Finally, there was a green leather jacket and matching skirt he'd found in the Palm Springs department store where he'd bought his waiter's clothes. It was double breasted with gold buttons, and the skirt was very slim. He'd measured the size against a salesgirl who was short and slender like his wife, whose favorite color was green. It had cost $500, but he didn't care. She'd never get a present like that again, not in her lifetime.
His comrades wouldn't be getting back much of the money that they'd taken from drug smugglers and U. S. insurance companies, but that was all right. He was sure that the family of Javier Rosas would say it was all right.
When they'd finally hiked to the Smoke Tree parking lot Lynn said, "My knees're begging for a drink."
"I don't need a drink," Breda said, heading toward her Z.
Nelson thought it was a good time to saunter to his Wrangler and give Lynn and Breda some space to say whatever it was they had to say to each other. The little cop plugged in a cassette and listened to country blues, and watched to see if their silhouettes got closer or stayed apart.
"I thought we could just. . . celebrate the end of our partnership," Lynn said to Breda as she stood by her car, keys in hand.
"I've enjoyed it, most of the time," she said.
"Ain't you ever gonna forget about that night?"
"It's forgotten."
"We work pretty well together, don't we? I mean, we solved your case and almost got the bald guy. I'm a pretty decent detective, right?"
"Yes you are," she said.
"I was thinking, after I get my pension maybe I could help you out once in a while when your work gets backed up.
"I don't think so, Lynn."
"You said you need somebody!"
"I do."
"Is it my personality? I mean, am I that hard to take?"
"Actually, you're funny and smart. You're even kinda nice to be with, sometimes."
"So why do I get the feeling this is goodbye? Why can't we go have a drink and talk it over?"
"I don't need a drink."
"So have a diet Coke!"
"Why don't you have one for me," Breda said. "And one for yourself. It's none of my business but a guy like you doesn't have to end up in The Furnace Room. Or like Jack Graves."
Breda unlocked the Z, but before she could get in, Lynn said, "Is that it? Are we finished? As a team, I mean?"
Breda nodded and opened the car door. But she impulsively turned and said, "I never did tell you: You got pretty nice buns."
Then she tried to grin, jumped into the Z, fired it up and drove into the night.
Nelson sat for a long time, watching Lynn's motionless silhouette. It looked so lonely under the velvet desert sky.
When the fugitive was twenty minutes from Calexico he looked at his watch and realized that his wife and eldest son might still be awake. After all, it was Saturday night and they had good TV programs to watch. He got unbearably excited. Suddenly, his throat swelled and tears started spilling.
He controlled himself when he approached the frontier, until he was waved across the international border. But when he arrived at his little street in Mexicali he began to sob and couldn't stop.
He pulled over until he was once again in control. He managed it by thinking of what the baby would say tomorrow when he saw his Ninja Turtles.
EPILOGUE:
Jack Graves was pleased to have helped Lynn and Breda with the Clive Devon affair. It felt good to do a job of investigation once again; even if it hadn't been real police work it had the taste of investigation. He'd hoped that it might make him want more of it, but it hadn't.
He wasn't feeling well at all. He was having trouble with a fluttering heart and migraines. The only time he felt all right lately was when he went hiking out on the desert, like Clive Devon. And he'd suffered another accident, this one involving a nasty burn. He'd put his arm in the gas flame when he reached across the range top to fry bacon. By the time he'd thrust his arm under water, it was blistered and throbbing. The pain was excruciating. The coyotes came that night, but still he couldn't sleep with so much pain.
Jack Graves had decided to go hiking the very next morning. He wore a sweater because the hot spell had broken, and he wore his floppy hat, but he didn't bother smearing sunscreen on his face. And he didn't bother with a lunch, or even a canteen of water.
Jack Graves decided on a particular hike he hadn't made since the drought began five years earlier. He knew it would be a shame to see Upper Palm Canyon Falls when there was so little water, but for some reason he had to see it again. There simply was no more beautiful place for him. It was the kind of place that made him wish he could stay there for the rest of his life.
He parked his car by the Indian trading post. There were quite a few other cars there but nobody was going to hike up to the falls. He told the Indian woman in the trading post where he was going and she cautioned him to be careful.
When he got to the base of the trickling falls he tried to see it, not as bleak as it was, but as it used to be before the drought. He saw white water that wasn't there, splashing down between serpentine chutes carved by the ages through gray crystalline granite. The fan palms were clumped together, tall, leaning toward the water as though for a drink, when there wasn't much for them.
