The fugitive scurried into the corridor but his new white leather shoes slid from under him. He went down, bounced up and, trying to get traction, smacked into the gangling guy in the gray suit who’d come running down the hall toward the ruckus.
The fugitive didn’t have to hit him, and had almost made it back to the foyer when Lynn Cutter leaped on his back and they knocked over the guest-book table, sending a huge floral arrangement spinning into the wall in an explosion of gladioli.
The fugitive, who was in better shape, bulled Lynn off his back and muscled under him now that he was standing on carpet, but Lynn grabbed on, whirled, and spun the fugitive through the open double doors. And suddenly the fugitive was smack in the middle of kneeling mourners. Then: pandemonium!
Everybody started hollering and screaming and trying to stream out, including two Irish nuns, and Lynn Cutter plowed through the panicked crowd, walking over a pile of old Micks who couldn’t get off their knees fast enough. The fugitive shoved two guys into the priest, who knocked over two candelabras and another floral spray, and water flooded everywhere!
The fugitive, leaking blood from his nose, crouched and waited, while old folks hollered and hissed and stacked up at the door like heaps of brittle sticks.
Lynn warily advanced toward the fugitive until he had the guy backed up against the bier of Denny O’Doul, who looked like a painted mummy.
And then, still gasping and bug-eyed, Lynn charged! The fugitive feinted and threw a short punch that didn’t land. But he grabbed Lynn by the curly hair, jerking him forward until his forward motion plunged Lynn’s head and shoulders inside the casket. Then the fugitive slammed the lid on Lynn’s neck, and those poor old mourners who had the courage to look started wailing and keening, like at a real old-fashioned Irish wake!
Denny O’Doul’s rosary beads got looped around Lynn’s ear, and the old tenor’s hands had come unclasped, dead cold and papery against Lynn’s face, and Lynn couldn’t breathe again! But when he turned his head sideways to inhale, he smelled corn flakes!
The fugitive put his weight on the casket lid and kept hooking Lynn, once, twice, three times in the ribs and kidneys, bashing more air out of him while Denny O’Doul’s eighty-five-year-old widow passed out cold, and nutty notions roared through Lynn’s skull, like: Why the fuck does Denny O’Doul smell like corn flakes?
Then the horrible pressure was released, and Lynn shoved backward as hard as he could, popping out of the casket like a cork, falling and tumbling over backward.
By the time Lynn’s world had straightened out, the fugitive had crashed through the fire exit opposite the foyer and was gone.
Nelson Hareem was sprawled in his Jeep with his earphones on, listening to Reba McEntire singing “Rumor Has It.” But Nelson pulled off the ears when he saw a bunch of people running out the front door of the mortuary and screaming. Then he saw Lynn Cutter sort of running out after them!
When Lynn got under the palm tree lights Nelson saw that he was limping and had blood on his face!
Nelson jumped from the Jeep when Lynn was thirty feet away, but Lynn screamed: “GET US OUTTA HERE!”
Lynn groaned in pain when he jumped into the Jeep, snatching at the bar with one hand, holding his ribs with the other, as Nelson backed up the Jeep and painted two rubber stripes on the parking lot.
“Did you see a car?” Lynn hollered.
“What car?”
“Any car! Did you see one?”
“There were some headlights a minute ago!”
“Catch that fucking car! And gimme your gun!”
They didn’t catch the fucking car. In fact, they didn’t even see taillights when they got out onto Gene Autry Trail. Nelson didn’t know whether to go north or south.
“What’ll I do, Lynn?” Nelson wanted to know.
“I’m outta ideas,” Lynn moaned.
“What happened in there?”
“He beat the crap outta me! He put me in a coffin!”
“Who?”
“Francisco V. Ibañez, that’s who!”
“What?”
“Don’t gimme what! Drive!”
Nelson was so baffled, confused, excited, that for once he wasn’t even speeding. “How could he be in there? How could he put you in a coffin?”
“Not very gently! Will you step on it?”
“Where?”
“The Furnace Room. Where else can I escape this miserable insane lunatic case?”
“You’re bleeding, and you’re nuts!” Nelson said, stomping on the accelerator, swerving around a white Caddy.
“That’s his blood! I’m bleeding internally! The sonofabitch tried to bust my spleen!”
