Desert Run

by Betty Webb

  “No. I come here two years ago from little village to south. Rada comes later. I meet him at Ethiopian Church, at what they call Social Evening. Rada not go to church but that OK.”

  “I didn’t know there was an Ethiopian church in Mesa.”

  Hadaradi shook his head. “Phoenix. I think we are only Ethiopians in Mesa. Some Sudanese here, some Somalians. Many Mormons.” He gave me his first smile.

  I appreciated his attempt at levity, but needed to find out what, if anything, Tesema had said to his roommates about Ernst. “When Rada…”

  He interrupted me by taking keys out of his pocket and walking toward the door. “No time. I only home to watch policemen look around, keep our things safe. Now I due at other job.”

  “Other job?”

  “Need three. All of us, even Rada. He help take care of four people. Almost never sleep. You go now, please. Have to lock apartment.”

  Unlike Tesema, Hadaradi didn’t have a car, so I dropped him off in front of the Burger King where he worked. From there, I went to Tesema’s bank, where a bank officer helped me through the laborious process of international wire transfers. Good deed accomplished, I drove back to Desert Investigations, thinking hard all the way. Four clients and little sleep. I wondered how irritable I might feel if I were exhausted, yet had to care for so many people, one of them a foul-mouthed U-boat captain.

  Irritable enough to commit murder?

  ***

  At five, I pronounced Desert Investigations closed for the day. After a few final taps on his keyboard, Jimmy headed out to spend the evening with his fiancée, leaving me to lock up. This accomplished, I clenched my teeth and climbed the stairs to my apartment.

  “No problem, no problem,” I muttered, as with my snub-nosed .38 drawn and ready, I unlocked my triple-locks, let myself in, triple-locked the door behind me, and began my routine search for an intruder. So much for therapy. But as Dr. Gomez had so astutely pointed out, a few months of court-ordered anger management couldn’t erase a childhood filled with abuse. And they did nothing to soften the memory of the foster father who had hidden himself in my bedroom closet, the better to rape me when I arrived home from school.

  I’d been nine years old at the time.

  My search revealed no rapist in any of the closets. No rapist under the bed. No rapist hiding in the bathroom or the kitchen cupboards. Relieved, I put my .38 down on the clothes hamper, stripped, and showered. Thirty minutes later, after scrubbing my skin raw, I still felt dirty.

  Warren arrived promptly at seven, not the least taken aback that I eyed him for a long time through the peephole before beginning the complicated unlocking process.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, stepping into the apartment. “I’ve never seen you in a dress before.”

  Although I’d purchased my all-purpose black dress off the sale rack at Robinson’s-May, Warren’s Armani suit had a loftier pedigree and his aftershave probably cost more than the dress. “You look beautiful, too.”

  He glanced around the living room. “Did you just move in?”

  “About four years ago, but I’m not much on decorating.” An understatement if there ever was one. The room was basic, since the only items I had added after leasing it fully furnished were a Kachina doll, a Navajo rug, a couple of toss pillows, and an oil painting done by an Apache artist. Seeing the apartment through Warren’s eyes—and remembering Jimmy’s colorful trailer—I realized my home sweet home had the personality of a motel room.

  Outside in the rapidly cooling spring air—did I smell magnolia blossoms, already?—Warren helped me into the passenger seat of his leased Land Rover as though I were some frail creature who couldn’t manage the climb, and I didn’t know whether to be charmed or insulted. I decided on charmed. “Where are we going?” Someplace dark, I hoped, where no one I knew would see us in case dinner ended badly.

  He pulled away from the curb and headed off into the night. “How about that three-star restaurant at the Phoenician?”

  The chance of my not being recognized at one of the city’s premiere resorts was slim. Not only was I on a first-name basis with the maître d’ because I’d once helped him find his runaway daughter, but I would probably also know half the diners, too. In these litigious days, private detectives get around. But Warren was trying to make an impression, so I tried not to let my disappointment show. “That’s nice.”

  Stopping at a crosswalk, where a gaggle of Bermuda shorts-wearing tourists were crossing, he gave me a look. “Too public? Then you recommend a place.”

