Fugitive Nights (1992) Page 5

  Two bluesuits from their own division happened to be in the emergency ward taking an ADW report from a poolshark who'd been beaned with a nine ball tossed by a guy he'd hustled out of fifty bucks.

  When the male cops saw the young woman bawling her eyes out, one of them asked Breda, "What's a matter? Did we mace each other by accident and run our mascara?"

  The other said, "What's a matter, we having a little P. M. S. attack, are we?"

  Breda glared at them with her pimp-killer grin, and said, "As far as I'm concerned, P. M. S. comes from PUKEY MEN'S SHIT, YOU HEMORRHOIDS!"

  In the old days, you could just about depend on the guys to call for a female backup every time somebody arrested a fighting-mad dyke who wore leather and spikes and greased-back hair. The guys got off by putting the female officer in the back seat with the dyke and cooing stuff like, "No playing patty-fingers on the way to the station, girlsl"

  And there were citizens who, after calling the police, would gape dumbfounded when a female cop stood on the threshold. They'd usually say, "They sent a woman?" And Breda would usually answer, "Yeah. Don't you feel silly?"

  Rape or sex crimes involving kids usually got kissed off to a female cop. The men would call for them and when they arrived, it was always, "Won't talk to me. Needs a woman's touch. Catch you later. Bye."

  And then the male would be off to the donut shop with the other guys while the female might spend the rest of her watch with a woman or child who might've been abused in ways that came back to you in the night. That was one of the reasons Breda had never used alcohol as a sedative. She didn't want the alcoholic wormies at three a. M., because that bed got awfully crowded when you loaded it with little kids. All those little kids . . .

  She'd worked sex crimes with kiddie victims for such a long time that when she went back to detective duty with grownups, she'd found herself talking like a diaper dick, interrogating forty-year-old burglars and sounding like Mister Rogers: "Now, see, Harry, you have the right to remain silent. Do we under-stannnnnd siii-lent?"

  Those sex crimes that were not filed by the D. A. because of insufficient evidence were often memorable. Like the five-year-old girl with new cigarette burns over old ones, who kept repeating, "I'm a bad girl. Daddy did it cause I'm a bad girl." And that child was put back in the home!

  The wormies at three a. M.: Boss, Vm outta here! I need a vacation!

  When Mommy or Daddy, or Mommy's boyfriend actually killed a child, when she'd attend postmortems with homicide dicks-those from the gag-and-giggle school of corpse-cops--

  they'd always make sure she was with a particular pathologist who liked to post a body like he was doing caesar salad for the pathologist's picnic. No tying things off to keep the bile in place, no way. Just mince, dice and toss. And all that lettuce and cucumber and bell pepper-which were really tiny bits of a former human child-would stick to her sleeves.

  She could deal with the clipping of fingers for hydrating fingerprints, but she hated the smell of burning bone when they sawed off the skull cap. The other corpse-cops knew it, and made sure she was up close and personal.

  It was hard not to retch when they had a "decomp," one covered with enough "rice" to open a live-bait shop. The pathologist would take a swipe at the "rice" and she might find herself wearing a pair of maggots on her lapel.

  How's your tummy? Shall we have enchiladas for lunch or would you like a meatball sandwich?

  There were other kinds of guys, good partners. She thought she was in love with one, a training officer at Wilshire Division. They were married in her rookie year and she got immediately pregnant with their only child. He'd been a decent husband, it's just that he should've been somebody else's husband. They'd both sensed it during their first year together, but by then Lizzy was on the way.

  Her ex-husband had gone on to become a police commander, later had remarried, and had eventually retired to a job as police chief in a small city in Washington. He'd had two other children and saw Lizzy less and less as the years passed, but he'd always sent the child-support payments, and was generous even after Lizzy was eighteen and his obligation was over.

  Breda had never married again and tried not to date cops unless she was absolutely desperately lonely. The last time she was that lonely was shortly before she'd decided to pull the pin and take her pension.

  That guy had been a gorgeous lieutenant who specialized in those intense gazes he thought were real spoon-benders. She recalled an evening in the coffee room at Hollywood Station just before her retirement, when he'd shared with her his opinions and philosophy on police discipline.

