Desert Run (5 page)

The evening wasn't as uncomfortable as I had feared. Not at first, anyway. It was refreshing to sit in a romantic restaurant with a handsome man again, pleasant to be asked what I suggested on the menu, and a relief not to monitor my date's alcohol intake. Although Warren ordered a glass of white wine, he never touched it. I, as usual, ordered tea. In between bites of his chicken piccata, he told me about Jaheese, the Arab mare he stabled in an equestrian complex near Griffith Park, and I told him about Lady, the bay mare I kept in Cave Creek. We made tentative plans to go riding together sometime, but I doubted either of us would follow through. When his schedule lightened, he'd be gone. And why take a flight to Los Angeles just to go horseback riding in Griffith Park?

Then he told me about his classic car collection, which he'd started when his father gave him a 1937 Buick sedan for his sixteenth birthday. “It was midnight black and looked like something that Al Capone would drive. Man, I felt tough in that thing! It scared the crap out of all the kids at Hollywood High.”

Most of the rich kids in Scottsdale got Beemers for their birthdays, so I had to applaud his father's creativity. The Buick was probably safer for a teenager than a snot-nosed import, too. “Your dad must be an unusual guy.”

“You could say that.” He looked over to the bar, where despite my assertion that Pasta Brioni was a quiet place, one of the bartenders had just launched into a surprisingly good rendition of
One for My Baby,
backed by a customer on the piano. When the bartender finished, he got a big round of applause, then everyone went back to eating.

Warren picked up where he'd left off. “And for my eighteenth birthday, I got a 1959 Edsel Ranger. Turd brown, butt ugly, and in terrible condition, but by then I'd learned enough to restore it myself.”

“Um, tell me about your dad.” Not having one of my own, I always liked hearing about other peoples' families. “And your mom. What was it like growing up in Hollywood? Were your folks in the business?”

When he smiled, he looked like a California beach boy. The restaurant's warm lighting erased the lines at the corner of his eyes, and softened the creases that ran from the corner of his mouth to his almost too-perfect nose. “Let's talk about you, instead. I notice that you don't drink.”

Talk about a segue.

But there was no point in being secretive about my background—most of it had aired on the local news a year earlier when I solved a high-profile murder case—so I gave him the same sanitized version I gave everyone, leaving out the beatings and rapes. “Since I don't know who my parents are, I don't know what kind of addictive genes I might be carrying around. So I don't indulge.”

He put his fork down. “Let me get this straight. You can't remember who your parents are, why you were shot, or who shot you?”

I smiled, shook my head, and shoveled more Shrimp Brioni into my mouth. “Nothing before the age of four.” A small lie there. I remembered the bus I was riding in just before I was shot, the gun itself, a red-headed man standing in a forest clearing. But those things I only discussed with Dr. Gomez.

Warren looked down at his chicken piccata, then said something unexpected. “If you ask me, memory can be overrated.”

In light of some of my memories, I agreed with him. But I was determined to keep the conversation as light as possible. “Hey, everything turned out fine. I received a scholarship to ASU, became a police officer, and when I left the Force, opened Desert Investigations.” I left out the part where I'd been shot in a drug raid. “Now I'm working for a famous Hollywood director! Lots of foster kids do worse.” Most of them, in fact. A study I once read revealed that only one of five ex-foster kids were mentally healthy and/or regularly employed. Few graduated from high school, went on to college, or led lives that could be considered remotely normal. The rehab clinics and prisons teemed with my less fortunate brethren. I left that part out, too.

When he looked back up at me, his expression was puzzling. There was gentleness around his mouth, but his blue eyes had darkened with an emotion I couldn't readily identify. “Jesus, Lena. You've managed to accomplish so much with so little, while I…never mind. My films should tell you all you need to know about me. The part that matters, anyway.”

Then he smiled again and the darkness in his eyes lifted. His tone became flirtatious. “Do you know why I decided I had to know you better?”

I flirted right back, in my own PI kind of way. “Because I made you sign a two-month contract instead of a day-to-day agreement?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Now
that
was a dart from Cupid! But, no. That's not the reason. The very
second
you pulled onto the set with that '45 Jeep I knew you were the woman for me.”

