Fugitive Nights Read online

  Fugitive Nights

  Joseph Wambaugh

  A MysteriousPress.com

  Open Road Integrated Media ebook

  To superb editor Jeanne Bernkopf,

  with gratitude for urging a return

  to the California desert

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks for the cop talk goes to the men and women of Palm Springs Police Department, Cathedral City Police Department, and Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Indio Station, especially to Sgt. D. T. Wright.

  Many thanks goes to Dale “Bubba” Johnson and P.I. Bill McMullin for providing Palm Springs local color.

  PROLOGUE

  It was unbearably thrilling. The police detective who was detailed to provide personal security hoped that the Mayor wouldn’t reel in ecstasy onto the tarmac. And it was undeniably historic: the first meeting held on the West Coast between the Japanese and U.S. heads of state in forty-three years. They were calling it the Summit in the Sun.

  The cop watched his Mayor very closely. Everyone else—Secret Service, State Department security, FBI, Japanese security—everyone else was watching the gathering crowd and the taxiing aircraft, while Greenpeace demonstrators were handing out Japan-baiting bumper stickers that read, HONK IF YOU LOVE WHALES AND HATE VCRS. When President George Bush finally bounded from the plane the detective was fascinated. The man was all knees and flying elbows, a bouncing collection of angles. He did his usual wing flapping, flailing those elbows first to the right then to the left, trying to hook up with Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, who was lost in the clutch of dark-suited Japanese. Finally, the President sprang toward a youngish man in a blue pinstripe, the only one shorter than the Mayor, and did one of his sidearm ball-fisted swings in the Prime Minister’s direction, which scared the crap out of the Japanese bodyguards, but was only George Bush’s Yalie boola-boola rockem-sockem pantomime, not meant aggressively, only to show he had pep. The Mayor’s police escort would recall that George Bush move later in the year when he did it again with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, and about a hundred cameras got a candid shot of the Syrian grinning like a jackal, saying in Arabic to his aide-de-camp: “Who coaches this dork, anyway?”

  When it was the Mayor’s turn to greet two of the most powerful men on earth, the little guy was hovering. The policeman thought His Honor might come right up out of his loafers. The cop always thought of him as a restaurateur, up to his mustache in spaghetti sauce six nights a week, listening to snow-bird tourists from Minneapolis pretend they knew the difference between cacciatore and calamari, only to ask him questions about his ex! He’d nearly drowned in olive oil back in the sweltering kitchen of that Palm Springs eatery, but he’d emerged pluckier than ever, and defeated the cronies of the old cowboy mayor who’d been in Palm Springs politics a century or so.

  Now with Reagan gone where old stars go to watch their orange hair change color, now with Mayor Clint Eastwood sick and tired of debating whether a Tastee-Freez would disrupt the fragile ecostructure of Carmel, now he, the Mayor of Palm Springs, was the only show business legend in American politics. And there was talk about him becoming a U.S. Senator. Today, Palm Springs. Tomorrow …?

  The cop figured that the Mayor had rehearsed all he should know about Japan and the U.S., just in case White House Chief of Staff John Sununu engaged him in some heavyweight conversation about the U.S.-Japan trade imbalance.

  Suddenly, it was too late for rehearsals! Too late for Japanese GNP and IMF and GATT and all those other confusing goddamn letters that don’t mean shit anyway. Because George Bush himself was pinwheeling toward him, those lanky arms lashing out every which way. Someone pointed, and the President himself gestured toward the Mayor! Then President Bush flailed back toward the Japanese Prime Minister, almost smacking him across the mouth with a return-of-serve backhand that would’ve cold-cocked the little Nip.

  Then the President careened forward, his right arm whirling toward His Honor, and said: “It’s wonderful to be in your beautiful city, Mister Mayor. And to be able to present you to Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu.”

  And only the Mayor’s police escort was close enough to hear the response. CNN didn’t hear it. Nor did any of the panting local newshawks. The only one close enough to hear his response was Detective Lynn Cutter of the Palm Springs Police Department.

