Fugitive Nights
Page 19
Country music was blasting from a fair-to-middling sound system and, perhaps due to the Gulf War, “Heroes” was getting a very big play. It was loud enough to’ve made Malcolm howl, if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with steak.
The dozen tables were covered with checked tablecloths, topped by a sheet of plastic so they didn’t have to be washed very often. It was a country version of The Furnace Room, but also featured shuffleboard and snooker tables, both of which were seeing action by the younger patrons, those under the age of fifty. It was one of those places where the barstools are screwed to the floor so you can’t throw them, and you half expected to see sticky curls of paper, studded with fly carcasses, dangling from the ceiling.
Clive Devon sat with his back to the wall, a mug of beer in his hand, beaming at all the desert locals who spoke to him and Malcolm while Jack Graves nursed his beer, thinking that he might return for supper sometime. The steaks were big, the aroma from a greasy kitchen grill was terrific, and the prices were as cheap as he’d seen anywhere in the desert.
At the table by the end of the bar where Jack Graves stood sipping his beer was a trio of eco-freaks with designer cowboy hats and kneeless jeans that looked like hand-me-downs from Devil’s Island.
One of the Snakeweed’s clientele, an old desert rat named Luther, with the biggest lip-load of snuff Jack Graves had ever seen, was regaling the eco-freaks with lore, and they were buying it all, as well as an endless supply of whiskey for the geezer.
“It’s all these city people that cause our problems,” Luther complained to the city people, who nodded somberly. “They come out here towing their ATC’s and run em all over the desert like Patton did with his tanks when he trained out here. You think the bighorn’s the only animal in trouble?”
After the eco-freaks shook their heads, Luther said, “How bout the poor old stick lizards?”
Which got some of the other desert rats at the bar snickering and poking each other.
“The most amazing creature in the entire desert is the stick lizard,” he told them. “Carries a lil stick in his mouth whenever the temperature rises above a hunnerd ’n fifteen degrees. On’y desert creature ta forage for food at high noon. Know how he does it?”
The punch line was worth a dramatic pause, and another shot of bar whiskey which the eco-freaks were only too glad to pay for.
Then Luther said, “When the sand starts burnin his feet, he’ll dig a hole for that stick, ’n he’ll push it vertical in the sand, ’n he’ll climb up it. He’ll jist hang there a few minutes till his feet cool off.” Luther finished his whiskey and said, “Ain’t too many stick lizards left. Definitely endangered.”
Just then a dazzling old gent in olive-green and chrome-yellow golfing duds entered and headed for the bar.
“Hi, Doc,” said the trucker, who was still feeding Malcolm from his plate.
Doc gave Malcolm a scratch, then grabbed his muzzle and opened the dog’s mouth. “That lip healed right up, didn’t it, Malcolm?” he said to the dog. Then he turned to the saloon keeper and said, “Otis, how about a sloe gin fizz?”
“You’re the only guy this side a black ’n white movies that still drinks those things,” Otis said.
“That’s why the world’s gone to hell,” Doc said. He spotted Malcolm’s companion and yelled, “Howdy, Clive!”
Clive Devon smiled and raised his beer mug. After Doc got his drink he walked over to Clive Devon’s table, shook hands and sat down.
Jack Graves moseyed down the bar toward Malcolm. He nodded a howdy to the guys on each side of him and said to the trucker, “Nice big dog you got.”
“Ain’t mine. Belongs to Clive over there.”
“Who’s the other guy?” Jack Graves asked. “I think I played golf with him one time, but I can’t remember his name.”
“That’s Doc Morton. You mighta played with him. He plays every day, now he’s retired.”
The Snakeweed began filling up with Canadian snowbirds, and the Mexican cook in the tiny kitchen couldn’t turn out the steaks fast enough. Pretty soon the cooking smoke was too much for the air-conditioner and things got more obscure than in The Furnace Room on Saturday night. It was the kind of joint where supper was over by eight o’clock, and then there’d be a night of hard drinking for the hangers-on, Jack Graves guessed.
