Fugitive Nights (1992) Read online

  Lynn was startled by a roadrunner scampering past with topknot trailing. The bird seemed to be slowed by a full tummy, perhaps from attacking and consuming a sidewinder. Lynn could never make much of a case for the rattlers.

  Once when he'd been part of a team of cops looking for the remains of a dope dealer who'd welshed on a deal with the wrong buyer, he had occasion to roam the canyons of south Palm Springs where he'd encountered a gunnysack hanging from a green-barked paloverde tree. Lynn had been about to open the sack when an old desert rat appeared from nowhere yelling at Lynn to keep his damn hands off his goods. The sack, Lynn later discovered, contained a dozen speckled rattlers! The desert rat told him that he expected to get pretty nice bucks when he sold the snakes to makers of antivenin.

  In twenty minutes, Clive Devon, along with the young woman and the dog, hiked into a narrow canyon where ancient earthquakes, followed by centuries of erosion, had honeycombed the Cenozoic cliffs into tormented ghostly shapes. Furrows and chiseled gashes in the rock added ominous shade. Even the early spring flora contributed to the spookiness of that shadow-shrouded canyon. The crooked fingers of the ocotillo plant writhed spidery in the wind that moaned ceaselessly, echoing off the canyon walls.

  Lynn crouched behind a dune, next to a beaver tail cactus that would soon have a lovely magenta blossom guarded by punishing spines. The sand was blowing in Lynn's face and his sunglasses weren't keeping all of it out of his eyes. He wiped his face on his shoulder.

  When he looked up through the binoculars, he saw that the picnickers were standing beside an ironwood tree. The dog wagged its tail but didn't approach a man who stood on the other side of the tree. The girl stayed a few steps back with the dog, but Clive Devon advanced and spoke to the man for several minutes. They all turned then and began moseying back the way they'd come, back in the direction of Lynn Cutter.

  And the man came with them, back to the Range Rover, while Lynn had to retreat to his Rambler. The man wore a baseball cap and a dark windbreaker, so Lynn thought he might be the same man he'd seen at the cafe buying a newspaper. The man was now carrying a red bag.

  Chapter 6

  By the time the Range Rover was returning to the cafe by the Salton Sea, the wrecked Ford was long gone, and the half-hearted search for a bald hitchhiker had petered out. Because the bald man had asked directions to Palm Springs the detectives had alerted the other police agencies in the valley, even though they figured the guy was headed home to Mexico.

  Detectives at the sheriff's department had little or nothing to go on as far as the bald man was concerned, except for a bit supplied by the injured campesinos, who said that the man did indeed have a drooping Zapata moustache and was younger than the cops had first assumed from his hairless pate.

  Both injured farm workers said that the man had only spoken a few words in Spanish and could've been from anywhere. But the words he had spoken were "well said," by which they meant articulate and authoritative. And that he'd looked like a man who, unlike themselves, was used to giving orders.

  At the cafe by the Salton Sea was the rusty Plymouth belonging to the young woman with long hair. Lynn Cutter was afraid to try driving past to get her license number. He decided to park his Rambler on the Mecca end of the highway, and watch them through binoculars. The smell of red tide was blowing in his direction, and from a distance the polluted water looked like it had a crust you could walk on.

  He couldn't understand about the guy with the baseball cap. Lynn had assumed that he must have a disabled car on the canyon road and had simply needed a lift to a telephone, yet he hadn't left the Range Rover.

  Before saying goodbye to the woman, Clive Devon knelt down beside the rusty Plymouth and hugged the brown dog. Then he said something to the young woman and she put the reluctant dog into the backseat of her Plymouth. Lynn wondered if Clive Devon and the young woman would've shown more affection if they'd been alone. And he wished he could've gotten the young woman's license number.

  Then, to his surprise, the guy with the baseball cap climbed into the passenger seat of the Range Rover. In a moment, they'd be coming his way on the open road, and Lynn found himself in the position that every one-car surveillance driver hates: He was being followed by his quarry. The Rambler groaned when he stepped on the gas and made a fast U-turn.

