Doing Hard Time Read online

  Todd drove the short distance to Shutters and, on Teddy’s instructions, pulled into the garage.

  “I should warn you,” Todd said as he parked, “Mr. Majorov doesn’t like having his invitations declined, and he doesn’t like his messengers shot.”

  “You needn’t worry about that,” Teddy said. “We’re going to call Mr. Majorov after you’ve checked into your room, and I’ll speak to him. Get your luggage from the trunk.”

  Todd pressed the trunk release, and the two men got out of the car. They walked to the rear, and when Todd leaned over to retrieve his bag, Teddy shot him in the head. He quickly folded the body into the trunk and closed it with his elbow, then he put away the pistol and walked the short distance back to Michael’s.

  Charmaine was sipping a margarita at the bar, and he sat down beside her and ordered her another and one for himself.

  “I think he meant to kill us both,” Charmaine said.

  “So do I,” Teddy replied.

  “He’s not going to get a chance to do that, is he?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “How am I going to explain this to Pete Genaro and Majorov?”

  “I’m going to make a proposal,” Teddy said, “and if you accept, you’ll never have to worry about either of them again.”

  “I’m all ears,” she said.

  “First, let me ask you some questions: Do you have any family?”

  “My mother died last year, and she was my closest remaining relative. I have a couple of cousins, but I haven’t been in touch with them for years.”

  “Is there anything in your Las Vegas apartment that you can’t do without?”

  She thought about that for a moment. “Nothing that can’t be replaced on a shopping spree.”

  “Do you want to go on working at the casino and hotel?”

  “No, it’s getting too scary there. I mean, they sent that guy to kill me, as well as you.”

  “Then come and live with me, and let me take care of you. I’ll give you a new, foolproof identity, and Genaro and Majorov will never be able to find you. I’ll give you a wonderful life.”

  She took his face in her hands and kissed him. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Oh, where is your car?”

  “In the employees’ parking lot at the hotel. It’s leased. I can have the leasing company pick it up.”

  “Tomorrow I want you to write to the leasing company, then write a letter to Pete Genaro, resigning your job and asking him to wire any money owed to you to your bank account in Vegas. We’ll transfer any funds you have there to an offshore account I have, then I’ll give you the cash. We’ll find a moving company on the Internet, and you can have them pack your belongings and deliver them to a charity. You’ll write to the phone, electric, and gas companies and to the credit card companies, closing your accounts. When all that is done, you will, effectively, have disappeared.”

  “As long as I’m with you,” she said.

  Ten days passed. Stone and Dino flew back to New York with Mike Freeman. Stone managed to convince Emma Tweed to come with them for a visit.

  Peter began shooting his new feature, starting with Tessa’s scenes, so that she could finish shooting in under a month. Ben was grateful for Emma’s absence; Tessa moved into the house at The Arrington.

  Five days after it had been left there, the body of Todd German was found in the trunk of his rented Camaro in the parking garage at Shutters, and the two detectives at the West Los Angeles police station had a new murder to solve. They were now getting crazy.

  • • •

  Pete Genaro looked up from his desk to find Yuri Majorov filling his doorway.

  “I have had a call from my Phoenix office telling me that the body of Todd German has been found in exactly the same circumstances as the body of Igor Smolensky and in the same place,” he said. “Where is your Charmaine? Did Burnett contact her?”

  Genaro handed him a sheet of stationery. “I received this from Charmaine today,” he said. “I sent someone to her apartment. It was empty, and the lease had been paid up.”

  “I expect you have a skip tracer employed here,” Majorov said.

  “Do you want to find Charmaine that badly?”

  “Where Charmaine is will be Billy Burnett.”

  “Mr. Majorov, if that’s what you want, then I’ll do it. But you should consider that the bodies are stacking up. Do you want that to continue?”

  “What I want is for you to assign a skip tracer to find these people. When he has done that, you will report their location to me, and I will take care of the rest.”

  “As you wish,” Genaro said.

  • • •

  Teddy continued working part-time at the Centurion armory, overhauling weapons and interviewing applicants for his job.

  Charmaine followed Teddy’s instructions, shutting down her old life, and she visited an upscale hairdresser in Beverly Hills, who cut her hair shorter and colored it to its natural shade of chestnut brown. She bought new clothes and jewelry, replacing the things she had left behind, paying with cash that Billy had given her.

  One late afternoon, when all that had been accomplished, Billy sat her down with a drink. “You’re going to have a new name,” he said. “What would you like it to be?”

  She thought about that. “When I was a child,” she said, “I hated my name. I always wanted to be Elizabeth and to be called Betsy.”

  “Then that is who you will be,” he said. “Would you like to be Mrs. Barnett?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then that will be done, too. It will all be accomplished by tomorrow evening, then we will go out and celebrate.”

  Teddy didn’t go in to work the following day. He spent the time creating a new identity for Elizabeth Barnett—passport, driver’s license, credit report, work history, and Social Security number, and he had a credit card issued from his Cayman Islands bank and mailed to him in Los Angeles. He also created a birth certificate and a marriage certificate and filed them both in the relevant city and state computers.

