It was quiet inside. He took the opportunity to put his pants on, but he looked awful with his belly hanging out. He put on a pajama top, and said, “Breda! Would you like a little drink a water? And an aspirin?”
Then the door opened and she came out, paler than Denny O’Doul, but seeming more sober than before. She stormed by him and headed for the staircase.
He followed behind and said, “Breda, you ain’t being reasonable. This is not such a terrible thing, anybody would tell you that!”
“If you mention this night to a living soul I will sue you!” she said, pausing on the staircase.
“Sue me?” he croaked. “You don’t need to. All I own is a tennis racquet with busted strings that I haven’t used since my first wife boogied and my knee blew out! You can have it! And my new shock absorbers I got at the swap meet!”
Even shaky and white as salt, with her hair messed up and her eyes all swollen, he thought she still looked great. “I wouldn’t tell nobody,” he said. “Look, we’re real close on the Ibañez thing, and I think we gotta see that one through. Nelson, me and you.”
“And why would you think that matters to me?”
“Why? Because we’re cops. Sort of. I mean we used to be cops and we’re on to something and it’s important and we all know it. And we’re gonna wrap up the Clive Devon thing too, I promise.”
“I said I’d pay you.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, unconvincingly. Christ, he was down to his last twenty bucks!
“All right,” she said. “I’ll see it through, and then I don’t want you to ever cross my path again.”
“Breda, I ain’t all that weird!” he cried. “I mean, I don’t go around putting rattlers in mailboxes! My entertainment consists of hanging around with coupon-clippers at The Furnace Room, most of em on walkers! I say stuff to women like, ‘Gee, you look swell today, Agatha!’ So how depraved can I be?”
As she descended the staircase again and was clicking across the marble foyer, it was his turn to feel a bit angry and indignant. Now that he wasn’t going to be shot dead his feelings were hurt too, goddamnit!
Besides, back there in the bedroom, somebody was singing: “Talk Back Tremblin’ Lips.”
Deciding to do just that, he yelled, “I didn’t do anything so awful! Whaddaya want from a guy before he brings you home? His old handcuff key on a gold chain, or what?”
She slammed the door so hard a painting fell off the wall and cartwheeled down the staircase. It was one of those crappy prizefight scenes that the owner of the house was so proud of. But it was an original, not a litho, so Lynn hoped he could reglue the ugly frame together.
As he staggered back to bed he thought of how they were, all of them! Their goofy heads full of female litter! There was more mess and litter in her head than you could shovel off the floor of a sorority house! She was squirrely, wacko, batty!
He fell onto the waterbed and had to endure a nauseating rock and roll for a few seconds. When the bed quieted down he knew he wouldn’t be going back to sleep for hours. Lynn stared at the ceiling, furious at the world. Matraca Berg was singing country blues.
I been snagged, I been hoooooked …
How many years did Breda think they had left, the two of them? You’d think somebody her age would behave like a sensitive compassionate grownup!
Oh, my God, what’s my world coming toooooo?
I got it baaaaaaad, for you.
His head hurt and he was trying not to vomit. His ears were still ringing where she’d slugged him. He had to get up in the morning and face Nelson Hareem. And the country blues made him want to cry! His heart ached!
Oh, my God, what’s my world coming tooooo?
I got it baaaaaad, for you.
How did they know? How did those goddamn redneck country hicks always know just what the fuck he was feeling?
Jack Graves was awake at 3:00 A.M., but it had nothing to do with drinking. He’d stayed at the Snakeweed Bar & Grill talking to the veterinarian for two hours, but never even finished the second glass of beer. Doc, however, drank lots of beer and three more sloe gin fizzes, which Jack Graves had been glad to buy.
The old vet was thrilled to be regaling such a willing listener with every golf story he knew. Doc promised to sponsor Jack Graves at his country club if he was serious about joining, but he warned Jack Graves about the frustrations associated with golf, and that golf spelled backwards is flog.
