by Stuart Woods
“Okay, I’ll try to talk to him just like a real person, instead of a shrink.”
THEY ARRIVED AT Santa Café, Eagle’s favorite local restaurant, which managed to be at once cool and festive. Daniel Shea was waiting for them at the bar. He stood up and approached, his hand out.
“Hello, Ed. And this must be Susannah.” He shook her hand warmly. He was not as tall as Eagle but broader, a bear of a man.
“Why do I feel so small in this company?” Susannah asked and got a laugh.
They were seated, ordered drinks, consulted menus and ordered food.
“I must tell you,” Shea said, “I’m a fan of your work.”
“Why thank you, Dan,” Susannah said.
“I don’t go to the movies all that much, but I see everything on satellite, and I’ve watched most of your movies more than once.”
“Well, I’m settling into my character period, I think, since I’m pushing forty now. The good news is, I produce most of what I appear in, so I just cast myself in good supporting roles.”
“That’s very smart,” Shea said. “Tell me, how does one learn to produce films? It seems very complicated.”
“Well, first of all, I’ve appeared in a lot of them, and I guess it didn’t hurt to be married to a producer for some years, and I got to watch him work. He’s very good at it.”
There was a silence.
“Oh, that’s right. I should have used the past tense,” Susannah said. “He was very good at it.”
“I won’t pretend I don’t know about that,” Shea said.
“Thank God. Ed promised me he hadn’t set me up for over-dinner therapy.”
“You’re a smart woman, I think,” Shea said. “You’ll call me if you need me. A lot of people wait a lot longer than they should, but I don’t think you’re one of those.”
“That’s a pretty good observation,” Susannah said. “What else have you divined about me during our brief acquaintance?”
“You mean besides beautiful and intelligent? Let’s see: frank to the point of being blunt, disdainful of charade, good judge of character.”
“Then why did I marry the schmuck I married?”
“You’re in the company of millions; love and sex distort judgment.”
“Go on with your observations.”
“I think that’s as far as I’d like to go on short acquaintance; I don’t want to get you mixed up with the characters you’ve played.”
“Well, you’re pretty much on target,” Susannah said, “especially the beautiful and intelligent part.”
Eagle laughed. “I can vouch for your perceptions, Dan.”
Susannah sipped her drink. “There’s something wrong with this drink,” she said. “It tastes funny.”
Eagle, who was drinking the same bourbon, tasted his, then tasted hers. “They seem the same to me.”
Susannah held up a hand, as if telling him not to speak, then she picked up her napkin, held it in both hands and vomited into it.
A waiter rushed over and relieved her of the napkin and handed her another.
“Excuse me,” Susannah said, starting to get up. “I’m feeling a little odd.” She got to her feet and fainted into Daniel Shea’s waiting arms.
“I think it’s caught up with her,” Shea said, sweeping her up. “Let’s get her home.”
Eagle followed behind him and helped get her into the car. “Should we take her to the hospital?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.” He handed Eagle his car keys. “There’s a medical bag in my trunk; get it for me, will you?”
Eagle retrieved the bag. When he returned Shea was sitting in the backseat with Susannah, her head in his lap. He held his fingers to her throat. “Her vitals are fine; she’s just having a bout with post-traumatic stress disorder. My guess is she’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep, though she may want to come and talk to me.”
“I’ll encourage it,” Eagle said.
“Don’t. Let it be her idea.”
“I’ll drive you home when we’ve gotten her in bed.”
“I’d better stay over, to be there if she needs me. You do have a guest room, don’t you?”
“A guesthouse; you’re welcome to it.”
“She may wake up in the night and move around. Try to settle her down. If she becomes agitated, call me, and I’ll give her something to calm her down.”
“I’m almost as surprised at her reaction as I was at her lack of reaction after the shooting,” Eagle said.
“Some people are just stoics,” Shea replied. “It takes them a longer time than most people to externalize what they’re feeling inside. It’s good that she’s finally let it out.”
Eagle drove on, hoping that this was the worst effect she would experience from the shooting.
8
EAGLE AND SHEA were having breakfast when Susannah, looking dazed, wandered into the kitchen. Eagle got her into a chair.
“I’m sorry about last night,” Susannah said.
“It’s all right,” Ed said.
“Had to happen,” Dan chimed in. “You can’t go through something like that without it having an effect. How do you feel?”
“Rested but a little dopey. Did you give me something?”
