Fugitive Nights (18 page)

“Lynn knows Palm Springs a lot better than I do,” Jack Graves said to Nelson. “I'd trust Lynn's instincts.”

Lynn said, “If it's Middle East types you're after, an Iranian recently bought a bar in Cathedral City that caters to a gay clientele.”

“Maybe it wouldn't hurt to ask a few questions around there tomorrow,” Nelson suggested.

“Why not?” Lynn said. “But if we have to do lunch, you might end up being the catch of the day.”

When Nelson went to the bar to fetch more drinks, Lynn said, “Jack, I know how cute he is and all, but I wish you wouldn't encourage him with all these crime stories. He already thinks everyone he meets in Palm Springs is Mafia if their name ends with a vowel.”

Lynn didn't fail to notice that Breda was getting a glow. He figured her for a three-drink woman, and she'd already downed two.

She said, “If you don't get away from Nelson after tomorrow, we'll have to make a new arrangement. How's he keep his job, all the trouble he gets in?”

“He must have a witness pool that'll swear to anything he says,” Lynn answered. “One thing I know, he's fearless. And me, I'm afraid a guys that ain't afraid. Guys like Nelson're a greater danger to society than MTV. I like him, but he wouldn't know the difference between dandruff and date rape. How about another Chardonnay, Breda?
I'll
buy a round.”

That shocked her so much that she accepted, even though she'd had enough. Then to her dismay, when Nelson returned to the table, he said, “Y'know, Breda, I think I can help you with your Devon case.”

“Can't afford any more employees,” Breda said. “Eastern Airlines went under because of too big a payroll.”

“Oh, I wouldn't charge you nothin,” Nelson said. “It's jist that I think your Clive Devon has a definite connection with my …”

“Smuggler-terrorist-mafioso,” Lynn said. “Actually, your guy's a double hyphenate.”

“Whatever,” Nelson said. “Anyways, some streets out there, there's so many motels he could use a different one every night. Maybe Clive Devon's the key to it. Maybe our smuggler phoned Clive Devon.”

“About what?” Breda challenged, and Lynn definitely liked her better with booze in her. She didn't show that odd little grin so often. He couldn't take his eyes off the bittersweet chocolate freckle next to her lip.

“I don't know, but for starters, what if he told Devon about what went down at the airport? And that he couldn't go to their …”

“Rendezvous is the word you want,” Lynn said. The freckle glistened now when a drop of wine bathed it. And she
licked
the freckle!

“Yeah, rendezvous. Maybe the guy told Devon he couldn't risk drivin to Palm Springs in a hot car, and that Devon should come pick him up.”

“In Painted Canyon?” Breda asked, incredulously.

“Well, it worked, didn't it?” Nelson said. “Nobody spotted him.”

“What the hell could he have that Clive Devon wants or needs?” Breda asked.

“Everybody needs somethin,” Nelson said.

“What do
you
need, Nelson?” Breda asked.

“Shade.”

“Shade?”

“Yeah, I can't do another summer down the other end a the valley. You can tell how many days a guy's worked by countin the sweat rings on his shirt. There's
no
shade. At least up here in Palm Springs you got the big mountain for afternoon shade. I gotta have shade. I need number seventy-five sunscreen and it don't go that high.”

“Shade,” Breda repeated. It was so simple. Nelson Hareem just wanted a little shade!

“I'm itchy all the time down there,” Nelson explained. “Athlete's foot, jock itch. By September it'll feel like I'm wearin barbed-wire Jockey shorts. It got so dry last summer, all my elastic died and my shorts kept fallin down.”

Jack Graves put his hand on the young cop's arm, saying, “I'll do my best tomorrow, Nelson. If I can tail Clive Devon, and he teams up with your dark bald smuggler, I'll get a hold of you. I'd like you to get your shade.”

Breda was looking at Jack Graves, and Lynn could plainly see that she liked him. But he was no longer jealous. Jack was too troubled to even notice that exquisite freckle near the lip of Breda Burrows.

