Fugitive Nights (1992)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "We don't know that, Nelson," Lynn said. "There could be lots a reasons why the guy I saw was out there on foot."

  "The Range Rover," Nelson said. "Do you have any idea who was drivin the Range Rover?"

  "None," Lynn Cutter said, avoiding eye contact.

  Nelson Hareem was quiet for a moment, then he said, "Lynn, what were you doin out there?"

  "You're gonna have to read me my rights before you take that approach," Lynn said.

  "I'm sorry, Lynn," said Nelson. "It's jist that I got somethin here, I know it. And it's my chance."

  "Chance for what?"

  "To get outta town. I don't wanna work down there where nothin ever happens. I wanna work where there's some lights and action."

  "Talk to Wilfred, the owner a this joint. You're describing the movie business except you left out camera between lights and action."

  "I wanna work for Palm Springs P. D., Lynn."

  "And here I been celebrating for months because I'm leaving Palm Springs P. D."

  "Yeah, but I'm still young."

  "Go up there and get us a couple drinks, Nelson. Scotch for me. Let this old man gum on this smuggler business for a while."

  After the kid had gone, Lynn thought, It couldn't be. Ridiculous. Just a coincidence. Damn, he wished his guy had taken off that baseball cap! By the time Nelson returned with the drinks, Lynn had convinced himself that it absolutely positively couldn't be.

  "It couldn't be, Nelson," he said. But then, "Was the smuggler wearing a dark windbreaker?"

  "Had on a short-sleeved khaki shirt when he kicked the deputy's dick in the dirt."

  "Well, my guy had on a dark windbreaker."

  "Maybe he had a change a clothes in his flight bag," Nelson said, taking a sip of beer, the foam lying on his fuzzy upper lip.

  "Flight bag?"

  "Yeah, the smuggler carried a flight bag. We figured it was full a heroin, but maybe he had some clothes in it."

  "What color flight bag?" Lynn asked.

  "Red," said Nelson Hareem.

  During the next thirty-five minutes, Lynn told most of his Clive Devon story and got a complete rundown on the bald smuggler, followed by a sketch of Nelson Hareem's police history, which had brought him to a place where his shoeshine turned viscous by eleven a. M. on summer days. They continued to talk even as they walked out of the saloon while the old doll at their table was singing "It Had To Be You," like Helen Forrest.

  "So you see, I'm helping out this retired cop till she gets her business in shape," Lynn said to Nelson while they stood under a desert sky so clear the dipper looked like it might fall on them and shatter into topaz.

  "I understand, Lynn," Nelson said.

  "I don't want you to say a word about this to anyone. I don't want nobody at Palm Springs P. D. to know I been goat-footing it around the canyons for a P. I. named Breda Burrows. Understand?"

  "The guy's a wanted felon. What if he kills somebody or somethin? We'd have to tell the detectives that you traced him to Palm Springs."

  "If he surfaces again we can reconsider. For now, what difference does it make if the sheriff's department knows he got this far? He's gone"

  "What happened when he went to the phone stand down by the Alan Ladd hardware store, Lynn? Think he mighta jotted down a number there?"

  In that too many of Lynn's neurons were swimming for their lives in Wilfred's booze, Lynn blurted, "No, I already checked that. Left his pocket change on the phone tray, is all."

  That got the young cop stoked. "You found pocket change?"

  "Yeah."

  "Where is it?"

  "I don't know. In my other pants, I guess. Just a few coins, Mexican coins. And one Spanish coin."

  "Spanish? You sure?"

  "I didn't have my jeweler's loupe handy but it sure looked like a Spanish ten-peseta coin."

  "That's really weird. Think he's from Spain?"

  "No, I think he's a drug smuggler, same as you think. He probably flew up from around Mexicali or Tijuana. I went to Tijuana with my first wife one time. It was the world's most expensive weekend in a place that's supposed to be cheap. In one a the saloons a bartender gave me pocket change from three countries. In those border towns you got people coming from everywhere with different kinds a money."

  "If only you'd seen the TV news last night!" Nelson said. "You had the guy!"

  "If it was him."

  "The red flight bag, Lynn!"

  "Yeah, I know. It mighta been him, I admit. He probably went to Palm Springs Airport and booked a flight home."

  "Can you forget about it that easy?"

  "I already did. I'm going home and I'm going to bed. You do the same, Nelson."