  It seemed that one of the officers had been caught in his patrol car getting serviced supremely by a cop groupie who had balled half the night watch and most of the morning watch during her groupie career. In that the groupie was not a professional prostitute, Breda's lieutenant thought that firing Charlie would be a harsh penalty. After all, in the good old days (cops were big-time reminiscers) even he'd committed an indiscretion or two. Wink!

  Breda said to the gorgeous lieutenant, "It's okay with me if good old Charlie skates, but tell me something, what if it was one of our female officers? How would you feel then?"

  And the lieutenant, an otherwise liberated supervisor, made it plain that he'd never entertained such a thought. A female officer? Female officers were different. He'd always been pleased with his reputation as a nonsexist police supervisor (pro-choice all the way), but Breda Burrows had just pitched one up there that he couldn't hit. The fact is, it was unthinkable.

  "That's unthinkable!" he said.

  "Why is it?" she asked. "What if it was me out there in uniform listening to Ravel's Bolero on a ghetto blaster, getting done by some guy in the front seat of a radio car? Would you think I should be fired?"

  He blinked and stroked his handsome jaw and stared at Breda Burrows, this woman he'd dated! as though she'd just offered to jerk off a gerbil. He had to come up with an answer, especially after the first words to slide out of his mouth had been the dreaded, sexist: "It's different."

  "Why do you think it's different?" Breda persisted, with the little grin that annoyed him.

  "Because . . ." He turned pomegranate-pink and sputtered, "because . . . your trousers would be down! And your Sam Browne! You'd be disarmed! And out of uniform!"

  Breda decided to turn it off, all the bad-time memories, when she drove her Z into the driveway. Her house was a three-bedroom stucco with a composite roof, air-conditioning, two and a half bathrooms, and a yard big enough for a pool that she couldn't afford to build. Seven thousand pools around there and she had to cool off with a lawn sprinkler, but at least the house was in Cathedral Canyon, well protected from the winter winds that could blow the paint off a car and the tits off a kangaroo rat, or so the realtor had told her when she sold Breda the house back in the protected cove of the mountain range. There was no big church with spires or Gothic arches in Cathedral City. The town got its name in 1850 when an army engineer-probably drinking fermented cactus juice-saw something in the canyon that resembled a cathedral. But it was an affordable town for cops.

  Breda decided she needed a bike ride, and there was enough daylight left. Aside from her Datsun Z, her other luxury in life was a Tour de France-class custom bicycle with a Holland frame. She'd saved up a long time for the bike, and had ridden it in a fifty-mile endurance run down in Baja California, from Rosarito Beach to Ensenada. Every time she'd passed a shabby Mexican kid watching that race she'd wondered if her $2,500 bike was worth more than the shack the kid lived in. Gringo guilt had ridden on her shoulder that day and slowed her down a bit.

  Even in a pack of bikers she felt alone, and that was good. Breda's favorite place to ride was in the Indio Hills, where she could gain downhill speeds up to fifty miles per hour. But she never went biking without a seat pack. Her .38 two-inch revolver was in the pack.

  Once, while biking on a lonely road near Desert Hot Springs, two dirtbag rednecks in a raggedy pickup truck had played
bumper tag, forcing her off the road. They were the kind that rushed out to shoot a spotted owl as soon as it was designated an endangered species in order to get theirs while they had the chance. The kind who hung signs that said "Rattlesnake Farm" on their front gates to ensure privacy, as though anyone wanted to see them in the first place.

  One of them had slouched toward her with a beer in his hand, and said, "Hey, pretty baby, you're a long ways from home. Put that bike in the back. We'll take you where you're goin."

  Before she could get her bike back onto the asphalt, the other guy, whose only clean flesh was along his upper lip where he'd been licking off the suds, said, "Get in the truck, sweet stuff."

  Breda heaved a sigh and opened her seat pack. By the time she'd bicycled away that afternoon, they were both lying face down on the sand behind their pickup, fingers interlocked behind their heads, whining about how they were only kidding. She'd told them she realized it was awfully hot, but their radiator had enough water in it and the antifreeze probably didn't taste as bad as some of the swill they'd consumed in their time, and maybe they should keep their traps shut or she just might forget to keep reminding herself that they were all fellow mammals here.