I didn't know whether to be thrilled or to run like hell. But when he leaned over and give me a quick kiss on the cheek, I didn't flinch. Yes, I was making progress. So much so that for the rest of the evening I was able to push all my worries away, including those about Rada Tesema and Beth Osmon.

As a wise man once said, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Chapter Five

6:10 p.m. December 25, 1944

Hidden in a deep ravine a few miles east of the prison camp, Gunter Hoenig watched the sun slip behind a mesa. Soon the cold night would descend, but they did not dare light a fire to warm themselves. They would shiver, once again, wishing they were back in Camp Papago with their companions, enjoying Christmas dinner. Nothing had gone right for him and his friend Josef since the escape, not their attempt to join up with the more even-tempered Kapitan Daanitz, nor their plan to float down the Gila River to Mexico…

River!

If their situation hadn't been so desperate, they could have enjoyed a big laugh at the joke. What were the American cartographers thinking, labeling that dry gully a river? Rivers had water! Yet when they reached it, they discovered that their so-called river was nothing but sand, sand, and more sand stretching away for miles—just like the Cross Cut Canal that ran alongside the prison camp. All dreams of floating to Mexico had vanished. Oh, how Kapitan Ernst had cursed when he realized their mistake, but as usual, Kapitan Daanitz had handled his disappointment with dignity.

“Mexico is little more than a hundred kilometers away and do not we have feet?” Daanitz had said with his philosophical smile. “We look ‘American,' and if we split up into small groups of two or three, we can reach the border unmolested. Food will pose no problem as long as we develop a taste for rattlesnake stew.”

“Better than U-boat food!” Josef had joked.

But Kapitan Ernst, who hated Daanitz as much as the other submariners loathed Ernst, put forth another idea. Why should they kill themselves attempting to make the border when they could double back and walk a few kilometers into the Superstition Mountains. There they could find shelter in one of the old mines marked on their map and hole up until the end of the war. Perhaps they would even find gold!

“The Fatherland will be victorious soon,” Kapitan assured them. “If we do not run, we will be in place to join our brave comrades when they arrive, and then we can play our part in founding the American Reich. There is yet great glory awaiting us!”

“Great glory?” Daanitz's face contorted with something that, if Gunter had not known better, looked like disgust. “Do not be so certain, Kapitan Ernst. I have heard stories…” He looked up at the sky, from which a fine drizzle had begun to fall, but not the downpour they needed to make the dry riverbed flow. “If those stories I hear are true, I would not wish for any of us to be in America when the war ends.”

Kapitan Ernst sneered. “Who will care what happened to a few Jews and gypsies? One German is worth ten thousand of each.” With that, he had ordered the two remaining members of his crew to follow him into the mountains. Being good Germans, Gunter and Josef followed orders, even when given by their despised Kapitan.

Now look at them, Gunter mused, as he huddled in the ravine next to Josef, pooling their body warmth. They were cold, hungry, scavenging food like alley rats from grapefruit orchards and trash heaps. So much for the great glory of the Kapitan Ernst's American Reich. At least the rain was letting up. Perhaps this night, unlike the last, would not be so cold.

“The Kapitan has been gone a long time,” Josef whispered. “Do you think something happened to him?” He sounded hopeful.

Gunter did not bother to hide his smile. “Past events have proven that we are not so fortunate. I am certain he will return soon, bringing more grapefruit and curses.”

His words proved prophetic. As night folded the desert in its chilly embrace, Gunter heard footsteps scrambling across the rocks above. Then Kapitan Ernst's wolfish face peered down at them.

“Come up, come up, lazy
schweine!
We will eat well tonight!” Kapitan motioned them from their cover. “I have found a farmhouse just over that rise. A cow, chickens, a vegetable garden. And inside, tins of food and piles of warm blankets. We will take what we need, then continue east into the mountains.”

Fear clenched Gunter's heart. “There will be a farmer, maybe, with a gun. We have nothing, not even a knife.” A farm boy from the same Bavarian village as Josef, he knew it improbable that a working farm would remain unprotected. “Perhaps either Josef or I should reconnoiter?”

He didn't like the smile that crept across Kapitan's face. “I guarantee there will be no resistance. Now,
schnell,
hurry. A Christmas feast awaits us!”