  Betsy came home to find her new identity arrayed on the dining room table. “You did all this?” she asked.

  “I did, and it’s all indistinguishable from the genuine article. You exist under your new name on more than a dozen computer systems around the country. You can travel anywhere in the world with these documents. I also removed your application for a casino worker’s card from the Nevada state computers, and your employment record from the computer at the hotel. Were you ever fingerprinted for any reason other than the casino application?”

  “Yes, for my carry license.”

  “I’ll delete that record tomorrow and make up a California license for you.”

  “You, sir, are a marvel,” she said to him.

  “Get changed into your new clothes,” he said. “I’ve booked a table at Spago Beverly Hills.”

  • • •

  While Betsy Barnett was applying her makeup, something occurred to her. If her ex-husband, Jimmy Sayer, tried to get in touch with her and failed, he would start looking for her, and she knew him to be tenacious. After a moment’s consideration, she called him.

  “Hello?”

  “Jimmy, it’s Charmaine.”

  “Hey, babe, I was just thinking about you. How about dinner and a roll in the hay?”

  “I’m afraid not, Jimmy. I got married.”

  “Really? Anybody I know?”

  “No, you don’t know him.”

  “One of your customers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where are you living?”

  She hesitated. “That’s not important, Jimmy. You won’t be hearing from me again, and I don’t want you to try to find me.”

  “You sound serious,” he said.

  “I’m absol
utely serious. For all practical purposes, I no longer exist. Understand?”

  “I can’t say that I do, but if this is what you want . . .”

  “It’s exactly what I want, Jimmy. This is goodbye.” She hung up, relieved that she was done with him forever.

  • • •

  Harry Katz knocked on Pete Genaro’s door and was invited in and told to sit.

  “How many cases you working on, Harry?” Genaro asked.

  “Three, at the moment.”

  “Hand ’em off to somebody else. I’ve got a special case for you, and I want you to devote a hundred percent of your time to it.”

  Harry produced a notebook and a pen. He was an ex–LAPD detective, and he had been trained to take copious notes. “Go.”

  “Remember Charmaine? One of my hostesses?”

  “The little blonde?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What’s her last name?”

  “Evans.”

  Harry sighed. “Why do they all have such common names? Does she have any family?”

  “I’m working from memory, here,” Genaro said, “because her personnel file has been deleted from the hotel computer.”

  “No kidding? How’d she do that? Did she have anything to do with computers in her work here?”

  “Just her schedule.”

  “How about the state record of her casino worker’s application?”

  “Good idea, check that.”

  “Any close friends?”

  “Not that I know of. Her apartment’s been cleaned out, and her car was picked up by the leasing company from the employees’ lot.”

  “How about that husband of hers, the one we busted for that card-counting scam?”

  “Now, there’s a thought—I forgot about him. Last I heard he was working as a parking valet at the Sands. He won’t ever work indoors at a casino again.”

  “You have an address on him?”

  Genaro turned to his computer and searched the out-of-date employment files. “Got one, but who knows if he’s still there?”

  Harry made a note of it. “Well,” he said, “it’s a start.”

  “There’s something else, Harry.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Charmaine has a boyfriend named Billy Burnett. He checked in here a few weeks ago, wired us a quarter-million, and played poker for three or four days. Walked away up sixty grand. I ran every sort of check on the guy and came up with the standard stuff, but nothing that would help track him down.”

  “Billy Burnett,” Harry said, writing down the name.

  “William J. Burnett. Harry, the man is dangerous.”

  “How so?”

  “He doesn’t like being tracked. One of our major stockholders has lost four—count ’em, four—men who tried to track him. Two of them are buried in their car in the New Mexico desert. The other two have been found in the trunks of their cars in the parking garage at Shutters, in Santa Monica.”

  “Holy shit!” Harry said. “I guess that is what you’d call dangerous.” He noted the names of the four men, then took down the colors and tail number of Burnett’s airplane.

  Genaro was still typing away at his computer. “Well, shit,” he said, “her casino card application is gone from the state’s records, too.”

  “This Burnett sounds like a major computer geek,” Harry said.

  Genaro told him everything he could remember about both Charmaine and Billy Burnett. “Go get ’em,” he said. “When you find ’em, do nothing—just call me. And, Harry, don’t turn up dead.”

  “Gotcha,” Harry said, then left.

  Stone and Emma, Dino and his wife, Viv, and Mike Freeman were having dinner at Patroon, a new favorite restaurant of Stone’s. When the ladies went to the restroom, Mike spoke up.

  “I sort of had lunch with Billy Barnett before we left L.A.,” he said.

  Stone was surprised. “Why?”

  “It was accidental, really. Peter and I bumped into him at the Centurion commissary, then Peter left and Billy and I had a chat.”

  “About what?”

  “I offered him a job.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet, but I’m sure he’d be a useful employee.”

