Stone Barrington 27 - Doing Hard Time

lost the first night.”
    “Pete said he thought you could have won a lot more, if you’d put your mind to it. I think you were down the first night because you wanted to be.”
    “You’re a smart girl,” Teddy said. “Tell you what, before you go back to Vegas, we’ll work up a little story about me for you to tell Pete.”
    “I wouldn’t like to lie to Pete,” she said. “That could have repercussions.”
    “You won’t be lying, you’ll be telling him what I said when you asked me some questions.”
    “Well, maybe in that case . . .”
    “All right, let’s get that out of the way, so we can concentrate on each other. Ask me some questions.”
    “Is Billy Burnett your real name?”
    “Burnett was my birth name, but I used my stepfather’s name all the way through school and in the army. After that, after my stepfather died, I changed it back to the original. And Pete has already seen proof that I exist when he ran me through his computer.”
    “How old are you?”
    “How old do you think I am?”
    She cocked her head and looked closely at him. “Forty-eight,” she said.
    Teddy laughed. “That’s a very good guess.” Teddy was in his early sixties, but during his ten months in Asheville he had had some work done: he cured his baldness with hair transplants; he had dental veneers attached to his teeth; and he had his face and neck lifted and implants inserted that firmed up his jawline and changed the character of his face. No one who had seen him a year ago would ever recognize him.
    “You look very fit,” she said. “Do you go to a gym?”
    “No, but I exercise every day using an old book called the
Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Plans
. I’ve worked my way slowly up to the upper levels, where it’s very strenuous, but it doesn’t require any weights or other equipment. I run a couple of miles once or twice a week, too—less than I used to. It’s not good for the knees.”
    “Where did you go to school?”
    “At military bases all over the world. I was born on one. My father was a colonel in the army, and a couple of years after he died, when I was three, my mother was remarried to one of his friends, also an army man.”
    “Did you go to college?”
    “I graduated from the United States Military Academy, which I attended because all I knew was army, and because I was entitled to admission, because my father had won the Medal of Honor in World War Two.” Teddy had chosen his alias after reading an account of the events leading to his chosen father’s medal. If Pete Genaro looked there, he would learn only what Teddy wanted him to know.
    “How long did you serve in the army?”
    “Eight years, in military intelligence, which some people say is a contradiction in terms.”
    She laughed. “What did you do after the army?”
    “I stayed in intelligence, but with another arm of the government.”
    “Now, let me guess: you won’t tell me which arm or anything about what you did.”
    “You’re partly right, I won’t—rather, can’t—tell you what arm, but I can tell you that my work was equipping other intelligence officers for their missions.”
    “What kind of equipment?”
    “Every kind you’ve ever read about in spy novels or seen at the movies.”
    “When did you stop doing that?”
    “A few years ago.”
    “So you live on a government pension?”
    “Not entirely. The technical skills I acquired in the army later helped me invent a lot of ordinary household items. A few of them made a lot of money—still make a lot of money—so I have no financial worries.”
    “Where do you live?”
    “Right now, in a very nice hotel on the beach, where I’m going to take you after dinner and ravish you.”
    She laughed merrily and finished her martini. He ordered another drink for them both, then they ordered dinner.
    “Now it’s my turn,” he said. “How old are you?”
    “How old do you think I am?”
    “Thirty-two.”
    “Close enough.”
    “Now, so I won’t wear myself out asking a lot of questions, give me a brief autobiography.”
    “I was born in a little town in Georgia called Delano, and I went to the public schools there and later got a degree in English Lit from the University of Georgia. I married a guy I met in school—charming, but a gambler, and that got us to Las Vegas, where he went to dealer school and then got a job in a casino. He ran up a gambling debt and then got fired when he tried to run a scam against the casino with a friend