“How could somebody put you in a coffin, Lynn? Tell me what happened!”
“We fought! He won!” Lynn yelled. “I did a whoop-de-do into the coffin! Then he slammed the goddamn lid on me!”
“Good Lord!” Nelson cried. “That’s the scariest thing I ever heard of!”
Suddenly, Lynn looked bleakly at Nelson Hareem and said, “Now I know what poor old Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee went through all those years! My sphincter’s slammed shut!”
“I know how you feel!” Nelson cried. “It feels like somebody’s Krazy-Glued my asshole too!”
This was the first time the fugitive regretted not choosing a cheap motel for more privacy. The layout of this elegant hotel almost guaranteed that guests would be seen entering and leaving by way of the expansive lobby.
When he parked the Buick in the guest parking lot he took off the maroon blazer, and was glad of the color. He used it to wipe the blood from his face.
The fugitive wasn’t badly hurt, just a nosebleed. He’d had a tendency toward nosebleeds since childhood. When he was a boy playing soccer, his jersey was always blood-soaked by the end of a game, and his mother would weep at the sight of him.
He was hatless and his face was slightly swollen, so he kept his head down and walked briskly across the lobby to the elevators, the blazer over his shoulder, hiding his shirt. A woman standing by the elevator looked at him curiously and he realized that his right nostril had started leaking. He patted his pocket reassuringly, touching the Rolodex card, and pushed the elevator button for the third floor.
When he got to his room, he removed the card from his pocket and switched on the lamp beside the king-sized bed. He read the name John Lugo, and the Palm Springs address, and the phone number, which he realized was local. He saw another phone number which he thought was probably somewhere in Los Angeles. He would memorize all of it, but later.
His beautiful new shirt had three buttons missing, and the breast pocket was torn and hanging loose. He stripped off the shirt and crammed it into the wastebasket. The fugitive sat on the bed, pulled off the white loafers and lay back on the pillow, sniffling gently, waiting for the blood to stop.
His confidence had been very badly damaged. He couldn’t begin to imagine how they’d found him. Of course, he would’ve recognized the one with curly hair as a policeman the second he saw him standing there, even if the mortician hadn’t verified it. The man just looked like a policeman. But how had he been traced? Maybe they were as efficient as on the TV shows!
Yet it made no sense. Why would they devote such diligence to tracking a man who’d simply pushed an old lady down and stolen some files? Was it conceivable that they’d begun hunting him after he’d attacked the policeman at the airport? That was a more serious crime, of course. But how could they have connected him to that incident? Impossible!
Then he remembered reading a news story in his country about a California man who’d raped a teenager and hacked off her arms, leaving her to die in the desert, but miraculously, she’d survived. That man had served only eight years in prison and was now free on parole! The story had been given prominent coverage to show his people what it’s like in the United States. The implied question was: Do you really want to live in a country where someone can commit such a horrible crime and be a free man after only eigh
t years?
And yet … and yet, for a minor crime like pushing an old woman and taking some worthless files, he was pursued and hunted down with unbelievable speed. And almost caught!
If he got home alive, and now he’d begun thinking if, he would never set foot in this crazy country again, not as long as he lived. If he got home alive …
Lynn had wiped the fugitive’s blood off his face, but he looked grim as he entered The Furnace Room. He gimped along, passed Wilfred Plimsoll without so much as a wave, and headed straight for the table in the back, near the yawning fireplace. He was as happy as he could be under the circumstances to see that Breda was already there, waiting.
Nelson said, “I’ll get the drinks, Lynn.”
When Lynn plopped down across the table from Breda, he was hanging on to his ribs like his guts were falling out. His right eye was slightly swollen and his knuckles were scuffed and raw.
“Did you get in a fight, or what?” Breda asked. “You look awful!”
“As a matter a fact I’ve been in bed. Dracula’s bed.”
“Whadda you mean?”
“I was in a coffin.”
“You mean, like a small room?”
“Well, it was pretty small,” Lynn said. “And there were two of us in there.”
“Care to explain?”
“Can I have a drink first? I got a taste of formaldehyde I gotta get rid of. And the smell of corn flakes!”
