Fugitive Nights Read Free

do have our private separate lives and we …”
    â€œRespect one another.”
    â€œCompletely.”
    â€œWhere’s your husband today?”
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œJust 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.”
    â€œSurveillance 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.”
    â€œAll right, just find out who the surrogate is to start with. Who may lead to why.”
    â€œSixty 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.”
    â€œYou’re very flippant,” Rhonda Devon said.
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œThere 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.
    â€œMrs. 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?”
    â€œThat’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.”
    Rhonda Devon arose languidly, but staggered a step from too much predinner booze, and swayed across the marble foyer, leading the way to the door.
    Before leaving, the P.I. looked at the client, and said, “What’ll you do with the information if I’m able to get it? I mean, the name of the surrogate and the reason for your husband doing this? What would you do with the information?”
    â€œYou don’t have to worry about that,” Rhonda Devon said.
    â€œOh, but I do. In fact, I’m not taking this case if you refuse to tell me.”
    Rhonda Devon studied the private investigator for a moment, showed perfect orthodontal teeth, and said, “Absolutely nothing. But I have to know.” Then she added, “I’d be happy to pay a bonus for results. Say, five thousand dollars? I won’t pretend that my husband and I have a close relationship or even a normal one. But I have to know. Surely, as a woman, you can understand?”

O n the fourth ring, he picked up the phone, or tried to. He made a swipe at it, but the phone fell off the nightstand. Somebody had squeezed him like a grapefruit. He was all acid and pulp, juiceless. Dry as tumbleweed.
    On the seventh ring he found it, a phone in the shape of a boxing glove. The guy whose mansion he was sitting probably had had one intramural match at prep school when he was ten years old, and had gone goofy over prize fighters. The study was