Fugitive Nights (35 page)

“How about the young woman with the dog?”

“Tell Mrs. Devon the truth, most of it. She's Blanca's daughter. He offered to take Esther and her dog on an outing in Painted Canyon. That's all there was to that.”

Breda said, “Give a false story to a client and take her money? I could lose my license! I could be sued! Successfully!”

“Then don't take the money,” Lynn said. “If anybody ever found out you gave her a phony story, the refusal of payment would mitigate the thing. It would show you got a good heart, even if
that's
a little hard for some people to buy.”

“You didn't say whether you're willing to give up your piece of it,” Breda said to Lynn. “Or did I miss that?”

“Yeah, I guess I'm willing,” Lynn said with a sigh. “I got too many worries as it is: tax shelters, capital gains, high yield bonds. Me 'n Sinèad O'Connor, we're sick a materialism anyway.”

Everybody sat quietly for a while, then Lynn saw Breda get that little smirk of hers all frozen into place. And she said, “Am I the crazy one here? Somebody tell me.”

The last thing Jack Graves said to her was: “Unconditional love. If you were about to lose it, wouldn't
you
get crazy notions? Haven't lots of people prayed, wished and fantasized about the dead coming back? Even in another body? I've read where that fantasy's fairly common in parents who lose children. It's not so hard to understand, is it? He can't accommodate the idea right now, the idea that Malcolm will be gone forever. That Malcolm won't
ever
come back to him.”

The ride to Lynn's house was very quiet. He was the first to speak.

“Tomorrow I'd like you to help us,” he said. “I think you owe us that. We're in this thing real deep now. I can't ask Jack to help us. It could get a little chancy, and Jack, he's not well.”

She only said, “Okay.”

After a few minutes, she said, “Isn't there something you can do to persuade Jack to … see somebody? A doctor?”

“I don't know him well enough,” Lynn said. “I knew him from before, and I worked on his defense, but we never got to be close friends. After he shot the kid he became a recluse. Anyway, I don't know how to deal with something like he's got to deal with. Do you?”

“No,” she said. “I never
have
known. Maybe he'd come to dinner sometime.”

“You can try. I've invited him a dozen times, but he always has an excuse.”

“Maybe after this case is over I'll give it a try.”

Lynn said, “Breda, I'd like you to arrange with Nelson to meet at the Bob Hope Classic tomorrow morning. I'd like you to keep an eye on Nelson while
he
keeps an eye on John Lugo.”

“Why on Nelson?”

“If Nelson spots our guy, or someone who's very likely our guy, I wanna be sure that the first deputy sheriff you see steps in and takes over. There'll be plenty a deputies working at that tournament. I want Nelson to back off and let
them
confront the guy. He's their problem anyway.”

“You gonna adopt Nelson, or what?”

“He's a squirrel, definitely hazardous to his own health and safety. But he's a nice kid.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “And so's Clive Devon. A nice
kid.
I'm surrounded by males that can't grow up.”

“People're always looking for immortality,” Lynn said. “That's all Clive Devon's doing. And it's not even for himself.”

They were silent again, both of them thinking about the money they were giving up. Her soft-hits radio station was getting on his nerves. He said, “Mind if I change stations?”

“Help yourself,” she said.

He switched to the country station and of course they were still monitoring his every move. It was a Chet Atkins number: “Poor Boy Blues.”

Breda didn't say anything at all till she dropped off Lynn at home. Then she sighed and said, “Okay, I'll baby-sit Nelson. I'll buy him a book in case the stakeout gets boring. And some crayons to color in it.”

L
ynn hadn't touched
any
gun since he'd been on medical leave. And he hadn't touched his off-duty gun in several years. He hoped the ammo still worked when he hitched the .38 two-inch Colt to his belt. He'd put on so much weight that even with his green flowered aloha shirt hanging outside, the slight bulge was noticeable.

He had no intention of confronting Francisco V. Ibañez; the gun was only in case Ibañez spotted him first. The gun was a last resort.

Lynn was surprised at how nervous he was that Saturday morning. He'd nicked himself twice while shaving. There was nothing in the house to eat, but he didn't care, his stomach was too fluttery anyway. He figured there was just about enough gas in the Rambler to get down to the hotel and back. He got a shudder when he realized that he might not
need
gas to get back!

Lynn arrived at the resort hotel just before 8:00
A.M.
He went straight to the house phone and called the room of Francisco Ibañez. Still no answer, so he went to one of the public phones and called reception.

With a fair-to-middling Spanish accent, Lynn said, “Hello? This is Francisco Ibañez. I am on the way back to the hotel and will be there in twenty minutes. I would like a continental breakfast waiting in my room upon my arrival. And please have someone bring my clubhouse badge to the room. It is there at reception in an envelope. Do you have all that?”

The young man said, “Mister … Ibañez? Wait. A badge, you say?”

“Young man, it's there at reception! A badge for the golf tournament. Please, I am in a hurry. Do I have to repeat myself?”

“No, no, sir. I have it,” the young man said.

After Lynn hung up he strolled back past reception pretending to be reading a paper. He overheard the kid say to the young woman assisting him, “Tell Tony to run this envelope up to room five-twenty-nine. These foreigners get
bossy
when they have a few bucks!”

Lynn spent the remainder of that morning on the fifth floor, on the wing across from room 529. That was a very long time to be leaning with his elbows on a railing, looking down at that humongous lobby. A couple of times he almost got vertigo.

“This ain't as exciting as the Indio Date Festival,” Nelson said to Breda, after stepping off the shuttle bus and getting jostled into the grounds of Indian Wells Country Club by swarms of golf fans. “I went to the Date Festival last year. Ever been to it?”

Breda bought two tickets from a tournament volunteer, and then said, “No, maybe I'll go this year.”

