Fugitive Nights (5 page)

Heroin was the drug of choice in the south end. The DEA estimated that seventy percent of California's cocaine came in through Mexico, and
all
of the “tar” heroin came from Mexico, a lot of it right there, only a few hours from Mexicali by car. Nelson Hareem's new backyard was an important distribution point for tar.

The tar, or
goma
, as the Mexicans called it, looked like brown window putty and smelled like vinegar. During recessionary times it cost about two hundred dollars a gram, which resembled a smashed raisin. Twenty dollars would buy one tenth of a gram wrapped in cellophane, covered with aluminum foil. The addict might get four hours of tolerable existence for twenty bucks, but then would need to slam more tar under his “trapdoor” scabs, so called because a convenient place to shoot was
under
the scab. The trapdoor hid the fresh needle marks from the cops.

Mexican brown and China white were almost never seen in the south end, only the tar, but there was lots and lots of tar. Hence, the south end was a dumping ground for dead human beings.

It was estimated that in those local desert towns there lived the highest concentration of parolees in the United States. Some had a need for speed, and did methamphetamine at a hundred bucks a gram, but heroin was king. The addicts were the kind who moved their lips when they read, but not when they talked. You couldn't understand a word they were saying, but outside of science institutes they were the only class of people in the continental U.S. who could think in grams and kilos.

The population always exploded down there during picking season and not just because of undocumented migrant workers from Mexico. Also in those fields were boat people from the Pacific rim, Laotians and Vietnamese mostly. Gambling squabbles were sometimes settled by machete and generally went unreported.

Local humor: Why does a migrant worker have a nose? So he has something to pick, off season.

The residents in Nelson Hareem's part of the world had to get by with swamp-coolers in summer, but one of the local drug dealers had proper air-conditioning. In fact, his house was fenced and gated, and he even had a swimming pool and spa. Nelson fantasized that he'd catch the guy doing a deal, and the young cop often tailed him when the dealer went to the saloon for a game of snooker, mingling with dogs and men who squatted out front by barred windows; their feet were white from the alkali that rose from the earth and produced a layer of crusty powder in that little bit of purgatory.

Nelson was dreaming of Palm Springs on the afternoon that Lynn Cutter was learning about Clive Devon from his new temporary boss, Breda Burrows.

That same afternoon a single-engine Cessna encountered mechanical trouble over the Anza Borrego mountain range, and the pilot of the plane decided to make an unscheduled stop at a small desert airport. It was one of the hottest spots in the nation, over a hundred feet below sea level. The airport had very little traffic, and absolutely nothing resembling a control tower. Pilots had to see and be seen. But the California Highway Patrol and the Riverside County Sheriff's Department kept a chopper and a fixed-wing aircraft at the airport. Often there'd be a cop, wearing an aviation jumpsuit with police insignia, hanging around the pilot's lounge.

The Cessna sputtered once on approach, but landed perfectly and taxied toward the hangar. A mechanic at the airport later told police that the pilot was a nice-looking blond guy in a designer bomber jacket, and that his passenger had spoken a few words of accented English.

The passenger, described as a “bald Latino in a khaki shirt,” had looked at a large map on the wall in the hangar while the pilot and mechanic talked briefly. The mechanic later said that the bald man had pointed to some nearby towns on the map, said something to the pilot, and laughed. Then the bald man, clutching a red flight bag, headed toward the airport's public rest room.

Meanwhile, a sheriff's department pilot who was sick of drinking soda pop and reading a three-month-old
Playboy
draped his Sam Browne over his shoulder and headed for the John. He never knew what hit him.

The bald man with the flight bag hadn't locked the rest room door because it was broken. He'd been rooting around in the bag when the uniformed cop barged in on him. The bald man automatically threw a punch that George Bush would've envied. It bounced the cop headfirst off the edge of the door and when he slumped down, the bald guy booted him once in the solar plexus, then jerked the semiautomatic from the cop's Sam Browne.