At six-thirty Clive Devon looked at his watch and ordered three steaks with fries, two salads, two orders of garlic toast. Jack Graves ordered a steak sandwich rare and another beer.
When the food arrived at Clive Devon’s table, he cut one of the steaks into bite-size chunks and moved a chair out of the way so Malcolm could dine with him and Doc. The regulars had seen it before. The big brown mongrel put his face in the plate and devoured a twelve-dollar steak. Clive Devon watched Malcolm like a proud daddy, and even Doc offered Malcolm some bites of garlic toast soaked in steak juice.
Jack Graves made an impulsive decision. He carried his plate over to their table and said to both men, “Looks like there’s no place else to sit. Mind if I join you?”
A deal was struck with Nelson Hareem when the three of them walked out of The Furnace Room that evening.
Breda surprised Nelson when she asked him, “What’d you get for Christmas?”
“From who?”
“Whoever buys you Christmas presents.”
“Well, I got a cowboy hat and a burglar alarm,” Nelson said. “The Stetson came from my folks and the burglar alarm from my sister. It’s one a those do-it-yourself alarm deals. I don’t have nothin worth stealin but my sister worries about me.”
“How much do cowboy boots cost?” Breda asked.
“There’s lotsa kinds. Why?”
“Is there a pair you’ve got your little heart set on?”
“I admire the Dan Post peanut-brittle lizard boots,” Nelson said. “But I can’t afford em.”
“How much are they?”
“Three hunnerd ’n fifty bucks.”
“If you promise not to screw up my deal with Clive Devon till I get my fee, I’ll buy you a pair of Dan Post peanut-brittle lizard cowboy boots. Deal?”
“You don’t have to buy me nothin,” Nelson said. “I already decided to do it your way.”
“I want to do it,” Breda said. “Just lay off Clive Devon till I say it’s okay. Okay?”
“Okay,” Nelson said.
“Nelson,” Lynn said, “I been thinking, I gotta tag along for one more day. I kinda got personally involved tonight. I don’t like guys doing slam-jams with my head. Pick me up at nine o’clock tomorrow.”
“Awwwrriiiiiight!” Nelson cried, and before any of them could change their minds he took off, jogging to his Wrangler in his red snakeskin cowboy boots, dreaming of peanut-brittle lizard. “Nine o’clock!” he yelled to Lynn.
When he was gone, Lynn said, “You never said if you wanna have dinner.”
“In The Furnace Room?”
“I’m feeling better but not well enough for that. Someplace nice?”
“I’m really not hungry,” she said.
“How bout a drink then? You ever been to the top a the tram?”
“Never had time.”
“Lemme take you to the top a the tram for a drink,” Lynn said.
“I’ve already had two drinks. That’s my limit when I’m driving.”
“One more won’t hurt,” Lynn said. “And I’ll drive your car. I got a tolerance built up to Furnace Room booze. They could soak me in it and light a match, I’d never burn.”
“Okay, just one drink,” she said.
Lynn Cutter was getting the guilts for what he was trying to do. Of course, he doubted if it would work, but he was getting the guilts. She wasn’t a drinker, and even if she had been, she didn’t know what could happen when you put down a few ounces of booze at the top of the tram. He’d had half a dozen drinks up there one time when a bunch of cops were celebrating a retirement, and they had to carry him to his car. At that altitude he’d felt like he had the bends.
“That’s interesting,” Breda said drowsily, and Lynn could see that she was feeling The Furnace Room booze.
“One time there was a safe job done up there,” Lynn said. “Somebody burned and pried a safe and hauled it all the way down. First thing the dicks did was check the emergency rooms for hernias.”
“Interesting,” Breda said, slurring slightly, and Lynn thought he might not even need the goddamn altitude!
He thought it was time to get personal, so he said, “Guess you date a lotta guys around town, huh?”
“Actually, just about none. I’ve been too busy setting up a business since I moved here.”
“Divorced, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m oh-for-two,” he said.
“Got a steady?” Breda asked.
“Every woman I know’s either old enough to get a discount at the movies or so young they only go for these naked-savage nail-pounders in the hard hats.”