Nelson finished his beer and said, “Well, maybe we should go home and get a fresh start tomorrow, Lynn.”

“I know it's time for
me
to go,” Breda said.

“You okay to drive?” Lynn asked, hopefully.

“Of course!” she said, indignantly.

“I'll be on stakeout in front of Clive Devon's house by six,” Jack Graves promised Breda.

“Six-thirty's early enough, Jack,” she said.

As Lynn Cutter was getting to his feet, wincing from pain in his right knee, Nelson said, “I'd like to suggest somethin and let you all think about it tonight. It might sound crazy.”

“Nothing crazy about you,” Lynn said. “Fourteen percent of adult Americans say they've seen UFO's.”

“I want you to consider that maybe he had somethin in that flight bag that none of us thought about.”

“I'm afraid to ask,” said Breda.

“Maybe he had a detonator and a nice big blob of Semtex,” Nelson said.

“Semtex?”

“Same stuff that brought down the Pan Am flight over Scotland,” said Nelson. “Maybe the Dan Quayle idea isn't so far off. Or maybe there's another big politician here for the Bob Hope Classic. There usually is.”

Breda and Lynn gaped at one another, while Nelson silently showed them his agreeable expectant grin.

Lynn said, “Well, Nelson, I'll have to sleep on that one. Semtex, huh? I gotta admit one thing: that stuff'd kill a politician faster'n an endorsement from Jesse Jackson.”

S
he owed herself a bath like this one, Breda thought. She'd been soaking in bubbles and bath oil for more than an hour, refilling the tub every time the water got tepid, and to hell with California's water shortage. The desert valley had underground water.

There was no getting around it, she
needed
Rhonda Devon's five thousand dollars, less what she'd have to pay Lynn Cutter and Jack Graves. But Breda was beginning to doubt that tailing Clive Devon to picnics and swim parties with Blanca Soltero's daughter was going to resolve anything. Maybe they were just friends.

Breda had been toying again with the idea of having Lynn pose as a patient in need of Clive Devon's urologist. Even if he didn't actually give a semen sample for a fertility check, he was smart enough to interrogate a receptionist, and might learn something about Clive Devon's link to a Beverly Hills sperm bank.

Lizzy needed six hundred dollars next week to cover room and board for a month, and at least another two hundred for her birthday present. Breda thought it best to send money on all holidays and birthdays, because Lizzy needed too many things for her mother to risk buying unnecessary gifts.

Another twelve hundred was due for the home mortgage, and a thousand dollars in office rent was due. Her landlord was the kind of guy who would tip a parking attendant fifty cents and expect to be thanked for it. When she'd complained about her rent the old geek had rolled his watery eyes, leaned over his desk until she was breathing his ghastly cologne and said, “Breda, we could work out something, you and me.”

Breda cooled him down by saying, “Melvyn, I'm going to have to trim your nose hair if this conversation is to continue. I've painted my kitchen table with smaller brushes than that.”

The crap a woman alone had to put up with to stay in business!

Breda's wildest hope was that Jack Graves would tail Clive Devon to a tryst and videotape it with the camera she was going to provide. She felt certain that if she had absolute proof of a lover, Rhonda Devon would be satisfied enough to confront her husband and deal with the sperm bank question on her own. By now, Breda was certain that the sperm bank
must
have something to do with an heir and money.

She was also sure that, in her own strange way, Rhonda Devon wanted to keep her husband even though she probably had more affairs than the Rolling Stones, and probably with both sexes. Breda hadn't forgotten the way her client had looked at her while drinking that martini. Maybe it wasn't exactly love that Rhonda Devon had for him, but a need for something more than his money.

Well, it was silly to try to understand people who were that rich. They
were
different, Breda was sure of it. So she'd be there in the morning with the video camera and hope that Jack Graves might get the chance to use it. She had faith in him.

Jack Graves. Breda wondered if he and his wife had split up before or after the shooting of the child. She hoped it was before, that a wife wouldn't abandon a man after something like that. He wasn't the first cop to get involved in that kind of a shooting. She could've done it herself once.

