Stone flipped through the pages devoted to the house. “God, it’s twenty-one thousand square feet, and it has only one bedroom!”
“Oh, that’s just the main house. It has a guesthouse and staff quarters, too. I could find a buyer for it in a week, if it came on the market. There are lots of filthy rich out there.”
“This guy gives filthy rich a bad name.” Stone buzzed the butler and gave him the application. “Please send this back to the manager, pronto.”
“Yes, sir.” The man disappeared.
? ? ?
LATER THAT MORNING, Dax Baxter sat at his desk, flipping through his e-mail. He was confronted with a photograph of himself, the application he had completed for membership in the Arrington Club, and a covering letter: Dear Mr. Baxter,
Attached please find your application for membership in the Arrington Club, which, I regret to inform you, has been declined by the chairman of our board of directors. State law requires me to give a reason for the declining of a credit application; in your case, your credit record reveals a history of late and/or nonpayment of restaurant and club bills, and of legal action against you for such practices.
It was signed by the hotel manager.
? ? ?
“THE CHAIRMAN OF their fucking board!!!?” Baxter screamed, sweeping his computer monitor off his desk. Then he looked up to find Chita Romero standing in his doorway. “What the fuck do you want?” he demanded.
“I have the production file you asked for,” she replied calmly.
“Then put it on my desk and get out!”
She did so and closed the door behind her.
? ? ?
OUTSIDE, AS SHE SAT DOWN at her desk, a colleague asked, “What was it this time?”
“He screamed something about the chairman of the board,” Chita said. “What does that mean?”
“Was he on his computer?”
“Yes, and he knocked the screen off his desk.”
“Let’s see what’s in his e-mail,” she said, and tapped some keys. “Ah,” she said, “here it is. The chairman of the board of the Arrington Hotels has rejected his application for membership in their club—personally, it seems. They cite a poor credit record.”
“How many times has he been sued?” Chita asked.
“I don’t have that many fingers and toes.”
Chita laughed, and just at the moment Baxter opened his office door. “Get a tech guy in here to fix my computer. It’s broken again.”
Chita picked up a phone. “Yes, sir, right away.”
He slammed the door.
“Tech support,” a young man’s voice said.
“Sammy, you’d better get up here in a hurry. He’s broken his computer again. And if I were you, I’d bring a new monitor.”
“On my way,” Sammy said. He was there in five minutes, with a new monitor on his cart.
Chita buzzed Baxter.
“What?”
“The technician is here to fix your computer.”
“Send him in.”
“Yes, sir.” She hung up and nodded at the young man. “Good luck,” she said.
Ten minutes later, the tech left the office, with the smashed monitor on his cart.
“Thank you, Sammy,” Chita said. Her phone buzzed. “Yes, sir?”
“I want you to do a little research,” Baxter said.
“Of course, sir.”
“Somebody named Stone Barrington is chairman of the board of the Arrington Hotel Group. I want to know everything about him, and I mean, everything.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied. “Grace,” she said to the woman next to her, “pull a Dun & Bradstreet report on a Stone Barrington, chairman of Arrington Hotels.”
“Sure,” Grace said.
Chita started in on Google, and in five minutes she had an inch-high stack of paper on her desk. “Got it?” she asked Grace.
Grace handed her the D&B report. “This guy is very well heeled,” she said, “and he’s a widower. Introduce me, will you?”
Chita laughed and reached for a file folder. She made a label for it and put the printouts inside. “Here we go,” she said. She got up, knocked, and handed the folder to Baxter. “Here’s everything we’ve got,” she said. “For anything more, we’d have to hire a detective agency.”
She set the folder on his desk and got out. Half an hour later, he buzzed her. “Yes, sir?”
“Call that guy, what’s his name, the private eye?”
“Cupie Dalton?” she asked. “Dalton & Vittorio?”
“That’s the one. Tell him I want him in my office now.”
37
CUPIE DALTON SAT in a reclining chair in his office on Venice Beach and gazed out the window at a group of girls in bikinis playing volleyball. Why hadn’t girls dressed like that for volleyball when he was still young enough to play? It wasn’t fair.
Cupie, who had gained his nickname for his resemblance to a doll of the same name, was ex-LAPD, and in the years since his retirement he had run his little agency with a partner named Vittorio, an Apache Indian based in Santa Fe. Between the two of them, they could cover just about anything. His phone rang, and a recording picked up.
“Good day, Dalton & Vittorio. How may I help you?” Her voice was low and British-accented. He had met her in a bar on the beach.
“I’m calling for Dax Baxter,” a woman said. “May I speak to Cupie Dalton, please?”
“One moment,” the recording said, and the phone next to Cupie’s chair rang, as it was programmed to do. “This is Cupie Dalton,” he said.
“Hi, Cupie, it’s Chita, in Dax Baxter’s office. He has some work for you, and he wants you here pronto. Are you up for that?”
Cupie sighed. He wasn’t, but business had been slow. “Sure. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
“Faster?”
“It takes that long to drive from Venice. I don’t have a helicopter at my disposal.”
“Okay, hit the road.”
Cupie hung up, got into the jacket of his catalog-bought seersucker suit, and went out back to his garage in the alley.
? ? ?
FORTY MINUTES LATER Cupie parked in a guest spot at Standard Studios; his other five minutes were used up waiting for the elevator, in which he snugged up his necktie while ascending.
He waved at Chita and she picked up the phone and announced him, then waved him through. Without slowing down, Cupie walked through the door.
“Siddown, Cupie,” Baxter said.
Cupie, like most people who’d worked for Baxter, loathed him, but he put on his best smile. “Hi, Dax. How’s it going?”
“Not great. I want to know everything there is to know about a guy.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“His name is Stone Barrington. Ever heard of him?”
“Sure,” Cupie said with confidence. He’d done lots of work for Ed Eagle, and sometimes Barrington had been involved. “He’s a New York lawyer with Woodman & Weld, a top firm, and he’s the chairman of the Arrington Hotel Group. His late wife, Arrington, was the widow of Vance Calder, the movie star.”
“I’m impressed, Cupie. How’d you know that? I’ve never heard of the guy.”
“I know a little about a lot of people,” Cupie replied, “and everything about a chosen few. What’s your angle on this, Dax?”
“What do you mean by that?” Baxter replied with a snarl.
“I mean, do you want to go into business with Barrington or just ruin his day? There’s a spectrum, you know.”
“Well, I don’t want to go into business with him,” Baxter said. He tossed a thick file folder across the desk. “And don’t try to fob off a whole bunch of Google stuff on me—it’s all in there.”
“Okay, an in-depth investigation into him is going to cost you twenty grand, ten up front. I’ve got expenses.”
“How long?”
“Couple of weeks, if you want accuracy.”
“I want accuracy,” Baxter said, “and I want it in three days.”
“That’ll run you twenty-five grand, twelve-five up front.”
Baxter glared at him for a moment, then picked up a phone. “Tell Gladys to cut a check to Cupie for twelve thousand, five hundred dollars.”
“Oh,” Cupie said, raising a finger. “I’m going to need cash. There are palms to be crossed.” He didn’t want to sit around waiting for the check to clear.
“Never mind the check,” Baxter said. “Tell her to draw it from Accounting with a check on my personal business account. They can clear it with me.” He hung up and addressed Cupie. “I’ll tell you what I really want,” he said.