The Ed Eagle Novels

by Stuart Woods

  Forty-five

  THE SUN WAS RISING AS BARBARA STEPPED INTO THE BLACK Lincoln Town Car. “We’re going to L.A.,” she said to the chauffeur.

  SHE DIRECTED THE DRIVER to get off the interstate at Venice Boulevard, then stopped him a block short of the beach. “Park here and wait for me,” she said. “I’ll be less than an hour.”

  She got out of the car and walked to the beach, then strolled along the promenade until she found an instant photo shop. She stood in front of a white background and was photographed by an electronic camera, which spat out a sheet of six passport pictures and six smaller shots, the size of California driver’s license photos. She put them into her purse and left the shop, walking south. As she walked, she wrapped her head in a silk scarf and put on her sunglasses.

  After a five-minute walk she came to a photographer’s shop, with wedding pictures and portraits displayed in the window. She went inside and found a young girl behind the counter.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’d like to see Dan,” Barbara said.

  “Who shall I say?”

  “Just tell him an old friend.”

  The girl disappeared for a moment, and Barbara looked up into the video camera over the counter and smiled broadly. The girl came back and motioned her through a curtain and into a hallway. “All the way to the back,” she said.

  Barbara found Dan sitting behind his desk in the rear office, looking at a contact sheet through a loupe. “Are you still using those old-fashioned film cameras, Danny?”

  He put down the loupe and peered at her. “I can’t quite place the face,” he said.

  “That’s the idea,” she replied. “But we’ve met before. For purposes of this visit, my name is Barbara Woodfield. I need some paper.”

  He said nothing but reached into a desk drawer and came out with a black box the size of a pack of cigarettes and extended an antenna from it, then he got up and went over her body with the antenna. Finally he moved it around her purse. “Cell phone?” he asked.

  Barbara took Cupie’s cell phone from her purse and handed it to him. “I’ll make you a gift of it.”

  Dan put the phone in his pocket and went over her purse again, then he sat down. “What kind of paper?”

  “U.S. passport, dated before they started putting in the electronic strips, California driver’s license, social security card, birth certificate.”

  “California birth certificate?” he asked, making notes on a pad.

  “Would that be easiest?”

  “I can get you the real thing, if you want to be born in Long Beach before nineteen seventy-five. Any name you like.”

  “Sounds good. How much?”

  “Five thousand each for the passport and driver’s license, seven thousand for the birth certificate. The driver’s license will be the real thing, on file with the DMV. You won’t have to worry about traffic stops. I’ll throw in the social security card for free, but don’t use it for anything but I.D.”

  “Your prices have gone up,” she said.

  “You obviously know my work; if you think you can do better somewhere else, feel free.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Then let’s take some photographs,” he said.

  She held up a hand to stop him. “I’ll bring you photographs when I come to pick up the paper,” she said, “and I’ll watch you attach them.”

  “You’re afraid I’ll make copies?”

  “I’ll just be sure you don’t.”

  “Whatever you say. You’ll have to sit around for a couple of hours while I finish up.”

  “That’s fine. When can you be ready for me?”

  “Can you give me a week?”

  “A week today,” she said. She counted out ten thousand dollars in hundreds. “The rest, in cash, on the day.”

  “That will be satisfactory,” he said, scooping up the cash. “You’ll owe me seven thousand.”

  She nodded.

  “There’s one more thing you might like. It’s expensive, but you’ll need it, if you ever want to do any financial transactions involving identity or credit.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I can create a credit history for you and hack it into the mainframes of all three credit-reporting agencies.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten grand, and you’ll be able to access it from any computer with an Internet connection.”

  “Done.” She counted out another five thousand.

  “All right,” he said, ripping a page off his pad. “Now we have to create a history for you—date and place of birth, work record, credit cards and charge accounts you’ve had—the works.”

  “Let’s make me a Beverly Hills girl,” she said, reeling off shops and stores. They made up past addresses, and she gave him the street address of the Bel-Air hotel as her current address.