“No in-between ages available?”
“I haven’t found many,” Lynn said, shooting her a tentative look. “Got any kids?”
“One, she’s in college.” Then after a pause, “You?”
“My first wife was a kid, emotionally. Wore braces till she was thirty-two. Had to hide ol’ tinsel-teeth under a table in a lightning storm. My second wife was about as trustworthy as Iraq. You don’t wanna hear about Precious. Lots a women throw their husband’s clothes out in the front yard, right? She cut pieces outta mine before she tossed em. Only woman I ever knew with real imagination like that. Lucky for me neither of them wanted to have my child.”
“Lucky for the child,” Breda said.
“I always thought I coulda done a decent job raising a kid. I ain’t the judgmental type. Life’s knocked that outta me.”
“Guess you won’t be trying marriage a third time?”
“The best laid plan of mouse and man takes a dog-leg left the second you get that license.”
“Then they decide they don’t like you, is that it?”
“Why wouldn’t they like me? They never even knew me,” he said. “Neither one a them.”
The valley station of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway was located three miles from Highway 111 at 2,643 feet above sea level. They arrived just in time to take the last tram car at 8:00 P.M.
There was a gift shop for Palm Springs souvenirs, and a bar at the valley station. Lynn had to use a credit card to pay for the tram tickets, which were $13.95 each. Breda definitely decided she didn’t want dinner up there when she learned that you could buy a ride ’n dine ticket for only four bucks more. She told Lynn that after she’d retired from police work she’d vowed not to have any more four-buck dining experiences.
There were two dozen other passengers taking the last car, and most of them looked like they’d been drinking at least as much as Breda. Lynn remembered the old days when if you wanted an easy drunk-driving arrest you just had to hang around on Highway 111 and catch them coming down.
The tram ride was more impressive in daylight, but plenty thrilling at night. At Lynn’s insistence Breda had taken her wind-breaker from the trunk and draped it over her shoulders. It was possible for the temperature to vary 40 degrees Fahrenheit from the valley floor to the top of the aerial tram.
“I had no idea it was so steep,” Breda said when the car started climbing on the two-inch cable. “It’s straight up.”
“Almost,” Lynn said. “Over a mile vertically.”
Most of the passengers in the enclosed tram car were at the rear of the car hanging on to the handrails, gazing down on the Coachella Valley. The clusters of lights showed that more people lived and played in the desert valley than most people supposed.
The tram car glided with hardly a ripple over the cable that was stretched over five towers, erected by helicopters in the early 1960’s. As they climbed, Lynn could sense that Breda was maybe a bit uneasy. Her body pressed against his, perhaps to steady herself.
“God, look at the stars from here!” she said, and his body felt disturbingly good to her.
“The desert sky,” Lynn agreed.
He looked up at bushels of diamonds scattered on black satin. And the moonlight flooded down behind them from over the mountains onto the snow-patched limestone and granite through which they soared. As they ascended through the crags, Breda could see swirls and marbling in the cliffs, and clumps of palm, yucca and cactus swaying in the whistling freezing wind.
In fourteen minutes they were at the mountain station, at 8,516 feet but still 2300 feet from the peak of Mount San Jacinto, overlooking 13,000 acres of state park wilderness. When they stepped from the car a blast of wind made her glad she’d brought her wind-breaker. They scurried inside the mountain station with other giggling passengers, none of whom were properly dressed for the ride.
Just climbing the steps to the observation area made Lynn a little dizzy, and he could guess how Breda felt even though she was in better shape, a lot better shape. They stepped out onto the observation deck, and the moonlight took her breath away. Thousands of sugar pines—bearers of the world’s longest cones—filled the air with pine scent. There was sycamore up there, and cottonwood, alder, black maple. Even wild grapevine grew on the mountaintop. The cloud shadow on the snow seemed fluorescent.
“One a the reasons we live out here,” Lynn observed.
“Magic!” Breda said.
And then she did lean against him. She might just be giddy from the altitude, he thought.
She was fighting an impulse to be held in his arms. It might just be the cold and the altitude, she thought.
