Fugitive Nights (12 page)

“Try Somalia. They kill their whole police force every Friday or so. Lots a openings for an ambitious lad.”

After shaking hands with the police celebrity, Lynn said, “My favorite Dirty Hareem story was when you accidentally turned your Holstein into a convertible with your gauge. I never actually met anyone that cranked one off through his own roof.”

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Nelson asked.

“Sure,” Lynn said, noticing that the kid's beer glass was empty. “Wilfred, a flagon on my tab.”

When Nelson got his fresh beer they weaved through the crowded barroom to the same corner table where Lynn and Breda had sat. There was an old woman from the Seniors Center sitting there who hadn't left since happy hour. She was bombed, and had returned to 1944, singing “We'll Meet Again,” like Vera Lynn.

Ignoring the old doll, who didn't even know they'd joined her private party, Lynn said, “What's up, Nelson? How'd you find me?”

“I called Palm Springs P.D. after I couldn't find you at your DMV address in Cathedral City.”

“Yeah, I had to move from Cathedral City after my second divorce. Everybody thinks a single guy in Cat City
has
to be gay, and I can never remember which ear to wear my gold stud in. Is it left for gay and right for straight, or vice versa?”

Nelson Hareem actually squinted through the smoke to see if Lynn had a pierced ear, making Lynn realize that all the things they said about this goofy kid were probably true.

“Anyways,” Nelson said, “the new owner at your old house is the one told me you're a Palm Springs police detective.”

“So you went to the P.D.?”

“Yeah, and a detective told me you're on medical leave and nobody knows where you live cause you house-sit for rich people, but everyone knows where to find you after nine o'clock.”

“Morning or night?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. So you found me, Nelson. Why're you running my license plate? Did I get a parking ticket, or what?”

“Well, sir, I'm sorta workin on somethin … unofficially.”

“Call me Lynn. I'm younger'n I look. Everybody around here is.”

“Well, Lynn, I wouldn't like you to tell nobody about this, but I'm workin on a deal on my own time, you might say. It's about the ADW where the smuggler beat up the deputy down at the airport and stole two vehicles.”

“Haven't heard about any smuggler,” Lynn said, wondering how the hell his own glass got so empty so fast. He looked suspiciously at the nearly comatose old babe.

“You ain't heard? It was all over the local TV news last night.”

“Tell you the truth, I only watch TV when George Bush is giving a speech. I stood real close to the guy once at Palm Springs Airport, and I came to love the suspense of whether he can utter two sentences with the grammar and syntax right.”

“It was in the paper this mornin. Even the
L.A. Times.
”

“Got up too early to read the paper. So tell me why you ran me to ground.”

“Cause you were down in Painted Canyon today. Unless you sold or loaned somebody your Nash Rambler.”

“You're right, I
was
down there. How'd you know?”

“I was there too. See, the guy I'm … the guy the sheriff's department's lookin for was hangin around there, so I was cruisin the canyons most a the day. I wrote down every license number of every parked car I saw, includin yours. Then I had to go back to my beat to handle a couple calls. When I went to Painted Canyon again your car was gone. A bunch a people in a Winnebago said they saw a guy park the Rambler and go for a hike. Musta been you, right? I ran your license number and got your old address in Cathedral City.”

“You sure went to a lotta trouble, Nelson,” Lynn said.

“Cause the people in the Winnebago told me they also saw a man and woman in a Range Rover go into Painted Canyon and drive back out with a
second
man! When they told me that, I drove all around the canyon but there's no abandoned car in there. So to me it meant the Range Rover picked somebody up. Unless it was you he picked up?”

Lynn Cutter gawked at the carrot-top cop like he'd just found Jimmy Hoffa's pinkie ring in Ivana Trump's hair, while the old babe at their table segued into “Embraceable You,” like Helen O'Connell.

“Nah, couldn't be,” Lynn said, shaking his head. “Couldn't be.”

“What?”

“What's the guy look like? The smuggler from the airport?”

“Mexican. Medium height, husky build, bald. Maybe thirty-five to forty.”

“Husky build?”