  He could read moods, a good sign. A man who paid attention to people. Relieved, I directed him to Pasta Brioni, a nice little Italian restaurant tucked discreetly into a shopping center. The place was quiet, dimly lit, and the owner/chef served original dishes rivaling the Phoenician’s. Best of all, the clientele didn’t blab.

  The evening wasn’t as uncomfortable as I had feared. Not at first, anyway. It was refreshing to sit in a romantic restaurant with a handsome man again, pleasant to be asked what I suggested on the menu, and a relief not to monitor my date’s alcohol intake. Although Warren ordered a glass of white wine, he never touched it. I, as usual, ordered tea. In between bites of his chicken piccata, he told me about Jaheese, the Arab mare he stabled in an equestrian complex near Griffith Park, and I told him about Lady, the bay mare I kept in Cave Creek. We made tentative plans to go riding together sometime, but I doubted either of us would follow through. When his schedule lightened, he’d be gone. And why take a flight to Los Angeles just to go horseback riding in Griffith Park?

  Then he told me about his classic car collection, which he’d started when his father gave him a 1937 Buick sedan for his sixteenth birthday. “It was midnight black and looked like something that Al Capone would drive. Man, I felt tough in that thing! It scared the crap out of all the kids at Hollywood High.”

  Most of the rich kids in Scottsdale got Beemers for their birthdays, so I had to applaud his father’s creativity. The Buick was probably safer for a teenager than a snot-nosed import, too. “Your dad must be an unusual guy.”

  “You could say that.” He looked over to the bar, where despite my assertion that Pasta Brioni was a quiet place, one of the bartenders had just launched into a surprisingly good rendition of One for My Baby, backed by a customer on the piano. When the bartender finished, he got a big round of applause, then everyone went back to eating.

  Warren picked up where he’d left off. “And for my eighteenth birthday, I got a 1959 Edsel Ranger. Turd brown, butt ugly, and in terrible condition, but by then I’d learned enough to restore it myself.”

  “Um, tell me about your dad.” Not having one of my own, I always liked hearing about other peoples’ families. “And your mom. What was it like growing up in Hollywood? Were your folks in the business?”

  When he smiled, he looked like a California beach boy. The restaurant’s warm lighting erased the lines at the corner of his eyes, and softened the creases that ran from the corner of his mouth to his almost too-perfect nose. “Let’s talk about you, instead. I notice that you don’t drink.”

  Talk about a segue.

  But there was no point in being secretive about my background—most of it had aired on the local news a year earlier when I solved a high-profile murder case—so I gave him the same sanitized version I gave everyone, leaving out the beatings and rapes. “Since I don’t know who my parents are, I don’t know what kind of addictive genes I might be carrying around. So I don’t indulge.”

  He put his fork down. “Let me get this straight. You can’t remember who your parents are, why you were shot, or who shot you?”

  I smiled, shook my head, and shoveled more Shrimp Brioni into my mouth. “Nothing before the age of four.” A small lie there. I remembered the bus I was riding in just before I was shot, the gun itself, a red-headed man standing in a forest clearing. But those things I only discussed with Dr. Gomez.

  Warren looked down at his chicken piccata, then said someth
ing unexpected. “If you ask me, memory can be overrated.”

  In light of some of my memories, I agreed with him. But I was determined to keep the conversation as light as possible. “Hey, everything turned out fine. I received a scholarship to ASU, became a police officer, and when I left the Force, opened Desert Investigations.” I left out the part where I’d been shot in a drug raid. “Now I’m working for a famous Hollywood director! Lots of foster kids do worse.” Most of them, in fact. A study I once read revealed that only one of five ex-foster kids were mentally healthy and/or regularly employed. Few graduated from high school, went on to college, or led lives that could be considered remotely normal. The rehab clinics and prisons teemed with my less fortunate brethren. I left that part out, too.

  When he looked back up at me, his expression was puzzling. There was gentleness around his mouth, but his blue eyes had darkened with an emotion I couldn’t readily identify. “Jesus, Lena. You’ve managed to accomplish so much with so little, while I…never mind. My films should tell you all you need to know about me. The part that matters, anyway.”

