Fugitive Nights (28 page)

There was silence in the bedroom, and he thought:
She's getting the fucking gun!
He looked behind him, but the only bathroom window was one of those shitty little openings high on the wall that slid open for ventilation. He couldn't have squeezed out of that even when he was still thin. He was doomed!

Then he heard something. It sounded like she'd fallen down. He called out, “Breda! Whatever's troubling you, I'm sure we can talk about it!”

No answer.

“Breda!” he yelled, picking up the tennis shoe telephone. “Don't make me call nine-one-one!”

No answer.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and unlocked the door. He had a crazy idea that he didn't want to be found naked and dead, like a fucking book title.

“Breda!”

She was sitting rigid as stone on a straight-backed chair by the window, staring outside with her back to him. She was fully clothed now, but panting from the pounding she'd given him.

“Breda,” he said softly. “I think I can understand why you're mad at me, but honest, I had too much to drink! I didn't know what I was doing!”

She never turned around when she said, “You're the most vile evil horrible person I've ever known.”

“I ain't
that
bad,” he said.

“You raped me,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“Date rape,” she said. “And I'm going to sue you, you filthy perverted creep!”

“Date rape! I didn't rape nobody! I just put you to bed cause you were drunk! Hell, I was drunk too! If I hadn't a been drunk I woulda noticed that I put you in the
wrong
bed is all. Date rape? Gimme a break!”

She still hadn't turned around when she said, “I'll pay you what I promised, but then I never want to see your slimy rotten self ever again.”

He looked at his watch. Three
A.M.
The Drinker's Hour. All the grief and agony of mankind happened at three
A.M.,
after booze made the blood sugar drop.

“Breda,” he said, “we're both still a little bit lubricated. We shouldn't try to communicate right now.”

Finally, she turned around and he saw that her face was white as china and tear-stained, and all of a sudden he
did
feel like a rapist!

Choking back a sob: “How could you do that to another human being?”

“Know what I did? I kissed your freckle. That's all I did. That's all I
could
do. I admit I had some other ideas, but I was too drunk. I just kissed your freckle maybe three times. Then I passed out.”

“You kissed what?”

“The freckle there by your mouth,” he said. “I had this uncontrollable desire to kiss your freckle since the first time I laid eyes on you.” Then he staggered sideways and had to sit down on the bed. It went GLUP!

“Christ, I
hate
this freaking bed!” he said. “It makes me nauseous.” He
was
nauseous, and his head was pounding. “Breda, I'm still hammered,” he whined. “You must be at least as drunk as me?”

“You got me that way so you could rape me,” she said. And that caused him to look frantically around the room again. Was that fucking purse still in the car or not?

“Look, we're grownup people,” he pleaded. “You got your forty-third birthday coming up, for chrissake!”

“How do
you
know when my birthday is?”

“I had you run through DMV. The second of April. You're almost as old as me.”

“You ran my name through DMV? You swine, how
dare
you!”

“I did it right after we met. I only do stuff like that when I
like
a woman!”

“When you'd like to
rape
them, you mean! You had your way with me!”

“Had my … Jesus! That kinda line went out with the zoot suit! Had my
way
? This ain't
Forever Amber!
Look, we're just two lonely middle-aged people is all we are! This can't be such a big deal!”

“I'm
not
lonely, you bastard! And if I was, that doesn't give you the right to … to …”

“To kiss your freckle? I told you, that's all I
did.
I passed out. You wanna give me a sobriety check? I'll prove I'm still tanked. I couldn't walk a line you painted with a push-broom. Honest!”

Now she seemed uncertain, but even angrier. “So you just take off a woman's clothes and slobber on her and … and
degrade
her! You think
that's
okay, you foul slithering vermin!”

“You're mad if I
did
it! You're madder if I
didn't
do it! And in the second place I didn't take off your clothes. But you ain't gonna listen to reason. Why'nt you just shoot me and get it over with.”

