I said, “Don’t feel bad, Martha. If we hadn’t nabbed you, they’d have gotten you at customs. Your new name and description is at every international terminal in the country. It was a good idea to travel with the passport of a swing band singer who no one knew was dead. It would have been an even better idea if you’d made sure I was dead as well. All the airlines and shipping agents were on the watch for anyone trying to leave the country under the name on Vera’s passport. Pan American took your reservation, called the Oakland police, and Bob and I flew down to greet you.”

Bob removed a black pistol from Martha’s pocketbook with his handkerchief. “You’re under arrest. We’re taking you back to Oakland for arraignment, where the FBI is interested in speaking with you as well.”

She said, “I know this sounds ridiculous, but if we have a long trip, might I use the bathroom quickly? I have to. It’s because I’m afraid.”

Culpepper walked over to a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and looked in. There was a toilet and a sink but no windows.

“I’m standing outside the door, and in five minutes I open it, no matter what,” he told her.

Gratefully, she replied, “Thanks so much. I won’t need anywhere near that long.”

She gave me a look I’ll never forget, entered the bathroom, Culpepper shut the door, and within fifteen seconds the gunshot I expected to hear rang out.

Culpepper, being a professional, should have realized that when you take a gun away from someone who does this kind of work on a regular basis, you don’t simply assume that it’s the only gun she has on her person.

I could have told Bob this before she stepped into the bathroom, but it was something he needed to learn, and people learn best by experience.

Besides, it was better for all concerned that it ended this way.

Chapter 59

59

Every Good Boy Does Fine

Bob asked me what I was doing.

I told him I was finishing up something I’d been writing. I placed my current yellow legal tablet, now full, in the nearest of the four orange crates that contained nothing but other such yellow tablets in my workroom. I set my Eberhard Faber No. 2 pencil atop it.

Bob didn’t have much interest in the contents of the crates. As usual, he was more taken with my odd drafting table. I’d had it mounted to a beat-up baby grand that had nothing to lose in the looks department. It allowed me to create an arrangement at the piano without having to constantly twist to my right each time I wanted to write a note. I was in pretty good shape for a man who was bidding good-bye to his forties, but it saved me a lot of wear and tear.