Pete glared up at him. “I told you there will be a delay.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Jake muttered.
Pete’s blood pressure was boiling over. “Get out of here, willya?” It occurred to him he was particularly stressed. He called after Jake, “Send in Sherry.”
55
Billy Barnett was not in Las Vegas plotting to kill Sammy Candelosi, nor did he have any intention of going. Billy Barnett, aka Mark Weldon, aka Teddy Fay, had enough on his plate. He was, temporarily, a man with three identities and no house.
While he could stay on at Stone Barrington’s, at least until Stone returned for the next stockholders’ meeting, the logistics of living so close to the studio and to the Arrington Hotel raised problems when it came to juggling identities. Just who was living at Stone Barrington’s house? Billy Barnett, who was supposedly away on vacation? Mark Weldon, who had no connection to Stone Barrington whatsoever? Or Teddy Fay, who didn’t exist?
The fact that people were trying to kill him merely complicated the problem.
Teddy didn’t have time to shop around. He bought a house on Mulholland Drive, sight unseen—a modern three-story split-level built into the hillside, with a terrace and swimming pool. It was a little conspicuous for someone on the run, but for a producer as successful as Billy Barnett had recently become, a modest address would also stand out, so there was no reason for Teddy not to make himself comfortable.
Teddy had more than enough money in his offshore accounts to cover the purchase, though he had to be judicious about flaunting it. Teddy updated Billy Barnett’s credit rating to arrange for the purchase.
Through Peter Barrington, Teddy hired renowned set dresser Marvin Kurtz to furnish it. Kurtz was given carte blanche, since Billy Barnett was on vacation at an undisclosed location and could not be reached.
Teddy also rented a one-bedroom apartment for stuntman Mark Weldon. From habit, he didn’t rent it under Mark’s name. No one knew where Mark Weldon lived, and Teddy saw no reason to change the situation. He didn’t need to get mail there, and it never hurt to have another safe house. And that didn’t stop him from being Mark Weldon as far as the tenants in the building were concerned.
Teddy ordered furniture and furnishings, and paid extra for rush delivery. He introduced himself to the super, Paco Alvarez, who lived in the basement apartment, explained that he was a stuntman on a movie and would be gone all day, and gave him a generous tip to accept delivery. He also ordered a computer delivered, and Internet service installed.
All this would take time, and Teddy needed a private place to lie low now.
Teddy drove back to Stone Barrington’s house and changed his look from Mark Weldon to Billy Barnett. Then he drove out to the Santa Monica airport. Peter Barrington’s hangar came with a small one-bedroom apartment. Teddy and his wife had lived there before moving into their house.
The pilot in charge of the hangar was working on the engine of Peter’s plane when Teddy arrived.
“You don’t have to look like you’re busy every time someone walks in,” Teddy said.
The pilot’s eyes widened. “Mr. Barnett!”
“Billy.”
“How are you?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“Your house burned down.”
“That’s why I’m here. I’d like to stay in the apartment a few days, if it’s all right.”
“It’s your apartment.”
“I assume it’s undisturbed?”
“It’s been cleaned once a week. Aside from that, no one’s been in.”
Teddy went upstairs and checked out the apartment. It felt like he’d been gone for ages, though actually it had been just a couple of years. The apartment was virtually bare. There were some shirts and pants, a sports jacket, and a pair of sneakers with no laces.
There were a few basic toiletries in the bathroom, like a toothbrush and toothpaste. There was of course no food. The computer was gone, and the Internet connection was disconnected.
Teddy made sure the water was running and the electricity was on.
Then he checked out the safe.
The safe in the airport apartment was neither as secure nor as large as the one in his house; still, it was a good quality product and virtually tamperproof. For most safecrackers nothing short of dynamite would have moved it.
Teddy spun the combination and swung open the door. The selection of handguns was meager but adequate. The lone sniper rifle was not handcrafted, merely a CIA-issued weapon in a case. And the collection of IDs and credentials was skimpy. It would do in a pinch, but not if a specific ID was needed. In this case, that was Billy Barnett. That ID was not there, because it was the one he always carried.
His duplicates had been in his house.
Well, that was something he would have to deal with. For now he was just happy to have a credit card. He chose James Haskell’s American Express because his driver’s license photo looked enough like either Billy Barnett or Mark Weldon that he wouldn’t need to change his appearance to use it.
Teddy took out a shoulder holster and slipped it on.
He smiled.
It was nice to have a gun he didn’t have to carry in a paper bag.
56
Peter was filming on location at the Merryweather Hotel in downtown L.A. when the cell phone was delivered. They were shooting stuntman Mark Weldon’s perilous climb up the side of the building to the ledge outside the fourteenth-floor hotel room window, the companion piece to the scene they had already filmed on the soundstage at Centurion where Teddy could occasionally be seen in the background as he eavesdrops on Tessa and Brad. In this instance they were in the background, seen only briefly through the window as Teddy climbs up onto the ledge.
Unlike most sequences of this nature, where the shot of Teddy climbing up the building would later be intercut with a shot from the soundstage mock-up of him arriving on the ledge, Peter was shooting it for real. He had rigged a camera on a mechanical arm in an adjacent window that would catch the last flight of Teddy’s climb, with the side of the building and the street below in the shot, and then extended out as the camera panned down and around to catch Teddy’s arrival on the ledge from behind with the hotel room in the background.
It was a million-dollar shot for a big studio production, and Peter was bringing it in for next to nothing. The only downside was it required several takes to make sure the camera was aimed correctly.
Tessa was relaxing in her trailer while they filmed Teddy’s climb when a production assistant knocked on the door to deliver a package that had just arrived by messenger.
Tessa knew it would be a cell phone, and managed to get rid of the production assistant before it rang.