And through all the drinking and the golf lore, Doc had never noticed the dozens of subtle questions that Jack Graves would slide into the middle of a golf tale, questions about Clive Devon, most of which Doc answered freely, anxious to get to the next golf anecdote.
After Jack Graves was certain that Doc had had more than enough, he’d asked his questions more directly. Doc was by then a fast friend to this neophyte golfer, and only too happy to answer after a boozy admonition not to tell anyone else about Clive Devon’s little secret, even though Doc had told all of it before to half the customers in the Snakeweed.
At midnight, Jack Graves was back home in Windy Point, standing out behind his motor home listening for the coyote pack, disappointed that they weren’t hunting in his range that night. He did hear an owl and even thought he heard the sound of a rattler in the brush. It was extremely unlikely in winter, but he walked toward the brush and obeyed an irrational impulse. He kicked at it, and there was a sound of scurrying. There were desert creatures that could imitate rattlers to frighten away predators, and it was probably one of them. Despite the dangers in the desert, Jack Graves was without fear, without that kind of fear.
He knew that he should feel happy about what he’d accomplished. Breda and Lynn would be thrilled when he told them what he knew about Clive Devon. It pleased him to think of helping them, but he still didn’t feel happy. On the contrary, he felt very uneasy, and he noticed that his palms were clammy. He wiped them on his jacket as he listened for the coyotes who never came.
He was lying awake at the same time Lynn Cutter was lying awake, but Jack Graves was not listening to country blues. He was indulging a very unhealthy compulsion. Before they’d given him his stress pension he’d been warned by a psychiatrist that if unsummoned images swept over him, that was one thing, but he must not probe the wound. A person could cause a deadly infection, the psychiatrist had warned him, picking at wounds.
Yet he was doing it, summoning ghosts. He listened for coyotes, anything to distract him, but there was only wind out there, desert wind gusting across the sand, sighing high up in the mountain pass. The wind did that sometimes, sighing. If only the little desert wolves would come …
He’d been detailed to guard the back of the house. If his partner had not hurt his back they’d have been swinging a battering ram, and they’d never have been back there when the boy ran out …
The fugitive was doing something that he’d never done before, something that he should have done before leaving home: He was writing out his last will and testament. He would have done it at home if he’d ever dreamed that this assignment could be so dangerous, if he’d even thought for one moment how it could all go so wrong.
It was after 3:00 A.M., and he hadn’t slept at all. How could he? After the terror in the mortuary, and the horror that still awaited him? He wondered if that policeman with curly hair had found John Lugo already and had asked the man questions. The fugitive still had one thing in his favor: John Lugo would not have the faintest notion what the policeman was talking about. Why would the man know about someone trying to trace him by way of his mother’s funeral?
The policeman had done an amazing thing in finding him, but neither he nor John Lugo would have any idea of the significance of María Magdalena Lugo’s tombstone. At least he hoped that was the case. It would take a great deal of thinking and questioning of others for anybody to figure it out. By then it would be too late. The fugitive would have his work completed, that’s what he prayed for.
Then he put down the pad upon which h
e was writing his will. He would post the letter tomorrow. The will was an easy thing to write. He left everything he owned to his wife and children: the car and furniture, and the little four-room house that was not paid for, a house that would still be too small for his family even if he did not come home to them. He was thirty-nine years old and had accumulated pitifully little in a lifetime of hard work.
He had to sleep for the sake of his mission. He wished he had some powders to make him sleep. If he was at home he could walk into a pharmacy and buy whatever he needed. In this country they made you go through a physician for everything.
Then the fugitive picked up the writing pad again, turned to a fresh page and wrote:
My dearest wife,
When you receive this letter I shall either be at home by your side or God shall have taken me. If I am gone to God you must be very strong for the sake of the
But the fugitive couldn’t go on. He got up and went to the bathroom. He drank some water and looked at himself in the mirror, determined not to weep.
