EAGLE AND SUSANNAH ate slowly and talked, sipping a good cabernet.

"I feel as though I'm starting a whole new chapter in my life," she said.

"I'm almost there, myself, and I will be as soon as I can get the divorce out of the way."

"Is that going to be a problem with her being out of the country?"

"Somewhere else is where I want her to be," Eagle said. "I'll have a signed agreement tomorrow morning, when I get to the office for your closing. The rest is just paperwork."

"My divorce wasn't so easy," she said. "He wouldn't settle, so we had to go to trial. It was all over the papers, and I hated that, but in the end, he had to pay more than I'd asked for, and he had to pay in cash, so at least I'm well fixed."

"I'm happy for you."

"The shipping company says my furniture will be here by noon Monday."

"Then I'm looking forward to our weekend together."

"So am I."

"We'll do a walk-through with the real estate agent first thing in the morning, then we'll close at my office. An associate has already prepared all the paperwork. It's a lot simpler for a cash transaction; fewer documents to sign. The seller won't be there, but his lawyer already has the signed documents. Did you bring a cashier's check for the sale price?"

"Yep. I'm ready to close."

"I wish all my clients were so easy to deal with."

"Well, I'm not always easy to deal with. I'm an actress, after all."

"You seem to have a solid sense of yourself, without the usual ego inflation of people in your business."

"Maybe that's because I've seen so many inflated egos, and I wanted to avoid that. It's the money, really. So many of those people are being paid so much money that they come to believe that they're actually worth it. I know an actress who lives in Malibu who has a big piece of property with four houses on it, and she takes turns living in all of them."

"Maybe there really is such a thing as too much money."

"Live in L.A. for three months, and you'll learn how true that is."

"I think three months might be too much for me. I spent five weeks there once, for a trial. The client put me up at the Bel-Air hotel, and after a while I began to think I was worth it."

AFTER DINNER, she wanted to go to bed, and so did he. He kissed her good night outside the guest room, then fell into his own bed and quickly fell unconscious.

Thirty-seven

EAGLE WOKE THE NEXT MORNING FEELING NEARLY HUMAN.

He showered, shaved and checked the state of his face. There was still the discolored eye, but the swelling in his face had gone down. He put antibiotic cream on his wound and applied a bandage. By the time he was dressed, he could smell bacon cooking.

"Good morning," she said as he walked into the kitchen.

"You really don't have to cook all our meals," he said.

"I've got to earn my keep somehow."

"I guess I'm going to have to take you out this evening to keep you from cooking again."

"Don't you like my cooking?"

"It's wonderful, but I don't like making you work."

They sat down and ate a big breakfast, then Eagle got out the Range Rover and drove them through Tesuque and down Tano Road.

"This route isn't as easy as it used to be," he said as he first followed a four-lane highway, then turned onto a dirt road. "They closed the entrance to Tano Road in some sort of weird traffic rerouting, so it'll take you a little longer to get home than it once did."

"I don't mind the drive," she said.

He turned onto Tano Norte. "This road used to be called County Road 85, or something like that, but the writer who built your house and Stanley Marcus, of Neiman's fame, who lived right there"- he pointed out a house as they passed-"got together and had the name of the road changed and the houses numbered."

They drove on down Tano Norte until they came to the house, where Susannah's real estate agent was waiting for them. The walkthrough went well, and Susannah made notes for minor repairs and changes she wanted done.

"I'll recommend somebody to take care of all that," Eagle said.

The walk-through completed, they drove to Eagle's office, where his associate had the paperwork arranged on the conference table in his suite. The seller's lawyer showed up, the papers were signed and money changed hands.

"Congratulations," Eagle said, "you're a Santa Fe home owner."

VITTORIO WOKE UP LATER than he had intended, had some breakfast and got dressed. He could see the Toyota in the ferry parking lot across the street, and he kept an eye on it as he dressed. His intention had been simply to go and get into the car when Cupie and Barbara did, but then he had a strange thought: Could the two of them have been in cahoots? He dismissed the idea as implausible, but he resolved to be more cautious.

He asked the hotel to provide a rental car, to be dropped off in Tijuana, and when Cupie arrived at the Toyota with their bags he was waiting across the street in a red Chevrolet.

CUPIE OPENED THE TRUNK and set his and Barbara's luggage inside, then he stopped. Vittorio's luggage had been there; now it was gone. He checked the lock on the Toyota; it was undisturbed; the trunk had not been broken into. He closed the trunk and looked carefully around him. What was going on here? The coast guard had reported not finding Vittorio's body. This was creepy.

VITTORIO DUCKED AND WAITED for Cupie to drive away, then he followed. Cupie stopped at a side entrance to a hotel, and Barbara ran from the building and dived into the rear seat of the Toyota. Cupie was still being careful. Good.

Vittorio followed at a distance as the Toyota made its way out of town, north toward Tijuana. He wasn't sure just how he was going to handle this yet, but what he really wanted was to kidnap her himself and sell her to a pimp in Tijuana. Maybe life as a sex slave in a Mexican whorehouse would be good for her.

BOB MARTINEZ SAT IN his car with a detective, across the street from the Santa Fe County Corrections Center, and watched the day's crop of released inmates leave the building.

"You know any of these guys, Pedro?" he asked the detective. "I'm looking for a man who might do a contract killing."

Pedro Alvarez watched the men through small binoculars. "I know three of them," he said. "One is a burglar, one is a car thief and the third is what you might call a jack-of-all-trades."

"What's the jack's name?"

"Harold Fuentes," Pedro replied, as he watched Fuentes get into a pickup truck with a woman. "He's your best bet."

"Then let's follow him."

"What do you expect to learn by doing that? I could just brace the guy."

"We don't have enough to charge him with anything yet. Let's just see where he goes and what he does."

Pedro started the car and followed the pickup at a distance.

"You know where he lives?" Martinez asked.

"Off Agua Fria, in a little adobe," Pedro replied.

Martinez watched as Fuentes passed Agua Fria without turning. "Harold appears to be going somewhere else," he said.

Fuentes passed the road to the interstate without turning. "There's nothing out here but a water-treatment plant and the airport," Pedro said.

"Let's see which one he chooses," Martinez replied.

Fuentes turned left toward the airport.

"You know who lives out here?" Pedro said.

"Yeah, Joe Big Bear, or at least he did before Ed Eagle so kindly blew him away for us."

Fuentes drove past the big junkyard, then turned into a road alongside it.

"Bingo," Pedro said.

"Stop here, and let's see what he does," Martinez ordered.