The bald man, cradling the flight bag to his chest, jumped over the semiconscious cop, ran from the john, looked toward the plane on the tarmac, turned the other way and scooted toward the parking lot. Waving the cop's 9 mm Sig Sauer, he headed straight to a parked truck occupied by a plumber who'd been called to check leaking pipes. The bald guy jerked open the door, pointed the 9 mm at the plumber's bulging eyeballs, snatched the guy out of the seat and careened out of the parking lot in the stolen truck.

While several people scrambled toward the ruckus in the parking lot, the revived deputy hollered for help. The bald guy's pilot must have figured that something very bad had happened because he jumped back in his Cessna and took off, mechanical gremlins and all, causing detectives to later theorize that whatever the deal was, it was worth his risking his life. Naturally, nobody had gotten his plane's number during all that excitement.

Everyone figured it had to have been aborted drug smuggling. There was always a “load plane,” carrying pot or Mexican heroin, landing on one of the little desert airstrips, usually at night. In fact, there was one county-owned emergency landing strip that was
only
that, a strip with a wind sock, and nothing more. You could bring in enough Mexican tar on any given night to goon out half the valley, not to mention a cocaine shipment bound for Palm Springs or L.A.

The plumbing truck was eventually found sand-locked up to the axle in a date grove near the Torres Martinez Indian Reservation, a collection of mobile homes, guns, satellite dishes, and clotheslines fluttering in the hot wind. The land belonged to a tribe that had had the misfortune to settle too far south, unlike their luckier cousins, the Agua Calientes, who'd stayed on a chunk of sand now called Palm Springs.

Just as on other Indian reservations, county ordinances were unenforceable on Torres Martinez land, but beating the crap out of a cop and stealing a truck at gunpoint was more than a county ordinance. So pretty soon dozens of cops from various jurisdictions were swarming all over the reservation searching for the bald guy with a flight bag, who'd been spotted by a curious Indian kid after scuttling the truck.

The Indian kid had watched the bald guy with the flight bag do something strange. Before abandoning the plumbing truck, the guy found a can of grease and smeared it on his mouth and in his nose. Then he took some coins from his pocket and put them in his mouth before walking toward Devil Canyon and the Santa Rosa wilderness on that extremely hot winter afternoon.

An old Indian who'd been whiling away the time by watching the futile search talked to the shy Indian kid after he'd bicycled home. The old Indian explained the grease trick to a few of the cops: The guy had lubricated his mucous membranes, and the coins in the mouth were to diminish thirst. According to the Indian, this proved that the guy with the flight bag had to be a “man of the desert.”

Meanwhile, Nelson Hareem, glued to the police radio, was going bonkers because he couldn't get out of town and head for Devil Canyon. He'd been ordered by his sergeant to stay on his beat in his own town.

It was later learned that the bald man had doubled back in the vicinity of Lake Cahuilla, climbed over a grape-stake fence, and kicked in the door of a modest two-bedroom stucco house. The bald guy apparently hid there for a bit, then hot-wired a ten-year-old Ford sedan parked in the open carport. He was long gone while the search for him went on.

Not being a boozer herself, Breda mistakenly thought that coffee would help Lynn. She drove to a coffee shop on Palm Canyon Drive where they sat by a window, and she ordered cherry pie and coffee for two.

He hardly touched his pie, but squinted through the window at aging white-legged tourists, their figures squirming in the waves of heat rising from the pavement. Most of them wore dark socks and stretch pants.

Then he said, “Elastic's done more for Palm Springs tourism than sunshine and movie stars.”

When the waitress refilled their cups, Breda Burrows, who'd never been in the eatery in her life, said, “Thanks, Dot.”

The waitress said, “My name's Bonnie.”

“Really?” Breda said. “Not Dot?”

“Dot works nights,” the waitress said.

“That's a relief,” said Breda.

After the waitress left, Lynn asked, “What was that all about?”

“Private joke.”

“Between you and yourself? I guess you're glad
you're
here, or you'd be bored as hell.”

Breda showed him that irritating grin and took another bite of pie. On the drive over, she'd explained everything she'd learned from Rhonda Devon about her husband, Clive. She
didn't
tell Lynn about the five-thousand-dollar bonus. He was already too nosey about fees.

Then he asked, “So how much we charging this Devon woman?”

