“Funny,” she said. “You know, this year it falls on a Friday. I checked. That’s bad luck, Harry.”
Friday the thirteenth somehow seemed appropriate. For a moment I wondered what it meant that she was checking on when future anniversaries of a failed marriage landed on the calendar. I dropped it and came back to the present.
“So just use them over the next few days. You know, go have dinner or something. If I were here I’d probably buy you a present for letting me stay with you. So go to the ATM and get some money and buy something you like. The AmEx still has my full name on it. You shouldn’t have a problem.”
Most people don’t know what gender my given name Hieronymus is. When we had been married Eleanor regularly used my credit cards without a problem. The only difficulty that would arise now would occur if an ID was requested at point of purchase. This rarely happens in restaurants anywhere and especially not in Las Vegas, a place that takes your money first and asks questions later.
I handed her the cards but she didn’t take them.
“Harry, what is this? What’s going on with you?”
“I told you. I want some people to think I am over here in Vegas.”
“And these are people who can monitor credit-card purchases and ATM usage?”
“If they want to. I don’t know if they will. This is just a pre-”
“Then you’re talking about the cops or the bureau. Which is it?”
I laughed quietly.
“Well, it might be both. But as far as I know it’s the bureau that’s most interested.”
“Oh, Harry…”
She said it with a here-we-go-again tone in her voice. I thought about telling her that it involved Marty Gessler but decided I shouldn’t involve her any further than I already had.
“Look, it’s no big deal. I’m just working on one of my old cases and it’s got an agent’s nose out of joint. I want him to think he scared me off. For just a few days. Okay, Eleanor? Can you do this, please?”
I held the cards out again. After a long moment she reached up and took them without a word. We were on an airport road where all the rent-a-car complexes were lined up in a row. I wanted to say something else. Something about us and about how I wanted to come back over when all of this nastiness was finished. If she wanted me to. But she pulled into the Avis lot and put her window down to tell a security man that she was just there to drop me off.
The interruption ruined the flow of the conversation, if it even was a conversation. I lost my momentum and dropped any thought of saying anything further about us.
She pulled up to the Avis pickup office and it was time for me to get out. But I didn’t. I sat there and looked at her until she finally turned and looked at me.
“Thank you for doing this, Eleanor.”
“It’s not a problem. You’ll get the bill.”
I smiled.
“Do you ever go back to L.A.? You know, to the card rooms or anything?”
She shook her head.
“Not in a long time. I don’t like to travel anymore.”
I nodded. There didn’t seem like there was anything else to say. I leaned over and kissed her, this time just on the cheek.
“I’ll call you tomorrow or the next day, okay?”
“Okay, Harry. Be careful. Good-bye.”
“I will. Good-bye, Eleanor.”
I got out and watched her drive off. I wished I had been able to spend more time with her and wondered if she would have let me if I’d had the time. I then put those thoughts away and went inside. I showed my driver’s license and credit card and picked up the key to my rental. It was a Ford Taurus and I had to get used to being low to the ground again. On my way out of rent-a-car row I saw a sign with an arrow pointing the way to Paradise Road. I thought that everybody needed a sign like that. I wished that it was that easy.
23
Four hours and a nonstop drive across the desert later I was in the tech lab at Biggar amp; Biggar. I took the memory card from my pocket and handed it to Andre. He held it up and looked at it and then looked at me as though I had just put used gum in his hand.