Fugitive Nights (16 page)

It was dark when they got to the fourth one, Bessie's Apartment Motel, north of Desert Hospital, just a few miles and a few million dollars from the
other
Palm Springs. It looked promising, a run-down stucco one-story, with a white rock-composition roof.

Bessie herself was working at the reception desk, and wasn't overwhelmed by a Palm Springs police badge being waved under her nose. She'd been watching
Wheel of Fortune
and dreaming of winning a Beverly Hills shopping trip. She didn't look quite as masculine as George Burns, whom she resembled, but her voice was more gravelly.

Bessie glanced at Lynn and said, “What is it, another runaway from L.A. get in trouble?”

“Need to talk to a guy who mighta checked in yesterday afternoon. He's a Mexican …” Then Lynn looked at Nelson and said, “Or maybe he's from the Middle East.”

“Like Kansas?”

“That's Middle West.”

“Like the guys that're behind the counter in a Seven-Eleven store,” Nelson offered.

“Oh, Eye-ranians?”

“Yeah, like that,” said Lynn. “But maybe he's a Mexican.”

“Mexican, Eye-ranian, gimme a break!” Bessie said. “Think anybody can tell the difference?”

“He's bald but might be wearing a blue baseball cap or some other hat,” Lynn said.

“Then I wouldn't know he was bald, would I?”

“No,” Lynn said.

“He's maybe in his late thirties, early forties. About my height but huskier. Strong-looking guy. With a big droopy black mustache. Might not have a car.”

“He sounds like every gardener I ever seen around here,” Bessie said. “Gimme a break!”

“Right,” Lynn Cutter said, and indicated to Nelson that it was time to let Bessie return to her
Wheel of Fortune
fantasies.

“But,” she said, “it maybe sounds like a guy named Vega in bungalow four.”

“What?” Lynn and Nelson said in unison.

As they headed for the two rows of semidetached cottages making up Bessie's Apartment Motel, Lynn Cutter got a load of what a few others before him had seen and would never forget— Lynn got to see the carrot-top cop when he put on his
game
face!

The first thing Nelson did was reach up under his Lakers T-shirt and grab hold of the .38 in the upside-down holster.

“Puh-leeeeze!” Lynn cried. “This is prob'ly just a snowbird from Walla Walla. Let's not kill him right away!”

“Ain't you carryin a piece?”

“No.”

“I got an extra one!”

“I figured.”

“Want it?”

“No.”

“Then stay behind me.”

“With pleasure. But puh-leeeeze don't Schwarzenegger the door. Let
me
handle it.”

“I'll whistle when I'm in position!” Nelson whispered. “Like a whippoorwill!”

Nelson squatted down so he could pass under the front window of bungalow four and not be spotted. He duck-walked toward the rear of the building, and when he was in position to watch the back door, he whistled from the darkness.

It dawned on Lynn. There's no whippoorwills in the frigging desert. Not even one scraggly-assed whippoorwill!

Lynn knocked. No answer. He knocked again and said, “Mister Vega! Bessie sent me to tell you the gas meter shows a leak in one a the bungalows! Mister Vega, you there?”

Lynn put his ear to the door. He walked to the corner of the bungalow, peered toward the darkness out back and saw Nelson crouching with his gun extended in both hands just like on television. When Lynn Cutter had first become a cop nobody extended
two
arms to hold
one
little gun!

“Nelson!”

“Yeah?”

“Nobody home. We'll come back later.”

Bessie had turned off
Wheel of Fortune
by the time they got back, and was busy registering a nervous middle-aged guy who had a babe outside in his car.

When the cops reentered the motel office the nervous guy was writing “Mr. and Mrs. Johnson” in a counterfeit scrawl, and had given a wrong license number. As though anybody gave a shit about him and a teenage hooker from Indian Avenue.

Lynn said to the motel proprietor, “Bessie, we might come back later. Don't say anything to the guy in bungalow four, okay?”

