Fugitive Nights (19 page)

Restless, he switched back to the TV news, which was still about the war. The Middle East had always depressed him. He didn't feel a shred of kinship with the people of the region, even those in Lebanon. In fact, Nelson had never known his Lebanese grandfather, who'd died when Nelson's father was still a boy. Nelson felt sort of Bakersfield-Okie like everyone else in his family, though he and his sisters had been mostly raised in San Bernardino after his mother had remarried.

Then Nelson got up to switch off the TV, wishing he could remember to buy batteries for the remote control. That Sony was his other real luxury, next to the Jeep Wrangler that he couldn't afford but had to have.

The aquarium looked okay, but he'd have to change the water soon. He sprinkled some food into it and said, “Hello Ollie, hello Liddy” to his two mongrel goldfish, which he liked better than all the fancy ones they'd tried to sell him.

Nelson thought about reading the issue of
Soldier of Fortune
he'd bought in the hope of learning something about terrorists now that he might be on the trail of one, but it seemed to be all about people who'd gone fruity over anything cylindrical that belched flame.

It was discouraging to think of trying to drag Lynn Cutter up to Desert Hot Springs the next day, but really, some of the motels up there would be even better bets for a fugitive seeking a remote base of operations. But Desert Hot Springs was several miles from Palm Springs so the guy would need a car, a cold car. Nelson was turning over in his mind the thought of checking car rental offices. The more he thought about it, the better he liked the idea.

By eleven o'clock he was in bed enjoying a fantasy of being interviewed by
The Desert Sun
after catching the bad guy. In this particular fantasy, the terrorist was trying to plant a plastique explosive on the eighteenth hole of Indian Wells Country Club, where the trophies and checks would be handed out by Bob Hope. Thus, Nelson Hareem was going to single-handedly stop a foreign power from blowing the living shit out of the guy who'd entertained the troops in Saudi Arabia.

The former renter of Nelson's bachelor apartment had tried scratching out a living as a telephone solicitor for anybody that'd pay her a minimum wage, and there was a stack of telephone books in the apartment with listings for most of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, two of the largest counties on earth.

Nelson jumped out of bed, grabbed the bathrobe his ex-girlfriend had given him for his twenty-sixth birthday, and rummaged through the pile until he found the Palm Springs directory. He turned to the yellow pages but was discouraged to see how many listings were devoted to automobile renting and leasing. He should've expected as much in a city that hosts hundreds of thousands of tourists during the season. He tore out the sheaf of pages and put them with page 572—the single page of motel listings A through C that corresponded to the page ripped out of another book by the terrorist.

Nelson spread page 572 flat on the coffee table beside the car rental pages. He had no interest in its other side. Page 571 listed some M's preceding the motel listings. There were modeling agencies, money order services and monument designers.

The fugitive was drinking coffee and studying page 571 of the Palm Springs yellow pages. There were only four listings that concerned him on the page, and he'd decided to memorize those listings and dispose of that page he'd torn from the phone book, just as he'd disposed of the red flight bag. Now he had a beautiful blue leather bag that would fit under an airplane seat, and yet was large enough to carry everything he'd need.

The fugitive read the business names, addresses and phone numbers aloud as he paced back and forth in his motel room.

“Desert Trail Monuments,” he said aloud in slightly accented English.

Then he read aloud for practice: “Depend on us to provide the perfect memorial in granite, bronze or marble.”

He went into the bathroom and splashed a little more shaving lotion on his face. His upper lip was still pinpointed with a raw and tender telltale rash, where he'd shaved off his mustache. He'd had that mustache since he was twenty-three years old and hated losing it.

He wondered what his wife would say when he got home. He had to admit that he looked a few years younger. Most people said he looked older than thirty-nine years, but it was only the premature baldness. His mother's father had been bald, and three of her brothers. But without the mustache he
did
look younger, he was sure of it.

He resumed his pacing. The second company under monuments was Johnson and Son Memorials. The company was in Desert Hot Springs.

He said it aloud, “Johnson … J-J-Johnson.” It was hard to say J's.

He'd worked many years at perfecting what everyone said was excellent English, and he'd tried to convince his children that they could not hope to succeed in the future without a solid knowledge of the English language. He was very much aware that one of the reasons he'd been chosen for this mission was because he spoke English better than any of his comrades.

The fugitive began to pace with more determination while he committed the address and telephone number of Palm and Sand Markers. When he was finished with that one, there was one more in Cathedral City, Serenity Markers and Memorials. He liked the name of that one: Serenity. He understood the word very well.

He paced and said quietly: “Serenity, Serenity, Serenity …”

N
o sneaking up on a guy like Jack Graves, Breda thought. He must've been a pretty good dope-cop. They had an awful lot of dope down there in Orange County where he'd done his work. Breda would've used a man like that in intelligence gathering rather than in drug raids, then he never would've shot that boy. Or was it written somewhere?

He stuck his hand out the car window and waved when she was still thirty feet from the right rear fender of his Mazda. Breda opened the passenger door and got in just as the first low rays were washing over the valley from above the Santa Rosa Mountains.

It wasn't like getting into Lynn Cutter's messy Rambler. Jack Graves' Mazda was disturbingly clean and tidy. He had a thermos of coffee waiting, and two mugs inside a vinyl gym bag. Along with a plastic container of real cream and another of sugar, there were two plastic spoons in a folded paper napkin; everything ready for her, including three pieces of Danish to choose from.

“I thought you might not have time for breakfast,” he said, as Breda put the binoculars, video camera and the Clive Devon file folder on the rear seat.

