guys have done the trenching and laid cable for the outdoor fixtures,” he said. “All we’ll have to do is connect them and set them up. We’ll be on our way to Palm Beach by mid-afternoon.”
“How do the plane connections work for that flight?”
“No problem there. We have a Citation that will take us there, nonstop, with a decent tailwind. Equipment has already been shipped there, and we’ll be at work the following morning.”
“My turn to say wow,” Laurence said. “That’s very good service.”
“That’s what you get from Strategic Services,” Chris said. “Oh, and Viv Bacchetti sends her regards. She’s our boss.”
“Please give Viv our best,” Laurence said.
Chis polished off his beer and said good night, leaving them to the sunset.
“Nice guy,” Theresa said.
“Everybody Stone Barrington has introduced me to has been a nice guy,” Laurence said, “starting with you.”
“I talked to my boss today and made my resignation official. I’ll use up my accrued vacation time, then I’m off their books. He was sweet enough to let me keep my employee discount.”
“Do they have a ready replacement for you?”
“I recommended Butch. He needs a couple more weeks of training, but I think he’ll be good at it.”
“Good for him.”
“I also rented Butch my apartment, with an option to buy it eventually. He’ll box up my things and send them to the Fairleigh.”
Laurence grinned and squeezed her hand. “A step in the right direction. By the way, the Eagles have invited us to dinner tomorrow evening, and I accepted.”
“Oh, good, I like them. Would you play something for me on the piano?”
“Of course. What would you like to hear?”
“Some Gershwin?”
“Coming right up.” He played Gershwin while she got dinner together, then they sat down together.
“I have an idea,” she said.
“Shoot.”
“Why don’t you record a whole lot of things on the piano, then we can listen together at dinner?”
“I like it. There must be a recording studio in town, I’ll see if I can find it.”
—
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Chris turned up with the newly arrived outside cameras with their flash warning. While his people were setting them up, he marked the plat of the property with their locations. “I’ve set this up in a way that you won’t blind passing motorists on the road, and, also, I’ve made sure they aren’t pointed at any of your neighbors’ houses. I’m sure you wouldn’t want complaints from them.”
“Good thinking,” Laurence said.
“By the way,” Chris said, “these things will detect coyotes, too. I understand you have them around here.”
“I haven’t seen any, but I’ve heard them at night.”
“You don’t have any pets, do you?”
“No—not yet, anyway.”
“If you get a dog or a c
at, it would be a good idea to keep them indoors at night. Remember, coyotes are carnivores.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Chris finished up his work and added the outdoor cameras to the iPhone app. “That’s it,” he said.
Laurence handed him a key. “This is for the Palm Beach house. There’s no security system to get past.”
“I’ll call you from there if I have any questions,” Chris said, then departed.
“I wish I had done the Palm Beach house weeks ago,” Laurence said to Theresa. “Then the tabloids wouldn’t have found us so easily.”
26
CHIP ARNOLD PARKED his car a couple of hundred yards up the road from the house, then he slung his camera around his neck and started down the hill. The sun was already behind the mountains, leaving a red sky, slowly darkening, and as he left the road it seemed to get dark all at once. He used a penlight to find his way through the piñon trees; he wanted to be about a hundred feet from the house. The 300mm lens would do the rest.
He had no more than a few paces to go when everything turned white for a moment, followed quickly by black, stopping him in his tracks. He blinked rapidly, trying to regain his normal vision, but all he could see was a red dot. He sat down on the ground and waited for his sight to return.
—
LAURENCE WAS UNDRESSING for bed when, simultaneously, a flash momentarily filled the bedroom window and his iPhone chimed. It took him a moment to realize what had happened. He slipped back into his loafers, opened the bedside drawer and extracted the new pistol, then ran for the door. He could hear Theresa, still in the shower.
He came out of the house at a dead run, heading into the piñons, then he was overcome by darkness and stopped, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed. Fortunately, there was enough backlighting from the house to make it possible to move through the trees. He worked the action of the pistol, pumping a round into the chamber, and thumbed up the safety to the on position.
