Stone Barrington 27 - Doing Hard Time

the head. There were no other signs of violence on the body.”
    “Will this murder be solved?”
    Gonzales sighed. “I’d say the chances are about fifty-fifty, under the circumstances.”
    “What are the circumstances?”
    “Out-of-town visitor, no local connections, no witnesses, no DNA, no forensic evidence, except for the bullet that killed him.”
    “So you have nothing at all to go on?” Todd didn’t really care, but he thought he should make a show of it.
    “That’s about the size of it,” Sanders said. “We were hoping you might give us something to go on. Why was Smolensky in L.A.?”
    “I don’t know—he left without telling me, said he’d be back in a couple of days. I don’t know of a business reason for his trip. It could have been personal, I guess.”
    “Did Smolensky know a woman here, or a man?”
    “I have no idea.”
    Sanders took a document from the file folder on the table, signed it, and handed it to Todd. “This is what you need to claim the body.” He gave Todd a card. “Please call us if any further information comes to light.”
    “I’ll do that,” Todd said, then he got out of there.
    He entered the address of the funeral home into the GPS unit and drove there. He was seen immediately by a gray man in a black suit.
    “How may we help you?” the man asked.
    “An associate of mine was murdered. His body is at the city morgue.” Todd handed him the document. “I’d like you to collect the body, have it cremated, and deliver the ashes to me at Shutters, a hotel on Santa Monica Beach. What is your customary fee for such services?”
    The man took a form from his desk drawer and began checking off items. “Hearse, pickup, body preparation, cremation container . . . Would you like to see a selection of urns?”
    “No, thank you, just use whatever container is customary.”
    “An urn is customary.”
    “Do you have such a thing as a cardboard box of an appropriate size?”
    “Yes.”
    “That will do.”
    The man added up some figures with a small calculator and wrote a number at the bottom of the page. “Twelve hundred and seventy dollars,” he said, sliding the paper across the desk.
    Todd counted out the money in cash and was given a receipt. “When will I have the ashes?” he asked.
    The man looked at his watch. “By noon tomorrow.”
    Thank you,” Todd said, and left as quickly as possible. Back at the hotel, he booked himself on an early afternoon flight to Las Vegas.

Stone, Dino, and Mike Freeman had dinner together in the dining room of the house at The Arrington. It was raining outside.
    “I met Billy Burnett,” Stone said. “Or rather, Billy Barnett—it seems that Peter got the name wrong.”
    “You know,” Mike said, “changing your name by one letter can be a very effective means of not being found. Most of the legwork in tracing people these days is done by computer. If you enter ‘Billy Burnett,’ maybe he turns up with a telephone listing or even an address, but computers are literalists: enter ‘Billy Barnett,’ and it will look for that and only that.”
    “That’s interesting, Mike,” Stone said, “but Billy whatever-his-name-is is not Teddy Fay.”
    “Why do you sound so certain?”
    “Because Billy is younger, slimmer, fitter, and has more hair and a firmer jaw than Teddy.”
    “Well, slimmer and fitter can make you look younger, and so can a face-lift. Hair can be transplanted and a firmer jaw can be gained with implants, usually slivers of cadaver bone. How about height?”
    “I think Billy is taller than Teddy.”
    “Losing weight can make you look taller, so can lifts in your shoes.”
    “You’re not going to let go of this, are you?” Stone asked.
    “I’m just pointing out the obvious,” Mike said. “I’m willing to accept that the two men are not the same person.”
    “There’s something you’re both forgetting,” Dino said.
    “Okay, what’s that?” Stone asked.
    “You’re forgetting who Teddy Fay is.”
    “Who is he?” Mike asked.
    “He’s a guy who spent twenty years or so outfitting intelligence agents so that they would be unrecognizable as who they are. That means passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards—all the paper that a person usually carries. One of our computer kids at the NYPD told me that it’s possible, even easy, if you’re a good enough hacker with good enough equipment, to go into other computers and manufacture credit reports with long histories of charge