Fugitive Nights (29 page)

He had to sleep for the sake of his mission. He wished he had some powders to make him sleep. If he was at home he could walk into a pharmacy and buy whatever he needed. In this country they made you go through a physician for everything.

Then the fugitive picked up the writing pad again, turned to a fresh page and wrote:

My dearest wife
,

When you receive this letter I shall either be at home by your side or God shall have taken me. If I am gone to God you must be very strong for the sake of the

But the fugitive couldn't go on. He got up and went to the bathroom. He drank some water and looked at himself in the mirror, determined not to weep.

Breda Burrows had slept in her clothes, the only time in her life. She had an all-world hangover, the first since she was twenty years old. She felt like maggots were eating her brain. And
still
the phone wouldn't stop.

Without attempting to raise up, she scooted on her back and groped around to where the phone should be, finally finding it on the floor. When had she put the damn phone on the floor?

“ 'Lo,” she whispered into the mouthpiece.

“Sorry to call so early,” Jack Graves said, “but I might be able to wrap up your case by this evening.”

“Really?” she said, too loud. A sharp knife stabbed across her forehead and settled behind her right ear up to the hilt.

“I'll be tailing him again today,” Jack Graves said, “and I
think
I know where he'll be going. What I'd like you to do is, I'd like you to call Rhonda Devon and ask her to call her husband and say she's coming to the desert at six o'clock this evening.”

“I doubt if she'll come,” Breda said, painfully forcing herself to endure the agony of sitting up. “She only comes once every couple weeks or so.”

“I don't care if she actually shows up,” Jack Graves said. “Just so he thinks she's coming. And the other thing I need for you to do is, I need for you and Lynn to go to Clive Devon's house at six o'clock this evening and have a talk with him.”

“About what?”

“About the drug smuggler he picked up in the canyon.”

“How can we do that without blowing the whole thing?”

“First, have Lynn badge him. Then tell him half the truth, that a policeman from the south end took license numbers of every car he saw in Painted Canyon including the Range Rover, hoping he could find a witness to the airport incident. Describe the smuggler to him.”

There was a pause and then Breda said, “I … uh … I can't use Lynn on this job anymore, Jack.”

“Why not?”

“It's too complicated.”

“You can't go there and represent yourself as a police officer, Breda,” Jack Graves said. “You have your P.I. license to think about.”

“I don't think Lynn's much use to me on this one,” she said. “And he's gonna be busy with Nelson.”

“But he's still a police officer. He can show his badge and ask questions. I need Clive Devon to believe that you're investigating a serious crime that involves a righteous bad guy that he picked up in the canyon. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “I'll take him with me. Six o'clock, you say?”

“Six o'clock. After that, I'd like both of you to meet me, and maybe I'll have your answer.”

“Where?”

“My place, okay?”

“See you in Windy Point after we talk to Clive Devon.”

When she hung up, she felt bilious. She could still smell the booze. She lurched unsteadily into the bathroom and ran a bath, then she changed her mind and took a hot shower followed by a cold one. It was pure agony, but she reveled in the suffering, knowing that the sniveling debauched lowlife villainous bucket of dog vomit was hurting just as much as she was.

He was hurting, but not quite as much as Breda Burrows. In the first place he hadn't drunk as much in relation to his capacity and tolerance. In the second place, every time a wave of agony would sweep over him he'd think of how she'd looked lying naked under the sheet, with her eyes narrowed to slits of cornflower blue, and that freckle quivering!

He showered, shaved and even trimmed his mustache, no mean feat when he was that shaky. He forced himself to eat a scrambled egg, and drank a glass of orange juice to replenish vitamins. He had coffee, the last of it. There wasn't another goddamn thing to eat or drink in the house.

Lynn had exactly ten more days of existing there before the owner took over, and he didn't hold out much hope for the house-sitting gig at Tamarisk Country Club. He figured he was about to join the ranks of the homeless.

The only chance he had was if the pension came through. It should've been granted a month ago. Every time he called about it he'd get some spineless double-talking bureaucrat too incompetent to flip burgers at Jack in the Box.

He was standing out on the street reading his press notices when Nelson roared up the street at 8:55
A.M.
grinning like he'd learned how to make shade.

“You're up and ready!” Nelson said, as he slid the Wrangler to a risky stop three inches from Lynn's body.

“The game's afoot,” Lynn said. “I couldn't wait. Like I can't wait to wear support hose and live for fiber. You see this?”

He handed Nelson the third page of the local paper. A small headline,
BRAWL AT FUNERAL HOME,
was followed by:
Police are baffled by a violent fight between two men that took place in the early evening hours during a rosary service at Lieberman Brothers Mortuary. Both men were seeking information on an undisclosed client of Lieberman Brothers. One man claimed to be a police officer, but police spokesmen believe that his badge was bogus. The case is being investigated.

Nelson said, “Yeah, I'm gonna get a scrapbook.” Then, “Did you and Breda go out for supper last night?” And he winked!

“What makes you ask that?”

“The way you were lookin at her, all googly-eyed.”

“Yeah, well you won't be seeing no more googles. That babe's a nut case.”

“Somethin happen?”

“Nothin a person your age'd understand.”

“Wanna hear my new country tape?”

“Not if it's about a guy whose girlfriend beats the living shit outta him and threatens to call a lawyer. Is
that
what it's about?”

“No.”

“Okay, play it. Maybe they don't know every freaking move I make, after all.”

“Who?”

“Nashville or wherever it is they spy into people's heads and turn out those goddamn songs.”

Nelson said, “I don't think I wanna know what happened to you last night.”

