“I think we just settled that,” he replied.
“But what would I do with my car?”
“Ditch it, if you like; I’ll buy you a new one.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “Perhaps I can get someone from the hotel to drive it to Los Angeles, to a friend’s house.”
“That’s good, clear thinking,” he said.
“But you don’t have a place in San Francisco, do you?”
“Not yet, but I know a good hotel.”
“I didn’t bring San Francisco clothes, I’m afraid. I don’t think I can get by with a couple of cotton dresses and a bikini.”
“That’s what shops are for. I think I’d enjoy watching you shop.”
“I think I’d enjoy watching you watching me shop,” she said.
“You’re game, then?”
“That’s the nice thing about being free again,” she said, with more depth of feeling than he knew. “You can do anything you want to.”
“That’s right,” he said. “You can, and so can I.”
“I think doing it together will be fun,” she said.
“I will make it so,” he replied.
BARBARA/ELEANOR DRIFTED OFF to sleep, physically satisfied but very, very curious. She woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of his regular breathing.
She got up, got online and Googled the name Walter Keeler. It took only a moment to find a news report of the sale of his electronics business. She gave a little gasp. His share of the deal had been $2.7 billion!
She was going to have to play this very, very carefully.
10
CUPIE DALTON DROVE over to Venice and, lucky him, found a parking spot. He strolled along the beachfront, taking the sun, his straw porkpie hat keeping the heat off his bald spot. He caught sight of the sign for the photographer’s shop a hundred yards away, knowing from his past encounter with Barbara Eagle that the place was a hotbed of counterfeit document sales. Then he was startled to see the owner, the man he wanted to see, walk out of the shop and start down the sidewalk toward him.
Cupie stepped off the sidewalk and found a spot on a bench, his back to the foot traffic. He waited for a few moments, then hazarded a glance to his right. The photographer was walking briskly, a package under his arm. Cupie watched as he stopped at a mailbox, dropped in the package and started back toward his shop.
Cupie waited until he was certain the man had walked behind him, then he caught sight of him turning into his shop. Good.
Cupie got up, walked down the sidewalk toward the shop and had a peek through the window. The owner’s pretty teenaged daughter was the only person in view. Cupie walked in, straight past the counter, toward the rear office.
“Hey,” the girl shouted, “you can’t go back there. It’s private!”
But Cupie was already back there. He pushed the curtain aside and stepped into the surprisingly large office, filled with computers and copying machines. The owner sat behind his desk. He looked up, registered Cupie and started to get up.
“Relax, my friend,” Cupie said, taking the chair across from him. “This is going to be short and sweet.”
The man said nothing, just glared at Cupie. It was obvious that his memory of their last meeting was an unpleasant memory.
“Now, my friend,” Cupie said, in his most avuncular voice. “All I want is her new name.”
The man stared at him and said nothing.
“Come on, you and I both know that holding out on me is not going to be good for business. Tell you what: I’ll sweeten it just a little.” He reached into a pocket for a wad of bills, peeled off two hundreds and tossed them onto the desk. “For your trouble.”
Finally, the man spoke. “Five hundred.”
Cupie sighed and tossed three more C-notes onto the desk. "I know it’s not really necessary to mention this,” he said, “but if you give me a wrong name, I won’t even need to come back. You’ll be raided before you can spend the five hundred-LAPD or the Feds, take your pick.”
“The name is Eleanor Wright,” he said.
Cupie stared at him.
“And I colored her hair auburn, photographically. It was a good job, even if I do say so.”
“Did you give her the whole package: passport, driver’s license, Social Security, credit cards?”
The man nodded. “And they’ll all stand up. Now, that’s all you get for your five hundred.”
Cupie stood up. “It’s so much easier talking to me than working for a living, isn’t it?” He gave a little wave and walked out of the office. “Good day, sweetheart,” he said to the daughter as he passed.
He walked on down the sidewalk until he found a bookstore. He located the travel section and found a shelf of books on spas, settling on one that covered Southern California. He paid for his purchase, pocketed the receipt and walked back outside. He found another bench, this one overlooking the sandbox where the muscle boys played. They glistened in the sun, stretching, lifting and assuming poses. Half a dozen gay men were happy spectators.
Cupie began leafing through the spa book. “Now, I’m Eleanor Wright, formerly Barbara Eagle,” he said aloud to himself. “If I had just decamped from a courthouse while the jury in my trial was still deliberating, where would I choose to go and rehabilitate my image?” He took a highlighter from his coat pocket and began marking likely spots. His criteria were luxury, seclusion, exclusivity and easy access from greater L.A.
When he had highlighted twelve spas, he took out his cell phone and began calling them. Each time the phone was answered he asked for Mrs. Eleanor Wright. Surely Barbara would not pretend to be a single girl but rather a divorcée or widow. On the ninth phone call he hit pay dirt.
“Oh,” a woman’s voice said, “you’ve just missed her. She checked out less than half an hour ago.”
“I’m so sorry to miss her,” Cupie said. “This is her father. Did she say where she was going? Back here, to L.A.?”
“No, but I don’t think so, because she hired one of our employees to drive her car there and leave it with a friend.”
“Oh, that would be Jimmy Long,” he said.
“Why, that’s right.”
“It’s rather odd that she would suddenly send her car back but not come back herself. How was she traveling?”
“Well, she left with Mr. Walter Keeler, and I know that he had flown into Palm Springs in his own airplane. He’s from up in Silicon Valley, the electronics entrepreneur.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the gentleman,” Cupie said. “Do you think she’ll be all right in his company? I worry about my girl.”
“Oh, Mr. Keeler is a very upstanding citizen,” she said. “I know Mrs. Wright would be safe with him.”
“Well, I’m relieved to hear that,” Cupie said. “I’m sure she’ll give me a call when she reaches her destination. Thank you so much for your help.” He hung up.
Cupie walked back to his car and drove home. He couldn’t wait to get to his computer. Once at his desk he Googled “Walter Keeler.” His eyes widened as he read of the sale of Keeler’s company. “Two point seven bil!” he said aloud. He then went straight to the Federal Aviation Agency website, to the page for airplane registrations. He entered the name Walter Keeler and found a CitationJet III registered to him. He made a note of the tail number, then he called up a nifty little program called Flight Aware.
Flight Aware could track the progress and destination of any aircraft, airline or private; all you had to do was enter the flight number or, in this case, the tail number. Cupie did so. Seconds later, a little red airplane symbol appeared on the screen, located over the Central Valley, the farming capital of California, headed northwest. Destination: Hayward, California. “What the hell is in Hayward?” Cupie asked himself.
He got out his road atlas and found Hayward. It was a small city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, just south of Oakland. He picked up the phone and dialed.