  Lynn stayed a hundred yards in front, driving by rearview mirror. He didn't get to drop behind Clive Devon until he was in the town of Thermal, finding a safe place to make a turn and parallel the Range Rover. Once the Range Rover had passed through the city of Coachella and was entering Indio, there was plenty of traffic and the surveillance got easy again.

  Lynn kept expecting Clive Devon to pull over and drop off his passenger, but he did not. He drove at a leisurely speed out of Indio, past Indian Wells Country Club, where part of the Bob Hope Classic was being played, and through Rancho Mirage, which called itself the "home of presidents." That meant home of Gerald Ford, who was a member of every country club in the desert for free, because of a freak accident of history, without which he'd be beaning folks at the Grand Rapids muni-course. They never called the place "home of vice-presidents," though Spiro Agnew lived in exile there.

  Then the Range Rover was out of Rancho Mirage, cruising through Cathedral City, finally entering Palm Springs, and Lynn still couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. Why hadn't he dropped his passenger long before now? Clive Devon didn't unload the guy until he neared downtown.

  Lynn saw the guy with the red bag go to a GTE phone stand at a gas station across from the Alan Ladd hardware store, and Lynn figured maybe he was just a tourist hoping to buy an old movie poster from Shane or The Great Gatsby at the Alan Ladd store. But what the hell had he been doing on foot out there in the canyon?

  For a second or two, Lynn was almost curious enough to turn around and tail that guy. But he stayed with Clive Devon, per instructions of his temporary boss, Breda Burrows.

  His heart was crashing against his breastbone. He was suddenly very frightened, now that he was standing alone on a busy street in Palm Springs, California. He was dripping sweat, and was about to remove his baseball cap to wipe it off when he caught himself just in time. They were looking for a bald man, so he had to wear a hat for the rest of his time in this city.

  He ran across Indian Avenue, realizing halfway that he should have gone to the intersection, to a crosswalk. He wasn't at home now. He'd have to be very much aware of traffic laws.

  Having come this far it would be a tragedy to be caught because he'd failed to cross a street at the right spot.

  He went to the phone stand, keeping his red flight bag pressed against his chest, wanting to get rid of it as soon as possible. He wished he had any color other than high-visibility red, but he couldn't have anticipated the policeman bursting into the rest room like that.

  He'd read the morning news account, in which the policeman said he'd only entered the rest room to relieve himself, that he probably wouldn't have paid any attention to the other man inside. Easy to say now, but what does a policeman in the States do when he sees a man of the Third World get off a private plane and carry a bag to a rest room? Except that the policeman claimed he wasn't even aware of the private plane having landed with engine trouble on its way to who-knew-where.

  He leafed through the yellow pages at the telephone stand while the unplanned events of the previous day blazed through his mind. It was almost impossible to read in English and think in his own language, so he put the phone book on the tray, telling himself to be calm. He'd simply panicked yesterday, and now he had to deal with the unexpected turn. He was a fugitive and that was a fact.

  The fugitive found what he wanted on of the Palm Springs yellow pages. He tore the page from the phone book, folded it, and put it into his jacket pocket. Then he leafed through more pages until he found the listing for used car sales. He took change from his pocket, then cursed. They were the coins he'd been given in the cantina in Mexicali, after he'd received his forged docu
ments. Useless. He had to get some U. S. coins to make calls.

  The fugitive left the coins on the tray and walked toward the gas station just as a Palm Springs police car cruised by. The fugitive ducked behind the gas station until the car had passed, then thought he'd better get into a shop immediately and buy some clothes. He removed a package of one thousand U. S. dollars from the red flight bag. He wished he'd brought a change of clothes for an emergency such as this, but it had been decided by the others that he'd buy his clothing in Palm Springs. They had wanted him to look as much as possible like a tourist.

  He chose to head toward the mountain, and walked north on Belardo Road in the direction of downtown, avoiding both Indian Avenue and Palm Canyon Drive, which he knew from his map and briefing to be busy thoroughfares. He was ready to leap from the pavement at the first sign of a police car.