Breda and two male detectives had been attempting to serve a felony warrant for murder on a gangbanger at a housing project in Watts. They believed he was at home, but nobody answered their knock at 1:10
A.M.
One of the detectives slipped the lock with a credit card and all three entered, guns drawn. Breda took the back bedroom. She heard footsteps. She wheeled and aimed! It was a rabbit.

A white, pink-eyed rabbit was hopping around a bedroom in the ghetto of Los Angeles. There was rabbit shit everywhere, but no suspect. She'd come within an ounce of trigger pull of blowing that bunny's ears off and a lot more. The rabbit stood in front of an infant lying on the floor in a nest of blankets, where she'd been left by her addict mother.

According to Lynn, Jack Graves had killed a twelve-year-old Mexican kid. His bunny had been a human child. Maybe Lynn was right, that getting out of the mobile home and back into something that at least approximated police work would help him. But Breda didn't think it would.

She'd worked with a cop who had the same look as Jack Graves. Stan McAffee, her old partner, used to complain of migraines for which they could find no physiological source. She'd liked Stan, everyone did. They'd go to ball games, movies, even out to dinner. She'd allowed herself to have a belated romance with him, but it was too late. The headaches had grown unbearable, or so he claimed. Three weeks after retiring from LAPD, he'd swallowed The Big .38 Caliber Aspirin.

She'd cried her eyes out at his funeral when the solitary police bagpiper played a somber march while they lowered the casket. Stan had eyes like Jack Graves.

When he got back to his mobile home in Windy Point, Jack Graves carefully watered all his indoor plants. Today was the day to do it, but he hadn't because he'd been busy helping Breda Burrows. He'd have to set the alarm for 5:30
A.M.
to allow himself enough time for a bowl of cereal and two cups of coffee. He wouldn't have time to read the paper but he could take that with him. While sitting in his car on Clive Devon's street he'd probably have lots of time to read the paper. He did everything carefully, meticulously. He'd developed an overriding need for order.

The yip yip yip of coyotes. Then a keening, almost lost in the wind. Then more coyote voices, a pack of twelve sounding like a hundred. Jack Graves opened the door and stepped out into the desert night to listen. The wind was howling down the pass and the moon flooded the foothills with white light. And there was a white glaze across the sky but beyond it he could see the dipper. Perhaps the brooding wind or the eerie light was stirring the wild hearts of the little desert wolves. They sounded deliriously happy.

The coyotes were full of themselves all right, singing their songs, wild
young
songs. Jack Graves felt old, and cold to the bone. His teeth clicked together when he walked shivering back inside the mobile home.

The alarm clock was set. He was prepared for tomorrow. Before going to bed he scooped coffee into the automatic coffee maker and poured water from a plastic bottle into the tank, setting the timer for 5:20
A.M.
When he put the plastic bottle back into the cupboard he slammed the cupboard door on his fingers.

He cried out, ran to the sink and held his throbbing fingers under cold water. The blood surfaced black, and spread to the size of a bullet wound. He thought he'd probably lose the fingernail. Jack Graves hoped he could sleep with the pain. He was becoming so clumsy that he wondered if, at age forty-six, he was developing a neurological disorder of some kind. So many accidents.

But he slept less fitfully than usual that night. Somehow, the pain was comforting.

The ten o'clock news hadn't ended by the time Nelson Hareem got home to his bachelor apartment in Indio. Nelson went into the bedroom and took off his T-shirt, then went into his kitchen, the size of a large bathtub, and fixed himself a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. Then he switched channels to CMT, since country music was his only passion outside of police work. While Travis Tritt sang “Put Some Drive in Your Country,” Nelson dunked the sandwich into the milk, then watched a commercial for mail-order toothpaste that claimed to give you a smile that movie stars paid thousands of dollars to get. He dunked the peanut butter sandwich again. His ex-girlfriend, Billie, had said it was uncouth to dunk, but he'd grown up dunking and couldn't quit.