Breda Burrows had slept in her clothes, the only time in her life. She had an all-world hangover, the first since she was twenty years old. She felt like maggots were eating her brain. And still the phone wouldn’t stop.
Without attempting to raise up, she scooted on her back and groped around to where the phone should be, finally finding it on the floor. When had she put the damn phone on the floor?
“ ’Lo,” she whispered into the mouthpiece.
“Sorry to call so early,” Jack Graves said, “but I might be able to wrap up your case by this evening.”
“Really?” she said, too loud. A sharp knife stabbed across her forehead and settled behind her right ear up to the hilt.
“I’ll be tailing him again today,” Jack Graves said, “and I think I know where he’ll be going. What I’d like you to do is, I’d like you to call Rhonda Devon and ask her to call her husband and say she’s coming to the desert at six o’clock this evening.”
“I doubt if she’ll come,” Breda said, painfully forcing herself to endure the agony of sitting up. “She only comes once every couple weeks or so.”
“I don’t care if she actually shows up,” Jack Graves said. “Just so he thinks she’s coming. And the other thing I need for you to do is, I need for you and Lynn to go to Clive Devon’s house at six o’clock this evening and have a talk with him.”
“About what?”
“About the drug smuggler he picked up in the canyon.”
“How can we do that without blowing the whole thing?”
“First, have Lynn badge him. Then tell him half the truth, that a policeman from the south end took license numbers of every car he saw in Painted Canyon including the Range Rover, hoping he could find a witness to the airport incident. Describe the smuggler to him.”
There was a pause and then Breda said, “I … uh … I can’t use Lynn on this job anymore, Jack.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too complicated.”
“You can’t go there and represent yourself as a police officer, Breda,” Jack Graves said. “You have your P.I. license to think about.”
“I don’t think Lynn’s much use to me on this one,” she said. “And he’s gonna be busy with Nelson.”
“But he’s still a police officer. He can show his badge and ask questions. I need Clive Devon to believe that you’re investigating a serious crime that involves a righteous bad guy that he picked up in the canyon. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take him with me. Six o’clock, you say?”
“Six o’clock. After that, I’d like both of you to meet me, and maybe I’ll have your answer.”
“Where?”
“My place, okay?”
“See you in Windy Point after we talk to Clive Devon.”
When she hung up, she felt bilious. She could still smell the booze. She lurched unsteadily into the bathroom and ran a bath, then she changed her mind and took a hot shower followed by a cold one. It was pure agony, but she reveled in the suffering, knowing that the sniveling debauched lowlife villainous bucket of dog vomit was hurting just as much as she was.
He was hurting, but not quite as much as Breda Burrows. In the first place he hadn’t drunk as much in relation to his capacity and tolerance. In the second place, every time a wave of agony would sweep over him he’d think of how she’d looked lying naked under the sheet, with her eyes narrowed to slits of cornflower blue, and that freckle quivering!
He showered, shaved and even trimmed his mustache, no mean feat when he was that shaky. He forced himself to eat a scrambled egg, and drank a glass of orange juice to replenish vitamins. He had coffee, the last of it. There wasn’t another goddamn thing to eat or drink in the house.
Lynn had exactly ten more days of existing there before the owner took over, and he didn’t hold out much hope for the house-sitting gig at Tamarisk Country Club. He figured he was about to join the ranks of the homeless.
The only chance he had was if the pension came through. It should’ve been granted a month ago. Every time he called about it he’d get some spineless double-talking bureaucrat too incompetent to flip burgers at Jack in the Box.
He was standing out on the street reading his press notices when Nelson roared up the street at 8:55 A.M. grinning like he’d learned how to make shade.
“You’re up and ready!” Nelson said, as he slid the Wrangler to a risky stop three inches from Lynn’s body.
“The game’s afoot,” Lynn said. “I couldn’t wait. Like I can’t wait to wear support hose and live for fiber. You see this?”
