"I just gotta start watching something besides The Simpsons and Tag Team Wrestling. Guess what? The guy Clive Devon picked up in Painted Canyon yesterday? He's the fugitive smuggler they're looking for! I think. Why don't I look for a safer job? Maybe the President of Haiti needs a food taster."
"Are you hung over again, or just nuts?"
"Both, but I'm coming around. I'm gonna go talk to one a those ex-FBI agents that run security for Thrifty Drug Stores. I'd rather be a drug store dick than a P. I.'s helper, cause I'm not as nuts as I was when you found me."
"Are you ready to explain in full?" she asked, with that irritating smirk.
Funny how the little freckle on her lip looked darker today. How come that freckle aroused him, he wondered. "First you'd have to meet Nelson Hareem," he began. "His paternal grandfather came from Beirut, but Nelson's not really a Muslim terrorist or anything. They'd never have him cause he's too fanatical. Here's what he told me. . . ."
Breda Burrows hardly blinked while Lynn Cutter told her the whole story, and why Nelson Hareem was, in effect, forcing him to dick around at motels and hotels from the A to C yellow pages.
When Lynn was finished, Breda sat back and stared toward Clive Devon's house for a few minutes. Then she said, "This is truly nuts."
"Sure it is," Lynn said. "So's Nelson. But he's still capable of turning over all his hot little clues to the sheriff's department. After which somebody would no doubt contact me. After which somebody else would no doubt contact my department. After which . . ."
"Okay, okay, I get it. You're worried about your disability pension, I get it!"
"Not at all," he said. "Who needs a pension? I got enough money to last till one o'clock this afternoon if I don't buy that bag a potato chips I been craving."
Breda reached in her purse, removed her wallet, and took out three twenties. "Here," she said. "For expenses. Doesn't the guy whose house you're sitting have a pantry?"
"Yeah, and I ate everything in it except the cat food, which ain't my brand. How about another couple a these?"
Breda gave him another two twenties and said, "This is an advance against your fee. If you earn the fee."
"If I . . . hey! I already earned something! I'm risking my pension with all this smuggler bullshit!"
"That's your problem."
"My problem. Yeah, because I took on this job!"
"We had a deal. I didn't plan on some drug dealer entering the picture. I don't think he did enter the picture. I think Clive Devon is just a nice man who gave a ride to a guy, and he doesn't know zip about drug smuggling or any other felony or misdemeanor."
"Well I'll stop worrying then. One a these days an earthquake's gonna hit the San Andreas Fault so hard Palm Spring'll just liquefy and turn into quicksand anyway. We'll be all gone like Sodom and Gomorrah. And here I am worrying about starving to death! I must be crazy!"
"I'm taking over the surveillance today," Breda said. "Why don't you go talk sense to this cop, Nelson Hareem. Explain to him that this smuggler business can't go anywhere. Make him see." .
"He couldn't see with the Hubble Space Telescope. He's got an obsessive-compulsive personality. He's gonna call you today, and if I know Nelson he'll be flying in your airspace and mine till we start doing legwork at motels that begin with A, B and C."
"You can do another job for me since you've got money now," Breda said. "Go to The Unicorn restaurant on south Palm Canyon and watch the two bartenders. Someone's stealing a hundred bucks a shift, or so the owner thinks."
"Do I get extra pay for another job?"
Breda showed him her world-champ sneer and said, "All right, another hundred. Meet me at seven o'clock tonight. Clive Devon's always back home before seven in the evening, girlfriend or not."
"Let's meet at The Furnace Room."
"Okay, I'll see you there at seven. Remember, Nelson Hareem's your problem. Deal with it."
"My first wife always said that to me," Lynn informed her. "Deal with it. You're a lot alike."
Knowing it was probably a mistake, Breda said, "And what was she like? A bossy bitch, I suppose."
"More self-indulgent than a spaghetti western. She liked to make me sweat for hours while she'd decide whether or not to pump a few more slugs into my fun zone."
"Do you think I overreacted, sir?" Nelson Hareem asked his police chief when he was called before him at nine o'clock that morning.
"No, I wouldn't think so," the chief told him. "No more than the Chinese in Tiananmen Square, or the Russians in Lithuania, or the U. S. Cavalry at Wounded Knee."