“You don’t have to worry about it. The way you booze it up, you’ll never get much older.”
After Nelson returned with the drinks, he hoisted a beer and said, “To success! He ain’t got away from us yet!”
Lynn said, “If we don’t find the guy tonight, let’s start looking for Amelia Earhart. It’d be a lot easier.”
He’d paid his bill and checked out of the hotel, never to return. He was going to succeed or fail this night. He’d never have a better opportunity, with three hundred people and dozens of servers moving about in that big pink house high on the hill. He’d always imagined it would have to be done in a parking lot somewhere, perhaps after he’d followed his man to a supermarket, or to a cinema, or to a restaurant. That was before he saw the private street with a guard and a dog. And a millionaire’s house high on a cliff, near other protected privileged people. No, this party, this night—he’d never get a better chance.
There were three options: He could appear at the catering company and hope that both gringo bosses were at the Lugo house. Then he could try to bluff one of the Mexicans into driving him up there in a van. After all, he was properly dressed, in his new white shirt, bow tie, black vest, black trousers, and black leather shoes. They’d have no reason to doubt him if he said that Henry or Phil had hired him. But when he got up there the Mexican driver might mention the new employee to Henry or Phil. It might cause some concern, for there were bound to be very important people at this party, and people were still talking about terrorists. No, he was afraid of that option.
A second possibility would be to show up at the shuttle bus and try to convince the bus driver that he’d missed his ride up to the party with the other servers. But they’d probably have a portable telephone to call the house for verification. He didn’t like that option either.
He made up his mind while sitting in his Buick across the highway from Southridge. He saw that not all of the guests were using the shuttle bus from Smoke Tree. Some partygoers were driving up the hill and giving their cars to the valet parking people, who would shuttle them back down. He watched this process for thirty-five minutes before making his decision. Even if it didn’t work he could always fall back on one of the more risky options.
The fugitive left the Buick across Highway 111 at Desert Lakes Drive, where it was close enough for an escape, but not so close that the police would think it suspicious. He had every reason to hope that after he completed his mission, the resulting confusion would allow him to get down that hill and past the guard in the kiosk, whose job it was to stop people going in, not going out.
If need be, he’d run down that hill to his car, where he would then be only a few minutes from Gene Autry Trail, which led to Highway 10, which in turn led to Mexico. To home.
He felt an empty shiver in his bowels then, and a chill in his spine. His heart had been beating steadily faster for the past three hours. There was a swelling in his throat as if from overwhelming grief. It happened whenever he thought that he could actually be home with his family, this very night! Or never again.
He was carrying his new leather bag and looked every bit like one of Henry’s catering employees as he stood by Highway 111 at the foot of Southridge, waiting for the cars containing special partygoers, mostly older ones, who required valet parking.
A car driven by one man turned off the highway from the direction of Indian Wells, but the fugitive turned his back on the headlight beams. One man? He couldn’t be sure the man was a party guest. Then a white Cadillac with three men in colorful golf shirts made a turn, and the fugitive took a chance.
He pretended to be walking hurriedly up the steep street, but waved shyly when the headlights illuminated him. He offered them his most servile smile.
The Cadillac stopped and the electric window on the passenger side slid down. A man with a red face, a bulbous nose and a big cigar said, “What’s up, amigo?’
The fugitive used a heavier accent than he really had, and said, “I am sorry, sir. Can you help me? I am to be working at Meester Lugo’s party, and my car, it break down and …”
The back door swung open, and an old man in the back seat said, “Hop in, kiddo. We’ll get you up there before your boss even knows you’re late.”
It worked! The driver said to the guard at the kiosk, “Harry Milford. Going to the Lugo party.”
The guard hardly glanced at the clipboard as he waved them through.
When they arrived at the big pink house, there were at least fifty people—some in golf clothing, some in evening wear—milling around in the street, waiting their turn to get through the entry doors, which were wide open but jammed with the busload that had arrived a few minutes earlier.
