Fugitive Nights (22 page)

“She's back in room D changing linens. That's where he stayed. She didn't get to it yesterday like she shoulda. We're kinda slow right now.”

They found a young black woman in room D, watching a soap and having a smoke. She jumped up when they entered.

“We're police officers, Becky,” Lynn said, showing his badge. “What can you tell us about the Spanish gentleman that checked into this room on Tuesday? He had a mustache and carried a red bag. You took him a feather pillow, remember?”

“Spanish?” she said. “I thought he was Eye-ranian.”

“Whatever,” Lynn Cutter said. “Did you see his car?”

“No.”

“What kinda hat did he have on?”

“I don't remember,” she said. “Did he have a hat on?”

“Was he bald maybe?”

“He was old enough to be bald, but I dunno if he was bald.”

“How old
was
he?”

“As old as you almost.”

“Anything else you can tell us? Did you see him later when he came or went?”

“No. When I came by with the feather pilla he was crawlin on the floor when I opened the door.”

“Crawlin on the floor?” Nelson said.

“Yeah, I figured he lost a contact lens,” Becky said. “That's all I seen. He said thanks for the pilla.”

When they got out to the Jeep, Nelson was practically hyperventilating. His blue eyes pulsated when he cried, “You know as well as I do! He was praying to Mecca!”

“Calm yourself, Nelson,” Lynn said, “or I'll have to give you mouth-to-mouth. And with the women I been seeing lately, you

don't
wanna kiss me.”

*   *   *

He'd been saving Serenity Markers and Memorials till last. He was discouraged, but he was also superstitious. The word
serenity
had a pretty sound, and few English words sounded pretty to his ear. If this was not the correct place he was finished, and might as well begin his trip home.

This one was in a Cathedral City industrial park on Perez Road. On both sides of the street there were dozens of shoe-box buildings with overhead metal doors. Some had the business names stenciled or painted on the office window. This one had a large wooden sign up near the roof on the face of the building:
SERENITY.

He was wearing the Panama. It was too hot to put on the gaudy blazer. He was hungry and wanted a beer, but wouldn't have a drink while he was working. When he entered the office, he found a workman dressed in denim, using the phone in the office. The workman's black hair was covered with pale dust, and a pair of goggles hung on a strap around his neck. This company obviously made their own memorials rather than stocking mass-produced plaques like the others he'd visited.

When the workman hung up the phone the fugitive smiled and said, “Can you help me, please? I am looking for a gravestone just like the one that was made for a woman who died last September. It was a beautiful stone. I must have one like it.”

“Did we do it?”

“I am not sure. I think yes, but I do not know the name of the dead woman. It was ordered on day thirteen of September.”

“Who was the customer?”

“I do not know, but he showed me a photograph of the stone. It was so lovely. I must have one for my aunt who died last Friday.”

“Last September you say? What'd it look like?”

“From the photo I cannot be sure if it was marble or granite. But there were orchids carved on it.”

“One on each side a the woman's name,” the workman said. “Single grave, sixteen by twenty-eight, right?”

“You did the work?” the fugitive cried.

“Sure,” the workman said. “Only time I ever got a call for custom orchids.”

“Please! I
must
see the stone with my eyes to be sure it is exactly what I want for my aunt! Please to tell me the name of the person who ordered the stone?”

“Well, I only do the engraving and sandblasting,” the man said. “Martha's the one you should talk to. She's gone to the bank to make a deposit. Can you come back later?”

“When?”

“Twenty minutes maybe?”

“Do you remember the name on the stone?”

“No, I can't remember. I do so many.”

The fugitive needed all his self-control to remain calm and businesslike when he said, “I have a problem at the moment. I need very much to order the stone at once. I must go to Los Angeles on business. If you can look in your files for last September it might be possible to find the name. Then I could contact the customer and discover where the stone is placed so that I can see it with my eyes.”

The man smiled, shook his head, and said, “Not me, Mister. Martha'd kill anybody that went into her files. Besides, I don't have no idea how to work a computer.”

