Magic Line (23 page)

‘An old blue Saturn. Very dirty, Norm said, and the whole back seat full of trash. Books and papers, piles of stuff in there – she's a real slob.'

‘Oh. But he didn't get the license number?'

‘No. He wasn't interested in her at the time.'

‘What about Robin?' Ollie asked him. ‘Did Sapperstein see him leave?'

‘No. He said, “I've been right here, waiting for the tow. I'd have seen him if he came out this way.” So I went back again and asked the barkeep. He said, “I never saw him leave, but I been busy. Maybe he went out the back.”'

‘Out the back,' Sarah said. ‘That sounds like Robin.'

‘Out the back, one step ahead,' Ray said. ‘I love this little turd.'

‘Sarah,' Phyllis from cold cases said, sticking her head in, ‘your desk phone's been ringing and ringing, so I answered it and a girl on there says she has to talk to you personally.'

Sarah ran toward the phone, thinking,
Denny!

A voice said, ‘I still don't want to get involved.'

‘OK. I'll keep you out of it,' Sarah said. ‘Who is this?'

‘Janet Butts, of course,' she said. ‘Who else would it be? Jeez.'

Sarah stifled an impulse to estimate how many other people it might have been. ‘You think of something to tell me?'

‘I just saw Zeb again in that same car. It's the weirdest thing. He was with this old lady.'

‘Oh? Which old lady?'

‘Nobody
I
ever saw before, for sure. He was driving, but it looked like she was telling him where to go.'

‘Where'd you see them, Janet?'

‘At the Walmart's on Valencia – I was turning in and they were pulling out.'

‘A gray Buick, you said?'

‘Yes.'

‘Anything else you can tell me? Like, did you notice any numbers on the license plate?'

‘Well, sure, I got it all – why else would I be calling you?'

Too pleased with the information to brood about how annoying the messenger was, Sarah wrote it down. ‘I certainly do thank you for this,' she said, and promised again that Zeb would never hear from her that his sister had . . . she couldn't say ‘narced on him,' although in her family they'd have called it that. She said, ‘been involved,' and hung up quickly.

She pulled up the DMV database and entered the number. In a few seconds the registration appeared on the screen. The car was a late-nineties Buick LeSabre belonging to Mrs Doris Duncan at an address on Camino de la Tierra. There was no lienholder listed; Doris' car was paid for.

Sarah copied the information and trotted back to Delaney's desk, crying out to a roomful of detectives who seemed to be too busy to listen, ‘Wouldn't it be handy if guns carried all their information with them the way cars do?'

‘We don't have time for any of your rants right now,' Delaney said. ‘Everybody's going to Ricky's Bar. Come on, you can ride with Jason.'

‘Not me,' Sarah said. ‘That's what I'm trying to tell you. I just found out where Zeb is.'

It took two minutes of very fast talk to convince him. The other detectives were all loading up, talking to the SWAT team Delaney had requested to go with them.

‘If you all get down there right away,' Delaney said, ‘you can get enough information from the people in that bar – this is our chance to catch that dirty bugger.'

‘If I find Zeb,' Sarah said, ‘I'll find Robin.'

‘You don't know that for sure,' Delaney said.

‘I know they're friends,' Sarah said. ‘His mother said so. And I know Zeb's been driving this woman's car. It's the best break we've had.'

‘Well, I'm not letting you go alone,' Delaney said. ‘Jason, you go with her.'

‘OK if I drive?' Jason said, as they put on their weapons, found their vests. ‘No offense,' he said as she fixed him with a stony stare. ‘I just like to drive.'

TWENTY

T
he plan worked just the way Robin had designed it in that dizzy improvisation in the bar. He walked quickly away from the back door and down the alley, wishing he could see what those cops were doing out front. What would they think when Valerie came out by herself ? He'd done everything but hang a sign over the booth saying, ‘This is how you do seduction.'

Valerie was waiting at the corner they'd agreed on. After they threw a lot of books and trash into the back so he could get into the passenger seat of her spectacularly messy car, she suggested they go to Rudy Garcia Park, saying she thought of it as her own private green space.