  "Good night," said Nelson Hareem. "I'll keep your secret so long as the guy don't surface again and hurt somebody."

  "Me, I'm going to bed," Lynn said. "I'm not a real cop anymore."

  Lynn Cutter watched Nelson jump in his topless Jeep Wrangler and squeal out into the heavy tourist-season traffic. Then Lynn got into his Rambler, turned south, drove three minutes and parked at a gas station across from the Alan Ladd hardware store. Lynn was staggering just a tad when he walked to the phone stand with his flashlight.

  And because the whole world was sneaking up behind him lately he wasn't even surprised when a tenor voice said, "You're still a cop, Lynn. You can't fool me."

  Then, while Lynn Cutter surrendered to his fate, Nelson Hareem borrowed Lynn's flashlight and started searching for clues.

  "People write down numbers anywhere at public phones," Nelson said.

  "Please chill out, Nelson," Lynn said. "It's embarrassing enough being out here like this. Only guy that'd hang around a public phone this time a night is either a candidate for AIDS or somebody from the planet Krypton."

  "Can I see the coins tomorrow?"

  "You ain't gonna lift prints from coins, for chrissake!"

  "The guy was seen puttin coins in his mouth."

  "What was he doing with coins in his mouth?"

  "Diminishes thirst, we were told. He's a desert rat, this guy."

  "And what difference would it make, pray tell, if I found those particular coins?"

  "They might have old saliva on them. I read where DNA technology can sometimes match up somebody from saliva. See, our eyeball witnesses're really lousy; they'll never ID the guy even if we bring him down."

  "That's space-age stuff, Nelson. Match up somebody from degraded saliva on a coin? Jesus! How do we know they were his coins? Anybody coulda left some foreign coins here. You could have all ten fingerprints, it wouldn't mean a thing. He's probably got no record here in the States. He's a foreigner!"

  But undeterred, Nelson Hareem put the butt end of the flashlight under his chin and started whipping through the Palm Springs yellow pages with both hands.

  Suddenly he cried, "Tits!"

  "What?"

  "This is absolutely tits! We got him!"

  "What're you talking about?"

  "Look at this!" Nelson said, pointing to the yellow pages.

  "I don't see . . ."

  "He tore out a motel page! A through C! All we gotta do is find another phone book and check all the motels that begin with A, B and C! There's only thirty or so, I bet."

  "How do you know he did it?"

  "Same way I know he left those coins! I got his scent!"

  "Nelson, unless you lift your leg to pee you don't have his scent. And you don't know if he left those coins. The fact that he may have left a Spanish coin is irrelevant."

  "He's ours!"

  "Nelson, when you gaze up at the stars do you get lonely for home?" Lynn wanted to know.

  "You can't bail out on me, Lynn!"

  "Whaddaya mean?"

  "I never worked detectives. You got the experience."

  "I'm going home."

  "Well, I guess I got no choice. I guess I jist gotta turn all this information over to . . ."

  "Nelson, I told you . . . warned you I don't want anybody finding out I'
m working for a P. I. Understand?"

  "But Lynn, I gotta do somethin about this! If I can't tell the sheriff's department then we gotta work it ourselves."

  "We gotta . . . Nelson, you're a madman!"

  "Get a good night's sleep, Lynn, but first gimme the number at your house-sittin gig. I'll call you tomorrow. And gimme Breda's number."

  Lynn Cutter had to go to bed. He had to think. He gave Nelson the phone numbers because he had no choice.

  Before Lynn could get into his Rambler, Nelson showed him that daffy grin and said, "If we get him I hope you'll put in a good word for me with your ex-captain. I jist gotta get a lateral transfer to Palm Springs P. D. They got eighty-four officers so there's always somebody retirin or leavin. They gotta take me!"

  Lynn couldn't remember if his gun was in the trunk, but what good would it do? The Dirty Hareems of this world couldn't be stopped with silver bullets. They just keep going and going and going, with more lives than that Energizer battery and Richard Nixon.

  "I gotta go home and mull this over, Nelson," Lynn said wearily. "The guy's a foreigner: husky, bald, resourceful. I wonder if he has a big pink birthmark on his forehead?"

  Chapter 8

  One slice wheat toast no butter, a small grapefruit juice, a multivitamin, two cups of coffee. Breda hadn't altered that breakfast since she'd moved to the desert. That, coupled with all the bike riding, and measuring red meat portions by their atomic weight, had gotten her back into a size six where she intended to stay.