  The detective later said that the Mayor’s eyes glistened, perhaps because he was brimming with thoughts about his bungee-jump career: He, so recently at the nadir of the dive; she, his ex at the apex. Well, let her sit on that Oscar, for he now stood—levitated really—in a place she’d never be, facing CNN cameras as a Brother Politician to the leaders of the industrial giants of the planet!

  The Mayor said what he had to say, the only thing he could say given his background, history and experience. The only response that came close to expressing the explosion of emotions as he now soared through the stratosphere on this, the Ultimate Bungee Jump! According to the detective, his boss extended a white-hot palm toward the prime minister of 125 million Japanese and the president of 250 million Americans.

  And His Honor, the Mayor of Palm Springs, USA, said: “AWESOME!”

  Later that day, when the Mayor was back in his restaurant chopping garlic, the detective was nursing a severely swollen knee. While jogging to keep up with His Honor—who’d gone cosmic from pressing the flesh of world leaders—the detective had stumbled and smashed his one good knee on the curb in front of the Palm Springs Airport.

  By year’s end he’d failed his police physical exam, had arthroscopic knee surgery twice, and was patiently awaiting an uncontested disability pension allowing him to retire with fifty percent of his salary for the rest of his life. Tax free! He figured he owed part of it to George Bush and vowed to vote a straight Republican ticket forever.

  And of course, the Mayor would always be his favorite politician. For all those months, while doctors tried in vain to rehabilitate his damaged knees, the detective couldn’t stop whistling “I Got You, Babe.”

  “What does it make you feel like?” Mrs. Rhonda Devon asked, as the private investigator studied a painting hanging over the mantel: figures in repose by the banks of the Seine, all done in the remarkable brush dots of Georges Seurat’s pointillism.

  “A cup of coffee.”

  “Coffee? Why?”

  “It makes me think of cafés and truck stops all over this desert.”

  “Why in the world do you say that?” Rhonda Devon asked. She took the P.I.’s cocktail glass to the bar. Behind her the sun was setting west of Mount San Jacinto, cooling down the unseasonably hot desert valley very quickly.

  “In every single truck stop and café there’s a Dot behind the counter. I must’ve had a thousand cups of coffee served by waitresses named Dot, more dots than you have in this painting.”

  Rhonda Devon chuckled and brought the P.I. another diet Coke in a cocktail glass. “What else does it make you feel?”

  “Poor. I’ve heard of this artist. The painting’s worth more than every house I’ve ever owned.”

  “Possibly,” Rhonda Devon said, gesturing palm upward toward the sofa by the Seurat.

  The P.I. didn’t like the sofa’s silk floral print, nor the Chinese Chippendale, nor the lacquered nesting tables. The massive old Spanish Colonial house cried out for some masculine bulk.

  “I usually ask clients to come to my office for the first interview,” the P.I. said, sipping the freshened drink.

  “Why did you make an exception for me?”

  “You’re rich.”

  “Do you treat rich clients better than poor ones?” Rhonda Devon asked coyly.

  “Absolutely. I mean, I would, except poor people don’t go to P.I.’s.”

  “Have you bee
n in business long?”

  “Only long enough to get in the yellow pages.”

  “That’s how I chose you, the yellow pages. I liked the name of your firm: Discreet Inquiries. Sounds like a massage parlor.”

  “How would you know about massage parlors, Mrs. Devon?”

  “I used to work in one.”

  It was best to let that one zing past. The texture of the rosy damask wall covering would absorb the ricochet. The damask was also wrong, the P.I. thought.

  Rhonda Devon smiled into her cocktail, then picked up the onion with a plastic toothpick and sucked it provocatively before dropping it back into the gin to bathe a while longer.

  Then she chuckled again, and the P.I. wondered how they learn to do that. Regular people guffaw or snicker or giggle. You even meet a few who chortle, but rich people, they chuckle. Chuckling 1A. They must learn it at boarding school and pass it around.