All of a sudden she jumped unsteadily to her feet and said, “I
will
, you asshole!”

“WAIT A MINUTE!” he screamed. “WHERE'S YOUR PURSE? WHERE'S THAT GODDAMN PURSE?”

Then she sat down again and he could see that she was sick, very sick. He crept a little closer.

“You're whiter'n Gramma's undies,” he said. “I think you oughtta get in the bathroom real quick.”

She did. He heard her throwing up two seconds after the door slammed. Then he weaved his way down the hall to the guest bath. Christ, his head! He got a glass of water and a clean towel and returned to the master suite, standing outside the door.

It was quiet inside. He took the opportunity to put his pants on, but he looked awful with his belly hanging out. He put on a pajama top, and said, “Breda! Would you like a little drink a water? And an aspirin?”

Then the door opened and she came out, paler than Denny O'Doul, but seeming more sober than before. She stormed by him and headed for the staircase.

He followed behind and said, “Breda, you ain't being reasonable. This is
not
such a terrible thing, anybody would tell you that!”

“If you mention this night to a living soul I
will
sue you!” she said, pausing on the staircase.

“Sue me?” he croaked. “You don't need to. All I own is a tennis racquet with busted strings that I haven't used since my first wife boogied and my knee blew out! You can
have
it! And my new shock absorbers I got at the swap meet!”

Even shaky and white as salt, with her hair messed up and her eyes all swollen, he thought she still looked great. “I wouldn't tell nobody,” he said. “Look, we're real close on the Ibañez thing, and I think we gotta see that one through. Nelson, me
and
you.”

“And why would you think that matters to me?”

“Why? Because we're cops. Sort of. I mean we used to be cops and we're on to something and it's important and we all know it. And we're gonna wrap up the Clive Devon thing too, I promise.”

“I said I'd pay you.”

“You don't have to,” he said, unconvincingly. Christ, he was down to his last twenty bucks!

“All right,” she said. “I'll see it through, and then I don't want you to ever cross my path again.”

“Breda, I ain't all that weird!” he cried. “I mean, I don't go around putting rattlers in mailboxes! My entertainment consists of hanging around with coupon-clippers at The Furnace Room, most of em on walkers! I say stuff to women like, ‘Gee, you look swell today, Agatha!' So how depraved can I be?”

As she descended the staircase again and was clicking across the marble foyer, it was
his
turn to feel a bit angry and indignant. Now that he wasn't going to be shot dead
his
feelings were hurt too, goddamnit!

Besides, back there in the bedroom, somebody was singing: “Talk Back Tremblin' Lips.”

Deciding to do
just
that, he yelled, “I didn't do anything so awful! Whaddaya want from a guy before he brings you home? His old handcuff key on a gold chain, or what?”

She slammed the door so hard a painting fell off the wall and cartwheeled down the staircase. It was one of those crappy prizefight scenes that the owner of the house was so proud of. But it was an original, not a litho, so Lynn hoped he could reglue the ugly frame together.

As he staggered back to bed he thought of how they were, all of them! Their goofy heads full of female litter! There was more mess and litter in her head than you could shovel off the floor of a sorority house! She was squirrely, wacko, batty!

He fell onto the waterbed and had to endure a nauseating rock and roll for a few seconds. When the bed quieted down he knew he wouldn't be going back to sleep for hours. Lynn stared at the ceiling, furious at the world. Matraca Berg was singing country blues.

I been snagged, I been hoooooked …

How many years did Breda think they had left, the two of them? You'd think somebody her age would behave like a sensitive compassionate grownup!

Oh, my God, what's my world coming toooooo
?

I got it baaaaaaad, for you.

His head hurt and he was trying not to vomit. His ears were still ringing where she'd slugged him. He had to get up in the morning and face Nelson Hareem. And the country blues made him want to cry! His heart ached!

Oh, my God, what's my world coming tooooo
?

I got it baaaaaad, for you.

How did they know? How did those goddamn redneck country hicks always know just what the fuck he was
feeling
?