  But she had to remain longer at the breakfast table since moving from Los Angeles. Now she had to read the local paper for potential business information, as well as the L. A. Times. The local obituaries were grim. The desert valley had one of the state's highest per capita incidences of AIDS victims. The obituaries would usually begin: "After a long illness . . . And survived by longtime friend . . ."

  Being a single woman she often thought about AIDS, but in the months she'd been in the desert it wouldn't have mattered to her personal safety if the whole male population had hepatitis.

  Working to get her house and her business established had left Breda little time for men. She'd had drinks with a few, and dinner with a Palm Springs lawyer whom she'd met through another attorney client, though it wasn't actually a date. They just went to the same place after a meeting, and had sat at the same table, and he'd paid. He'd called her several times, but she learned he was married. Breda didn't have time in her life for complications like that.

  She finished writing a letter to her daughter, Lizzy, stacked the breakfast dishes in the sink, checked the time and hurried to the bathroom to brush her teeth. A silk jumpsuit, blue to match her eyes, and white flats seemed okay for this day's work. She had a "shopping" job she had to do in the afternoon, if she could find the time.

  Shopping to a P. I. meant loss-prevention work. Breda had been hired by a downtown department store to investigate the sales clerks. The store had been having some unexplained losses in the sportswear department, and three clerks were suspected. For over a week Breda had been trying to give two hours a day to the shopping job but hadn't spotted anything unusual.

  She hated shopping jobs but hated another job even more, and one of those too was on her calendar. She'd been retained to investigate the bartenders at The Unicorn, a restaurant recently opened on south Palm Canyon Drive. The owner of The Unicorn had hired a new bartender who wore a Rolex and a diamond ring, and this alone had worried the boss, who was sure that one of his bartenders was ripping him off.

  Breda told her client that he should be glad that the new bartender had the Rolex and ring because it meant that he'd already stolen the money to buy them from somebody else. She told him that if he wanted an absolutely honest deal from a bartender he'd have to make the guy work in a Speedo swimsuit, follow him every time he went to the john, and hire someone from Chicago to search his body cavities at closing time.

  Breda decided that she'd give the saloon job to Lynn Cutter and take over the Clive Devon surveillance that morning. She couldn't bear the thought of sitting in a gin mill like a daytime barfly, avoiding the moves of local lotharios so old they were moldering.

  She drove to Clive Devon's Las Palmas home and found Lynn in his car half a block away drinking coffee. He'd parked in the opposite direction this time so as not to alarm gardeners, maids or other servants who might get curious. This time he spotted her in his rearview mirror before she opened his car door.

  Without so much as a good morning, Lynn said, "It's too bad I'm not an Augua Caliente Indian. Just think about it. I could get drunk and raise hell anywhere I want, and keep the law out by claiming I live on sacred ground. I could plug the cracks in my walls with five-dollar bills. I could use my spa to barbecue cows in. I could have Kevin Costner speak up for me if anybody tried to throw me in jail, and no one would dare say I was a drunk, or even dumb. They'd say I'm an Indian. I wish I was a Palm Springs Indian. I'd never have to worry about money again."

  "What brought all this on?" Breda asked.

  "This job you gave me," Lynn said. "I met a guy last night, a little policeman from the south end, they call him Dirty Hareem. And he informed me we're in the middle of some kind a smuggling conspiracy. Or at least, Clive Devon might be. And I don't need a thousand scoots bad enough to jeopardize my pension by getting involved in whatever it is."

  "Explain, please."

  "Have you heard or read anything in the past couple days about some smuggler jumping out of a private plane long enough to do a soccer demonstration on some deputy?"

  "Sure. It was on all the local news programs."

  "I just gotta start watching something besides The Simpsons and Tag Team Wrestling. Guess what? The guy Clive Devon picked up in Painted Canyon yesterday? He's the fugitive smuggler they're looking for! I think. Why don't I look for a safer job? Maybe the President of Haiti needs a food taster."

  "Are you hung over again, or just nuts?"

  "Both, but I'm coming around. I'm gonna go talk to one a those ex-FBI agents that run security for Thrifty Drug Stores. I'd rather be a drug store dick than a P. I.'s helper, cause I'm not as nuts as I was when you found me."