“Oh. Your transaction is on a computer?”

“I don't know nothing about that part of it. I can do a design and tape it off and I can sandblast it till you have the prettiest orchids you ever seen. But I can't go into Martha's files.”

“I understand,” the fugitive said. “I may wait here until the lady returns?”

“Help yourself,” the workman said. “I gotta get back to work.”

When he was alone, the fugitive sat and picked up a magazine, thinking about Martha and what he would say to her. What if she was one of those officious Americans who would only give him enough information to select his gravestone and nothing more? Then he'd have to take the information by force, or risk burglarizing this place. He was sure that the building had an alarm system.

The fugitive could hear the hiss of sandblasting outside the office. He got up, went to the front door and looked outside. There was no car parked immediately in front, not even his own. He made a quick decision, and walked around the reception counter to the file drawers. The first one contained nothing but brochures for memorials of all kinds.

He opened another and discovered what looked like order forms. The company had a computer, but they also had an invoice system. He found some orders that were placed by those other companies he'd visited. Serenity appeared to be the only manufacturer in the area. He worked from front to back and discovered that they were in chronological order.

Locating September, he found a large number of invoices. He grabbed the entire batch including some from August and October, just to be sure.

He was shoving them inside his pink cotton shirt when a woman said, “What're you doing?”

He would've recognized Martha. She was taller than he, and almost as heavy. She was a woman of about sixty years, and was so angry there was no point in talking. What could he say, in any case?

The fugitive simply smiled in embarrassment and walked deliberately toward the door, holding out his hand as though to say, “Please, Martha, step back.” But he said nothing.

“Who
are
you?” Martha demanded. “And where do you think you're going with those?”

He kept advancing, meaning only to fend her off so he could get to the door, but she grabbed his arm and said, “Here, you! Drop those files! Then she screamed: “MIKE! COME QUICK!”

The fugitive shoved the woman hard and heard her grunt when she thudded into the wall and fell to the floor.

She screamed, “MIKE! HELP! HELP!”

The fugitive was glad he'd done one thing right, at least. He'd parked out on Perez Road, just in case. He hadn't wanted anybody writing down his license number if something went wrong. He certainly didn't want to steal any more cars.

He ran through the parking lot with no one chasing him. When he got to his car and started it, he made a U-turn to avoid being seen by anyone running out the front door, and as he drove, he was careful not to exceed thirty-five miles per hour.

He was approaching Date Palm Drive when he saw a Cathedral City police car about to turn west on Perez Road. He wheeled into another industrial park. He believed that the response time to Martha's call would be fast, so he only had a few minutes.

He waited a moment, then eased his car back onto Perez Road, but he saw that the police car had pulled over to the side of the street. The officer was writing something. The fugitive couldn't wait any longer. He drove out and turned west on Perez Road away from the police car, but as he neared Cathedral Canyon Drive he saw yet another police car! He was about to be sandwiched!

The fugitive made himself turn left into
another
business park, hoping both police cars would go by. He drove to the rear of the building, but slammed on his brakes when he found himself confronting four more Cathedral City police cars!

The fugitive wheeled around and was retreating out the driveway when the first policeman he'd seen came right at him! The fugitive stopped.

When he did, the policeman pulled his car alongside, facing the other direction, and said, “Looking for the post office?”

Too frightened to speak, the fugitive nodded and tried to smile.

“Around the front,” the policeman said. “To your right.”

The fugitive was afraid to say thank you. He merely waved, and did as the policeman said. He wanted to speed away on Perez Road, but he did not. He pulled into the front parking lot with all the other cars.

It appeared to be a little shopping center like so many he'd seen. The Cathedral City police station was just a series of storefronts, tied together. In a bizarre way, it was reassuring. It was the way it would be in his own country: a police station crammed between a post office and an Armenian chiropractor.