  “We could sit here all evening and you’d never ask, would you? I took a job as a masseuse in order to research a paper in social science when I was an undergraduate. It was fun. I learned a few tricks.”

  When she said it she sucked on the onion again and smiled. That time there was almost certainly a sexual connotation.

  It was easy to see the former undergraduate when Rhonda Devon smiled. The intervening years hadn’t been hard on her but why should they be? She probably had a personal trainer to keep the belly hard, and a hairdresser to keep every strand of gray from that honeyed Marilyn Quayle flip, and a weekly visit to a manicurist probably took care of those long graceful fingers, two of which wore diamonds that could bail out Lincoln Savings.

  The P.I. was wondering what it would be like to be this rich, when Rhonda Devon said, “Your answering service told me you’re an ex-police officer.”

  “Apparently, they do listen to instructions once in a while. I was twenty years with LAPD. Thought it might be impressive for callers to hear about it.”

  “You can’t be old enough for that,” Rhonda Devon exclaimed.

  “I’m old enough.” Then, seeing she wasn’t satisfied, said, “I’m going on forty-three.”

  “And you’re right back into police work.”

  “This is nothing like police work Mrs. Devon,” the P.I. wanted to say, thinking of the garbage work, such as interviewing witnesses for criminal defense lawyers; that was particularly hateful for an ex-cop. Virtually all defendants brought to trial were about as innocent as Josef Stalin, so most of the defense work consisted of trying to persuade them to cop a plea. This made the local criminal lawyers happier than it made the prosecutors, because the court-appointed lawyer got paid without lifting a finger. The local courthouse, like all others in the U.S., was more cluttered than a dressing room at the Folies-Bergère, so in a sense, it was doing what LAPD detectives did: offering tickets to the slam and hoping the defendants would buy.

  But all the P.I. said was, “It’s sorta like police work. At least sometimes.”

  “Why didn’t you go into another line of work?”

  “Well, if I could dance I’d try ballet but crime and crooks are all I know. Depressing, isn’t it?”

  “Rather.”

  The vast desert sky was turning ermine black. Rhonda Devon switched on a lamp behind her and the lemony glow highlighted her cheekbones. When she turned in profile there was no telltale glint from contact lenses in her wide-set eyes. The forest-green irises came from DNA, not optometry.

  “So, Mrs. Devon,” the P.I. said, thinking there’d been enough small talk. “How can I help you?”

  “It’s about my husband, Clive,” Rhonda Devon said. “I’d like you to follow him.”

  That was a bad start. The P.I. never had any luck with people named Clive or Graham or Montgomery, and once had served at Hollywood detectives under a captain named Clive, hating his guts.

  “Is it a woman problem?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Devon, this is a no-fault divorce state. Most places are, except maybe for Monte Carlo. Prince Rainier and Princess Grace couldn’t have afforded to get caught chippying, but it’s different here. You don’t need a private investigator.”

  “I’m not trying to catch him in a tryst. I don’t care what he does.”

  “Any lawyer would tell you that in a divorce situation in California you don’t have to—”

  “I don’t want a divorce. I just have to understand why.”

  “Why he’s fooling around?”

  “No … yes, that’s part of it, but only a small part.”

  “What’s the big part?”

  “I think he’s preparing to have a child. And I can’t understand why.”

  “You said you don’t care if he—”

  “I don’t care if he has one mistress or ten! But he’s having a child. I have to understand that.”

  “Okay, how do you know?”

  “I found something quite by accident. Our business manager writes the important checks and handles our portfolio, but we have separate personal checking accounts. It caught my eye, the monthly statement in the pocket of his blazer. It fell out when I hung the jacket in the armoire. I just got a glimpse before he came into the room, but when I returned to the armoire later it was gone. It was a monthly billing from a place called the Beverly Hills Fertility Institute.”

  “Did you call them?”

  “I had my doctor make a few calls. The sperm banks in Los Angeles are administered by a medical director who insists on absolute confidentiality. All they’d say is that the name Clive Devon is unknown to them.”

