Fugitive Nights(8)

"Who invited you?" Breda said.

He attempted to smile. "I know I've been a pain in the ass today."

"Any more of a pain and you'd break through my Valium," she said, not asking him to get out, but not starting the car either.

She put on sunglasses with taffy-colored plastic rims, and looked him over. He wore a shabby golf shirt with a frayed collar, tattered cotton trousers, cheap loafers.

"I guess I should at least listen to your offer," he said. "I suppose you heard I got burned for allegedly giving information to a lawyer, and you figured I'm your man, right?" Lynn saw that she wasn't wearing stockings. Her legs were so tan that in The Furnace Room they'd fooled him.

"See, the lawyer was working on a deal for a guy I know, a cop facing prosecution for a bad shooting. He killed a kid."

"How old was the kid?"

"Twelve."

"Twelve years old!"

"Yeah, I know," Lynn said. "Jack Graves is the cop's name. Worked dope down in Orange County. I knew him when he used to work here. Anyway, his department was helping out the DEA with a raid. Supposed to be a dealer's house, wrong house. One a those things where the snitch burned them and everything went wrong. A twelve-year-old that lived there was terrified by all the commotion and picked up a toilet plunger for protection. And he ran right out and into Jack Graves. Jack's eyes saw: Guy-with-Gun. It was dark. Jack reacted, squeezed one off, didn't mean to."

"What happened to him?"

"The D. A. was considering a prosecution for manslaughter. There was a so-called witness, a brother-in-law to the righteous drug dealer that lived next door to the victim. I did the investigation for Jack's lawyer and proved that the dealer's brother-in-law was a lying, cop-hating gob a slime. In the end, Jack got pensioned off on stress. I don't generally go around helping lawyers and P. I.'s, okay?"

"Look, Lynn," Breda said, "I've heard you're just waiting for your disability pension to be approved. And I've heard you might wanna be a P. I. yourself after you get the pension. And I've heard you might need money even though you make it a practice to house-sit for Palm Springs millionaires and exercise their Rolls-Royces when they're not in residence. And I've also heard that these days you don't have enough money to put gas in those cars. That's what I've heard about you, Lynn. Is it wrong?"

"Well, it's true that my last marriage gave me a bigger deficit than Nicaragua, but you don't have it quite right."

"What am I missing?"

"That I do get my paycheck even though I ain't got the disability pension locked up. I mean, I got a pair a knees with all the flexibility of Margaret Thatcher, but the pension ain't official yet, so I don't wanna screw things up by selling myself to some P. I. They call that double-dipping, and I believe it's even against the law, is it not?"

"I got a couple easy jobs where there'd be no written reports of any kind with your name on them. No testifying, nothing illegal or immoral. Just a few little jobs for somebody like you. Somebody male as it turns out."

"You were right about the empty tank in the Rolls," he said. "The house I'm sitting has nine bedrooms and eleven bathrooms and two Rolls-Royces in the garage with the gas gauges on empty. I'd walk home except I ain't feeling good. Will you drive me? It's still my home for three more weeks, then I hope to house-sit at Tamarisk Country Club for two months."

Breda, deciding it was over, disgustedly started up the 280ZX. After she drove for a few minutes, Lynn said, "How much could I make?"

Breda kept her eyes on the street, saying, "Up until yesterday I couldn't have paid much, but I just got the best client I've ever had. I could pay you as much as a thousand bucks, if you can get the results I want. Cash. Nobody'd ever know about it."

"What would I have to do?"

Breda Burrows turned toward Lynn Cutter and said, "I've been thinking about this. One reason I'm going to need a man helping me on this case is because of some special undercover work. The job might call for a sperm sample."

Lynn Cutter removed the shades, gawked sideways at Breda Burrows with eyes like bags of plasma, and said, "Lady, you can't be that lonely!"



Chapter 3

On the same afternoon that Breda Burrows was learning how easy it would be to hate a world-class cynic like Lynn Cutter, Officer Nelson Hareem was doing what he did best: plotting, scheming and fantasizing about how to secure a lateral transfer from his police department to Palm Springs P. D.

Officer Hareem had worked a total of five years at two police departments, one in San Bernardino County and another in Los Angeles County, before ending up on the wrong end of the Coachella Valley, thirty minutes and millions of bucks away from Glamour. A captain at Palm Springs P. D. told the carrot-top cop he'd consider letting Nelson apply after he "proved himself" for a year or two at one more police department, hinting that it was Nelson's last chance.