  Then he smiled again and the darkness in his eyes lifted. His tone became flirtatious. “Do you know why I decided I had to know you better?”

  I flirted right back, in my own PI kind of way. “Because I made you sign a two-month contract instead of a day-to-day agreement?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Now that was a dart from Cupid! But, no. That’s not the reason. The very second you pulled onto the set with that ’45 Jeep I knew you were the woman for me.”

  I didn’t know whether to be thrilled or to run like hell. But when he leaned over and give me a quick kiss on the cheek, I didn’t flinch. Yes, I was making progress. So much so that for the rest of the evening I was able to push all my worries away, including those about Rada Tesema and Beth Osmon.

  As a wise man once said, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

  Chapter Five

  6:10 p.m. December 25, 1944

  Hidden in a deep ravine a few miles east of the prison camp, Gunter Hoenig watched the sun slip behind a mesa. Soon the cold night would descend, but they did not dare light a fire to warm themselves. They would shiver, once again, wishing they were back in Camp Papago with their companions, enjoying Christmas dinner. Nothing had gone right for him and his friend Josef since the escape, not their attempt to join up with the more even-tempered Kapitan Daanitz, nor their plan to float down the Gila River to Mexico…

  River!

  If their situation hadn’t been so desperate, they could have enjoyed a big laugh at the joke. What were the American cartographers thinking, labeling that dry gully a river? Rivers had water! Yet when they reached it, they discovered that their so-called river was nothing but sand, sand, and more sand stretching away for miles—just like the Cross Cut Canal that ran alongside the prison camp. All dreams of floating to Mexico had vanished. Oh, how Kapitan Ernst had cursed when he realized their mistake, but as usual, Kapitan Daanitz had handled his disappointment with dignity.

  “Mexico is little more than a hundred kilometers away and do not we have feet?” Daanitz had said with his philosophical smile. “We look ‘American,’ and if we split up into small groups of two or three, we can reach the border unmolested. Food will pose no problem as long as we develop a taste for rattlesnake stew.”

  “Better than U-boat food!” Josef had joked.

  But Kapitan Ernst, who hated Daanitz as much as the other submariners loathed Ernst, put forth another idea. Why should they kill themselves attempting to make the border when they could double back and walk a few kilometers into the Superstition Mountains. There they could find shelter in one of the old mines marked on their map and hole up until the end of the war. Perhaps they would even find gold!

  “The Fatherland will be victorious soon,” Kapitan assured them. “If we do not run, we will be in place to join our brave comrades when they arrive, and then we can play our part in founding the American Reich. There is yet great glory awaiting us!”

  “Great glory?” Daanitz’s face contorted with something that, if Gunter had not known better, looked like disgust. “Do not be so certain, Kapitan Ernst. I have heard stories…” He looked up at the sky, from which a fine drizzle had begun to fall, but not the downpour they needed to make the dry riverbed flow. “If those stories I hear are true, I would not wish for any of us to be in America when the war ends.”

  Kapitan Ernst sneered. “Who will care what happened to a few Jews and gypsies? One German is worth ten thousand of each.” With that, he had ordered the two remaining members of his crew to follow him into the mountains. Being good Germans, Gunter and Josef followed orders, even when given by their despised Kapitan.

  Now look at them, Gunter mused, as he huddled in the ravine next to Josef, pooling their body warmth. They were cold, hungry, scavenging food like alley rats from grapefruit orchards and trash heaps. So much for the great glory of the Kapitan Ernst’s American Reich. At least the rain was letting up. Perhaps this night, unlike the last, would not be so cold.

  “The Kapitan has been gone a long time,” Josef whispered. “Do you think something happened to him?” He sounded hopeful.

  Gunter did not bother to hide his smile. “Past events have proven that we are not so fortunate. I am certain he will return soon, bringing more grapefruit and curses.”

  His words proved prophetic. As night folded the desert in its chilly embrace, Gunter heard footsteps scrambling across the rocks above. Then Kapitan Ernst’s wolfish face peered down at them.