  She'd flattened two tires and took their ignition key with her, tossing it away in the desert. It was actually one of the most enjoyable biking experiences she'd ever had and she'd slept like a baby that night.

  Breda Burrows was feeling a lot better about things when, wearing her black Coolmax shirt and black Lycra pants, she bicycled out Ramon Road to Bob Hope Drive, then right, past Dinah Shore Drive to Frank Sinatra Drive, where she made another right and stopped at the oleander-encircled estate of publisher Walter Annenberg, who threw the biggest New Year's bash in the desert, one that Ronald Reagan never missed.

  Two private guards were out front, and Breda, covered with a fine layer of sweat and feeling euphoric, yelled to them, "Again he didn't invite me on New Year's Eve!"

  The guards grinned and waved, and with her earth-brown hair streaming from under the helmet, Breda sprinted past Tamarisk Country Club, the home of Old Blue Eyes himself. Then she was back on Highway 111 pumping toward Cathedral City, no longer feeling all nutted up from her encounter with Lynn Cutter.

  Breda overtook a sheriff's unit cruising in the slow lane, and instantly felt a pang of camaraderie. The female deputy was pretty, and as young as Breda had been when she'd started on the job. Breda wondered how long it would be before they put an attractive kid like that into vice duty, the John Squad, make her go out there on the avenue in tight pants and spike heels and listen to all those sweaty guys with wives and kiddies at home, eager to pay twenty dollars for a head job or forty for straight sex or fifty for both.

  She wanted to say something to the young woman, but what was there to say? It was not just a job, it was a way of life.

  Well, she was something else now. What had Lynn Cutter called her? Fuzz that was. And she had to earn a decent living to supplement her pension, because a kid at Berkeley was damned expensive, even with her ex-husband helping out.

  Since coming to Palm Springs she'd become acutely aware that lots of the poshest dwellings she passed on her bike rides served as second-or third-home getaway destinations for owners who might only visit them a couple of times a year. She wondered what it cost them to keep their house plants alive.

  Good things! she told herself, pumping past Date Palm Drive, sprinting toward a glass of iced tea. Good things! Think of good things!

  The thing she thought about was that the tropical tan uniform the deputy wore was undramatic, that the sheriffs department and Palm Springs P. D. ought to change color to police blue.

  Blue was much more slenderizing.

  At the end of the duty tour that day the sergeant of Nelson Hareem thought he recognized something in the eyes of the little redhead as he talked about the hunt for the fugitive who'd cold-cocked the deputy at the airport.

  By now, the residents of the house near Lake Cahuilla had come home and discovered that their house had been entered and their Ford sedan was gone. The cops figured that the burglar-car thief had to be the airport guy, and the description of the stolen white Ford was broadcast every thirty minutes or so to all the law enforcement agencies in the valley.

  "You are gonna beat feet to your little home, aren't you, Nelson?" the sergeant asked with a worried look. Maybe it was the fact that Nelson's haircut looked frizzy and wild. Nelson was giving off an aura you could trip over.

  "Sure, Sarge," Nelson told him innocently. "Why wouldn't I?"

  "You wouldn't do something really goofy, would you? Like trying to get in on the search for the airport guy? I mean, while you're off duty?"

  "Of course not, Sarge," the carrot-top cop promised, with a baby-face smile that scared the crap out of every supervisor he'd ever had.

  The sergeant was the kind of guy who never did anything off duty, except help his wife sell Tupperware. He asked, hopefully, "Isn't there someone at home waiting? Someone to help you chill out when you start getting that Robocop feeling? You look like you could set off smoke alarms."

  "I jist live alone with my goldfishes, Sarge," Nelson answered affably.

  "You got that certain look in your eye," the sergeant said. "Like you might go out and do something . . . worrisome. You don't own an assault rifle, do you?"

  "I learned my lesson, Sarge," Nelson promised. "I don't wanna finish my career in the Legion. Can't speak French."

  "Good night then, Nelson," the sergeant said, doubtfully.