When the fugitive finally did begin to drive back out onto Perez Road, a police car squealed from behind the police station, heading east on Perez, no doubt on its way to take a report from Martha. The fugitive turned west, back to Palm Springs, and only then did he relax enough to pull the wad of invoices from inside his shirt. They were slimy from his sweat. His beautiful new pink shirt was drenched. He couldn't wait to get back to the hotel and order a beer.
Two
beers.

He wondered what the policeman would make of it, someone stealing work invoices. Probably that he was a madman. That's what a reasonable person would make of it. He suddenly felt weak, and the tension started to dissipate. He smiled when he thought of all those police cars, Chevrolets, each with a wide blue stripe and a stylized decal on the door: a mountain, a palm tree and a red fireball of sun.

They even have beautiful police cars in this country, the fugitive thought, admiringly.

When Nelson was driving south on Date Palm Drive intending to take Lynn back to The Furnace Room, he was still pumped. “Lynn, you gotta admit we done a good job even if we sorta ran outta leads temporarily.”

“Nelson, we still don't know for sure if Francisco V. Ibañez from the Canary Islands is your drug smuggler, pardon me, your terrorist.”

“We know in our hearts, Lynn. Anyways, I'm gonna keep diggin. I'm gonna call or go to every single car rental company in Palm Springs tomorrow. I got a hunch he's after somebody big, somebody that's here for the Bob Hope Classic.”

“Good luck, Nelson,” Lynn said. “You might see if Donald Trump's playing. If he is, don't try to stop the bad guy. There's such a thing as
good
terrorism, you know.”

“By the way,” Nelson said, “Francisco V. Ibañez blew his horn when he wanted service at the motel, didn't he?”

“So?”

“That's real uncool, honkin your horn in California. Only tourists do it.”

“So? He's a tourist, ain't he?”

“In
Arab
countries they use their car horns for everything. They play sonatas with em. I read it somewheres.”

Then Nelson noticed the local TV news car driving on Perez Road, and Lynn almost got thrown into Nelson's lap when the little cop whipped the Wrangler to the right.

“What're you doing, Nelson?” Lynn demanded.

“Might be a two-eleven in progress or somethin! Let's check it out!”

“Get me outta here!” Lynn said, but Nelson stomped down and sped toward the TV news car as it was about to turn into the industrial park. While the news car waited for the oncoming traffic to clear, Nelson pulled up beside them and flipped out his badge.

“What's up?” Nelson asked them.

“Offbeat story,” a camera guy said. “Somebody roughed up an old lady at a tombstone company and stole her work invoices. We're gonna do an interview under the ‘Some-guys'll-steal-any-thing' sort of story.”

“I'll watch for it tonight,” Nelson said, as the news car turned into the parking lot and stopped in front of Serenity Markers and Memorials.

“That's not a bad lead,” Nelson said to Lynn, and kept driving west. “Some guys'll steal anything.”

“We had a patrol officer, tried to put together a video on offbeat crime,” Lynn said. “Spent a fortune on video equipment, but all he ended up with was a boring two hours that showed what everybody already knows: people're thieves. The
Heaven's Gate
of home movies is what he ended up with.”

All of a sudden, Nelson screamed: “TOMBSTONE COMPANY!”

And this time he jumped on the brakes, wrenched the wheel, and spun a U-ee at the same time.

Lynn had to grab the roll bar with both hands and hang on while Nelson roared back to Serenity Markers and Memorials code three, but without a siren.

When Nelson slid the Jeep to a stop, Lynn said, in the monotone of a psychopathic killer, “You better have an explanation for this, cause now my neck hurts so much I don't even know I
got
knees anymore. You have maybe two minutes to live.”

But Nelson already had page 571 of the Palm Springs yellow pages unfolded and was waving it before the bloodshot eyes of Lynn Cutter, saying, “Remember Carlton the Confessor? What he said about markers and memorials? This is it, Lynn! This is why Francisco V. Ibañez tore out the page!”

Nelson's stubby little finger was pointing to a list on the page, at the same name that was painted on a sign high on the face of the building.