Fugitive Nights (25 page)

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.

“Lemme 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.

T
he 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.

Country music was blasting from a fair-to-middling sound system and, perhaps due to the Gulf War, “Heroes” was getting a very big play. It was loud enough to've made Malcolm howl, if he hadn't been so preoccupied with steak.

The dozen tables were covered with checked tablecloths, topped by a sheet of plastic so they didn't have to be washed very often. It was a country version of The Furnace Room, but also featured shuffleboard and snooker tables, both of which were seeing action by the younger patrons, those under the age of fifty. It was one of those places where the barstools are screwed to the floor so you can't throw them, and you half expected to see sticky curls of paper, studded with fly carcasses, dangling from the ceiling.

Clive Devon sat with his back to the wall, a mug of beer in his hand, beaming at all the desert locals who spoke to him and Malcolm while Jack Graves nursed his beer, thinking that he might return for supper sometime. The steaks were big, the aroma from a greasy kitchen grill was terrific, and the prices were as cheap as he'd seen anywhere in the desert.

At the table by the end of the bar where Jack Graves stood sipping his beer was a trio of eco-freaks with designer cowboy hats and kneeless jeans that looked like hand-me-downs from Devil's Island.

One of the Snakeweed's clientele, an old desert rat named Luther, with the biggest lip-load of snuff Jack Graves had ever seen, was regaling the eco-freaks with lore, and they were buying it all, as well as an endless supply of whiskey for the geezer.

“It's all these city people that cause our problems,” Luther complained to the city people, who nodded somberly. “They come out here towing their ATC's and run em all over the desert like Patton did with his tanks when he trained out here. You think the bighorn's the only animal in trouble?”

After the eco-freaks shook their heads, Luther said, “How bout the poor old stick lizards?”

Which got some of the other desert rats at the bar snickering and poking each other.

“The most amazing creature in the entire desert is the stick lizard,” he told them. “Carries a lil stick in his mouth whenever the temperature rises above a hunnerd 'n fifteen degrees. On'y desert creature ta forage for food at high noon. Know how he does it?”

The punch line was worth a dramatic pause, and another shot of bar whiskey which the eco-freaks were only too glad to pay for.

Then Luther said, “When the sand starts burnin his feet, he'll dig a hole for that stick, 'n he'll push it vertical in the sand, 'n he'll climb up it. He'll jist hang there a few minutes till his feet cool off.” Luther finished his whiskey and said, “Ain't too many stick lizards left. Definitely endangered.”

Just then a dazzling old gent in olive-green and chrome-yellow golfing duds entered and headed for the bar.

“Hi, Doc,” said the trucker, who was still feeding Malcolm from his plate.

Doc gave Malcolm a scratch, then grabbed his muzzle and opened the dog's mouth. “That lip healed right up, didn't it, Malcolm?” he said to the dog. Then he turned to the saloon keeper and said, “Otis, how about a sloe gin fizz?”

“You're the only guy this side a black 'n white movies that still drinks those things,” Otis said.

“That's why the world's gone to hell,” Doc said. He spotted Malcolm's companion and yelled, “Howdy, Clive!”

Clive Devon smiled and raised his beer mug. After Doc got his drink he walked over to Clive Devon's table, shook hands and sat down.

Jack Graves moseyed down the bar toward Malcolm. He nodded a howdy to the guys on each side of him and said to the trucker, “Nice big dog you got.”

“Ain't mine. Belongs to Clive over there.”

“Who's the other guy?” Jack Graves asked. “I think I played golf with him one time, but I can't remember his name.”

“That's Doc Morton. You mighta played with him. He plays every day, now he's retired.”

The Snakeweed began filling up with Canadian snowbirds, and the Mexican cook in the tiny kitchen couldn't turn out the steaks fast enough. Pretty soon the cooking smoke was too much for the air-conditioner and things got more obscure than in The Furnace Room on Saturday night. It was the kind of joint where supper was over by eight o'clock, and then there'd be a night of hard drinking for the hangers-on, Jack Graves guessed.

At six-thirty Clive Devon looked at his watch and ordered three steaks with fries, two salads, two orders of garlic toast. Jack Graves ordered a steak sandwich rare and another beer.