  And of course, the little cop put on his civvies, jumped in his Jeep Wrangler, and raced straight for the Sheriff's Department in Indio, where he hoped to gather some clues he could work on the next day.

  When somebody assaulted a cop like that, it was a big deal, a lot worse than a murder of a mere civilian. Everyone got stoked and wanted a piece of the son of a bitch and would be very appreciative of the cop that bagged him. Nelson Hareem had big-time fantasies about being that cop.

  Sliding the Wrangler into the parking lot he spotted a deputy he knew, a Latino named Morales who was arriving in his black-and-white patrol car.

  "Half-Nelson!" Morales yelled, when Nelson jumped out of his Jeep with his tape deck blasting. "What're you doing here?"

  "How about the bald guy, Morales?" Nelson asked, leaning in the window. "Any leads?"

  "Yeah, he throws a Mike Tyson left hook and kicks like Uncle Bubba's ten-gauge. And he knows how to hot-wire a car."

  "Got a better description yet?"

  "Naw. The pilot never saw it coming and the mechanic in the hangar, he didn't pay no attention. Didn't even notice the guy's face. Just has the impression of a husky bald Mexican. We're guessing he's middle-aged, but he might be younger. His fringe hair was black. That's all the plumber saw, black sideburns, bald on top, a Zapata mustache and the nine-millimeter. From a muzzle point of view."

  "Nothin else?"

  "Yeah, an Indian kid from the reservation saw him take a can a grease from the plumber's truck and smear it in his mouth and nose. An old desert trick. There's a lotta desert down in Mexico so he might know about that kinda stuff. I figure he's halfway to L. A. by now. Or maybe heading back home after things went so bad at the airport. I bet he's stole another car by now. He's a savvy smuggler, that guy. Oh, and he left the deputy's gun in the abandoned truck."

  "Why would he do that?"

  "Maybe because he had his own gun in the bottom of his flight bag. A bigger 'n better one."

  "Are the people at the house where he stole the Ford sure there wasn't a car key in the kitchen or somewhere?"

  "Positive. He hot-wired it. The guy's resourceful. I bet that flight bag was packed with several keys a heroin. Be pretty neat to take that guy down, wouldn't it?"

  "Yeah!" Nelson Hareem said, and it was a good thing his sergeant couldn't see the little cop's bulging blue lamps.

  The deputy said, "He did another desert trick. The kid saw him take out some pocket change to stick in his
mouth. An old Indian said it diminishes thirst. Called him a man of the desert."

  There was a stand of old tamarisk trees twenty minutes by car from the parking lot where Nelson Hareem was speaking with the deputy before going home to his goldfish. The stolen Ford sedan was parked under the shaggy branches of the tamarisks by a bald man who frightened three migrant workers who'd been camping among the trees, sleeping on a bed of needles.

  The campesinos spoke a few words to the man, who answered in their language, and as soon as they saw he was no threat they returned to their campfire. The bald man urinated in a grape vineyard, climbed into the back seat of the Ford, locked his car doors and went to sleep.

  The only reason that detectives would learn about all of this was that one of the migrant workers was spending his last night on earth, and his friends would need to talk to the police.

  Chapter 5

  His two marriages were part of a rags-to-witches story, Lynn Cutter always said. His first wife, Claudia, had spent him into bankruptcy by finding "little frocks" to wear to Palm Springs restaurants frequented by movie stars, millionaires and swarthy guys with "dapper don" haircuts. But when it came to fancy duds his second wife, Teddi, could spend California out of a recession in a day and a half.

  His marriage to Claudia had lasted eighteen months. She was a good-looking flight attendant based in L. A. who liked to visit the desert every chance she got. Claudia always stayed at a cozy hotel near the Tennis Club in the days when tennis was tops, when developers there wouldn't dream of doing a hotel, condo or country club without top-drawer tennis facilities. Even Cathedral City-at that time a community of blue-collar folks who serviced the resorts-was pouring a lot of concrete for the sport of strings.

  Claudia's favorite hotel was one of the hideaways snuggled up against the mountains. The first time Lynn saw her she was wearing tennis whites, lounging by a pool that reflected a sparkle of sunbeams, framed by a backdrop of mocha desert hillside laced with purple verbena. Enchantment.