Short Straw (22 page)

He saw a public phone across the sidewalk, and on a whim, went to it and dialed his cell phone number. Busy signal. Bingo! He walked back into the shop and waited for the girl to complete her call.

“Can I help you?”

“I was thinking about some photographs. Hey, that’s a good-looking cell phone, can I see it?” He took it from her hand before she could object, switched it off, then back on. As it booted up, it displayed his number.

“Great,” he said, “where’d you get it?”

“It was a gift,” she said, reaching for the phone, but he hung onto it.

“From who?”

A man stepped from behind a curtain, as if on cue, one hand in a pocket. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Cupie recognized the guy but couldn’t place him. “This young lady is using a stolen cell phone,” Cupie said. “Care to explain that to me?” Cupie pulled his jacket back to reveal his old LAPD badge and the holstered gun, both on his belt. “And take your hand out of your pocket right now.”

“I found it,” the man said, removing his hand from his pocket.

“Where?”

“On the beach.”

“Don’t you know it’s a crime to make calls on somebody else’s phone?”

“Look, officer, I found it, okay?”

“When did you find it?”

“A few days ago, almost a week.” Cupie put the phone in his pocket. “The phone company will be in touch,” he said, then he turned and walked out of the shop.

B
ACK HOME,
Cupie took another look at his phone bill. The first call had been made the evening he had crossed the border with Barbara, only a couple of minutes later. Then there was a gap of a couple of days before the calls resumed. The first number was in San Diego, and he dialed it.

“Good afternoon, La Reserve,” a smooth male voice said.

“Uh, I’d like to book a table for two at eight-thirty,” Cupie said.

“Are you a guest, sir?”

“A guest?”

“Our restaurant is not open to the public; this is a spa.”

“Oh, I guess I got it mixed up with that other place. Where are you located?”

“In La Jolla, on the beach.”

“Sorry about that,” Cupie said, then hung up. Barbara was being nice to herself. He went to his computer and Googled La Reserve. Very nice, very plush, very expensive. He thought about it for a moment, then he called Ed Eagle.

“H
ELLO, CUPIE,” Eagle said.
“I sent your check a few days ago.”

“Yes, Mr. Eagle, and I got it, thank you very much. I called, because I think I know where Barbara is, or was very recently.”

“Where?”

“At a health spa in La Jolla called La Reserve. Very ritzy place, according to their website.”

“And how do you know this?”

“My cell phone disappeared in Mexico—I think Barbara stole it—and a call was made on my phone to La Reserve a few minutes after we crossed the border. My guess is she called to book a room and went straight there.”

“Very good, Cupie. You want to follow up on this?”

“Mr. Eagle, all due respect, but I’ve had enough of your wife; I don’t want to go anywhere near her again. I just thought I’d pass on the information, and you can do with it as you like.”

“Thank you, Cupie, I understand,” Eagle said. “I assume you haven’t entirely retired. Shall I call you again when something comes up?”

“Oh, sure, Mr. Eagle. I’m available for anything, except Mrs. Eagle.”

“Thank you, Cupie.”

E
AGLE HUNG UP,
called information, got the number for La Reserve and dialed it.

“Good afternoon, La Reserve,” a man’s voice said.

“May I speak to Barbara Eagle, please? She’s a guest there; this is her husband.”

“Just a mo—” The man stopped mid-word. “I’m afraid we have no one registered by that name, sir.”

“Thank you,” Eagle said, then hung up. He thought about it for a couple of minutes, then he made another call.

“Vittorio.”

“It’s Ed Eagle.”

“Yes, Mr. Eagle, what can I do for you?”

“I’ve got a lead on Barbara’s whereabouts.” He described his phone conversation with Cupie and the man at La Reserve.

“I’m on it, Mr. Eagle.”

“Wait a minute, Vittorio,” Eagle said. “I want to reiterate: I do
not
want her killed, and I am not employing you for that purpose. I just want her signature on those blank sheets, this time, for real. Get that, and there’s ten thousand dollars waiting for you.”

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Vittorio said. “I’ll be in touch.”

Vittorio hung up and began packing a bag. Ten minutes later he was on his way to Albuquerque Airport.