It was nearly a perpendicular climb to the top, and though it was early morning, Jack Graves began sweating freely and wondered why he hadn't brought his canteen. He knew there was something wrong with that.
When he got near to the top of the falls, he looked straight up and saw a solitary falcon, like a tiny kite in the towering desert sky. He tilted his head back to watch that falcon floating on the brooding wind while shredded clouds shattered the light on glittering granite below.
Then, a hush. Silence. The wind . . . sighed.
Almost one year to the day that Lynn Cutter had blown out his one good knee chasing after the Mayor of Palm Springs during his historic meeting with President Bush and Prime Minister Kaifu, Lynn's first pension check arrived. Moreover, he'd been able to arrange the temporary house-sitting job at Tamarisk Country Club. The owner of the house had decided to spend the spring in Hawaii, now that Maui had such terrific golf courses. It seemed that Lynn's luck might be making a turn for the better.
That was the day he got the phone call from Officer Nelson Hareem, the newest rookie member of the Palm Springs Police Department. Nelson called to tell him that Jack Graves had had a terrible accident while hiking in the Indian canyons. When he hadn't returned to his car the Indians had searched and found his body at the base of Upper Palm Canyon Falls, lying all alone on the rocks.
Nelson tried to reassure Lynn that Jack Graves couldn't have suffered much, falling from that height, and Lynn said no, Jack Graves couldn't have suffered much.
When he hung up the phone he couldn't stop thinking about Jack Graves, alone in that little mobile home. Alone on the granite rocks in the lonely canyon. Alone.
Lynn Cutter began to assess his options in life.
After the funeral, where he saw Breda only briefly, Lynn decided to conduct an experiment: He wanted to survive a month without taking a drink, just to prove that he could. On the sixth day of sobriety, an amazing incredible miraculous thing happened: He woke up to find he had an erection! Just like when he was a young sober man!
During his twenty-ninth day of sobriety, after his fifteenth AA meeting, he used up his first pension check at a bike shop. Three hours later, on a Saturday afternoon, the doorbell rang at Breda's house in Cathedral City. She went to the door and peeked out, but no one was there. Then she went to the window and saw him in the driveway, sitting on his tangerine bike.
When she opened the door, he gave her a self-conscious, silly smile. He was wearing a red and white biking helmet, a red shirt, and black biking pants with a Day-Glo yellow stripe. He was on a bike that she knew must have cost $500, quite an investment for him. He was dripping, having ridden all the way from Tamarisk Country Club, nothing but a sprint fo
r her, but a killer ride for him.
"Whaddaya think?" he asked.
"That's a pretty decent bike," she said.
"Yeah, the doc says it won't hurt my knees if I don't ride up mountains. The only thing I changed is, I got rid a that razor blade they call a seat and put on a cushier seat for more ample bottoms."
"It's really a nice bike," she said.
"Notice anything about me?"
"Yeah," she said. "You got skinny legs."
"Anything else?"
"You still got a lotta blubber around the middle."
"I'll soon be lean and whippetlike," he said. "Haven't had a drink in twenty-nine days, eighteen hours and fifteen minutes. Notice anything else different?"
"You got rid of your mustache."
"Yeah!" he said. "Whaddaya think?"
"You don't remind me quite so much of Saddam Hussein," she said.
"See how sweet you can be when you wanna?"
"What's it feel like?" she asked. "Quitting drinking?"
"It's easy. You just gotta find substitute activities to occupy your mind. Me, I been eating live lizards. Don't worry, not the endangered fringe-toed lizards, just your average backyard dirt-bag lizards. Got any lizards under your house? Wanna go for a bike ride?"
"I don't think so," she said. "I rode this morning."
"I rode all the way over here," he said. "And I'm still full a juice."
"Thanks anyway," she said.
"It's your age" he said sympathetically. "You can't exercise in the morning and the afternoon. And it's your body chemistry. Something about women, I don't know what. You people can't take too much. I understand."
Then he saw it. That mean little killer grin of hers. She said, "Yeah? Give me five minutes."
"Sure," he said, "I'll listen to music."
He took a transistor radio out of his seat pack, tied it to the handlebars with a little bungee cord, and tuned to the country station.