With the inky sky darkening their faces and the birds silenced under the burden of night, they crept through the brush toward the house. When they reached the edge of the farmyard where the golden light from a window spilled across the sand, Gunter bit his lip in consternation. Where were the sounds of laughing children, the contented murmurs of husband and wife discussing the fruits of the day, the friendly rumblings of dogs? All he could hear was the pained lowing of a cow, as if its bag was full to bursting. His misgivings increased. It was late, almost eight o'clock. Why had the cow not yet been milked? What sort of farmer would allow his animal to suffer, allow good milk to go to waste?

As they emerged from the brush and sprinted across the farmyard, the answer floated toward them on a soft desert breeze.

The smell of Death.

Chapter Six

Wearing a red wig and the yuppiefied suit I'd purchased from a Scottsdale resale shop, I picked up a dark blue BMW from Hertz the next morning and set about tailing Jack Sherwood. It wasn't hard to see why Beth Osmon had fallen for him. Even from this distance I could see that he was as tall, dark, and handsome as the cliché. His Southern manners put smiles on the faces of everyone he came in contact with: the desk clerk at his residence hotel, the caddy at the golf course, the waitress at the expensive watering hole where he drawled through a business lunch with local bigwigs, one of them a former state senator known as much for his honesty as his inability to win re-election. I observed no suspicious behavior, and yet by the end of the day, I'd become convinced something was wrong.

Sherwood was too slick.

As I dropped off the Beemer at the Hertz lot near Desert Investigations and switched to my Jeep, I made a mental note to ask Jimmy to initiate an in-depth background search on Sherwood. While he had no police record in Mississippi or anywhere else—a dip into the AFIS database proved that—it might prove informative to find out the names of his Southern associates. Or maybe Jimmy would turn up an ex-wife or two. Exes frequently had interesting tales to tell.

A glance at my watch told me it was now past six, but evenings were good for home visits. Kryzinski had given me MaryEllen Bollinger's address, so I pulled off the red wig, threw it into the back, and pointed the Jeep north for a ten-mile battle through the remnants of rush hour to North Scottsdale.

El Cordobes Luxury Condominiums was typical of the area, with storybook architecture and anal compulsive landscaping. Perfectly cared-for pink and purple petunias lined the narrow cement walk that curved around a cream-colored adobe complex designed to look like an Indian pueblo. Discreet ceramic signs decorated with Hopi symbols identified each of the fifteen buildings, but regardless of the community's good looks and signage, the massive development was a hopeless maze. I wandered in increasing exasperation until I found Unit 220-A hiding on the second floor of the sixth building. The woman who answered the door studied my PI license carefully. An attractive, if rather plastic blonde, she stood in the center of the doorway as if loathe to invite me inside, but behind her I could see a sea of white: white carpeting, white walls, white leather sofas—the whole Marilyn Monroe deal. She identified herself as MaryEllen's roommate and told me I was five minutes too late, that MaryEllen had already left for work.

“She just
left
for work?”

The woman bared perfectly capped teeth. “She hardly keeps banker's hours.”

Implants, white apartment, non-banker's hours. I was beginning to get it. “Perhaps you could tell me where she, ah, does what she does.”

The teeth again. “MaryEllen does the same thing I do. You say you're a detective, go detect.”

I offered a smile of my own. “Cute. But why not help me out here?”

More teeth. “Oh, you're no fun. She's at The Skin Factory, on Scottsdale Road.”

Too bad I hadn't known this before my trip north. The Skin Factory was less than a mile south of my office. A topless bar, it was the latest addition in a long line of so-called gentlemen's clubs, massage parlors, and outright bordellos that were turning South Scottsdale into a sexual combat zone. The Scottsdale City Council, its tunnel vision focused on the glittering developments of the upscale northern section of the city, appeared content to let the southern end rot, ignoring the pleas of the neighborhood's hard-working blue-collar families who resented the horny drunks driving down their streets looking for action.

I thanked MaryEllen's roommate for her help. As I started down the stairs she called out, “Tell MaryEllen that Clay called right after she left. And to be careful. He might show up.” Before I could ask who Clay was, she closed the door.