Robin didn't tell her how many deals he had made there – after bars, parks were his favorite workspace. He was considering her car – it would be humiliating to leave Tucson in this terrible old clunker, but on the other hand, maybe it was good cover? Anyway, it would get him on the road. The surprise at the stash house had pretty much cancelled his determination to off Zeb before he left town – his need to get out of town took precedence over everything else now.

While he was still deciding whether it would be beneath him to take Valerie's car, as they approached a gas station she said, ‘Oh, Richard, could you be a pal and loan me some gas money? Otherwise we might not make it to the park. I just noticed I'm on empty.'

‘Why, so you are.' He saw that the needle was sitting right on ‘E.' ‘You always run around town on the fumes?'

‘Well, I don't believe in babying these cars,' she said, snickering, tossing her long hair around as she parked by the pump. ‘They need to be told who's boss.' Probably spent her last cash in the bar. Crazy broad.

Although not too crazy, come to think of it, to maneuver him into getting out and filling her gas tank, and watching contentedly while he paid for it.

And fully alert, really at the top of her game, when it came time to enjoy a fat joint in the park. She drove around for a while, looking critical, saying, ‘Let's find a nice quiet parking place in the shade.' There were plenty of shady places inside the park, but she didn't want to go in there and ‘squat on the grass with the bums,' she wanted to stay in the car. It didn't seem to occur to her that her car was the most squalid spot in the neighborhood – maybe in the whole city.

She finally settled on a spot under a tall cypress, pulled her car up tight against the curb to get it all in the shade and rolled down the windows. She got very happy when they lit up, waved her hands extravagantly at the park as if showing off her private estate and said, ‘Isn't this
heaven
?'

Rudy Garcia Park was not at all heavenly, but kind of nice in its own way, Robin thought – a worn, homey place with tired grass and some beat-up playground equipment, a few benches and a baseball field. It certainly wasn't private – it got plenty of use, Robin knew, by big local families and the people who brought their horses to the Rodeo Grounds next door. Valerie probably liked it because nobody bothered her when she came here to get high. The people in this part of town usually had too many problems of their own to give a damn what anybody else was doing.

Robin pretended to join her but didn't actually smoke much. There was a lot to decide yet and he needed his head clear. He was still a little in shock from finding that cop back there by the Taurus – he'd had to make so many changes, so fast. A planner by nature, he kept thinking, did I leave any loose ends? Other than Zeb he couldn't think of any, but the uncertainty made him inclined to settle for this car – too much had gone wrong; he needed to get out of Tucson and cool off for a while. Valerie's old crate ought to get him as far as Yuma and he could switch to a better car there.

After a little more of this happy smoke she would be too dizzy to drive. He would get her to give him the keys. There'd be no screaming in a public park, no mess to clean up. He could drive them both out of here smiling and once he was on the road just throw her out anywhere. It was the sensible thing to do, he decided.

As soon as he made up his mind he was impatient to go, so when her eyes started to glaze a little he said, ‘I think I've got a pipe in my bag. How would you like to drop a little crack into that weed and have a bit of a blast?'

‘Oh, baby,' she said, her head on one side, beaming at him, ‘does a polar bear poop on the ice?'

She had little gold scissors in her surprisingly neat make-up bag. She used it to cut what she called ‘the burn-y part' off the joint, along with another half inch of weed, and drop it in the bowl of his ‘sweet little tiger-striped pipe.' While he was clipping off a pebble of crack she wrapped the rest of the marijuana neatly in half a Kleenex and tucked it tenderly in her glove compartment. Against the backdrop of the sordid mess she had made of her car, her meticulous moves with the remains of the toke were enchanting to watch. Robin also noted how smoothly she had assumed ownership of the rest of the joint. This girl has all the right instincts, he thought. If only she had fewer needs I'd consider making her a partner.

As it was, if he took her car he would have to dispose of her. I'll wait till I'm clear out of town, he decided, past Marana, into that empty stretch between Red Rock and Picacho. Just push her out – she's a girl, stoned or not she's got round legs and all that hair; someone will pick her up. She might report the car stolen, but he'd have left it behind long before anybody got around to looking for it.

