“I can give you a week.”
“I can do that, but it’s going to be expensive; prices have gone up. Sixty grand.”
“All right, but everything has to work, has to show up in the relevant databases.”
“Always,” he said.
She opened her purse and paid him in hundreds, then watched while he checked a sample of the bills on a light box.
“All good,” he said. “Let’s get a couple of pictures.”
Barbara checked her makeup, then posed, once as the redhead she now was, and once with a blond wig.
“You can pick them up a week from today,” he said.
“I’d like you to FedEx them, overnight, to this address.” She wrote it down for him. “I’m trusting you by paying you before I see the paper,” she said.
“I don’t fail my best customers,” he replied.
She thanked him and left. She walked a couple of blocks before she found a cab back to the airport. She didn’t want to spend any more time in L.A. than necessary.
CUPIE DALTON SAW the woman coming from a block away. He always spotted beautiful women from a distance; it was a trait learned over the decades. Cupie was ex-LAPD, now a private investigator, and because of his work a lot of faces looked familiar to him. Also, there was something about the way she walked. He ducked behind a palm tree as she approached, then watched her pass and get into a taxi. She was different but still familiar. Images flashed through his mind. “Jesus,” he said aloud, “it can’t be. I must be getting old.”
Cupie was one of two P.I.s who had been hired by Ed Eagle to find the wife who had stolen his money, and he had been responsible for the ruse that had got her to Mexico, where she could be arrested. “It can’t be,” he said again, but he thought he should call Ed Eagle.
He had already dialed the number, but as he was about to press send, he stopped. No need to make a fool of himself. First, he would check. He looked up a number in his cell phone address book and pressed the call button. A woman answered in Spanish.
“I’d like to speak to the capitan,” he said. “Tell him it’s Cupie. He’ll know.”
“Cupie, my friend,” the police captain said. “How are you? Are you in Tijuana?”
“No, Capitan,” Cupie said. “I’m in L.A., but I just saw a familiar body walk past me, and I thought I was dreaming.”
“You always dream of women, Cupie,” the capitan said.
“This one is a nightmare,” Cupie said. “You took her off a yacht for me a few months ago.”
“Oh, La Barbara,” the capitan said. “I will never forget her.”
“She was convicted, remember?”
“Oh, yes. She will die in prison.”
“Are you sure she’s still there?”
There was a brief silence. “Do you have some reason to believe she is not?”
“I told you, I could swear I saw her five minutes ago. Can you find out if she’s still in prison?”
“Instantly,” the capitan said. “Give me your number.”
Cupie gave him the number, then went and sat on a bench, looking out over the Pacific.
THE CAPITA?N DIALED the number and listened to it ringing.
“Capitan Alvarez,” a voice said.
“Pedro, it’s me.”
“Good day to you, my friend. Are you in Acapulco?”
“No, I’m in Tijuana. I just wanted to check something with you.”
“Of course. How can I help you?”
“Tell me, is the woman, Barbara Eagle, still in your custody?”
Alvarez didn’t miss a beat. “Of course she is,” he replied. “I fucked her in the ass this morning. She loved it.”
“I’m relieved to hear that,” the capitan said.
“Why do you ask me this?”
“A friend saw a woman in L.A. a few minutes ago who looked like her.”
“Your friend drinks too early in the day. Next time you’re in Acapulco, drive up here, and you can fuck her, too.”
“That might be fun, as long as there isn’t a straight razor around.”
“No worries there, my friend. I would never let her near sharp instruments.”
“Thank you, Pedro. I’ll call you when I come south and take you up on your offer.” He hung up and called Cupie.
“Hello?”
“It’s me, Cupie.”
“What did you find out?”
“She’s still in the prison in Tres Cruces. The warden told me he fucked her in the ass this morning.”
“I’m relieved to hear that.”
“He says you drink too early in the day.”
“Maybe I’m getting old,” Cupie said. “Thanks, my friend. I’ll buy you a drink the next time I’m in Tijuana.”
“You do that.” The capitan hung up.
Cupie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was glad he’d checked. If he had made that call he might have destroyed his credibility with Ed Eagle, who was one of his better clients.
IN TRES CRUCES, Pedro Alvarez ran into the toilet and vomited. Still this woman haunted him. He wished he’d shot her in the head and buried her in the mountains.
10
Dolly Parks spent the entire day of Tip’s departure for the Houston tournament directing the moving in of office furniture. She arranged things efficiently, not forgetting to give herself a nice view of the Jemez Mountains from her seat at her desk.
When everything was arranged as it should be and wiped down for dust she opened the box containing her new computer and set it up, hanging the twenty-one-inch flat monitor on the wall beside her desk. She had only to swivel her chair to the right to have the keyboard at hand and the screen before her. She plugged in all the cables, then tucked the tiny Enano PC away in a corner of her desk.
She took a box of writable CDs into Tip’s study and copied all his files, then loaded them into her computer. A few minutes of testing the bank program and she was up and running. She spent the rest of the day putting away her office supplies on the shelves she had had installed in the closet, and then she was done.
She went into the little powder room off her new office and put her own cosmetics into the medicine chest, then washed the dust from her hands and splashed some water on her face. Exhausted, she went into Tip’s study, opened the cabinet containing the bar and poured herself a stiff Scotch, then she stretched out on the leather sofa and watched the sun set behind the mountains as she sipped her drink.
Soon, healed and relaxed by the whiskey, she began thinking about Tip Hanks, his mop of sun-bleached hair and his taut body. She unzipped her jeans and pulled them down to her knees, then, with the Scotch in the other hand, she began to stroke her clitoris. She was already wet, and it took only a couple of minutes of fun to bring her to orgasm.
When she stopped panting she wiped herself with tissues, pulled up her jeans and soon fell asleep on the couch.
TIP LANDED AT HOUSTON’S Hobby Field at dusk and taxied to Atlantic Aviation for refueling and hangaring,