Forty-seven

E
AGLE ARRIVED AT SEVEN AT SUSANNAH’S NEW HOUSE ON
Tano Norte for her first dinner party. As he got out of his car, another car pulled up, and Rick Barron, the chairman of Centurion Studios, whom he had met briefly at the airport, got out, along with a woman who appeared to be his wife.

“Good evening, Ed,” Barron said. “Nice to see you again. I’d like you to meet my wife, Glenna.”

“How do you do, Glenna,” Eagle said. If Barron was in his eighties, his wife appeared to be considerably younger, perhaps fifteen years or so.

“I’ve heard of your work, Mr. Eagle,” Glenna Barron said.

“Please call me Ed. Shall we go in?”

The front door was ajar, and Eagle called out to Susannah.

“Come in,” she shouted from the kitchen, “and go into the living room. Ramón will get you a drink.”

A houseman in a white jacket and black bow tie appeared and led them into a large living room off the central hallway. He took their drink orders and prepared them inside what appeared to be a large armoire, which was actually the entrance to a roomy bar.

A moment later, Susannah joined them. “Did you all meet?” she asked.

“We did,” Eagle replied.

Ramón handed her a drink, and she joined them. “I’m glad you’re in time for the sunset,” she said, and they all turned toward the large windows to see a lurid sky with a sun sinking behind the Jemez mountains.

“Los Alamos is right up there,” Susannah said, pointing. “Where the atom bomb was built.”

“Which saved a lot of lives,” Eagle said, “in addition to snuffing out a lot of others. Were you in World War II, Rick?” he asked the movie producer.

“I was,” Barron replied. “I flew fighters off the carrier
Saratoga,
until I got a knee shot up over Guadalcanal. That got me sent home, so I wasn’t one of the lives saved by the bomb.”

Glenna spoke up. “I was actually able to see Rick aboard the
Saratoga,
” she said, “the day before he was wounded.”

“What on earth were you doing aboard an aircraft carrier in the middle of a shooting war?” Eagle asked.

“I came aboard with the Artie Shaw Orchestra,” she said. “I was their singer on a USO tour.”

“I was just a bit surprised to see her,” Rick laughed.

They talked on until they were called to dinner.

A
FTER DINNER SUSANNAH
led them to a paneled library across the central hallway from the living room and served Eagle and Barron coffee and brandy, then she took Glenna on a tour of the house.

“I’m aware of your domestic difficulties,” Barron said.

“Oh? Is word getting around?”

“Not really, but I have my sources. In the circumstances I might be able to suggest a solution.”

“Do you have a lot of experience in resolving marital problems, Rick?”

“No, but I have a lot of other kinds of experience. Let me tell you a story: As a young man I was an officer in the Beverly Hills Police Department, and late one warm June evening in 1939, I was parked in a patrol car just off Sunset Boulevard when I heard something very loud and very fast approaching from the direction of the Sunset Strip. I looked up to see a Ford coupe on the other side of the boulevard run a stop sign and drive onto Sunset, directly into the path of a black Mercedes sports car doing, I don’t know, sixty or seventy, I guess, and the sports car struck the Ford, spinning it around and pretty much totaling it. The Mercedes continued until it jumped the curb and came to rest in a hedge half a block away.

“I jumped out of the patrol car and checked the Ford: there was a very dead woman inside. Then I ran to the Mercedes and found that the driver, who had been thrown clear and landed in the hedge, looked very familiar. I suddenly realized he was the movie star Clete Barrow.”

“I remember his films well,” Eagle said. “He was killed in the war, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, but that’s another story. In those days, the Beverly Hills PD was very protective of movie people, and there were rules—unwritten—about how to do it. Barrow gave me the number of a man named Eddie Harris, who was a bigwig at Centurion Studios, and, after I’d put Barrow in the back of my patrol car and radioed in the report of the accident, and a sergeant had arrived, I called Harris and was told to bring Barrow to the studio.

“That I did, and Harris and a doctor were waiting in Barrow’s bungalow dressing room. He was okay, and they took a sample of my blood to substitute for Barrow’s, who was quite drunk, and so I helped my superiors and the studio cover up the whole business. That’s just the way things were done in those days. The woman had been at fault, for running the stop sign, after all.