Rush hour was over, so I made good time and pulled into the parking lot of the Skin Factory a mere fifteen minutes later. With its landscaping of Italian poplars and neo-Tuscan facade, the bar was trying for tasteful, but that's always a losing proposition when the front of your building features a ten-foot-high pink neon sign of a naked woman in a pose similar to those found on the mud flaps of pickup trucks. The name SKIN FACTORY blinking on and off in purple neon did help, either. After parking the Jeep between a rickety Ford pickup and a sun-bleached Nissan, I made my way to the bouncer stationed outside the entrance.

“You looking for work, honey?” Mr. Bouncer was about the same size as my Jeep and probably every bit as tough, so I didn't crack wise while his eyes expertly tracked every line of my body. “Jim generally likes them a little younger, but I say, hey, a few miles on a gal can be awful sexy when she's built like you.”

Uncertain whether to feel flattered or insulted, I flashed my PI license. “Thanks for the compliment, but I was hoping to have a few words with MaryEllen Bollinger before she…” Before she does what? Clocks in? Goes onstage? Gets down butt-naked?

Mr. Bouncer narrowed his eyes, not that it took much; they were already at half-mast. “You want to talk to her, you make an appointment.”

I thought fast. “It's about, uh, Clay. And the trouble she's been having with him.”

He grunted. “That mope. Go on back, then. The dressing room's on the left side of the stage, behind the pillar that says EMPLOYEES ONLY. Tell her not to worry, that Otto's got her back.”

Once through the door, I was stopped by yet another bouncer who—my PI license notwithstanding—made me fork over the twenty-dollar guest admission. Eyes stunned by the dimly lit room, I stumbled through a fug of cigarettes and soured beer toward the brightly lit stage, trying to evade the hands that reached for me. The dancer, a brunette sporting a matched set of double-D's, gyrated against a pole, her hips out of sync with the beat of a Nine Inch Nails soundtrack. Well, if I were as top-heavy and stoned as her eyes told me she was, I'd probably flub a few dance steps, too. Another bouncer, this one larger than Otto, stood by the dressing room door, but when I flashed my ID and mentioned Clay, he opened the door for me, muttering, “Don't know why she needs a PI. I'll take care of the asshole for free.”

MaryEllen Bollinger sat facing the makeup mirror. When she turned around, I could see why Clay was on a first-name basis with the club's bouncers. A startlingly beautiful redhead, she sported a shiner almost the same size and color as the maroon aureole around her nipples, although the concealer she'd applied did a masterful job of disguising the damage. “You the new girl?” she asked, her voice as high and soft as a child's. “You're not due on for another hour.”

With her looks, it was hard to understand why she worked in a cheezy South Scottsdale topless bar, not Hollywood. Maybe she couldn't act. Then again, most starlets not half as beautiful as she couldn't act, yet they still headed up sit-coms and rode around in limos. But MaryEllen's career decisions—or lack thereof—were irrelevant to my mission so I handed over my ID and told her why I'd come. “Other than the killer, you were probably the last person to talk to Mr. Ernst the night of the murder.”

So flat was her affect that at first I thought she hadn't heard me. She kept staring at my ID card while her foot tapped to the music leaking through the door. Finally she shrugged, making her perfect nipples bounce up and down. “The cops have already checked my alibi. Besides, Ernst is dead now, so what does it matter?”

An odd remark, considering that Ernst was dead and that
was
the matter. “What was your connection to Ernst?”

“None of your business.” With that, she faced the mirror and began applying more concealer to her eye. Her back didn't bear bra strap marks, but with implants like hers, who needed a bra? The rest of her was real enough.

“You're a suspect in a murder case. Wouldn't you like to clear your name?”

The mirror reflected her smile. “The name ‘Bollinger' will never be cleared. The damned Nazi saw to that sixty years ago. Now, you'll have to excuse me, Miss Jones. My public awaits.” The eye now looked as perfect as the rest of her. She put the concealer away in her makeup kit, then stood up, her almost impossibly long legs lengthened even further by five-inch stiletto pumps. Her matching silver thong was tiny enough to prove that she was a natural redhead.

It never hurt to appeal to someone's good nature, even a topless dancer's. “Please, MaryEllen. An innocent man has been arrested for Ernst's murder, an Ethiopian immigrant named Rada Tesema. He has a wife and children back home who depend on him for financial support.”

When she blinked, silver eyeliner sparkled. “Ethiopia?”

“Border wars, famine, the whole bit. Tesema is his family's only ticket out.”