She got manic for a few minutes on the fresh smoke, talked a blue streak and giggled a lot. Then the chemical warfare began, between the mellowing Mary Jane and the speed-up effect of the crack. Her brain was trying to follow two different emotional tracks and the confusion made her angry. Resentment came pouring out of her, about school for the stupid courses that never translate to anything useful in the real world, then aimed at her parents for being so careless about their mutual cheating that they ended up divorced.

‘Really,' she said, ‘wouldn't you think they could have the decency to sneak around?' But no, they'd split the sheets and left her stranded in student housing with nobody around to give a damn about her but her grandmother, and now even Gram was getting freaky.

Robin thought he must have heard wrong the first time she said that – he would never have guessed this girl to have family issues; she seemed like somebody raised under a rock. But no, there it was again, coming through the cloud of smoke, ‘some fond granny
she
turns out to be. All those digs at me about sitting in bars when I should be studying – now some weirdo carries her groceries and she thinks tats and an eyebrow ring are just fine.'

Robin said, ‘Why do you care if your granny has a boyfriend?' Just passing the time. She wasn't quite at the tipping point yet – might as well talk.

‘Omigod, he's not her boyfriend, puh-
leese
!' Hair flying around, smoke billowing. ‘I mean, he's not much older that I am. She may have her quirks but my grandmother is not depraved.'

‘Nothing like her granddaughter, hmm?'

‘Oh, good one. You think crack's so depraved you keep a supply on hand, right?' You couldn't insult her – she just batted them back. Another puff and then anger boiling up again. ‘Silly little sneak fixed her car!'

He was absolutely not interested – but a stoner girl who seemed to think auto repair was a criminal offense, you had to ask – ‘That makes you mad?'

‘It's been up on blocks for weeks! Just because I had that little problem and blew a tire when I backed over the . . . never mind. She was pissed because I took it without asking her while she was at her neighbor's playing that stupid game with the tiles.'

‘Scrabble?'

‘No, not that, the Chinese one old women play, Ma somebody.'

‘Never heard of it. I still don't get why you're mad.'

‘She made me think it was wrecked beyond repair, something wrong with the motor, too. Now Mr Eyebrow-ring's driving her around in it and when I ask her does she need me to come over and read to her she says, “Never mind, honey, I know you're busy and Zeb can read well enough.”'

Robin sat up. ‘His name is Zeb? As in Zebulon?'

‘I don't know as in what. Why do you care?'

‘I don't. I used to know a guy by that name, that's all. He has an eyebrow ring?'

‘Yes. And too many colorful tattoos to count. And now my supposedly conservative grandmother, who until last week depended on me for everything, driving and reading and keeping her in touch with my father, who's flying around the world all distraught because my mother is the worst wife and mother in the world, an all-around flop as a human being . . .' She disappeared into the smoke for a few seconds, came out and said, ‘Where was I?'

‘You were telling me how you drive your Granny around. Why? Did she lose her license?'

‘Yes. She has macular . . . something. Blind spots.'

‘But she kept her car? What kind of a car is it?'

‘Umm . . . Buick.' Valerie's eyes had begun to blur. ‘Nice gray Buick LeSabre with clean upholstery. Oh, and one like-new tire.' She giggled.

‘Why'd you take it? Is it newer than your car?'

‘Not newer but in better shape, and always full of gas.' She turned her smoldering gaze on him, attentive suddenly. ‘Why? You thinking of stealing it?'

‘Of course not,' said Robin, who of course was. ‘How could you take it without her knowing? Didn't you have to get the keys?'

‘I've got my own.' She tossed the hair around some more. ‘Back when she trusted me for everything, she had a set made.'

‘Didn't she make you give them back after you messed up the tire?'

‘She tried.' Valerie disappeared into the smoke for a few seconds, came out coughing. When she could breathe again, she told him, ‘I told her I'd lost them but I'd keep looking. I thought, why give them back? She'll get it fixed and I'll get back on her good side. But then she started saying there was something else wrong with the car, she might never be able to fix it.'