“Anyway, as a result of my performance that evening, Eddie Harris hired me as head of security for the studio. Part of my job—the biggest part—was protecting the actors and actresses under contract as well as the name of the studio. Glenna was an actress there, and that’s how we met.

“Shortly after I came to work for Centurion, Eddie Harris gave me the name of someone who was willing to perform rather extreme services, when conditions became extreme and there was no other way. As it turned out, I had known the man for years. His name was Al Moran, and he ran a gun shop where all the cops bought their weapons.”

“Did you ever employ Al’s services?” Eagle asked.

“I did, but not his most extreme services; that came later and was not my doing. There was a gangster—a mafioso, you’d call him today—named Chick Stampano, who worked for Ben ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, and he loved going out with movie actresses. He also loved beating them up, and that made me very angry, especially when he became a threat to Glenna.”

“What did you do about it?”

Barron took some money from his pocket and handed Eagle a hundred-dollar bill. “I wish to retain you to represent me as my attorney.”

Eagle smiled. “All right,” he said, putting the money in his pocket, “I’m your lawyer, and attorney-client confidentiality is in full effect.”

“I confronted Stampano, more than once, and finally, I beat him up pretty good. He reacted by taking it out on Glenna. At that point, I was ready to call Al Moran and employ his most extreme services, but I didn’t.”

“What did you do?”

“Left no other alternative, I went over to Stampano’s house with a gun, and when he came out the door with his own gun, I killed him.”

“Wow,” Eagle breathed.

“Then, by previous arrangement, I joined the navy. It was summer 1941, with Pearl Harbor still to come. Clete Barrow had been killed at Dunkirk the year before, and I was about to be a wanted man. After flight training—I was already a pilot—I served out my hitch in the Pacific, and came home and married Glenna. Eddie Harris and a couple of my friends on the police force had arranged for the Stampano killing to remain unsolved.”

“That’s quite a story,” Eagle said.

“There’s more,” Barron replied. “On our wedding day, in 1947, we received an over-the-top floral arrangement from Bugsy Siegel, and Eddie Harris took that as a threat. Siegel was, apparently, still angry at me for killing one of his protégés. Eddie didn’t tell me about this until years later, when he was dying, but what he did was call Al Moran. Al took a Browning automatic rifle over to Virginia Hill’s house—she was Siegel’s girlfriend—then he sat outside and fired a burst through a window at Bugsy Siegel.”

“Are you kidding me, Rick?” Eagle asked. “I thought the Mafia killed Siegel after Virginia Hill stole a lot of money from the Flamingo casino.”

“That’s what the preponderance of opinion was at the time,” Rick replied. “But Al Moran killed Siegel for Eddie Harris, who did it for Glenna and me.”

“And who else knows this?”

“Certainly not Glenna, and you should never mention it to her or anybody else while either of us is alive. Eddie Harris is dead, so now only you and I know. And Al Moran, of course. He’s still alive.”

“And why are you telling me all this, Rick?”

“Because Al, although he’s retired, has two sons, who still run his gun shop, and they are known by a select few people to perform the same services Al did.”

Eagle didn’t say anything.

“From what I’ve heard of your present circumstances, it may not be possible, in the end, to deal with your wife in the conventional manner, through the courts.” He handed Eagle a card. “Should it come to that, call Al; his number is on the back of my card. Tell him I sent you.”

The women were approaching from down the hall, chatting loudly.

Eagle took a sip of his drink and stood up for the entrance of the women. “I don’t believe it will ever come to that,” he said quietly, “but thank you, Rick, for your concern.”

Eagle put the card into his pocket.

Forty-eight

O
N THE FLIGHT TO SAN DIEGO, VITTORIO WAS LEAFING
through a copy of
Vanity Fair,
when he came across an article about West Coast spas, which included a long description of La Reserve, in La Jolla. There was a good deal written about the spa’s reputation for privacy and seclusion, and it occurred to him that he was not going to be able to just walk into the place and take a look around for Barbara.

He picked up the airphone at his seat and called La Reserve.

“Good afternoon, La Reserve,” a British-accented woman’s voice said.

Vittorio made an effort to sound charming. “Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m on an airplane to San Diego right now, and I read the
Vanity Fair
piece that included your spa. It sounds just wonderful.”