  Thinking of the police made him regret kicking the policeman so hard. As to the blow that put the man down, reflexes did that. Danger was there, the adversary was identified, and he had put down the adversary just the way he'd been taught. The only deliberate thing was the stomach kick to keep him down long enough to escape. The fugitive was glad that the policeman had not been badly hurt. There was no point in hurting anyone, except for the one he had come here to find.

  When he saw Clive Devon turn into his street in Las Palmas, Lynn Cutter broke off the surveillance and sped back toward the Alan Ladd building, his curiosity killing him. But the guy with the baseball cap was no longer at the phone stand. Lynn got out of his car and went to the phone, looking for what, he didn't know, perhaps a phone number scribbled on the writing tray.

  There were no numbers and no scraps of paper on the tray, but there were four coins that somebody had left. Three were Mexican, the fourth a ten-peseta Spanish coin. Lynn examined that one just to be sure it was Spanish.

  Not knowing why, Lynn put the coins into his pocket and walked toward the Alan Ladd hardware store. He looked inside but the man was i*)t among the customers wandering around. He couldn't afford to waste any more time, so he returned to his Rambler, sped to Clive Devon's house in Las Palmas and parked on the next block. Then he strolled past the Devon house, stopping to peer through the oleander. He was relieved to see that the Range Rover was in the driveway next to Rhonda Devon's silver Mercedes 560SEC.

  When Lynn was finally back in his own car, massaging his aching knees, he began truly regretting that he hadn't broken off the surveillance at the Salton Sea and followed the young woman. He was even sorrier he hadn't indulged his whim and stayed with the guy in the baseball cap.

  The sun was still high, white as bone, and hot, but the sky was streaked with a pearly hint of sunset. Lynn leaned back and closed his eyes. At six o'clock he was startled by a familiar voice. It was Breda Burrows, who had parked behind and walked up on him.

  "Damn!" he said, disoriented. "You scared me!"

  "Next time I'll wear a cowbell," she said with that mean little smile. "What happened today? And don't bother with a description of your wet dream."

  She got in his car on the passenger side.

  "I wasn't asleep."

  "Okay, you always snore on stakeouts. So what happened today?"

  God, the woman had such an irritating grin! Lynn said, "This guy Devon's gonna be harder to trace than the Basque language. How much did you say you were making for this job?"

  "Never mind that," Breda said. "What happened today?"

  Lynn was stalling while he pulled himself together, trying to sneak a peek at his watch, stunned to see it was nearly 6:00 p. M.! All that running and skulking like a goddamn coyote had obviously drained him, except that coyotes had sense enough to hole up in the daytime.

  "The guy has a friend," Lynn finally ttegan.

  "What kind of friend?"

  "A young woman."

  "I'll be damned. Who is she?"

  "I don't know," Lynn said. Then, "Can we drive somewhere and talk? Clive Devon's not going anywhere." He couldn't admit to Breda that he'd been so out cold he didn't know if Clive Devon was at home or surfing in Malibu.

  "We better hang around here this evening," Breda said. "Mrs. Devon said she might go home to L. A. today. If she's gone he might not stay home."

  "Wait here," Lynn said.

  He jumped out of the car and did a very painful jog on water-filled knees to the Devon property. Peeking through the oleander he saw both the silver Mercedes and the black Range Rover. Pausing a moment, he also saw a slender woman in lounging pajamas walk past a window with a drink in her hand. Then he jogged even more slowly back to his Rambler.

  "She's there having a drink," he told Breda. "And she's wearing her Frederick's of Hollywood silkies for beddy-bye. With that drink in her hand she ain't going to L. A. till tomorrow."

  "Okay," Breda said. "Let's go back to the office. I want to hear all about today."

  "The Furnace Room?" he said hopefully. "You can buy me a drink."

  "Not The Furnace Room," she said. "I sat in chicken gravy last time. Do they ever clean that dump?"

  "Couldn't a been chicken," Lynn said. "Wilfred doesn't serve it. Was it sorta sweatsocks gray? I think I know what Wilfred calls it but I dunno what's in it."

