Detectives at the sheriff's department had little or nothing to go on as far as the bald man was concerned, except for a bit supplied by the injured campesinos, who said that the man did indeed have a drooping Zapata moustache and was younger than the cops had first assumed from his hairless pate.
Both injured farm workers said that the man had only spoken a few words in Spanish and could've been from anywhere. But the words he had spoken were "well said," by which they meant articulate and authoritative. And that he'd looked like a man who, unlike themselves, was used to giving orders.
At the cafe by the Salton Sea was the rusty Plymouth belonging to the young woman with long hair. Lynn Cutter was afraid to try driving past to get her license number. He decided to park his Rambler on the Mecca end of the highway, and watch them through binoculars. The smell of red tide was blowing in his direction, and from a distance the polluted water looked like it had a crust you could walk on.
He couldn't understand about the guy with the baseball cap. Lynn had assumed that he must have a disabled car on the canyon road and had simply needed a lift to a telephone, yet he hadn't left the Range Rover.
Before saying goodbye to the woman, Clive Devon knelt down beside the rusty Plymouth and hugged the brown dog. Then he said something to the young woman and she put the reluctant dog into the backseat of her Plymouth. Lynn wondered if Clive Devon and the young woman would've shown more affection if they'd been alone. And he wished he could've gotten the young woman's license number.
Then, to his surprise, the guy with the baseball cap climbed into the passenger seat of the Range Rover. In a moment, they'd be coming his way on the open road, and Lynn found himself in the position that every one-car surveillance driver hates: He was being followed by his quarry. The Rambler groaned when he stepped on the gas and made a fast U-turn.
Lynn stayed a hundred yards in front, driving by rearview mirror. He didn't get to drop behind Clive Devon until he was in the town of Thermal, finding a safe place to make a turn and parallel the Range Rover. Once the Range Rover had passed through the city of Coachella and was entering Indio, there was plenty of traffic and the surveillance got easy again.
Lynn kept expecting Clive Devon to pull over and drop off his passenger, but he did not. He drove at a leisurely speed out of Indio, past Indian Wells Country Club, where part of the Bob Hope Classic was being played, and through Rancho Mirage, which called itself the "home of presidents." That meant home of Gerald Ford, who was a member of every country club in the desert for free, because of a freak accident of history, without which he'd be beaning folks at the Grand Rapids muni-course. They never called the place "home of vice-presidents," though Spiro Agnew lived in exile there.
Then the Range Rover was out of Rancho Mirage, cruising through Cathedral City, finally entering Palm Springs, and Lynn still couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. Why hadn't he dropped his passenger long before now? Clive Devon didn't unload the guy until he neared downtown.
Lynn saw the guy with the red bag go to a GTE phone stand at a gas station across from the Alan Ladd hardware store, and Lynn figured maybe he was just a tourist hoping to buy an old movie poster from Shane or The Great Gatsby at the Alan Ladd store. But what the hell had he been doing on foot out there in the canyon?
For a second or two, Lynn was almost curious enough to turn around and tail that guy. But he stayed with Clive Devon, per instructions of his temporary boss, Breda Burrows.
His heart was crashing against his breastbone. He was suddenly very frightened, now that he was standing alone on a busy street in Palm Springs, California. He was dripping sweat, and was about to remove his baseball cap to wipe it off when he caught himself just in time. They were looking for a bald man, so he had to wear a hat for the rest of his time in this city.
He ran across Indian Avenue, realizing halfway that he should have gone to the intersection, to a crosswalk. He wasn't at home now. He'd have to be very much aware of traffic laws.
Having come this far it would be a tragedy to be caught because he'd failed to cross a street at the right spot.
He went to the phone stand, keeping his red flight bag pressed against his chest, wanting to get rid of it as soon as possible. He wished he had any color other than high-visibility red, but he couldn't have anticipated the policeman bursting into the rest room like that.
He'd read the morning news account, in which the policeman said he'd only entered the rest room to relieve himself, that he probably wouldn't have paid any attention to the other man inside. Easy to say now, but what does a policeman in the States do when he sees a man of the Third World get off a private plane and carry a bag to a rest room? Except that the policeman claimed he wasn't even aware of the private plane having landed with engine trouble on its way to who-knew-where.