He handed Nelson the third page of the local paper. A small headline, BRAWL AT FUNERAL HOME, was followed by: Police are baffled by a violent fight between two men that took place in the early evening hours during a rosary service at Lieberman Brothers Mortuary. Both men were seeking information on an undisclosed client of Lieberman Brothers. One man claimed to be a police officer, but police spokesmen believe that his badge was bogus. The case is being investigated.
Nelson said, “Yeah, I’m gonna get a scrapbook.” Then, “Did you and Breda go out for supper last night?” And he winked!
“What makes you ask that?”
“The way you were lookin at her, all googly-eyed.”
“Yeah, well you won’t be seeing no more googles. That babe’s a nut case.”
“Somethin happen?”
“Nothin a person your age’d understand.”
“Wanna hear my new country tape?”
“Not if it’s about a guy whose girlfriend beats the living shit outta him and threatens to call a lawyer. Is that what it’s about?”
“No.”
“Okay, play it. Maybe they don’t know every freaking move I make, after all.”
“Who?”
“Nashville or wherever it is they spy into people’s heads and turn out those goddamn songs.”
Nelson said, “I don’t think I wanna know what happened to you last night.”
He punched in a Garth Brooks song, “If Tomorrow Never Comes.”
“JESUS CHRIST!” Lynn yelled, and his voice exploded in his ears like a magnum round.
“What’s wrong?”
“Whaddaya think you’re doing, playing that song? Do you realize we’re going after a guy that tried to stick me in a brass-handled sedan before my time? And might try it again with more success?”
If tomorrow never comes, Garth Brooks sang. The song was an omen.
Nelson didn’t say a word. He ejected that mother, pronto.
When they knocked on the door of the pink Mediterranean house up on Southridge, they were met by a handsome guy in his mid-thirties. He wore matching flowered shirt and shorts, and leather sandals. He was dark and had a streak of white running through his black power ponytail. He stood blocking the entry, but smiling.
Lynn showed his badge, but this guy was different. This guy said, “Got an I.D. card to go with that?” Lynn reluctantly showed his police
I.D. and the guy read it and said, “Yes, Mister Cutter, what can I do for you?”
“Are you John Lugo?” Lynn asked.
“No, this is his home, but he’s not here. Can I help you, sir?”
“Is he at his L.A. home?”
“No, he’s in Hawaii for a few days playing golf. Why don’t you tell me what it’s about, sir.”
It was going to be like that, Lynn thought. This guy wasn’t going to let anybody get close.
“Can I have your name?” Lynn asked.
“Sure, Mister Cutter. Bino Sierra.”
“Bino.”
He touched the snowy streak in his hair and said, “Short for Albino. I was born with this.”
The guy hadn’t stopped smiling since he’d opened the door. He had brilliantly white teeth and you could see all thirty-two of them. It was that kind of smile. He wore rings on both hands, and a gold chain with a cross on it hung from his neck, all but vanishing in a thatch of chest hair. Bino Sierra wasn’t a typical butler, and he didn’t cut the grass, that was certain.
“When will he be back from Hawaii?”
Shrugging, Bino Sierra said, “Mister Lugo comes and goes in his own good time. But you can talk to his lawyer.”
The smile got even wider when Lynn said, “Does his lawyer sleep here or does he have an office?”
“An office in Palm Desert. Name’s Leo Grishman.”
“Where’s the office?”
“The new building across from the college,” Bino Sierra said, again touching the white streak. Then he said, “Funny, a detective from Palm Springs P.D. phoned this morning to see if Mister Lugo could shed any light on a brawl that happened in a funeral home last night. Involved a couple a guys looking for Mister Lugo. He didn’t say he was sending detectives to the house. But it’s okay, we’re anxious to help.”
Bino Sierra was still smiling as he closed the door.
When they were back in the Wrangler, Nelson Hareem said, “This ain’t gonna be so easy.”
“That smile was about as genuine as an agent’s kiss,” Lynn said. “That’s what the old actors at The Furnace Room would say.”
Fugitive Nights Page 21