  “Before you use that address on, say, a credit application, be sure you file a change-of-address card with the post office, forward the mail to where you want it to go,” Dan said.

  “Good idea.” She was making notes to herself as they talked. “Tell me, can you make me a really good L.A. concealed carry license?”

  “Sure. That’s another five grand, but I’ll throw in a Florida license, too. That will be good in twenty-seven other states. You’ll need to bring driver’s-license-size pictures for both of the carry licenses.”

  “Done. Anything else you need?”

  “Nope. I’ll go to work on all this today, and a week from today, when the cash is paid, everything will be activated.”

  “Is the passport going to pass muster if I travel overseas?”

  “You’ll be able to use if for about four years, then it expires. By that time, I hope to have the coded strip thing beaten, and you can come back for another one. Now, let’s create a travel history for you, so I can put in the stamps.” They spent ten minutes creating a record of trips to Europe.

  “Danny, you’re a wonder,” she said when they had finished. “I’ll see you in a week.” She shook his hand and left.

  SHE WAS BACK at La Reserve in time for her surgical appointment and in bed in Pine Cottage by six thirty, an ice pack applied to her face, sipping soup through a straw, very carefully, over her still-numb lower lip. The pain medication was working wonderfully well.

  Forty-six

  CUPIE HAD BEEN BACK HOME IN SANTA MONICA FOR nearly a week when his cell phone bill arrived. He was stunned. There were more than fifty calls he hadn’t made, most of them long distance. He called the cell phone company and made a fraud complaint about the calls, but he didn’t cancel the number.

  After he hung up, it occurred to him that he had lost the phone in Mexico, but none of the calls were to Mexican numbers. His phone was in the United States. Cupie called a friend at the LAPD, the son of his old partner, a young man who was up to date on all the latest technology.

  “Bob Harris,” the voice said.

  “Bobby, it’s Cupie Dalton. How are you?”

  “I’m great, Cupie. How about you?”

  “Just fine. How’s your old man?”

  “As grouchy as ever. What’s up?”

  “Bobby, you can trace cell phone calls these days, can’t you? I mean, locate the actual phone?”

  “Sure, if it’s a late-model phone, with the GPS chip.”

  “It’s less than a year old.”

  “Then I could trace it. This for one of your clients? My captain is strict about that.”

  “No, it’s for me; I lost the phone, and there are several hundred dollars of calls on my bill that I didn’t make. I’d like to know who has it.”

  “Give me the number.”

  Cupie gave it to him.

  “Now look at your bill. Were the calls made at a certain time of day?”

  Cupie checked the bill. “Mostly afternoons, between two and five.”

  “Give me a day or two,” Harris said. “You still at the same number?”

  “Yep.”

  AT THR
EE-THIRTY THAT AFTERNOON Cupie got a call.

  “I got a location for you,” Harris said. “Venice Beach.”

  “You got an actual address?”

  Harris gave him a range of street numbers. “That ought to narrow it to a block or so.”

  “Bobby, I can’t thank you enough,” Cupie said. “Let me know when I can do you a favor.”

  “Hey, Cupie, you can find out who my wife is fucking.” Harris laughed loudly.

  “Yeah, yeah, sure. See you around.” Cupie grabbed a jacket. He had been getting bored, with no work. He headed for Venice Beach. If Barbara still had his cell phone, maybe he could nail down her location for Ed Eagle. It was something to do.

  CUPIE FOUND A PARKING place and began walking up and down the block of Venice Beach to which Harris had directed him. It was a collection of small shops, mostly tourist-oriented: Tshirts, souvenirs. He walked into a couple of them and had a look around. Finally, he stopped in front of a small photography shop and glanced at the window display. What really interested him, though, was that the young girl behind the counter inside was talking on a cell phone that looked very much like his.

  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.

  BACK 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.

  “HELLO, 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.”

  EAGLE 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

  EAGLE 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.

  AFTER 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.