Fugitive Nights(17)

She'd flattened two tires and took their ignition key with her, tossing it away in the desert. It was actually one of the most enjoyable biking experiences she'd ever had and she'd slept like a baby that night.

Breda Burrows was feeling a lot better about things when, wearing her black Coolmax shirt and black Lycra pants, she bicycled out Ramon Road to Bob Hope Drive, then right, past Dinah Shore Drive to Frank Sinatra Drive, where she made another right and stopped at the oleander-encircled estate of publisher Walter Annenberg, who threw the biggest New Year's bash in the desert, one that Ronald Reagan never missed.

Two private guards were out front, and Breda, covered with a fine layer of sweat and feeling euphoric, yelled to them, "Again he didn't invite me on New Year's Eve!"

The guards grinned and waved, and with her earth-brown hair streaming from under the helmet, Breda sprinted past Tamarisk Country Club, the home of Old Blue Eyes himself. Then she was back on Highway 111 pumping toward Cathedral City, no longer feeling all nutted up from her encounter with Lynn Cutter.

Breda overtook a sheriff's unit cruising in the slow lane, and instantly felt a pang of camaraderie. The female deputy was pretty, and as young as Breda had been when she'd started on the job. Breda wondered how long it would be before they put an attractive kid like that into vice duty, the John Squad, make her go out there on the avenue in tight pants and spike heels and listen to all those sweaty guys with wives and kiddies at home, eager to pay twenty dollars for a head job or forty for straight sex or fifty for both.

She wanted to say something to the young woman, but what was there to say? It was not just a job, it was a way of life.

Well, she was something else now. What had Lynn Cutter called her? Fuzz that was. And she had to earn a decent living to supplement her pension, because a kid at Berkeley was damned expensive, even with her ex-husband helping out.

Since coming to Palm Springs she'd become acutely aware that lots of the poshest dwellings she passed on her bike rides served as second-or third-home getaway destinations for owners who might only visit them a couple of times a year. She wondered what it cost them to keep their house plants alive.

Good things! she told herself, pumping past Date Palm Drive, sprinting toward a glass of iced tea. Good things! Think of good things!

The thing she thought about was that the tropical tan uniform the deputy wore was undramatic, that the sheriffs department and Palm Springs P. D. ought to change color to police blue.

Blue was much more slenderizing.

At the end of the duty tour that day the sergeant of Nelson Hareem thought he recognized something in the eyes of the little redhead as he talked about the hunt for the fugitive who'd cold-cocked the deputy at the airport.

By now, the residents of the house near Lake Cahuilla had come home and discovered that their house had been entered and their Ford sedan was gone. The cops figured that the burglar-car thief had to be the airport guy, and the description of the stolen white Ford was broadcast every thirty minutes or so to all the law enforcement agencies in the valley.

"You are gonna beat feet to your little home, aren't you, Nelson?" the sergeant asked with a worried look. Maybe it was the fact that Nelson's haircut looked frizzy and wild. Nelson was giving off an aura you could trip over.

"Sure, Sarge," Nelson told him innocently. "Why wouldn't I?"

"You wouldn't do something really goofy, would you? Like trying to get in on the search for the airport guy? I mean, while you're off duty?"

"Of course not, Sarge," the carrot-top cop promised, with a baby-face smile that scared the crap out of every supervisor he'd ever had.

The sergeant was the kind of guy who never did anything off duty, except help his wife sell Tupperware. He asked, hopefully, "Isn't there someone at home waiting? Someone to help you chill out when you start getting that Robocop feeling? You look like you could set off smoke alarms."

"I jist live alone with my goldfishes, Sarge," Nelson answered affably.

"You got that certain look in your eye," the sergeant said. "Like you might go out and do something . . . worrisome. You don't own an assault rifle, do you?"

"I learned my lesson, Sarge," Nelson promised. "I don't wanna finish my career in the Legion. Can't speak French."

"Good night then, Nelson," the sergeant said, doubtfully.

And of course, the little cop put on his civvies, jumped in his Jeep Wrangler, and raced straight for the Sheriff's Department in Indio, where he hoped to gather some clues he could work on the next day.

When somebody assaulted a cop like that, it was a big deal, a lot worse than a murder of a mere civilian. Everyone got stoked and wanted a piece of the son of a bitch and would be very appreciative of the cop that bagged him. Nelson Hareem had big-time fantasies about being that cop.