“They got hot butter rum inside,” Lynn said. “Ever tried it?”
“How about Irish coffee?”
“Let’s go,” he said, guiding her to the glass doors.
When they got to the cocktail lounge there were a dozen tables of drinkers and one cocktail waitress serving. Lynn considered sitting at the bar, but thought better of it when he envisioned what a few drinks might do to her. She could fall off.
“I gotta go to the John,” Breda said. “Grab us a table with a view.”
The drinking area of the mountain station didn’t lend itself to viewing, it lent itself to drinking. The decor was faux-alpine, with peg-and-groove flooring, and there were flags from Alpine countries attached to poles extending horizontally from the walls. There were posters from Lucerne, Innsbruck, Grindewald, Zermatt. The chunky cocktail tables and ersatz captain’s chairs were like those you see all over California in medium-priced restaurants where booze is a big item.
When the waitress came to the table, Lynn said, “Irish coffee and Scotch on the rocks.”
“Baileys or Jameson’s for the Irish coffee?”
“Jameson’s,” Lynn said. “Double, okay?”
“Okay,” the waitress said.
When Breda got back from the restroom, Lynn actually made a feeble attempt to stand up, causing Breda to say, “Don’t overdo it. Too much gallantry makes me flutter my eyelashes and I’m not wearing them tonight.”
“You don’t need em,” Lynn said, gazing for a moment at her electric blues. “Your eyelashes’re almost as thick as Jack Graves’.”
“Wonder what he’s up to,” Breda pondered.
When the waitress brought the drinks, Lynn said to her, “Run a tab.”
Breda sipped the hot Irish coffee. “Wow! By EPA standards this oughtta blow up!”
“The altitude makes the alcohol jump out and seem strong,” Lynn lied. “There’s a reason for it but I forget what it is.”
“So,” Breda said, “Nelson’s not gonna run out and buy a terrorist-killing rocket launcher or anything, right?”
“I think he’ll have to let loose of that one,” said Lynn. “Arab terrorists don’t usually terrorize tombstone c
ompanies and mortuaries. This deal’s about something else.”
“Any idea?”
“Nada. Zip. Zero. I think we gotta talk to John Lugo to see what he knows about Francisco V. Ibañez. I doubt the car rental angle’s gonna work. If Ibañez rented a car I bet he wouldn’t put the right hotel on the rental agreement.”
“His I.D.’d have to be good,” Breda said. “And he’d need a good credit card to rent a car.”
“There’s no question in my mind, this guy’s gonna have whatever he needs. He knows how to hot-wire a car. He knows how to get information and he’ll do anything he has to do to get it. He sure as hell knows how to fight. So far he hasn’t wanted to kill anybody but I’ll bet he can do that real good too.”
“You’re positive he’s the same guy you saw through the binoculars down in Painted Canyon?”
“Without the stash,” Lynn said, nodding. “It was him.”
Lynn noticed that after her Irish coffee cooled, Breda drank it easily.
“This stuff isn’t bad,” she said.
“Warms you right up,” Lynn agreed. “Think I’ll have one if you’ll go for another.”
“One more,” she said, and he saw that her eyes weren’t quite focusing. The high-altitude drinks on an empty stomach were even causing him a few problems. Her freckle was a bit fuzzy.
While Lynn and Breda were busy getting bombed almost two miles above sea level, Jack Graves was still on his second beer and cold sober, watching a young cowboy and a middle-aged woman slow-dancing between the shuffleboard and the snooker tables to “Heroes and Friends” by Randy Travis.
By then, Jack Graves was well acquainted with Malcolm the dog, Doc the vet, and Clive Devon, in that order. The steak was pretty good, and he’d already heard about thirty-three golf jokes from the retired veterinarian.
All of a sudden Clive Devon looked at his watch. “Well, gentlemen, it’s time for Malcolm and me to cut trail.”
“Good to’ve seen ya, Clive,” Doc said, reaching over the table to shake hands.
“Nice to meet you, Jack,” said Clive Devon, shaking hands with the man who’d dogged him unobserved for thirteen hours.