Fugitive Nights (9 page)

The three migrant workers had pooled their money at the north shore café to buy a bag of tortilla chips and two cokes to be split three ways. Then they got back into the hot-wired Ford and cruised out Highway 111. They'd decided to drive to Thermal, hoping to impress some girls.

The driver had learned to operate a car in Calexico, where he had a job cleaning restaurant grease traps, so filthy that cats wouldn't even touch them, but that brief driving experience wasn't enough. He zigged across the double line as a big rig was roaring toward him, and the eighteen-wheeler clipped the Ford.

The car went airborne and came to earth upside down with an explosive crunch. The two lucky ones were blown out and suffered broken bones and a few internal injuries. The passenger in the death-seat was decapitated.

Like too many police agencies, the sheriff's department hired few Hispanics, and neither of the two deputies who arrived before the paramedics could speak Spanish. Nor could Nelson Hareem, who sped down the highway and skidded to a stop across the highway from the overturned Ford. But the next unit to arrive was driven by a CHP officer who at least spoke Border Patrol Spanish and was able to ask a few questions.

The headless corpse and the crash itself no longer interested anybody. What the cops were all excited about was that the crunched Ford bore the license number of the one stolen by the smuggler the day before. For the least injured of the migrant farm workers, a slow and painful interrogation continued until the ambulance arrived.

The Chippie, frequently interrupted by Nelson's “Whadhe-say?,” learned that the husky bald man had stashed the stolen car in a stand of tamarisk trees the night before, and ditched the car that morning.

As the paramedics arrived and began loading the more seriously injured farm worker first, the one doing the talking kept telling the cops that he wouldn't have kept or sold the stolen car, that they only wanted to use it for a day or so, because of the girls in Thermal. And just before being lifted into the ambulance, the young farm worker volunteered that the husky bald man was about thirty-five years old and
muy intelligente.
He was certainly not a farm worker, the young man informed them.

The cops immediately called in a chopper, which thudded over the canyons all the way from Highway 10 to the Salton Sea before giving up. Everyone figured that the bald smuggler had probably hitched a ride moments after he'd started out on foot.

Lynn followed the Range Rover to the county park, where to his surprise, Clive Devon got out with a shopping bag, spread a blanket and laid out a little picnic on the desert floor for man, woman and dog. Lynn made an approach on foot and lay flat on his belly, watching from behind a clump of sage. He used his elbows as a tripod to steady the binoculars and was able to see that the woman was a young Latina, probably in her early twenties, and the brown dog knew Clive Devon
very
well. The animal was jumping all over him and cuddling up to him, being fed by hand from the picnic bag. Lynn Cutter had gotten a cramp in his neck and had mighty sore knees by the time the happy picnickers picked up their litter and got back inside the Range Rover.

Nelson Hareem returned to the station to have a chat with his sergeant.

“Sarge,” he said, “have you heard that the hot car from yesterday, the one the smuggler was driving, got wiped out near the Salton Sea?”

“Yes, Nelson,” the sergeant sighed. “Calexico's only eighty miles from there, and you can spit on Mexicali from Calexico, so I'd say the guy's home free by now. South of the border planning to hire another load-plane.”

“But Sarge,” Nelson said, “he stayed in the area last night cause he didn't know where he was for sure. He didn't take a chance and drive out on the highway where he might get spotted. He holed up and waited out the night. This guy might do the same thing again. He might
still
be burrowed, waitin for an absolutely safe way to Palm Springs.”

“How do you know he's going to Palm Springs?”

Nelson didn't want the boss to know he'd been out of town interrogating the injured
campesino
, so he said, “Well, I'm jist guessin. He's not some lettuce picker. And he's prob'ly packin a bag full a dope and waitin out the daylight so he can take his drugs to Palm Springs.”

“That's pure speculation, Nelson,” his sergeant said.

“Sarge, I been thinkin, maybe if it's quiet this afternoon you might let me go back down around Box Canyon and …”

“Stay in your own backyard, Nelson,” the sergeant said warily. “You could fuck up a one-car funeral. Several years ago a guy like you brought down a president. It was called Watergate. The guy was a hotdog of a loose cannon named G. Gordon Liddy, ever heard of him?”

“Sure!” Nelson said. “My hero. He went to the joint but still he didn't rat off nobody. I named one a my goldfish Liddy. The other one I named Ollie after Colonel Oliver North.”

“Why doesn't his choice of role models surprise me?” the sergeant said to nobody.

After a pause, Nelson said, “I guess you're right. He's back in Mexico by now. I'll forget all about it and go back out on patrol.”

The sergeant made a note to check up on the carrot-top cop who the lieutenant said was more dangerous than body fluid in a whorehouse, and about as controllable as a feral cat. But the sergeant got totally distracted when his wife called to announce that her Tupperware hostess had gotten the flu and the shindig was being moved to their own house.

The sergeant had to run to the store and buy some onion dip and Fritos while Nelson Hareem went rocketing down the highway toward the vicinity of Painted Canyon.

Lynn Cutter had left all the fancy stuff in the trunk of his car: Breda Burrows' commercial-grade video camera with the twelve-to-one zoom and her 35 mm for still photos. It was all useless on this caper. He'd draped the binocular strap around his neck because it was about all he could manage if he was going to tail Clive Devon and a woman and a dog into the desert.

The Range Rover had kicked up dust on the road leading into Painted Canyon, helping to obscure Lynn's Rambler, but he thought he was going to have to abandon the tail when they got close to the canyon itself. He was lucky. There happened to be a van full of kids also driving into the canyon, so he was able to drop in behind them. Also, there were some nature lovers in a big Winnebago RV, setting up day camp farther down on the road that penetrated the twisting canyon walls.

A few other nature lovers had found a few early specimens of dune primrose and were photographing the delicate white blossoms. Three kids of college age were hiking alongside the mouth of the canyon, gingerly examining the joints of a jumping cholla cactus whose nearly invisible barbs can penetrate flesh like sewing needles, and yet provide a nesting place for cactus wrens. The Range Rover stopped two hundred yards ahead, and Lynn parked beside the larger group of ecos who'd fanned out near the canyon mouth. His car didn't look particularly conspicuous next to theirs.

The Painted Canyon cliff face looked as though a huge can of watercolor paint had spilled over it. Burgundy hill formations abutted persimmon hills, next to chocolate hills, next to sandalwood hills. There were clumps of puffy blue-gray smoke trees on the desert floor, and the clean dry desert was in his nostrils and in his mouth as he panted to keep up with the hikers. His goddamn knees were killing him! He stopped, unlaced his shoes, and dumped sand.

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 café buying a newspaper. The man was now carrying a red bag.

B
y the time the Range Rover was returning to the café 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 mustache 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 café 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.