“Think I'm gonna nail a notice on his door?” Bessie snorted. “Gimme a break!”

“Okay, Bessie,” Lynn said, and the cops left her to tend to the nervous guest who kept watching the street for cops.

But before Lynn and Nelson could get out the door, Bessie said, “Hey! Here comes Mister Vega now.”

Lynn grabbed Nelson's arm to anchor him and took a good look through the motel window at the burly man walking their way. He was carrying a bag of take-out food and he
did
look like the guy with the baseball cap, right down to his Zapata mustache, except that he was wearing a straw cowboy hat.

Before Nelson could start blasting out windows, Lynn opened the glass door and dashed out, as though hurrying toward the parked car containing the Lolita.

Suddenly, Lynn stopped in his tracks, turned to the dark burly man, and said, “Sir! You have a wasp on your hat!”

And the burly guy dropped his bag of ribs and whipped the hat off all in one motion. And his hair fell out. He had more than Milli Vanilli, all done up in double braids, Injun style.

“Where is it?” the guy yelled.

“It's gone,” Lynn said. “I oughtta get a job with Terminix Pest Control. Boy, I can spot a nasty wasp faster'n the Anti-Defamation League.”

Even in Nelson's topless Jeep Wrangler, cruising along Palm Canyon Drive at night was beautiful. Rows of light washed high up on the towering palms that lined both sides of the avenue. There were throngs of in-season tourists strolling about, and college kids scoping out the hardbodies.

Of course, during Easter week there'd be hell to pay when Palm Springs tried to keep forty thousand vacationing students under control after they got drunk and turned Palm Canyon Drive into a honking blaring screaming parking lot.

A television crew would be on hand then, which would encourage lots of on-camera miniriots. There'd always be a few coeds hanging on the back of a bike, or sitting up on the trunk of a convertible, flashing the crowd. One would probably start it off by removing her bikini top. Then another might stand up in a pickup and show everyone that her bikini bottom was on backwards. Then somebody would take it
all
off.

Then a macho sophomore would no doubt run out into the street to cop a feel, or steal the bikini, or otherwise prove to the coed that she shouldn't have had that last six-pack. And she'd scream for help, and a fight would start and lots of students and maybe a few cops would all end up with contusions and abrasions. It happened every Easter week: traffic jam, gridlock, flashing, fighting, riot.

And every year, a coed would have to flash at least one cop by lifting her T-shirt to reveal her address written across her tits. After which, she'd utter some variation of, “Officer, I'm lost. Here's my address. Can you take me home?”

The last one to do that to Lynn Cutter—when he was in uniform with a squad of cops from five different jurisdictions—was a nymphet with creamy shoulders and a pouty candy-apple mouth. While her pals snickered and guffawed at the cop-flashing, Lynn had said to her, “I can tell by your nipple development that you're under the age of eighteen. There's a curfew law. Go home.”

She'd covered her boobs very quickly, wiped off her smirk, and said, “I'm seventeen and ten months! I consider myself eighteen!”

“So do I,” Lynn said, “but that doesn't change reality for
either
of us. Go home!”

As Nelson Hareem revved the Jeep Wrangler, it jerked Lynn Cutter out of his reverie.

“Wanna try Desert Hot Springs or Cathedral City, Lynn?” Nelson asked.

“Why don't we finish up here in town first?”

“Okay,” Nelson said, agreeably. “There's one on Chaparral that looks likely. Thirty-five a night isn't too much for a terrorist, is it?”

“I don't know, Nelson,” Lynn said. “I haven't called the terrorist hot line lately.”

“Wanna hear some Dwight Yoakam?” Nelson started thumbing through his country cassettes.

“Never heard of him.”

“How about George Strait?”

“Is George Strait the one that wears a Gene Autry hat?”

“Damn, Lynn!” Nelson was incredulous. “What kinda music do ya like? Waltzes or somethin?”