She closed her eyes long enough to give me hope, so I pushed it further. “He has four sons, two daughters. All hungry.”

Her eyes were a vivid blue, unclouded by drugs. “Does he love his daughters as much as he loves his sons?”

The question caught me off guard.. “I…I didn't ask.”

“Lots of men don't, you know. Especially in those Third World countries. Women don't count for much over there.”

“Judging from that shiner you're sporting, they don't always count for much here, either.”

She surprised me again by leaning forward and gently touching the scar above my own eye. “No, they don't, do they?”

The expression on my face must have been all the answer she needed, because she straightened and said, “I'm dancing a four-hour shift tonight. You want to talk, call me sometime Sunday afternoon. That's my day off. Until then, why don't you do a little research? If you really are a private detective, it should be a piece of cake. Bollinger. Scottsdale. Christmas Day. 1944.”

With that, she left me staring at my own scarred face in the dressing room mirror.

***

If there was such a thing as a wasted day, Saturday was it. I picked up a Lexus at Hertz, tucked my blond hair into a brunette wig, and again followed Jack Sherwood back and forth across the city, from shopping center to spa, from business lunch to business dinner. Everywhere he went, he left a trail of smiles and big tips. Yet I couldn't get over my feeling that something was seriously out of kilter with the man.

By the time I returned the Lexus and made it to the office, Jimmy, who had dropped in for a while, was gone. A search through the papers he left on my desk revealed no new information on Sherwood's dealings in Mississippi. But private cases paid less than corporate ones, and Southwest MicroSystems' background checks paid even more than the usual, so those came first. Still, I put a sticky note on his computer screen, reminding him to run the Sherwood file first thing Monday morning. From the conversation I'd had with Beth Osman on the way back from Hertz, I feared that she—despite her suspicions about Sherwood —was falling more deeply in love with him.

Women were so crazy.

My office voice mail was clogged with messages. My own relationship anxiety spiked when I came across a message from Warren asking me for another dinner date.

Should I, or shouldn't I?

I considered it carefully before making up my mind, then punched in Warren's number. He didn't pick up on his cell, so I left my own message. Dinner sounds great, I purred into his machine. Seven o'clock, too. I'll be waiting. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to recall them.

Embarrassed by my own craziness, I didn't.

***

It was pointless to open Desert Investigations on Sunday morning, especially since I'd worked all day Saturday, so as soon as the sun was up, I put on some running clothes and took my usual six-miler down to Papago Park and around the Buttes. The film set was deserted, with all the camera, sound and light equipment locked securely in the trailers. The only person present was the security guard I'd hired, and he waved to me as I jogged by. A few blocks on, I passed Erik Ernst's house, where a few pieces of yellow tape still fluttered in the morning breeze. I averted my eyes. Once back at my apartment, I took a long shower, but it didn't wash my restlessness away. Rada Tesema's face still haunted me.

Around ten, I heard a knock at the door, and looked through the peephole to see a delivery man standing there with a huge bouquet of deep red roses. On Sunday? Discarding my usual caution, I opened the door and signed for them. After I'd whisked them inside, I opened the card and read:

For the most amazing woman I've ever met.

W.

P.S. Her Jeep's cool, too.

I filled an empty Trader Joe's coffee can with water and arranged the roses as best I could. Then I carried them over to my faux pine coffee table and stared at them, inhaling their sweet aroma as it drifted through my apartment.

Dusty had never sent me roses.

Once the novelty of the roses wore off, I flipped through my old blues albums, finally settling on Robert “Washboard Sam” Brown's
Rockin' My Blues Away
. This was one of my favorite anthologies since it included contributions by Memphis Slim and Roosevelt Sykes on piano, and Brown's half-brother Big Bill Broonzy on guitar. Although one of the best singer/composers in the business, Brown's recording career was cut short during World War II, when royalty disputes broke out between the American Federation of Musicians, the record labels, and the radio stations that wanted to play their music. By the time the dispute was settled in November 1944, Brown's career had waned, which made his pre-WWII recordings even more valuable. After making myself as comfortable as possible on my lumpy sofa, I listened to all twenty-two cuts on
Rockin' My Blues Away
. As the last cut ended, I realized that at the same time Washboard Sam and his friends were wailing away in Chicago blues bars instead of recording in studios, German POWs were streaming into Camp Papago.