Lynn didn’t really begin explaining until he’d had his second dose of eighty proof anesthetic. When Lynn finally got into it, Breda listened in disbelief to the day’s antics. And Lynn lost his train of thought once or twice, because he found himself paying too much attention to the freckle on her lip.
After he was through, Breda handed her glass to Nelson and said, “I think I need another one, Nelson, do you mind?”
When Nelson was at the bar fetching another round, Breda said, “Did you give your name to any of those people today?”
Lynn shook his head slowly and said, “At least I had that much sense. I flashed my buzzer, is all. There’s gonna be a lotta speculation about a middle-aged fat guy and a red-headed munchkin in red snakeskin cowboy boots impersonating officers of the law.”
“What’re you gonna do about all this?”
“Eat. Wanna go to dinner? I’ll even buy, as long as it’s not one a those yuppie joints where they serve radicchio and tofu. The way they don’t decorate those hard-surface joints, the decibel level gets so high I wanna stuff my ears with their angel hair pasta. Which generally ain’t edible anyway.”
“That’s one of the more unusual dinner invitations I ever got,” Breda said, as Nelson returned.
“Hope I didn’t miss anything,” Nelson said.
“I wouldn’t think you oughtta be wrecking funeral homes and stuff till you get a lock on that pension,” Breda suggested to Lynn.
“I been sorta thinkin the same thing,” Nelson said. “And it prob’ly wouldn’t help me to get a transfer to Palm Springs P.D., would it?”
“I think we’re all in agreement that we gotta keep our little project mum,” Lynn said.
“I sure wouldn’t blame ya if ya never wanted to see me again,” Nelson said. “But I ain’t quittin. I’m checkin out the car rentals tomorrow till I come up with where Francisco V. Ibañez is stayin.”
“What happened to Jack?” Lynn wanted to know.
“Said he wouldn’t be here if he got on to something,” said Breda. “That might mean he tailed Clive Devon to a love nest. I’ll call him in the morning unless I get a beeper message.”
“I guess I might as well break it to you now, Breda,” Nelson said. “I intend to talk to Clive Devon tomorrow.”
“You what?” Breda and Lynn said in unison.
“You can’t screw up my case!” Breda said.
“That ain’t your business!” Lynn said.
“Look,” Nelson said, trying to be agreeable. “Francisco V. Ibañez and the guy at the airport and the guy at the tombstone company and the guy that Clive Devon picked up in Painted Canyon and the guy that slam-dunked Lynn in a coffin are all the same guy! A detective’s gotta consider every angle. Everybody’s a suspect to a homicide detective, that’s what it says in the books.”
“This ain’t a homicide,” Lynn said, glaring at Nelson. “Yet!”
“Well, it’s gotta be somethin serious,” Nelson said, “and Clive Devon’s in this till we … till I eliminate him.”
Seeing his thousand bucks vanishing, Lynn shot Nelson a dangerous glare and said, “Nelson, somebody might eliminate you. This is blackmail!”
“Wait a minute,” Breda said. “Let’s all be reasonable.”
“Okay,” Nelson said, reasonably.
“You could check out the car rentals and talk to John Lugo for the next day or so, couldn’t you? Give us a chance to wrap up our business with Clive Devon. After we’re through and I get my fee, I don’t care if you swing through Clive Devon’s bedroom window on a vine!”
“Tit for tat,” Nelson said. “What’ll ya do to help me with my case?”
“Okay, you’ll find a guy over there at the far end a the bar,” Lynn said. “He’s one a the younger customers, maybe seventy or so. They call him Ten-till-six. Tell him Lynn wants to see him. But first, buy him a whiskey.”
“Why do they call him Ten-till-six?” asked Nelson.
“You’ll see,” Lynn said.
“What’s that all about?” asked Breda when Nelson was off again.
“I don’t like to get Nelson too excited, but I have developed a passing interest in his case as of an hour ago. I guess I just don’t like guys using my head for stuff-shots.” Lynn reached up and gingerly touched a swelling near his crown.
“How’s it feel?” Breda asked.
“I won’t be break-dancing for a while. My head spins’re wrecked.”
Breda glanced up at an old dipso shuffling their way, wearing a Kmart jogging suit and brown leather dress shoes, and she said, “I see why they call him Ten-till-six.”