“No,” Dan said. “I didn’t think you needed anything.”
“I’ll make you some eggs,” Eagle said.
She picked up half of his English muffin and spread some marmalade on it. “No, thanks, this will do fine.”
Eagle gave her some juice and, when she had downed it, filled her coffee mug.
“That’s what I need,” she said, sipping the strong liquid.
“Well,” Dan said, rising, “I have appointments this morning; I’d better get going.”
“Can I come and see you?” Susannah asked.
“Of course.” He consulted a pocket diary. “How about two o’clock? I’m usually reading medical publications at that time, but any excuse not to.”
“I’ll see you at two.”
Shea gave her directions.
Eagle got up. “I’ll drop you at your car,” he said. He turned to Susannah. “Will you be all right on your own?”
“Of course. Get out of here, both of you.”
THEY GOT INTO Eagle’s car and drove down the mountain.
“She’ll be okay,” Dan said. “Last night was a good thing for her, a wake-up call.”
“I think you’re right,” Eagle said. “She’s a sturdy person.”
EAGLE SETTLED BEHIND his desk and looked at the messages waiting there. He returned a couple of calls and signed some letters, then sat alone in his office and thought for a long moment about what Dan Shea had said to him the day before. Finally, he picked up the phone and dialed a number in Santa Monica.
“Dalton,” the voice said.
“Cupie, it’s Ed Eagle. How are you?”
“Well, hello there. I’m okay, you?”
“Not bad. I watched your testimony on TV; you did a good job.” Cupie Dalton was one of the two private investigators Eagle had hired to follow his ex-wife to Mexico when she had decamped with a lot of his money.
“I watched yours, too, and so did you.”
“You heard she was acquitted.”
“Yeah. Go figure.”
“A friend has convinced me that I need to know where she is.”
“A good friend,” Cupie said. “I’m surprised you couldn’t figure that out on your own. She’s a dangerous woman.”
“I can’t imagine that she’d come back to Santa Fe, but I’d feel better if you could track her down.”
“I hear she walked on the escape charge, so I guess she’s free as a bird.”
“Yes. I’d feel better if she were reporting to a parole officer every week.”
“Well, yeah. You got any leads for me?”
“Just one: Jimmy Long.”
“He was her alibi for the time of the shooting, right?”
“Right.”
“What do
you know about him?”
“He’s a rich kid who always wanted to make movies, and something of a playboy. Surprisingly, he’s produced some pretty good films.”
“So he’s well-known around town?”
“He is. He lives somewhere in Beverly Hills or Bel-Air, I think.”
“It won’t be any trouble to find out.”
“I’m sure he helped her with the escape; she doesn’t have any other friends out there that I know of.”
“You think she might be holed up at his house?”
“I doubt it,” Eagle said. “She was a fugitive for twenty-four hours or so, and that’s the first place the cops would have looked.”
“Last time, she laid low at a high-end spa place in La Jolla,” Cupie said.
“I doubt if she’d go where anyone knows her.”
“Probably not, but I’d be willing to bet she’d go to another place a lot like it.”
“Well, Southern California is riddled with those places; it would be hard to know where to start.”
“Of course,” Cupie said, “but I’ll bet she chose one not that far away. She’d want to get off the roads as soon as possible after her escape, and no later than dinnertime.”
“That’s a good thought. You don’t think she’d go back to Mexico?”
Cupie snorted. “Not while there’s a chief of police down there whose nephew’s dick she and her sister cut off.”
“You’re right.”
“I’ll start with Jimmy Long.”
“I don’t think he’s going to want to talk to you,” Eagle said.
“Does he have an office outside his home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Won’t take long to find out.”
“She’s probably using another name,” Eagle said.
“Probably, but I know where she got her last set of documents. I’ll pay somebody a call.”
“Good man.”
“It’s a thousand a day with a five-thousand minimum, plus expenses.”
“Agreed. She will probably have changed her appearance, too, if her last outing is any indication.”
“I’ll take that into consideration.”
“Just remember that she knows what you look like, Cupie, so she’ll have the advantage of you. Don’t let it get you hurt, like last time.”
“Yes, she does have a tendency to shoot first and not bother with questions, doesn’t she?”
“She does.”
“Well, you can bet I’ll be more careful than I was in Mexico,” Cupie said. “Listen, are you sure that all you want is to know where she is?”