  “How old is your husband?”

  “Sixty-three.”

  “And how old’re you, if I may ask?”

  “Forty-four. I’ve never had children, and as of last December I won’t be having any. I went through the change rather early just like my mother and both my sisters. Clive’s obviously planning to have a child by a surrogate! Perhaps he’s planning to leave me!”

  “Do you care?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  “Maybe he’s one of these movers and shakers that can’t depart this earth without leaving his genetic code behind. Maybe he’s donated his sperm to some study or experiment.”

  “He’s a terribly shy man, an introvert really, with low self-esteem and very few friends. He’s never done any moving and shaking. He’s always lived on trusts. I can’t imagine him having a need to leave part of himself behind. Clive being part of an experiment? That’s preposterous.”

  “Did he make you sign a prenuptial?”

  “No.”

  “Then you stand to inherit when he dies?”

  “Oh, yes. We’ve been married for thirteen years. He can’t legally leave all his money to a new wife and child.”

  “Well, did you ever want children?”

  “No, nor did he. Neither of us had happy childhoods so we thought we’d keep our neuroses to ourselves and not pass them on.”

  “Mrs. Devon, why don’t you just ask him why he made this little bank deposit that’s driving you nutty?”

  “Oh, I’d never pry. Nor would he if the roles were reversed. We’re each very independent. We live apart a good deal of the time. I prefer our main house in Beverly Hills and only come here two weekends a month. He stays here all the time, even in summer. I seldom can get him to spend forty-eight hours at our other home.”

  “Do you and your husband still …”

  “He had a cardiac bypass. Arterial insufficiency allows him to ejaculate, but he can’t get an erection. We haven’t had sex for about five years.” Then she added, “At least together.”

  “Have you discussed this with anyone else? I mean, why he maybe wants a kid?”

  “We have the same attorney in Los Angeles, a good friend. He hasn’t a clue.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t dream of just asking Mister Devon, either?”

  “I would never permit it. We do have our private separate lives and we …”

  “Respect one another.”

  �
�Completely.”

  “Where’s your husband today?”

  “I have no idea. When I come here we’re only together long enough to have dinner or a game of golf. He likes to spend most of his time hiking in the desert. Or so he says.”

  The P.I. put the cocktail glass on an onyx coffee table that was bigger than a squash court—the only piece with the right scale—and said, “So you want me to conduct a surveillance and find out who, what, where, when and why?”

  “Just who and why. I particularly have to know why. If once, in all these years, he’d ever expressed the slightest wish for a child we could have … at least talked it over.”

  “Surveillance is very expensive. It can go on for days and weeks with no satisfaction whatsoever. And by the way, I don’t do illegal phone taps.”

  “All right, just find out who the surrogate is to start with. Who may lead to why.”

  “Sixty dollars an hour charged against a one-thousand-dollar retainer is what I get for surveillance work,” the P.I. lied, half hoping Rhonda Devon would change her mind. This could turn into real garbage work. “And when he goes to bed I go to bed. I don’t sit outside a client’s house running up the meter. If he gets up in the middle of the night for a run to his hired bake-oven I’ll never know about it.”

  “You’re very flippant,” Rhonda Devon said.

  “I don’t think I really want the job.” The P.I. hesitated for a moment, then said, “I have to ask you, Mrs. Devon, after the cardiac surgery did he try with you? Are you sure he has vascular insufficiency?”

  “There were a few pathetic attempts. No, I do not believe he’s capable of erection.”

  She looked thinner than ever in the lemony light and shadow. The P.I. was unaccountably sorry for her, and felt odd pitying someone this rich.

  “Mrs. Devon”—the P.I. touched an urn on the coffee table—“are you afraid he’s found someone he cares about? Someone he wants to raise a child with? No matter how the conception gets accomplished?”

  “That’s an Etruscan vase,” Rhonda Devon said, as though she hadn’t heard the question. “Please be careful. I’ve prepared a file for you with everything you’ll need to know about Clive, including a photo. The file’s on the table by the door.”