“What, no espresso?” She tore off a piece of Danish to be polite, poured herself some coffee and added a few drops of cream, no sugar. “What time did you get up?”

“I always get up at five-thirty,” Jack Graves said, and Breda was sure that it would be at 5:30
A.M.
exactly.
Not 5:20, not 5:40.

“When this case is wrapped up I'm gonna sleep till noon,” Breda said.

“Then you'd miss the sunrise. Sunrise and sunset are a part of it. That's when the desert tells you that no matter what, everything's gonna be burned up and blown clean. That's a big part of it, living in the desert, I mean.”

Breda sipped her coffee and studied the gaunt, sorrowful face. Then she said, “Know how to work the video camera?”

“Sure. We used them all the time when we worked the Peruvian smugglers. That a Panasonic?”

“Uh huh,” Breda said, taking another nibble of Danish though she knew she shouldn't.

“I doubt that I'll be able to tape anything you'd recognize, even with the zoom. The open desert doesn't let any hunter get very close.”

“Do the best you can,” she said. “Who knows, he might go straight to the Soltero house down in Indio. Far as I'm concerned, if he's swimming and picnicking and visiting that young woman at her house, his wife can start to draw a few conclusions.”

“I'd sure hate to tape any hanky-panky through somebody's bedroom window, but I said I'd do the job and I will.”

“I don't think it'll come to that,” Breda said. “I don't know why, but I don't.” She noticed that he couldn't use the word
shoot.
It was
tape
any hanky-panky, not
shoot.

“I considered getting in the P.I. business,” he said, “but I didn't think I'd like it.”

“I don't think I like it, but my only skill and training involves dealing with the worst of people, and ordinary people at their worst.”

“A lotta the police in this town work the security jobs at the big hotels when they're suspended or on medical leave. I thought about trying to get a security job like that. Trouble is, after you do real police work for a long time you feel overqualified for the other stuff. I wish I could work with my hands, but I'm not so good with my hands.”

Breda looked at the long bony hands of Jack Graves. The first three fingers of his right hand were bruised and swollen. She was almost certain that last night his hands were okay.

She was afraid to ask what happened. “You make good coffee,” was all she said.

“That I do,” Jack Graves said, smiling. “I guess I could get a job as a short-order cook, couldn't I?”

Breda finished the coffee and the last bite of Danish, and said, “You're set then? You can read the profile I've done on him. It's not very helpful, but if he heads into the barrio down in Indio and loses you, you can figure he'll go to the Soltero house. How about meeting me at The Furnace Room at seven o'clock if he's safely tucked in at home.”

“The Furnace Room?”

“Yeah, it's Lynn's home, office and refuge. I've learned to go with the flow, far as he's concerned.”

“Okay, see you at seven unless I'm involved with something worthwhile. If I am you won't see me, but I'll call when I can.”

“I hope these goodies weren't made with saturated fat,” said Breda, enjoying the last crumb.

He liked the blue Buick very much indeed. He would love to have a car like this at home. He believed they wouldn't look for him in a car like this. Besides, he liked big American cars.

The used car had been far easier to buy than his comrades told him it would be. He had a forged California driver's license, obtained in Mexicali. And he had a Mexican license, also counterfeit, in case he needed it. He was simply a Mexican national, in California to do a bit of business with a Los Angeles firm that was trying to set up a
maquiladora
factory south of the international border, using cheap Mexican labor for the assembly of circuit boards.

The Palm Springs men's shop had been expensive beyond belief. His shoes alone—white loafers with little tassels—had cost him $185 U.S. He'd never even bought a suit of clothes that cost that much, not in his whole life. But the clothes made him feel more confident.

The salesman in the shop had chosen a maroon blazer for him, cream-colored trousers and three casual shirts. He'd told the salesman he wanted to be well dressed for Palm Springs evenings. He decided that when he returned home he'd give the coat and trousers to his brother-in-law, who would be only too happy to wear a wine-red coat with gold buttons. He would keep the shirts though; they were cotton, the finest cotton he'd ever seen. The pink one lay softly against his skin. He looked in the rearview mirror as he drove and was relieved to see that his upper lip was healing nicely. The shaving rash was all but gone, and the only evidence of absent facial hair was that his upper lip was not as tan as the rest of his face.

He'd bought two hats, one a Panama, which the salesman in the shop had insisted was “your type of hat.” And he'd bought a gray straw snap-brim like the ones he'd seen some of the Palm Springs tourists wearing. There were many bald men in this city, what with so many older people walking about; still he thought he should keep a hat on his head at all times.

He had refined his cover story for two weeks and had no fear in that regard; the only real fear he had was that somehow he'd left a trail after he'd panicked at the airport. He just had to continue reminding himself what he knew to be true, that they were not superdetectives, the U.S. police. It was so easy to feel inferior. In fact, that's what most people in his country did best: feel inferior to Americans.

Real life wasn't like the television shows where the U.S. police could solve any crime with the most sophisticated technology imaginable. The one thing his comrades kept telling him in preparation for this mission was that the U.S. police were no better than he. They were just ordinary police who failed to detect the vast majority of their serious crimes. And he spoke English probably better than any one of them could speak his language. So who was inferior to whom?

He made a right turn on a street in Desert Hot Springs, a street whose name he'd committed to memory. He was in a commercial district with a great deal of light industry, but even in an industrial area there were beautiful trees and plants. On each side of the building there were fan palms, nearly thirty meters high. A heavy thatch of dead palm fronds hung down around their trunks like a young girl's petticoat. It was reassuring to see the fan palms. They were very prevalent in his country. Perhaps it was a good omen. He put on the jacket with the gold buttons and entered the office.