Perspiring valet parkers were running every which way, and one of them, a girl in a blue T-shirt and shorts, opened the door for Harry Milford, who said, “Take good care of it, honey. It’s momma’s car.”
“Sure will, sir!” she said.
“Thank you, berry much,” the fugitive said to Harry Milford, who winked and said, “If your boss gives you a bad time, tell him to see me.”
“Yes sir, thank you sir,” the fugitive said, as obsequiously as he thought prudent.
Instead of trying to battle through the entry doors, he walked across the grass, around the house to the rear. The patio was composed of lighted flagstone terraces. There was a black-bottom pool, a spa and a fountain spewing water ten feet into the air. There was a putting green with a view as spectacular as any in California. The entire city of Palm Springs was laid out 1000 feet below, with an unobstructed view of Mount San Jacinto and Mount San Gorgonio, each of them two miles high and snow-capped, even during this blistering heat wave.
The naked display of opulence froze him for a moment, but then he gathered himself for what he had to do. He saw four Mexicans serving cocktails to the guests on his side of the patio where there were two bars set up, each with two bartenders. He didn’t see the tall blond catering boss, nor the young Mexican driver, both of whom could recognize him. As long as he saw neither he felt he had a chance. The other catering people might think he was John Lugo’s house servant.
The patio was only dimly lit; people’s faces weren’t easy to recognize as they moved about on those terraces. The leather bag was a problem. He spotted a huge planter by a brick wall that divided this property from the neighbor. He crossed a lawn and dropped the bag behind an enormous clump of palm and banana trees, and as soon as his hands stopped shaking, he walked down to the first level of flagstone patio.
He was startled when a mariachi band struck up what had become the California mariachi signature: “La Bamba.” The musicians were out of sight on the next level of garden and terraces below, near a lighted, stair-stepped koi pool. The guitars and trumpets of Mexico! It seemed like another omen, but for good or bad, he couldn’t say.
The fugitive picked up three empty cocktail glasses in each hand and walked briskly, as though he knew where he was going. When he reached the far side of the house, he peered through the windows, seeing an open door leading from the dining room into the kitchen area. The tall blond gringo was working at a chopping block. The fugitive would not be spending much time around this side of the house.
Still carrying the empty glasses, he followed along the lighted flagstone path leading down to the second terrace. This one had railings protecting the guests from tumbling down the mountainside after too many drinks. Here, all of the upper patio furniture had been stacked to allow room for the mobs above. But even on this level there was a bar set up, right next to the six-piece mariachi band, now playing a passable version of an old song his mother liked, “El Reloj.” It was easy to see that an escape down the sheer hillside would be impossible.
The fugitive had picked up a few more glasses when, suddenly, an exquisite woman in a pumpkin-colored tuxedo jacket, matching walking shorts, and a coconut-brown silk tank top, said to him, “I’ll have another margarita, please. And ask Mister Lugo to please come down and see
Maggie and George. Can you remember those names?”
“Yes, señora,” he said, and bowed slightly, wondering if a bow was going too far.
When he got to the upper deck, he entered the main part of the house, where the humidity from over a hundred human bodies fresh from a golf tournament was palpable. The din inside was drowning out the piano player who was trying to sing requests at the other end of the living room.
There were people chattering, laughing, drinking, crushed together all the way from the wide-open sliding doors at back, through to the marble foyer in front. And clutches of people sat on every step of an open, carpeted spiral staircase leading up to the second floor of the split-level house.
Even if he’d known what John Lugo looked like and where he was standing, he wondered if he could have gotten close enough to give him the message from Maggie and George.
They got separated at the shuttle bus. There was space for only one, so Lynn said to Breda, “You go on ahead. We’ll catch the next one.”
When she was gone, Lynn looked up at the black desert sky and said to Nelson, “I hope this heat doesn’t mean we’re gonna have an early summer.”
“Might not matter so much for me this year,” Nelson said, “if I’m workin Palm Springs P.D. where there’s some shade!”