Jack Graves was awake at 3:00
A.M.,
but it had nothing to do with drinking. He'd stayed at the Snakeweed Bar & Grill talking to the veterinarian for two hours, but never even finished the second glass of beer. Doc, however, drank
lots
of beer and three more sloe gin fizzes, which Jack Graves had been glad to buy.

The old vet was thrilled to be regaling such a willing listener with every golf story he knew. Doc promised to sponsor Jack Graves at his country club if he was serious about joining, but he warned Jack Graves about the frustrations associated with golf, and that golf spelled backwards is flog.

And through all the drinking and the golf lore, Doc had never noticed the dozens of subtle questions that Jack Graves would slide into the middle of a golf tale, questions about Clive Devon, most of which Doc answered freely, anxious to get to the next golf anecdote.

After Jack Graves was certain that Doc had had more than enough, he'd asked his questions more directly. Doc was by then a fast friend to this neophyte golfer, and only too happy to answer after a boozy admonition not to tell anyone else about Clive Devon's little secret, even though Doc had told all of it before to half the customers in the Snakeweed.

At midnight, Jack Graves was back home in Windy Point, standing out behind his motor home listening for the coyote pack, disappointed that they weren't hunting in his range that night. He did hear an owl and even thought he heard the sound of a rattler in the brush. It was extremely unlikely in winter, but he walked toward the brush and obeyed an irrational impulse. He kicked at it, and there was a sound of scurrying. There were desert creatures that could imitate rattlers to frighten away predators, and it was probably one of them. Despite the dangers in the desert, Jack Graves was without fear, without
that
kind of fear.

He knew that he should feel happy about what he'd accomplished. Breda and Lynn would be thrilled when he told them what he knew about Clive Devon. It pleased him to think of helping them, but he still didn't feel happy. On the contrary, he felt very uneasy, and he noticed that his palms were clammy. He wiped them on his jacket as he listened for the coyotes who never came.

He was lying awake at the same time Lynn Cutter was lying awake, but Jack Graves was not listening to country blues. He was indulging a very unhealthy compulsion. Before they'd given him his stress pension he'd been warned by a psychiatrist that if unsummoned images swept over him, that was
one
thing, but he must not probe the wound. A person could cause a deadly infection, the psychiatrist had warned him, picking at wounds.

Yet he was doing it, summoning ghosts. He listened for coyotes, anything to distract him, but there was only wind out there, desert wind gusting across the sand, sighing high up in the mountain pass. The wind did that sometimes, sighing. If only the little desert wolves would come …

He'd been detailed to guard the back of the house. If his partner had not hurt his back they'd have been swinging a battering ram, and they'd never have been back there when the boy ran out …

The fugitive was doing something that he'd never done before, something that he should have done before leaving home: He was writing out his last will and testament. He would have done it at home if he'd ever dreamed that this assignment could be so dangerous, if he'd even thought for one moment how it could all go so wrong.

It was after 3:00
A.M.,
and he hadn't slept at all. How could he? After the terror in the mortuary, and the horror that still awaited him? He wondered if that policeman with curly hair had found John Lugo already and had asked the man questions. The fugitive still had one thing in his favor: John Lugo would not have the faintest notion what the policeman was talking about. Why would the man know about someone trying to trace him by way of his mother's funeral?

The policeman had done an amazing thing in finding him, but neither he nor John Lugo would have any idea of the significance of María Magdalena Lugo's tombstone. At least he
hoped
that was the case. It would take a great deal of thinking and questioning of others for anybody to figure it out. By then it would be too late. The fugitive would have his work completed, that's what he prayed for.

Then he put down the pad upon which he was writing his will. He would post the letter tomorrow. The will was an easy thing to write. He left everything he owned to his wife and children: the car and furniture, and the little four-room house that was not paid for, a house that would still be too small for his family even if he did not come home to them. He was thirty-nine years old and had accumulated pitifully little in a lifetime of hard work.