She was wearing a pink knit shirt, white walking shorts, white Reeboks. It was already 75 degrees in Indian Wells and climbing to an expected 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Her pink visor and sunglasses, along with her athletic figure, made her look like a pro herself, Nelson thought. One of the mature tour professionals, of course.

“At the Date Festival you see mimes and magicians and guys on stilts roaming all around the midway,” Nelson said. “And there's ostrich races and camel races. They tell me sometimes a camel or ostrich gets loose and the cops have to help chase them. I don't think I'd want an overtime job like that. The deputies working here at the golf tournament also get good O.T. pay.”

“You'd rather work for free,” Breda said, “which is what you're doing at this moment, and what you've been doing all week, you and Lynn.”

“Funny,” Nelson said, showing his rabbit grin, “I guess you're right. But I'll get my reward.”

“In the next world?”

“Yeah, my
next
world's gonna be at Palm Springs P.D. after I catch the bad guy. I'll be the number-one draft choice in this whole valley. Everybody's gonna want me!”

Nelson had told Breda he'd worn his “golfiest” outfit, a striped knit shirt, Levi Dockers and Nike Airs, the latter so as not to scrunch up the turf with his high-heeled boots. Breda studied the little cop for a minute. Lynn was right in wanting her to watch over him. But they couldn't
all
be little boys, could they? Only every one she'd ever met in nearly forty-three years on this earth!

They found John Lugo's name on the pairing sheet along with two other amateurs and the professional who made up the foursome. The pro was some guy named Jim that Nelson had never heard of. He was disappointed it wasn't somebody like Arnold Palmer, who had a huge gallery following him.

“Ever been to one a these things?” he asked Breda as they wandered behind the crowds along the roped-off fairways.

“Just the Dinah Shore tournament,” she said, looking at the scheduled tee times. “I think we might catch up with Lugo on number seventeen. He started on number ten.”

“I wonder if we shoulda got here earlier? What if the guy had went for him right away on his very first hole?”

“Assassins need bigger crowds.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Nelson said. “Well, he's gonna get that, all right.”

The unseasonable hot spell they'd been having all week brought out lots of extra golf fans. They were pouring in, and thousands would be on hand at day's end. Even on the opposite side of the clubhouse they could hear a noisy gallery at number one tee cheering on a couple of amateurs who'd tried in vain to drive it past Bing-Phil Lake, named for Crosby, and for Phil Harris, who still lived in the valley with his wife, former movie star Alice Faye.

Indian Wells was a tight golf course but in a beautiful setting coved next to the hills. The course was landscaped with pines, pepper and olive trees, some eucalyptus, and palms palms palms. There were white and yellow pyramid tents set up all around the clubhouse with booths for refreshments and mementos.

When they got to the side of the clubhouse Nelson heard someone say, “That poor fella's going snorkeling, wait and see!”

There was a puddle, which in the desert they call a lake, guarding the sixteenth green. Nelson heard the moan of the crowd and then a plunk! He watched the guy who'd predicted the disaster show everyone one of those ain't-it-a-shame Jimmy Carter grins, the kind where you just wanted to tear his lips off.

“I oughtta take up golf if I'm gonna make a successful life for myself in this valley,” Nelson said.

“Wouldn't burn up enough of your nervous energy. I think you should consider marathon running. By the way, I don't see any sign of a gun. You
must
be carrying.”

“You don't wanna know where it is,” he said. “That's why I'm wearin these pants. They're a little baggy in the crotch.”

“Try not to sit down,” Breda said. “If you do, I sure hope you don't have a premature discharge of the uncommon variety.”

The seventeenth was a 398-yard par four, with a dogleg left. Just about all the holes at Indian Wells had narrow fairways, and the amateurs they'd seen so far were usually on the wrong one. Standing between the sixteenth green and seventeenth tee gave them a lot to look at, including the clubhouse veranda, which was mobbed.

Breda, who was taller than Nelson, stood on her tiptoes to see over the gallery. She said, “I think his foursome's on the tee at sixteen. I'd sure like to see Johnny Mathis or John Denver come through.”

“I'm waitin for Glen Campbell,” Nelson said. “I'm bettin he
does
wear cowboy golf boots.”

Fifteen minutes later, John Lugo was beside his golf cart on the sixteenth fairway waiting for the foursome in front to clear the green. There was no doubt which of the golfers was John Lugo. The other three looked, in various ways, about as Mexican as Tip O'Neill, former Speaker of the House, who for once wasn't playing.

John Lugo didn't look sixty-seven years old, and would've looked even younger if he hadn't dyed his hair and mustache black, an idea that had backfired. He was thick through the chest and shoulders but was two inches shorter than Nelson Hareem. Lugo wore a lavender Ben Hogan golf cap, a gray sweater-vest already damp with perspiration, a gray golf shirt and lavender plus fours. He carried the maximum handicap of eighteen, and was a
very
macho hacker.

When he flailed away at his second shot with a five-iron, it cost him a trip to the sand, and made all the sadists in the gallery titter, and say things like, “That swing reminds me of
yours
, Norman!”

“We oughtta find an opportunity to ask Lugo a few questions,” Nelson said to Breda.

“About what? I'm sure he and his lawyer had a heart-to-heart. If there was any light to be shed the lawyer would've called us.”

“Maybe Leo Grishman forgot to mention the Canary Islands thing. Remember, Lugo had a limited partner in Puerto Rico who came from the Canary Islands, just like Francisco V. Ibañez.”

“Maybe after it's over, we can introduce ourselves.”

“I hope Lynn's okay workin all alone,” Nelson said, at about the time John Lugo put the gallery into hysterics by shoveling a skip-load of sand onto the sixteenth green, leaving the ball behind in the bunker.