“Either way I’m gonna buy you a little umbrella to wear with a headband,” Lynn said. “Something to remember me by.”
“I hope I’m gonna see you and Breda once in a while,” Nelson said, as the second shuttle bus rumbled toward them across the parking lot.
“Me and Breda? Together?”
“Well, sure,” Nelson said. “The way I see it, you got life-threatenin feelings for her.”
“You figure I’m in love with Breda, huh? Clive Devon, he’s in love with Malcolm. Malcolm’s probably in love with some Airedale. Nobody’s lucky in love, not in this freaking town.”
There were about thirty passengers on their shuttle. When they got up to the top of Southridge, Lynn estimated that another thirty were still out in the street, trying to squeeze through the gates onto the property.
“I don’t know if I can handle this mob scene,” Lynn said. “Maybe I oughtta take the next shuttle back down.”
“We don’t wanna leave Breda here not knowin anyone,” Nelson said. “Follow me.”
Nelson did what the fugitive had done. Instead of trying to squeeze and wriggle through the masses entering the foyer, he led Lynn around the side lawn toward the rear of the property, where they could breathe. Actually, he was just following the sound of mariachis playing “Guantanamera.”
After that number started, about six couples started doing their ludicrous version of Mexican folk dancing on the flagstone patio, and fifty others started clapping and whistling. Lynn stood up on a planter trying to find a bar. He saw two bartenders pouring margaritas as fast as the pitchers could be delivered from the service area which was near the kitchen.
“Somebody’s gonna be in the pool in half an hour or less,” Nelson predicted.
Lynn pointed to one of the dancers, a bosomy babe with legs longer than his regrets, and said, “I hope it’s her. We’ll have a wet T-shirt contest.”
Several guys stepped aside for Breda when she tried to squeeze into the house. In fact, two of them offered her their drinks, in that it was getting impossible for the servers to keep up with the orders.
Breda declined politely, and slid past the piano player, who had resorted to shouting Gershwin tunes that nobody could hear.
Breda perched herself on the spiral staircase and spotted John Lugo, still in his golf togs, surrounded by people in the marble foyer. His head was bobbing and he was kissing women on the cheek and shaking hands with men, trying to urge everyone toward the terraces out back. Breda saw a handsome younger man with a streak of white in his black wavy ponytail push his way through to John Lugo and whisper something in his ear.
Then a gorgeous young woman in a striped, cotton-knit sweater with a flashy tennis-racquet applique and white stirrup pants that only looked good on models cupped her hands over her mouth and started yelling, “Outside on the patio, everybody! FOOD!”
And enough people heard her that the masses started ebbing and flowing in that general direction, allowing enough cross-ventilation to cool down Breda, who felt like she’d been in a sauna with half of Brazil.
* * *
The fugitive had finally gotten himself into the middle of the new arrivals in the foyer. And though he was jostled, and nudged, and bumped, and almost lost his props—the empty cocktail glasses—he managed to move right behind the man who was greeting guests and getting all the attention.
He heard a new arrival say “John! Great party!”
Still he wanted to be sure, so he waited. A big man, wearing the ugliest neon-yellow trousers he’d ever seen, said to him, “Man, don’t stand around! Get us three margaritas! It’s an emergency!”
The fugitive bowed slightly and said, “Yes, señor, right away.” But he lingered, even with the man glaring at him impatiently, until he heard a woman say what he wanted to hear.
The woman said, “Sheila, this is John Lugo, our host!”
Then the fugitive left, but he knew he couldn’t come back to the foyer until the man in the ugly trousers was gone or unless he had the margaritas. He went to one of the bars where waiters, rather than guests, were picking up their orders. Then he got an idea and thought, Why not? So he turned and walked, not along the lighted path jammed with people, but across the grass, dangerously close to the kitchen window where he’d seen the tall blond gringo from the catering company.
One of the bartenders, incessantly blending margaritas in that area, was a Mexican. He approached that man and said, “Tres margaritas, por favor.”