And then the young cop started getting
very
excited. “You saw him, sir! I mean Lynn! You saw him!”

“Chill out, Nelson. I saw a husky Latino, yeah. He wore a blue baseball cap so I don't know if he was bald. It coulda been a Dodgers cap, so maybe it was just Fernando Valenzuela out there prospecting for gold.”

“It
was
him!” Nelson cried. “I know it was him!”

Suddenly, the old doll emerged from her stupor and yelled, “Garçon!” at Wilfred Plimsoll, after which she lapsed into a chorus of “I'll Be Seeing You.”

“We don't know that, Nelson,” Lynn said. “There could be lots a reasons why the guy I saw was out there on foot.”

“The Range Rover,” Nelson said. “Do you have any idea who was drivin the Range Rover?”

“None,” Lynn Cutter said, avoiding eye contact.

Nelson Hareem was quiet for a moment, then he said, “Lynn, what were
you
doin out there?”

“You're gonna have to read me my rights before you take that approach,” Lynn said.

“I'm sorry, Lynn,” said Nelson. “It's jist that I got somethin here, I know it. And it's my
chance.
”

“Chance for what?”

“To get outta town. I don't wanna work down there where nothin ever happens. I wanna work where there's some lights and action.”

“Talk to Wilfred, the owner a this joint. You're describing the movie business except you left out camera between lights and action.”

“I wanna work for Palm Springs P.D., Lynn.”

“And here I been celebrating for months because I'm leaving Palm Springs P.D.”

“Yeah, but I'm still young.”

“Go up there and get us a couple drinks, Nelson. Scotch for me. Let this old man gum on this smuggler business for a while.”

After the kid had gone, Lynn thought, It couldn't be. Ridiculous. Just a coincidence. Damn, he wished his guy had taken off that baseball cap! By the time Nelson returned with the drinks, Lynn had convinced himself that it absolutely positively couldn't be.

“It
couldn't
be, Nelson,” he said. But then, “Was the smuggler wearing a dark windbreaker?”

“Had on a short-sleeved khaki shirt when he kicked the deputy's dick in the dirt.”

“Well, my guy had on a dark windbreaker.”

“Maybe he had a change a clothes in his flight bag,” Nelson said, taking a sip of beer, the foam lying on his fuzzy upper lip.

“Flight bag?”

“Yeah, the smuggler carried a flight bag. We figured it was full a heroin, but maybe he had some clothes in it.”

“What color flight bag?” Lynn asked.

“Red,” said Nelson Hareem.

During the next thirty-five minutes, Lynn told most of his Clive Devon story and got a complete rundown on the bald smuggler, followed by a sketch of Nelson Hareem's police history, which had brought him to a place where his shoeshine turned viscous by eleven
A.M.
on summer days. They continued to talk even as they walked out of the saloon while the old doll at their table was singing “It Had To Be You,” like Helen Forrest.

“So you see, I'm helping out this retired cop till she gets her business in shape,” Lynn said to Nelson while they stood under a desert sky so clear the dipper looked like it might fall on them and shatter into topaz.

“I understand, Lynn,” Nelson said.

“I don't want you to say a word about this to anyone. I don't want nobody at Palm Springs P.D. to know I been goat-footing it around the canyons for a P.I. named Breda Burrows. Understand?”

“The guy's a wanted felon. What if he kills somebody or somethin? We'd have to tell the detectives that you traced him to Palm Springs.”

“If he surfaces again we can reconsider. For now, what difference does it make if the sheriff's department knows he got this far? He's
gone.
”

“What happened when he went to the phone stand down by the Alan Ladd hardware store, Lynn? Think he mighta jotted down a number there?”

In that too many of Lynn's neurons were swimming for their lives in Wilfred's booze, Lynn blurted, “No, I already checked that. Left his pocket change on the phone tray, is all.”

That got the young cop stoked. “You found pocket change?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is it?”

“I don't know. In my other pants, I guess. Just a few coins, Mexican coins. And one Spanish coin.”

“Spanish? You sure?”

“I didn't have my jeweler's loupe handy but it sure looked like a Spanish ten-peseta coin.”