“As a matter a fact ‘Tennessee Waltz' is a big-hit single in The Furnace Room. Has been for thirty-five years or so. The only cowboy song I can identify with is ‘She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft).'”

Nelson said, “My favorite lately is ‘Chasin' That Neon Rainbow.' I guess maybe that's what I'm doin, but damn it, I need some bright lights! I wanna get outta the desert and come to town!”

When Nelson changed lanes to lunge past some cruising kids in a van, Lynn almost got whiplashed. “Puh-leeeeze, Nelson! I'm getting seasick. Do I have to buy a patch to wear behind my ear?”

They checked out two more Palm Springs motels, but got no report of a single man fitting the smuggler's description. Nelson said, “We oughtta drive up to Desert Hot Springs now.”

“Gimme a break, Nelson!” Lynn moaned. “Jesus, I'm starting to sound like Bessie.”

“Okay, let's see, how about the Cactus and Sand Motel? Know anything about it?”

“Yeah, it's fifty-five a night. No terrorist has that big an expense account.”

“How do ya know it's fifty-five?”

“I got picked up one night by some babe at The Furnace Room. She complained about how much it cost her. That was when Washington was talking about cutting Social Security checks and she didn't know if she could afford me.”

“You went to a motel with a woman that's on Social Security?”

“I'm the hottest number The Furnace Room's ever seen,” Lynn said. “I've put more a those old babes in bed than broken hips ever did. In fact, I sorta promised myself to the one that sings ‘The Little Old Lady from Pasadena' every Thursday night. Remember that one, Nelson?”

“That's sick, Lynn!”

“I know. I don't understand how you can stand me. Why don't you drop me at The Furnace Room where I can indulge my perverse desires and buy myself Wilfred's easily chewable supper, if there's any left over from the early-bird special.”

“Okay, let's make a pit stop,” Nelson said. “I could use a beer.”

“I could use a pension,” Lynn said. “And Doctor Ruth for counseling. I wouldn't be in this mess if I had any kind a sex life. It's that damn freckle.”

“
What
freckle?” Nelson wanted to know.

T
he dog started barking the second she stepped onto the driveway that night, frustrating her plan to force open the electric gate far enough to squeeze inside. The barking came from upstairs-front, in what Breda assumed was the master bedroom suite. Then someone, perhaps the maid, opened a downstairs door and flooded the entire property in light. Breda had to hurry back to her Datsun Z, fire it up and drive away. That goddamn slobbery brown dog!

Rhonda Devon had left a message with Breda's service that she'd expect a progress report by the weekend, but Breda knew that her client would really expect a satisfactory answer, not just a report. Breda wondered what Lynn Cutter and Nelson Hareem were up to, checked the time, saw that it was 8:30
P.M.,
and even though she was exhausted, decided to see if Jack Graves had been having any luck at The Unicorn. Her flagging morale required some sort of resolution to at least one of her cases.

When she got to The Unicorn, there were no less than 150 diners being served, the foyer was packed with people waiting, and they were two deep at the bar. One of those at the bar was Jack Graves.

He was sitting quietly near the service area, sipping beer from a bottle. He wore an old Pendleton shirt, a soft tan corduroy jacket, khaki trousers and well-worn moccasins. He smiled from time to time at a guy next to him who was half bagged and loud. Breda walked up behind Jack and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Hello, Breda,” he said. “Wanna drink?”

“I can use one,” she said. “Chardonnay.”

Jack Graves gave his stool to Breda and stood behind her. The suspect-bartender wiped the bartop and bared his tobacco-stained teeth in what passed for cordiality.

“Chardonnay, please,” Jack Graves said to him.

When the bartender was gone, Breda asked, “Any luck?”

“Oh yeah,” Jack Graves said quietly. “Mister Riegel was right. The bartender's supplementing his income at Riegel's expense. My guess is he makes an extra thirty or forty bucks a night, not worth firing him for. He's a very good bartender.”

“Maybe he'll just warn the bartender.”

“He'll put the guy in the hospital.”