She came out of the house carrying her lightweight custom speedster, wearing her black Coolmax shirt and Lycra pants. Her lustrous earth-brown hair billowed from under the black and white helmet. Jesus, she looked buff in black!
"You gonna listen to a radio while you ride?"
"Sure," he said. "I'm one a those people can do two things at once. Sometimes I even clip my toenails when I'm watching the news."
"We'll take it easy," she said. "Maybe go up to Dinah Shore, out to Bob Hope, back on Gerald Ford. And all the way to Frank Sinatra if you're up to it."
"Make it easy on yourself," he said, to make it more fun for her when she started ratcheting up to his pain threshold.
When they got out of the traffic and onto Dinah Shore Drive, he wondered if something spooky would happen on the country scene. It did. Don Williams started singing to him.
I wanna hear your heartbeat, In the darkness, Ev-er-ry night, Of my life.
He was so fatigued just from the ride to her house that he was puffing and blowing. He rode two bike lengths behind, at what was for her a slow cruising speed. Then when the traffic thinned out he panted up beside her, trying to breathe through his nose to keep his tongue from lolling, and turned up the volume so she could hear.
I wanna hear your heartbeat, In the darkness, Ev-er-ry night, Of my life.
"Oh, man!" he cried.
Breda looked over and said, "What's wrong?"
"This guy that's singing?" Lynn said. "He's at least our age. And he's got our number!"
I wanna hear your heartbeat, In the darkness
Next to miiiiiine.
"Night after night," Lynn said. "Alone like Jack Graves."
"Huh?"
"As alone as ... as a fugitive," Lynn said.
"What're you talking about?" She pulled closer to the sandy shoulder as a Sun Bus whizzed by, blowing Lynn's bike in her direction.
"I'll tell you something!" Lynn shouted, dropping back just a few yards, while she kept her face forward.
Beyond her the desert sky was showing streamers of cherry red across a glaze of twilight blue. He smelled sage. The desert was performing right on cue.
"You'll tell me what?" She was irritated because he was blabbing about some cowboy when she was supposed to be enjoying a ride.
He said, "I'll tell you that fifty percent of a salary, tax free, and forty percent of another salary based on a salary that was more than the first salary, equals one hundred percent of either salary, no matter how you wanna look at it."
"What in the hell are you jabbering about?" She downshifted the bike, sat upright and rode no hands, looking at him.
"Just that you could probably rent out one a your bedrooms with that extra bath, and get quite a good piece a change. Which wouldn't hurt, what with a kid in college and all."
"Have you totally lost your mind? Maybe you oughtta start drinking again!"
"Not me. I don't like those parties where I'm the only guest to RSVP my own invitation. I'm gonna stick to diet Coke and reptiles. Anyway, whaddaya think?"
"Are you saying you wanna live in my house?"
That caused him to drop farther back because he didn't want to look her in the eye. "Only in one bedroom and one bathroom. I wouldn't use the rest a the house till you get more mellow, say in ten years or so. Whyn't you think about it? We could start out this new relationship by exchanging Polaroids in our bike suits. I'll attach yours to my fridge with this souvenir palm tree magnet I got. Soon as I can afford a fridge. Better yet, I could pay you an exorbitant percentage a my pension check and use your fridge to store a couple oranges in so I don't get scurvy, okay?"
Breda rolled her eyes, mumbled something, and started pumping. But she hadn't said no!
He watched her ripple inside those black Lycra pants while he pedaled to keep up. It was hard to yell things. His voice was pretty shaky, but he hollered, "We have a lot in common. We're both very enthusiastic about pain, as long as it's mine. We could take turns beating me up. In fact, I'm suffering so much at this very moment, I sense that we're both supremely happy!"
She shot him that mean little grin one more time, like he might be right, for once.
He sensed he was getting to her with all those money bribes. Lynn put his head down and pumped for all he was worth. He kept thinking about heartbeats in the darkness, and the terrible absence of same. When he saw it! "OHMYGOD!" he cried. "What is it now?"
"I can't tell you yet. Maybe someday!"
I wanna hear your heartbeat, In the darkness
Next to miiiiiine.
Maybe there was a kind of destiny at work. It couldn't be a coincidence, not after all he'd been through. Her bike shorts had crept up. There it was: inescapable, undeniable, inevitable. Another one of those goddamn bittersweet chocolate freckles. It was just behind her left thigh!
Fugitive Nights (1992) Page 29
