"What's the guy look like? The smuggler from the airport?"
"Mexican. Medium height, husky build, bald. Maybe thirty-five to forty."
"Husky build?"
And then the young cop started getting very excited. "You saw him, sir! I mean Lynn! You saw him!"
"Chill out, Nelson. I saw a husky Latino, yeah. He wore a blue baseball cap so I don't know if he was bald. It coulda been a Dodgers cap, so maybe it was just Fernando Valenzuela out there prospecting for gold."
"It was him!" Nelson cried. "I know it was him!"
Suddenly, the old doll emerged from her stupor and yelled, "Gargon!" at Wilfred Plimsoll, after which she lapsed into a chorus of "I'll Be Seeing You."
"We don't know that, Nelson," Lynn said. "There could be lots a reasons why the guy I saw was out there on foot."
"The Range Rover," Nelson said. "Do you have any idea who was drivin the Range Rover?"
"None," Lynn Cutter said, avoiding eye contact.
Nelson Hareem was quiet for a moment, then he said, "Lynn, what were you doin out there?"
"You're gonna have to read me my rights before you take that approach," Lynn said.
"I'm sorry, Lynn," said Nelson. "It's jist that I got somethin here, I know it. And it's my chance."
"Chance for what?"
"To get outta town. I don't wanna work down there where nothin ever happens. I wanna work where there's some lights and action."
"Talk to Wilfred, the owner a this joint. You're describing the movie business except you left out camera between lights and action."
"I wanna work for Palm Springs P. D., Lynn."
"And here I been celebrating for months because I'm leaving Palm Springs P. D."
"Yeah, but I'm still young."
"Go up there and get us a couple drinks, Nelson. Scotch for me. Let this old man gum on this smuggler business for a while."
After the kid had gone, Lynn thought, It couldn't be. Ridiculous. Just a coincidence. Damn, he wished his guy had taken off that baseball cap! By the time Nelson returned with the drinks, Lynn had convinced himself that it absolutely positively couldn't be.
"It couldn't be, Nelson," he said. But then, "Was the smuggler wearing a dark windbreaker?"
"Had on a short-sleeved khaki shirt when he kicked the deputy's dick in the dirt."
"Well, my guy had on a dark windbreaker."
"Maybe he had a change a clothes in his flight bag," Nelson said, taking a sip of beer, the foam lying on his fuzzy upper lip.
"Flight bag?"
"Yeah, the smuggler carried a flight bag. We figured it was full a heroin, but maybe he had some clothes in it."
"What color flight bag?" Lynn asked.
"Red," said Nelson Hareem.
During the next thirty-five minutes, Lynn told most of his Clive Devon story and got a complete rundown on the bald smuggler, followed by a sketch of Nelson Hareem's police history, which had brought him to a place where his shoeshine turned viscous by eleven a. M. on summer days. They continued to talk even as they walked out of the saloon while the old doll at their table was singing "It Had To Be You," like Helen Forrest.
"So you see, I'm helping out this retired cop till she gets her business in shape," Lynn said to Nelson while they stood under a desert sky so clear the dipper looked like it might fall on them and shatter into topaz.
"I understand, Lynn," Nelson said.
"I don't want you to say a word about this to anyone. I don't want nobody at Palm Springs P. D. to know I been goat-footing it around the canyons for a P. I. named Breda Burrows. Understand?"
"The guy's a wanted felon. What if he kills somebody or somethin? We'd have to tell the detectives that you traced him to Palm Springs."
"If he surfaces again we can reconsider. For now, what difference does it make if the sheriff's department knows he got this far? He's gone"
"What happened when he went to the phone stand down by the Alan Ladd hardware store, Lynn? Think he mighta jotted down a number there?"
In that too many of Lynn's neurons were swimming for their lives in Wilfred's booze, Lynn blurted, "No, I already checked that. Left his pocket change on the phone tray, is all."
That got the young cop stoked. "You found pocket change?"
"Yeah."
"Where is it?"
"I don't know. In my other pants, I guess. Just a few coins, Mexican coins. And one Spanish coin."
"Spanish? You sure?"
"I didn't have my jeweler's loupe handy but it sure looked like a Spanish ten-peseta coin."
"That's really weird. Think he's from Spain?"
"No, I think he's a drug smuggler, same as you think. He probably flew up from around Mexicali or Tijuana. I went to Tijuana with my first wife one time. It was the world's most expensive weekend in a place that's supposed to be cheap. In one a the saloons a bartender gave me pocket change from three countries. In those border towns you got people coming from everywhere with different kinds a money."