He leafed through the yellow pages at the telephone stand while the unplanned events of the previous day blazed through his mind. It was almost impossible to read in English and think in his own language, so he put the phone book on the tray, telling himself to be calm. He'd simply panicked yesterday, and now he had to deal with the unexpected turn. He was a fugitive and that was a fact.
The fugitive found what he wanted on of the Palm Springs yellow pages. He tore the page from the phone book, folded it, and put it into his jacket pocket. Then he leafed through more pages until he found the listing for used car sales. He took change from his pocket, then cursed. They were the coins he'd been given in the cantina in Mexicali, after he'd received his forged documents. Useless. He had to get some U. S. coins to make calls.
The fugitive left the coins on the tray and walked toward the gas station just as a Palm Springs police car cruised by. The fugitive ducked behind the gas station until the car had passed, then thought he'd better get into a shop immediately and buy some clothes. He removed a package of one thousand U. S. dollars from the red flight bag. He wished he'd brought a change of clothes for an emergency such as this, but it had been decided by the others that he'd buy his clothing in Palm Springs. They had wanted him to look as much as possible like a tourist.
He chose to head toward the mountain, and walked north on Belardo Road in the direction of downtown, avoiding both Indian Avenue and Palm Canyon Drive, which he knew from his map and briefing to be busy thoroughfares. He was ready to leap from the pavement at the first sign of a police car.
Thinking of the police made him regret kicking the policeman so hard. As to the blow that put the man down, reflexes did that. Danger was there, the adversary was identified, and he had put down the adversary just the way he'd been taught. The only deliberate thing was the stomach kick to keep him down long enough to escape. The fugitive was glad that the policeman had not been badly hurt. There was no point in hurting anyone, except for the one he had come here to find.
When he saw Clive Devon turn into his street in Las Palmas, Lynn Cutter broke off the surveillance and sped back toward the Alan Ladd building, his curiosity killing him. But the guy with the baseball cap was no longer at the phone stand. Lynn got out of his car and went to the phone, looking for what, he didn't know, perhaps a phone number scribbled on the writing tray.
There were no numbers and no scraps of paper on the tray, but there were four coins that somebody had left. Three were Mexican, the fourth a ten-peseta Spanish coin. Lynn examined that one just to be sure it was Spanish.
Not knowing why, Lynn put the coins into his pocket and walked toward the Alan Ladd hardware store. He looked inside but the man was i*)t among the customers wandering around. He couldn't afford to waste any more time, so he returned to his Rambler, sped to Clive Devon's house in Las Palmas and parked on the next block. Then he strolled past the Devon house, stopping to peer through the oleander. He was relieved to see that the Range Rover was in the driveway next to Rhonda Devon's silver Mercedes 560SEC.
When Lynn was finally back in his own car, massaging his aching knees, he began truly regretting that he hadn't broken off the surveillance at the Salton Sea and followed the young woman. He was even sorrier he hadn't indulged his whim and stayed with the guy in the baseball cap.
The sun was still high, white as bone, and hot, but the sky was streaked with a pearly hint of sunset. Lynn leaned back and closed his eyes. At six o'clock he was startled by a familiar voice. It was Breda Burrows, who had parked behind and walked up on him.
"Damn!" he said, disoriented. "You scared me!"
"Next time I'll wear a cowbell," she said with that mean little smile. "What happened today? And don't bother with a description of your wet dream."
She got in his car on the passenger side.
"I wasn't asleep."
"Okay, you always snore on stakeouts. So what happened today?"
God, the woman had such an irritating grin! Lynn said, "This guy Devon's gonna be harder to trace than the Basque language. How much did you say you were making for this job?"
"Never mind that," Breda said. "What happened today?"
Lynn was stalling while he pulled himself together, trying to sneak a peek at his watch, stunned to see it was nearly 6:00 p. M.! All that running and skulking like a goddamn coyote had obviously drained him, except that coyotes had sense enough to hole up in the daytime.
"The guy has a friend," Lynn finally ttegan.
"What kind of friend?"
"A young woman."
"I'll be damned. Who is she?"
"I don't know," Lynn said. Then, "Can we drive somewhere and talk? Clive Devon's not going anywhere." He couldn't admit to Breda that he'd been so out cold he didn't know if Clive Devon was at home or surfing in Malibu.