  “Did he have any idea that we suspected him of being Teddy Fay?”

  “He does now,” Mike said. “I told him so.”

  “Mike, that’s crazy,” Stone said. “That makes him dangerous.”

  “I told him my story as a way of warming him to me.”

  “Did it work?”

  “He admitted nothing—the man is icy cool. I’ll bet he could beat a good polygraph.”

  “Did he take the job offer?”

  “No, but he has my card. Stone, I don’t think you have anything to worry about, as far as Peter is concerned. He seems very protective of the boy.”

  “Well, I’m relieved to hear that,” Stone said.

  The women returned, and the subject changed.

  • • •

  Harry Katz ran the usual background check on Billy Burnett, just to see what turned up. Pete Genaro had been right: it was unrevealing, as far as the man’s whereabouts were concerned. He was going to have to go to L.A., he guessed. He told his secretary he was going away for a few days, and as an afterthought, he asked her to book him into Shutters, where the two dead men had been found.

  But Harry had another stop to make before he left town. He found James Sayer in the valet parkers’ break room at the Sands and introduced himself.

  “Yeah, I remember you from the Desert Inn,” Sayer said. “What can I do for you?”

  It wasn’t a warm greeting, Harry thought. “The Desert Inn people are concerned about your ex-wife,” he said. “She quit her job and apparently left with somebody who could be dangerous.”

  “I didn’t know Pete Genaro was concerned about anything but his bottom line,” Sayer said.

  “It’s true he’s not concerned about people who steal from his casino,” Harry said, “but Charmaine was a valued employee, and he doesn’t want her to get into trouble.”

  “Well, she called me yesterday,” Sayer said. “She said she had gotten married and left town, and she wouldn’t be seeing me again.”

  “Did she say who she married?”

  “No name. She said he was a former client at the Desert Inn.”

  “Did she say that she got married, then left town?”

  Sayer thought about that. “No, she just said she got married. I didn’t get the impression she got married in Vegas. In fact, she had a low opinion of the marriage chapel business here. I don’t think she would have gotten married at one of those.”

  “Did she say anything else that might have indicated where she was?”

  “Nope, not a thing.”

  Harry thanked him, got into his car, and headed for L.A.

  His first stop was at the West Los Angeles police station, and it took him only a minute or two to find out which detectives were assigned to the homicides in the Shutters garage. Turned out, he had been a mentor to one of them, Sanders, when they had both been assigned to the Ramparts division. Sanders seemed glad to see him.

  “I hear you guys are working the homicides at Shutters,” Harry said.

  “‘Working’ isn’t the right word,” Sanders said. “We’re mostly sitting on our asses, trying to figure out what to do next. These are the cleanest killings I’ve ever seen.”

  “Tell me about the ballistics,” Harry said.

  “Same gun, a .380 semiautomatic. There was a shell casing in each trunk, too.”

  “No prints on the shell casings?”

  “Clean as a whistle. This guy is a pro, no doubt about it. Both victims worked for the same company in Phoenix, an international conglomerate. The se
cond victim came in here and talked to us, told us nothing, then claimed the first victim’s body and had it cremated. We think he must have been hunting for the killer on his own and found him.”

  “You think there was a crime other than homicide connected to these two killings?”

  “Maybe, but we can’t prove it.”

  “Do you have a list of the other guests in the hotel at the time?”

  Sanders fished a document out of the case file. “Here’s a list of people who checked out the morning Smolensky was shot. That’s all we got from the hotel.”

  Harry glanced at the list and immediately saw a W. J. Burnett, but he said nothing. This was his case for the moment, and he didn’t want the two cops in his way.

  “What’s your interest in these homicides, Harry?” Sanders asked.

  “I may be looking for the same guy your two victims were looking for.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Doesn’t matter—it changes often,” Harry said.

  “What does your casino want with the guy? He steal from them?”

  “Nope. It’s a confidential matter.”

  “If it’s connected to our two homicides, it’s not confidential.”

  “If I find out anything along those lines, I’ll let you know,” Harry said. He thanked them and left.

  • • •

  Teddy checked his computer for messages and found flags he had placed on various websites, indicating to him that somebody was doing a background check on William J. Burnett. It had to be the casino again, since he had never given that name to anybody else.

  So, there was somebody else on his tail again.

  Teddy had begun to think that the only way to put a stop to this relentless hunt for him would be to take Majorov out of the picture entirely. Apparently, nothing less would discourage him.

  He logged on to the CIA mainframe, routing his path through half a dozen other computers around the country. Anyone who stumbled onto his presence there would find that the computer being used was in a real estate office in Boise, Idaho.

  He did a search for Majorov, and the man not only had a file, but a large one. He was the son of a colonel in the KGB who had been in charge of a Spetsnaz, or special forces, unit that had been tied to a misbegotten plan to invade Sweden back in the 1980s. The father had begun his rise in the KGB when he was chosen as the English instructor to the former Soviet premier, Andropov.