He punched in a Garth Brooks song, “If Tomorrow Never Comes.”

“JESUS CHRIST!” Lynn yelled, and his voice exploded in his ears like a magnum round.

“What's wrong?”

“Whaddaya think you're doing, playing
that
song? Do you realize we're going after a guy that tried to stick me in a brass-handled sedan before my time? And might try it again with more success?”

If tomorrow never comes, Garth Brooks sang. The song was an omen.

Nelson didn't say a word. He ejected that mother, pronto.

When they knocked on the door of the pink Mediterranean house up on Southridge, they were met by a handsome guy in his mid-thirties. He wore matching flowered shirt and shorts, and leather sandals. He was dark and had a streak of white running through his black power ponytail. He stood blocking the entry, but smiling.

Lynn showed his badge, but this guy was different. This guy said, “Got an I.D. card to go with that?” Lynn reluctantly showed his police I.D. and the guy read it and said, “Yes, Mister Cutter, what can I do for you?”

“Are you John Lugo?” Lynn asked.

“No, this is his home, but he's not here. Can I help you, sir?”

“Is he at his L.A. home?”

“No, he's in Hawaii for a few days playing golf. Why don't you tell me what it's about, sir.”

It was going to be like that, Lynn thought. This guy wasn't going to let anybody get close.

“Can I have
your
name?” Lynn asked.

“Sure, Mister Cutter. Bino Sierra.”

“Bino.”

He touched the snowy streak in his hair and said, “Short for Albino. I was born with this.”

The guy hadn't stopped smiling since he'd opened the door. He had brilliantly white teeth and you could see all thirty-two of them. It was
that
kind of smile. He wore rings on both hands, and a gold chain with a cross on it hung from his neck, all but vanishing in a thatch of chest hair. Bino Sierra wasn't a typical butler, and he didn't cut the grass, that was certain.

“When will he be back from Hawaii?”

Shrugging, Bino Sierra said, “Mister Lugo comes and goes in his own good time. But you can talk to his lawyer.”

The smile got even wider when Lynn said, “Does his lawyer sleep here or does he have an office?”

“An office in Palm Desert. Name's Leo Grishman.”

“Where's the office?”

“The new building across from the college,” Bino Sierra said, again touching the white streak. Then he said, “Funny, a detective from Palm Springs P.D. phoned this morning to see if Mister Lugo could shed any light on a brawl that happened in a funeral home last night. Involved a couple a guys looking for Mister Lugo. He didn't say he was sending detectives to the house. But it's okay, we're anxious to help.”

Bino Sierra was still smiling as he closed the door.

When they were back in the Wrangler, Nelson Hareem said, “
This
ain't gonna be so easy.”

“That smile was about as genuine as an agent's kiss,” Lynn said. “That's what the old actors at The Furnace Room would say.”

T
he law office was in a fairly new professional building on Fred Waring Drive in Palm Desert.

After they'd gotten the Wrangler parked and were walking toward the flat-roofed, brick-and-glass building, Nelson said nervously, “Guy's gonna be a mob lawyer, ain't he?”

“Oh,
sure
,” Lynn said. “When we come outta here you'll have to start your Jeep with a long stick or suddenly we'll be residing in three states.”

“Know what I was thinkin? If the Palm Springs cops got the guy's hat after he mashed it in your moosh they could get his genetic fingerprint from the sweat on the hatband. I was readin where the technology's gettin that refined!”

“I just know you were the roomie of Doctor John Watson in another life,” Lynn said.

When they were ascending the stairs to the second floor, three workmen carrying a huge roll of carpet were staggering down the staircase.

“Comin through!” the guy in front said.

“Leo Grishman law offices up there?” Lynn asked.

“I'll say it is,” the guy in back said, panting. “And I wish it was on the first floor, I can tell ya.”

The double doors of the law firm were wide open, and a huge carpet pad was being trimmed and stapled to the floor.

A little man about Wilfred Plimsoll's age, wearing shapeless ancient tweed, was yelling at a natty young guy in a butterscotch three-piece Italian suit. The young guy had his hands full of carpet and fabric samples.

“Do I complain, Roger?” the old guy complained to the young one.

“No, Mister Grishman,” Roger replied.

“Then why can't you give me texture? You give a woman color, you give a man texture, that's how it should be. That's all a man needs, along with an easy chair and a used-brick fireplace. Is
that
asking too much?”

“No, Mister Grishman,” Roger said, looking down at the old lawyer. “Except for the used brick. You don't have a fireplace here.”

“Do my clients want to be walking around for two weeks on carpet pad because
you
couldn't bring me the carpet I ordered? I'll tell you the answer. The answer is no. Is that too difficult to understand, Roger?”

“No, Mister Grishman,” Roger said.

“Go find me some texture, Roger, please. They have to sell it somewhere. You people must learn where to buy it in your interior decorator school. It's got to be for sale! Texture!”

“I'll get right on it, Mister Grishman,” the interior designer said. “I think I know what you want.”

Roger's butterscotch coattails were flying past Lynn and Nelson before the little attorney even noticed the visitors. Then he saw them and said, “He thinks he knows what I want. I've only been working with him for six months and he
thinks
he knows what I want. I asked for subtlety. Graceland is more understated. Come in, gentlemen. Whom did you wish to see?”

Lynn displayed his badge and said, “It's about the matter at the funeral home last night, Mister Grishman. I suppose Mister Lugo's man has contacted you?”

“Matter of fact I just hung up from talking to Bino Sierra, and to Bob Lieberman at the mortuary. Bino said you'd be dropping by. Come on in. It's all unbelievable.”