“We?”

“I've heard P.I.'s say they get maybe forty-five bucks an hour for surveillance. And how much a mile? Forty-five cents?”

“Look, I'm offering you a flat fee of a thousand bucks if you get the results I want. That's pretty generous.”

Lynn Cutter liked the way she handled a knife and fork. Too many of the babes he dated talked during dinner with food hanging out their mouths. He hated that more than gum chewing, but when he complained, they always implied that he was awfully prissy for a cop.

He absolutely
loved
the very dark freckle just below Breda's lower lip, near the corner of her mouth. He had a crazy impulse to lick a tiny drop of cherry syrup off that bittersweet chocolate freckle.

Still probing, he said, “I'll bet you demanded a hefty fee up front. If I was doing a garbage domestic case like this I'd ask for two grand.”

Breda Burrows quietly ate her cherry pie, chewing with her mouth closed.

Lynn Cutter sipped his coffee, looked into those electric blues, and said, “In this town I bet you can make good bucks for domestic crap. Like when some a these fifty-million-dollar marriages break up they'll fight over a used Maytag washer and hire P.I.'s to tail each other out of spite.
Big
bucks, right?”

“I try to avoid domestic cases. Like you said, they're garbage. And yeah, a P.I. better take a retainer up front and bill against it because you can never make a client happy in a domestic case.”

“So how much're we …
you
getting an hour for this one?”

She sighed and said, “I asked for sixty an hour. I usually ask for forty-five.”

“Beverly Hills broad, Beverly Hills prices,” Lynn said, smiling.

“There's a lotta competition,” she said, irked by the happy face. “There's at least a dozen P.I.'s in the local phone book. Gotta get it when I can.”

“So what're we gonna do about Clive Devon?” he asked. “I hope you don't expect me to hang around in the urologist's alley and go through his trash for
clues.
”

“That's not what I had in mind,” she said, squinting when the last of the afternoon sun slanted through the window of the coffee shop.

“Why don't you call his doctor's office and tell his receptionist you're from the Beverly Hills Fertility Institute? That you got some problem with the care and storage of his little tadpoles.”

“I tried that the moment I left Mrs. Devon's home,” she said. “Only I said there was a billing problem at the institute and I needed to verify the client's address.”

“What'd the receptionist say?”

“That Mister Clive Devon hadn't seen Doctor Blanchard in over twelve months. That there must be some mistake.”

“Maybe he went to some other doctor.”

“Mrs. Devon said that Doctor Blanchard's been her husband's urologist for years. Maybe he's lying.”

“Hell, most a them lie. My doctor lies every time he sends me a bill for shooting my knee with a needle like a railroad spike. And he tells me he
has
to charge me a hundred 'n fifty bucks for asking, ‘Does it hurt?' Far as I'm concerned, my doctor's just a lawyer with a stethoscope.”

“She thinks maybe Doctor Blanchard was ordered by Clive Devon to keep mum about the semen sample.”

“So whaddaya want me to do?”

“I was thinking you might go there as a patient and say that you and your wife're considering in vitro fertilization and you need to have your sperm checked out. You could consult with him and casually mention that an acquaintance of yours is a patient. You could go with the flow and see where the conversation leads.”

“What if he wants the sample?”

“You give it to him. That's one of the reasons I need a man helping me with this one.”

“Forget it! I'm not gonna lay there and give up my little pollywogs to some stranger! Besides, it's humiliating!”

“Don't be stupid.”

“It wouldn't work anyway. My second and
last-ever
wife insisted I get a vasectomy. My little swimmers're in dry dock. One look under a microscope and he'd wonder what's up.”

“Okay, I guess I can still use you on a surveillance. I've got a couple other cases going or I'd do it myself. How are you at surveillance?”

“I can cope.”

“Tomorrow morning,” she said. “Mrs. Devon said her husband leaves the house at seven
A.M.
and doesn't come back till four-thirty. He wears hiking boots and takes a canteen. When she goes to L.A. he doesn't seem to go on these hikes. So maybe he can't stand his wife and gets the hell out when she's at the Palm Springs house.”