Before the friends left the airport to go to dinner that night, Jackie Cochran called on the phone.

"How'd the trial go?" she asked anxiously. "I'm terribly sorry I couldn't have been there. My secretary sent me your message asking me to be a character witness, but I was in London and just got back and got it."

"I won't know until tomorrow morning," Barbara replied.

"The judge will make a ruling then whether I get custody of Tim or his grandmother does. But I don't have a good feeling about it."

"What's the judge's name?" Jackie asked.

"Calvin Collins. I think his middle initial is R, for Rat."

"Tell you what. I'll talk to Floyd. He's been with me in London. He's out by the pool now, talking more business with Howard. He may be able to think of something."

Barbara left a phone number for Luigi's, the restaurant she and her friends were going to, in case either Jackie or Floyd wanted to call her back.

Three hours earlier by Pacific time zone, while Barbara and her friends had dinner in Chicago, Floyd Odlum and Howard Hughes sat in bathing suits under a sun umbrella. It was beside the Olympic-sized swimming pool on the Cochran-Odlum ranch near Indio, California where Jackie Cochran's husband did most of his business.

"Saw The Outlaw," Odlum told Hughes. "Not a bad movie. That Jane Russell! Wow!"

"Why'd you see it?" Hughes asked, his long legs stretched out in front of him as he sat at a round cabana table across from his host.

"Two reasons."

"Thought so."

Jackie came out to tell her husband that their friend Barbara had just called.

"She's worried. The judge rules tomorrow morning whether she gets custody of her godson or his grandmother does. She doesn't think she'll win. Her lawyer thinks the judge is prejudiced in favor of the grandparents. He's learned the grandfather plays golf with the judge and their wives sit on a Senior League fund-raising committee together. Is there anything you can do?"

"Who's the judge?" Odlum asked from behind dark sun glasses.

"Calvin R. Collins."

Odlum chuckled. "Old Cal Collins? That reprobate still alive? Hell, tell Barbara not to worry. I'll make a few phone calls. Really, tell her to start painting the bedroom blue for her son's arrival at home."

While Jackie went back into the house to make a phone call to reassure Barbara, her husband went to work on his poolside telephone. First he called a friend in Kenilworth, then a building contractor, then a store in Chicago. In less than an hour, he and Howard Hughes were back talking their own business again.




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