The guy just nodded, stopping for a moment to mop his brow with a white towel.
The fugitive said, in Spanish, “What a party, ’mano.”
The bartender nodded again, and the fugitive said, “Mister Lugo needs Mister Sierra. Do you know him?”
The bartender said, in Spanish, “Man, I don’t know nobody! I just took this job because my friend got sick. And if I’d known it was this hard I’d have demanded an extra two bucks an hour!”
The fugitive thanked him when he got the three margaritas, and risked an approach to the kitchen window. There were five Mexicans in serving whites, working furiously in the kitchen. The window was wide open so the fugitive put his face to the screen and yelled, in Spanish, “Tell Senor Sierra that Senor Lugo wishes to see him at once.”
Then the fugitive returned to the foyer. When he got there the man in the neon-yellow trousers was gone, as were most of the other guests, who were queuing up outside at the four buffet tables.
John Lugo was finally getting free of the arriving throngs, and was only surrounded by a dozen people when Breda saw that the handsome guy with the white streak in his hair had returned. He whispered something into the ear of John Lugo, who shook his head and shrugged. Then the handsome guy walked away, as John Lugo kissed yet another beautiful woman, urging all to go outside and dine.
The fugitive had been watching John Lugo and the other man. Then he saw an attractive woman in a pink shirt and white shorts sitting alone on the step. He walked over to her and said, “Margarita, señora?”
And Breda Burrows said, “Sure. Thanks.”
The fugitive had started outside when he saw him—and almost dropped the remaining two margaritas. The policeman from the mortuary!
The fugitive spun around and mounted the stairs two at a time, nearly jarring Breda’s drink out of her grasp. A blob of cold sticky ice splashed on her bare thigh and she was scooping it up and licking it off her fingers when Lynn and Nelson approached.
Lynn looked from her thigh to her mouth as Breda licked, and their eyes met. Hers said: Don’t even think it!
“I say, old thing, must you sneer so?” Lynn said to her.
“Did you say hello to Lugo yet?” Nelson asked.
&
nbsp; “He’s too busy,” Breda said. “Why would I want to meet him anyway?”
“You’re in business in this town. Might not be a bad idea,” Nelson said. “Even if we can’t figure out why somebody’s lookin for him.”
“I might try later,” Breda said. “Want something to eat? They just started serving.”
“I want a drink,” Lynn said.
“That’s outside too,” said Breda. “The waiter that gave me this one just ran upstairs with two more. Maybe you can find him.”
“I think I’ll find a tall cool Scotch,” Lynn said. “I’ll bet Lugo’s Scotch beats the hell out of Wilfred’s.”
When they got outside, with the lights of Palm Springs spread out below them, Nelson gazed dreamily and said, “I wonder what he’d say now?”
“Who?” Breda wanted to know.
“The Indian that looked at the first white land developer and said, ‘What, a golf course in the desert?’”
He had not been this frightened in his life! His jaw was trembling, and he couldn’t keep the drinks from sloshing over the rims of the cocktail glasses.
Every room in the house was thrown wide open for guests to wander as they chose. There were valuable pre-Columbian pieces on display in the upper hallway, and the fugitive pretended to be looking at them as guests strolled past, meandering from room to room.
As soon as he heard the last of them go back downstairs, he entered a guest bedroom, put down the drinks, and pulled up his trouser legs, removing his weapons from where they were taped to his calves. The tape stripped the hairs from his legs but he didn’t even feel it.
If only his hands would stop trembling! He didn’t usually tremble, even in dangerous police situations, but this was different. He wasn’t a policeman here. That man downstairs was a policeman. And who knows how many others were in this house!
He put his weapons under a satin cushion on a bay window bench. Without his weapons he didn’t know if he felt more safe or more threatened. He crept along the hallway to the top of the stairway and looked down. The policeman with curly hair was gone. There was no one on the staircase now. He started back to the bedroom, but changed his mind. Better this way if his idea worked. If.
Fugitive Nights Page 28