  “Come up, come up, lazy schweine! We will eat well tonight!” Kapitan motioned them from their cover. “I have found a farmhouse just over that rise. A cow, chickens, a vegetable garden. And inside, tins of food and piles of warm blankets. We will take what we need, then continue east into the mountains.”

  Fear clenched Gunter’s heart. “There will be a farmer, maybe, with a gun. We have nothing, not even a knife.” A farm boy from the same Bavarian village as Josef, he knew it improbable that a working farm would remain unprotected. “Perhaps either Josef or I should reconnoiter?”

  He didn’t like the smile that crept across Kapitan’s face. “I guarantee there will be no resistance. Now, schnell, hurry. A Christmas feast awaits us!”

  With the inky sky darkening their faces and the birds silenced under the burden of night, they crept through the brush toward the house. When they reached the edge of the farmyard where the golden light from a window spilled across the sand, Gunter bit his lip in consternation. Where were the sounds of laughing children, the contented murmurs of husband and wife discussing the fruits of the day, the friendly rumblings of dogs? All he could hear was the pained lowing of a cow, as if its bag was full to bursting. His misgivings increased. It was late, almost eight o’clock. Why had the cow not yet been milked? What sort of farmer would allow his animal to suffer, allow good milk to go to waste?

  As they emerged from the brush and sprinted across the farmyard, the answer floated toward them on a soft desert breeze.

  The smell of Death.

  Chapter Six

  Wearing a red wig and the yuppiefied suit I’d purchased from a Scottsdale resale shop, I picked up a dark blue BMW from Hertz the next morning and set about tailing Jack Sherwood. It wasn’t hard to see why Beth Osmon had fallen for him. Even from this distance I could see that he was as tall, dark, and handsome as the cliché. His Southern manners put smiles on the faces of everyone he came in contact with: the desk clerk at his residence hotel, the caddy at the golf course, the waitress at the expensive watering hole where he drawled through a business lunch with local bigwigs, one of them a former state senator known as much for his honesty as his inability to win re-election. I observed no suspicious behavior, and yet by the end of the day, I’d become convinced something was wrong.

  Sherwood was too slick.

  As I dropped off the Beemer at the Hertz lot near Desert Investigations and switched to my Jeep, I made a mental
note to ask Jimmy to initiate an in-depth background search on Sherwood. While he had no police record in Mississippi or anywhere else—a dip into the AFIS database proved that—it might prove informative to find out the names of his Southern associates. Or maybe Jimmy would turn up an ex-wife or two. Exes frequently had interesting tales to tell.

  A glance at my watch told me it was now past six, but evenings were good for home visits. Kryzinski had given me MaryEllen Bollinger’s address, so I pulled off the red wig, threw it into the back, and pointed the Jeep north for a ten-mile battle through the remnants of rush hour to North Scottsdale.

  El Cordobes Luxury Condominiums was typical of the area, with storybook architecture and anal compulsive landscaping. Perfectly cared-for pink and purple petunias lined the narrow cement walk that curved around a cream-colored adobe complex designed to look like an Indian pueblo. Discreet ceramic signs decorated with Hopi symbols identified each of the fifteen buildings, but regardless of the community’s good looks and signage, the massive development was a hopeless maze. I wandered in increasing exasperation until I found Unit 220-A hiding on the second floor of the sixth building. The woman who answered the door studied my PI license carefully. An attractive, if rather plastic blonde, she stood in the center of the doorway as if loathe to invite me inside, but behind her I could see a sea of white: white carpeting, white walls, white leather sofas—the whole Marilyn Monroe deal. She identified herself as MaryEllen’s roommate and told me I was five minutes too late, that MaryEllen had already left for work.

  “She just left for work?”

  The woman bared perfectly capped teeth. “She hardly keeps banker’s hours.”

  Implants, white apartment, non-banker’s hours. I was beginning to get it. “Perhaps you could tell me where she, ah, does what she does.”

  The teeth again. “MaryEllen does the same thing I do. You say you’re a detective, go detect.”

  I offered a smile of my own. “Cute. But why not help me out here?”