  In ten minutes they were seated in the bar of a French restaurant with huge tapestries on the walls, where sauces were identifiable by name and ingredients, not by color. It was a very expensive, quite lovely restaurant that Lynn had never entered in the twelve years he'd lived in Palm Springs. When the valet had taken their cars Breda had to assure Lynn that she'd take care of the tips.

  They sat at the bar and were served by a Belgian in formal attire. One wall of the barroom was lined with low plush banquettes, and the place was bustling with well-heeled drinkers. Lynn doubted that the management needed to reduce prices at happy hour. He figured that when people drank from crystal tumblers and goblets they weren't worrying about price.

  Most of the chic older women were drinking white wine, of course, and Lynn was surprised when, after he ordered Chivas, Breda said, "Two."

  "I'm trying to learn to drink like a P. I.," she explained. "I never did learn to drink like a cop, and all my male partners were so disappointed in me."

  Lynn took a couple of big hits of Scotch, showed her a yum-yum smile, then said, "Okay, here's how my day went. First I followed him down to the Salton Sea. Ever been there?"

  "Not on business," she said. "I've done a few bike rides around there. What was he up to?"

  "Met his squeeze," Lynn said. "They went for a picnic out near Painted Canyon. It was touching. She even brought her doggie along."

  "Did they do anything besides picnic?"

  "He didn't spread anything on the blanket except maybe peanut butter," Lynn said. "And he fed her doggie from his very own sandwich. It was a domestic scene if ever I saw one. After they were through they went for a hike in Painted Canyon."

  Lynn hesitated, finished the drink, and nodded to the bartender for another. Breda noted that the nervy bastard didn't bother to ask if she'd pop for one more.

  After he got his fresh drink, Lynn said, "Only thing is, I wasn't able to get the babe's license number."

  "Shit!" she said. "Why not?"

  "Hey, I was lucky he didn't make me! It's open country out there. I got enough sand in my shoes to toilet train a thousand cats!"

  "Okay, but do you know where she lives?"

  "I didn't follow her. You said to stay with his car. He drove her back to the cafe and then went home. But there was a weird part."

  "What?"

  "He wasn't alone. He picked up a guy in Painted Canyon. Devon and the guy drove back to Palm Springs together. He dropped him down by Indian and Ramon Road. Weird."

  "What'd the guy look like?"

  "Dark, maybe Mexican. Husky. Wore a baseball cap and a windbreaker."

  "I wish you'd followed the woman."

  "You told me to stay with Devon."

  "I know."

  "I wish I'da followed the guy with the bas
eball cap."

  "Why?"

  "It bugs me. Who was he?"

  "Some guy that needed a lift."

  "But all the way to Palm Springs?"

  "Maybe he lives in Palm Springs."

  "Then how'd he get to Painted Canyon?"

  "Does the Sun Bus run down there? What difference does it make?"

  "I don't like third parties barging in on a nice clean soap opera is all."

  "I just wish you'd followed the woman."

  "You said that. How about buying me another drink?"

  Breda pushed her tumbler of Chivas toward him. "Here, drink mine," she said with a barely concealed sneer.

  And then her jaw muscles tightened because the son of a bitch turned the lipstick mark the other way before he drank!

  "Okay," he said, "next time I'm using my own judgment.

  If Clive Devon starts picking up mysterious people and I think they oughtta be followed then I'll follow em."

  "I assumed you'd use your own judgment. You've been a cop long enough. By the way, how long have you been on the job?"

  "Thirteen years in this town. Six years before that with San Diego P. D. I came to the desert when I hurt my knee and started getting problems from the dampness down there. Now both my knees're so wrecked I could live in Greenland, it wouldn't make no difference."

  "When's your pension coming through?"

  "Hopefully this month," he said. "That's why I don't want anybody at the department or anywhere else to know I'm running around the desert in places a bighorn wouldn't go. The great giver-of-pensions might have second thoughts about my disability."

  "Going to get a P. I. license after the pension's in the bag?"

  "Why not?" he said. "Anybody can from what I see."

  "How sensitive you are."

  "I wasn't referring to you."

  "Of course you weren't."

  "I don't insult people when they're buying the drinks. Not on purpose."