“That's really weird. Think he's from Spain?”

“No, I think he's a drug smuggler, same as you think. He probably flew up from around Mexicali or Tijuana. I went to Tijuana with my first wife one time. It was the world's most expensive weekend in a place that's supposed to be cheap. In one a the saloons a bartender gave me pocket change from three countries. In those border towns you got people coming from everywhere with different kinds a money.”

“If only you'd seen the TV news last night!” Nelson said. “You
had
the guy!”

“If it was him.”

“The red flight bag, Lynn!”

“Yeah, I know. It
mighta
been him, I admit. He probably went to Palm Springs Airport and booked a flight home.”

“Can you forget about it that easy?”

“I already did. I'm going home and I'm going to bed. You do the same, Nelson.”

“Good night,” said Nelson Hareem. “I'll keep your secret so long as the guy don't surface again and hurt somebody.”

“Me, I'm going to bed,” Lynn said. “I'm not a real cop anymore.”

Lynn Cutter watched Nelson jump in his topless Jeep Wrangler and squeal out into the heavy tourist-season traffic. Then Lynn got into his Rambler, turned south, drove three minutes and parked at a gas station across from the Alan Ladd hardware store. Lynn was staggering just a tad when he walked to the phone stand with his flashlight.

And because the whole world was sneaking up behind him lately he wasn't even surprised when a tenor voice said, “You're
still
a cop, Lynn. You can't fool me.”

Then, while Lynn Cutter surrendered to his fate, Nelson Hareem borrowed Lynn's flashlight and started searching for clues.

“People write down numbers anywhere at public phones,” Nelson said.

“Please chill out, Nelson,” Lynn said. “It's embarrassing enough being out here like this. Only guy that'd hang around a public phone this time a night is either a candidate for AIDS or somebody from the planet Krypton.”

“Can I see the coins tomorrow?”

“You ain't gonna lift prints from coins, for chrissake!”

“The guy was seen puttin coins in his mouth.”

“What was he doing with coins in his mouth?”

“Diminishes thirst, we were told. He's a desert rat, this guy.”

“And what difference would it make, pray tell, if I found those particular coins?”

“They might have old saliva on them. I read where DNA technology can sometimes match up somebody from saliva. See, our eyeball witnesses're really lousy; they'll never ID the guy even if we bring him down.”

“That's space-age stuff, Nelson. Match up somebody from degraded saliva on a coin? Jesus! How do we know they were his coins? Anybody coulda left some foreign coins here. You could have all ten fingerprints, it wouldn't mean a thing. He's probably got no record here in the States. He's a foreigner!”

But undeterred, Nelson Hareem put the butt end of the flashlight under his chin and started whipping through the Palm Springs yellow pages with both hands.

Suddenly he cried, “Tits!”

“What?”

“This is absolutely tits! We
got
him!”

“What're you talking about?”

“Look at this!” Nelson said, pointing to the yellow pages.

“I don't see …”

“He tore out a motel page! A through C! All we gotta do is find another phone book and check all the motels that begin with A, B and C! There's only thirty or so, I bet.”

“How do you know
he
did it?”

“Same way I know he left those coins! I got his scent!”

“Nelson, unless you lift your leg to pee you don't have his scent. And you
don't
know if he left those coins. The fact that he may have left a Spanish coin is irrelevant.”

“He's ours!”

“Nelson, when you gaze up at the stars do you get lonely for home?” Lynn wanted to know.

“You can't bail out on me, Lynn!”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“I never worked detectives. You got the experience.”

“I'm going home.”

“Well, I guess I got no choice. I guess I jist gotta turn all this information over to …”

“Nelson, I told you … warned you I don't want anybody finding out I'm working for a P.I. Understand?”

“But Lynn, I gotta
do
somethin about this! If I can't tell the sheriff's department then we gotta work it ourselves.”

“We gotta … Nelson, you're a madman!”

“Get a good night's sleep, Lynn, but first gimme the number at your house-sittin gig. I'll call you tomorrow. And gimme Breda's number.”

Lynn Cutter had to go to bed. He had to think. He gave Nelson the phone numbers because he had no choice.