“That’s all, Cupie, nothing else. Let’s be clear about that. Once you’ve found her, though, I may want you to keep tabs on her location.”
“When we get to that point, I can hire somebody cheaper just to watch her movements.”
“There’s something else, Cupie.”
“What’s that?”
“She’s good at using men. The last time you went after her she never had time to get next to anybody, but she’s been on the loose for a few days, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she has probably already latched onto somebody.”
“The poor bastard,” Cupie said.
9
BARBARA/ELEANOR HAD NOW spent two days in the company of Walter Keeler, and she had played her cards very carefully. She had listened rather than talked, and, eventually, he had poured his heart out. As she had suspected, his marriage to his late wife hadn’t been all he had wanted it to be, and there was an element of relief as well as guilt in his feelings about being a newly minted widower.
She had talked about herself only when he had asked her questions, and she had always been brief, sticking to a story that would be easy for her to remember. She had never made any allusion to any future after their time together at the spa, not even “Let’s have dinner sometime.” She would make it her business to make him want to see her again, and often.
She had her chance as they were finishing dinner in the spa’s restaurant.
“You know,” he said, “I like this place, but there’s something unnatural about not having an occasional drink, and I was stupid enough not to bring something with me.”
“Well,” she said, smiling, “I guess I’m smarter than you are.”
His eyebrows went up. “Oh, yeah?”
“If you’d like some very fine bourbon, let’s part company now, then meet in my suite in fifteen minutes.”
“What a grand idea!” he said.
“And be stealthy; we wouldn’t want to give the staff something to talk about.”
“I’ll do better than that,” he said. “I’ll be sneaky.”
Barbara stood up and offered her hand. “Thank you so much for dinner, Walt. I enjoyed it.”
“So did I,” he said. He sat down and waved for the check.
BARBARA WENT BACK to her suite, stripped naked and slipped into a cotton shift with a zipper down the back. She freshened her body with a damp facecloth and sprayed her crotch with something both scented and flavored.
When his knock came, she let him in and waved him to the large comfortable sofa. “How would you like it?” she asked.
“What?”
“Your drink,” she said, laughing.
“Oh, on the rocks, please.”
She poured two generous drinks and set them on the coffee table, then sat down—not too close to him—and faced him, pulling her knees onto the sofa.
Keeler sipped his drink. “That’s wonderful! What is it?”
“Knob Creek, a boutique bourbon. I’ll never drink anything else; it’s my only real legacy from my late husband.” Good to plant that thought now.
“This is the best I’ve felt for a long time,” he said.
“Must be the bourbon.”
He smiled and shook his head. “No, it’s a lot more than that.”
“Oh?”
“Come on, you feel this, too.”
“I certainly feel something,” she said.
“You’re sure it’s not the bourbon?”
“Fairly sure.”
He put his hand on her cheek and kissed her, sweetly, no tongue.
She returned the kiss in the spirit in which it was offered. He sighed. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yes, it has been for me, too.”
“I have a feeling that empty period of my life has come to a close.”
“That’s what I’d like to feel,” she said.
He kissed her again, this time more passionately.
She flicked her tongue in and out of his mouth and ran her fingers through his thick hair.
He took hold of her, turned her around and laid her across his lap, her head on his shoulder.
She put an arm around his neck and played with an ear. She could feel him hardening under the weight of her body.
“Does this suite have a bedroom?” he asked.
“It does.”
“Why don’t we continue this conversation there, before I explode?”
“I think that’s a good idea,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to explode—not just yet, anyway.”
He scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom, laying her on the bed.
She turned her back to him. “Zipper, please?”
He complied, and she heard his own zipper working. A moment later they were fully embracing.
“Easy,” she said. “Be tender.”
He was, and so was she.
Somewhat to her surprise and much to her delight, he did not immediately enter her. Instead, he parted her vulva with his tongue and lingered there until she insisted he mount her.
They both came that way, then rested for a while. Then she began bringing him back, stroking him first with her fingers, then with her tongue. She would not let go, until he had climaxed again.
They lay under the covers, panting, gradually recovering themselves.
“Did I mention that I have my airplane at Palm Springs Airport?”
/>
“I don’t remember,” she lied.
“Why don’t you and I fly to San Francisco tomorrow for a few days?”
“What a sweet thought,” she said. “Don’t you think it might be a little early in our acquaintance for that sort of trip?”
“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.