  "Are you ready to explain in full?" she asked, with that irritating smirk.

  Funny how the little freckle on her lip looked darker today. How come that freckle aroused him, he wondered. "First you'd have to meet Nelson Hareem," he began. "His paternal grandfather came from Beirut, but Nelson's not really a Muslim terrorist or anything. They'd never have him cause he's too fanatical. Here's what he told me. . . ."

  Breda Burrows hardly blinked while Lynn Cutter told her the whole story, and why Nelson Hareem was, in effect, forcing him to dick around at motels and hotels from the A to C yellow pages.

  When Lynn was finished, Breda sat back and stared toward Clive Devon's house for a few minutes. Then she said, "This is truly nuts."

  "Sure it is," Lynn said. "So's Nelson. But he's still capable of turning over all his hot little clues to the sheriff's department. After which somebody would no doubt contact me. After which somebody else would no doubt contact my department. After which . . ."

  "Okay, okay, I get it. You're worried about your disability pension, I get it!"

  "Not at all," he said. "Who needs a pension? I got enough money to last till one o'clock this afternoon if I don't buy that bag a potato chips I been craving."

  Breda reached in her purse, removed her wallet, and took out three twenties. "Here," she said. "For expenses. Doesn't the guy whose house you're sitting have a pantry?"

  "Yeah, and I ate everything in it except the cat food, which ain't my brand. How about another couple a these?"

  Breda gave him another two twenties and said, "This is an advance against your fee. If you earn the fee."

  "If I . . . hey! I already earned something! I'm risking my pension with all this smuggler bullshit!"

  "That's your problem."

  "My problem. Yeah, because I took on this job!"

 
; "We had a deal. I didn't plan on some drug dealer entering the picture. I don't think he did enter the picture. I think Clive Devon is just a nice man who gave a ride to a guy, and he doesn't know zip about drug smuggling or any other felony or misdemeanor."

  "Well I'll stop worrying then. One a these days an earthquake's gonna hit the San Andreas Fault so hard Palm Spring'll just liquefy and turn into quicksand anyway. We'll be all gone like Sodom and Gomorrah. And here I am worrying about starving to death! I must be crazy!"

  "I'm taking over the surveillance today," Breda said. "Why don't you go talk sense to this cop, Nelson Hareem. Explain to him that this smuggler business can't go anywhere. Make him see." .

  "He couldn't see with the Hubble Space Telescope. He's got an obsessive-compulsive personality. He's gonna call you today, and if I know Nelson he'll be flying in your airspace and mine till we start doing legwork at motels that begin with A, B and C."

  "You can do another job for me since you've got money now," Breda said. "Go to The Unicorn restaurant on south Palm Canyon and watch the two bartenders. Someone's stealing a hundred bucks a shift, or so the owner thinks."

  "Do I get extra pay for another job?"

  Breda showed him her world-champ sneer and said, "All right, another hundred. Meet me at seven o'clock tonight. Clive Devon's always back home before seven in the evening, girlfriend or not."

  "Let's meet at The Furnace Room."

  "Okay, I'll see you there at seven. Remember, Nelson Hareem's your problem. Deal with it."

  "My first wife always said that to me," Lynn informed her. "Deal with it. You're a lot alike."

  Knowing it was probably a mistake, Breda said, "And what was she like? A bossy bitch, I suppose."

  "More self-indulgent than a spaghetti western. She liked to make me sweat for hours while she'd decide whether or not to pump a few more slugs into my fun zone."

  "Do you think I overreacted, sir?" Nelson Hareem asked his police chief when he was called before him at nine o'clock that morning.

  "No, I wouldn't think so," the chief told him. "No more than the Chinese in Tiananmen Square, or the Russians in Lithuania, or the U. S. Cavalry at Wounded Knee."

  The chief was sweating Nelson Hareem because of a threatened lawsuit from a mortgage banker who'd passed through their little town two weeks earlier in a Porsche 928 while driving from a seminar in Scottsdale to his home in Encino. The mortgage banker had turned off Highway 10 intending to get one of those tasty date-shakes he'd heard so much about. He'd carelessly blown past a stop sign without making a complete stop, and quickly found himself lighted up by the whirling gumballs of Nelson Hareem, who happened to be dawdling down the street at a poky seventy miles per hour, the speed limit he ordinarily reserved for parking lots and residential driveways.