It was obvious. He leaned to starboard from the waist up.
“A few more drinks, he’ll lean the other way,” Lynn said. “Then they’ll call him Ten-after-six.”
“Hi, Lynn!” he said, when he got to the table.
“Hi,” Lynn said. “You already met Nelson. Breda, this is Ten-till-six.”
“Hey, good-lookin,” said Ten-till-six. His nose was bulbous, wrapped in a pink hairnet of veins. Like many of the other Furnace Room Romeos, Ten-till-six wore a thatch of man-made hair on top. It was slightly askew because of his starboard lean, and his lower dentures were in his shirt pocket.
Lynn said, “You know everybody in this town. How bout John Lugo? Lives up on Southridge. Only eight or ten houses up there, that should be an easy one.”
“Easy, breezy!” said Ten-till-six, winking at Breda. Then he said, “Ya know, Breda, Bob Hope lives up there in that big airplane hangar with the swoopy roof? Looks like the hats women wore in nineteen thirty-two? Know the one? Has a swimming pool shaped like his profile.”
“Well, who’s John Lugo?” Nelson demanded.
“Everybody knows John Lugo,” said Ten-till-six. “Used to own the Barrel Cactus Lodge. Or at least he fronted it. Coulda been Vegas money behind it, I dunno.”
“Sure!” Lynn said. “John Lugo. I knew that name was familiar.”
“Who is he?” Breda asked.
“Came to town, oh, twenny years ago,” said Ten-till-six. “Bought the Barrel Cactus and turned it into a first-class hotel. Lotta Vegas guys use it when they come to town. And he bought a vending machine company and some other stuff. I think he lives mostly in Beverly Hills or somewheres.”
“But he still has a house up on Southridge?” Nelson asked.
“Far as I know,” said Ten-till-six. Then to Breda he said, “William Holden lived up there too. Nice man. Drank too much for his own good though.” Ten-till-six shook his head sadly and drained his whiskey.
“L
emme buy you one,” Breda said. “How do you take your whiskey?”
“Naked and in bed is the way I like it best,” said Ten-till-six, winking at Breda again, and smacking his lips toothlessly.
When he staggered back to the bar they noticed that he’d tilted to ten-after-six.
The day had been far from uneventful for Jack Graves. After he’d tailed Clive Devon out of the Indian canyons he’d followed the Range Rover north on Palm Drive, and out of Palm Springs. At twilight, they’d crossed the freeway and continued on into the community of Desert Hot Springs, home of hot mineral baths and wind. It was a great place to spend the winter, locals said, as long as you didn’t develop a fondness for paint. The gales through Desert Hot Springs could sandblast a car’s paint-job to the metal in two hours, or so the inhabitants claimed.
But then, the locals told a lot of tales about the legendary wind, as well as other folklore. One such yarn was being spun when Jack Graves took his biggest risk of the day by following Clive Devon and the big brown dog into the Snakeweed Bar & Grill. He quickly saw that Clive Devon was so well known in the Snakeweed that he could’ve brought in a litter of coyotes and nobody would’ve complained.
Jack Graves heard at least five of the locals say, “Howdy, Clive!” when they shambled in for a pitcher of beer at happy hour.
Almost everyone knew even the dog’s name. One trucker sitting at the bar sliced off a four-ounce chunk of steak from his T-bone and yelled, “Hey Clive! Okay to give Malcolm a bite?”
“If it’s okay with Malcolm!” Clive Devon yelled back, grinning.
Of course, the big mongrel dog bounded across the saloon like George Bush, jumped up, forefeet on the bar, and gobbled the steak right off the guy’s fork.
The bartender, who looked to be about one-half Morongo Indian, hollered, “Clive, if the health inspector ever comes in here, be sure to act blind and tell him Malcolm’s a seeing-eye dog!”
Three people yelled variations of: “Your booze’d blind anybody, Otis!”
One knotty pine-paneled wall was devoted to cowboy hats, another to a wagon wheel draped with an American flag. There was a U.S. marine pennant over the bar with a homemade sign saying DESERT WORM under a caricature of Saddam Hussein being kicked in the ass by a marine. And naturally, there was a “Die, Yuppie Scum!” bumper sticker plastered to the bar mirror.
Fugitive Nights Page 18
