Free Desert Cut by Betty Webb Page A

Talking Twelve Step, gulping Stoli. But that’s his problem. Our’s is that the producers want to replace him with a kid as a continuing character. One of our new sponsors has a microwave snack line, Cheezy-O’s or something like that, and they want to appeal to the under-twelve demographic.”
    “
Under twelve
?” The show was one of television’s darkest crime dramas. Past plots had featured bondage, necrophilia, and once, a graphically-filmed murder by an old Chinese torture called The Death of a Thousand Cuts. “You can’t be serious.”
    “Oh, but I am. That’s why I need you here. Speerstra won’t listen to a thing I say.” Hamilton “Ham” Speerstra was
Desert Eagle
’s executive producer, a ferret-faced man with a false smile and avaricious eyes.
    “Since the Giff thing,” she continued, “which you warned him about from the beginning, he pays more attention to you than anyone, so can you take the next flight? Spend the night at my place and we’ll corner him first thing tomorrow morning. Once everything’s straightened out, you can fly back. Or stay for a few days and we’ll go shopping.”
    I shook my head, then remembering that she couldn’t see it, said, “Sorry. I’m working a murder case in Southern Arizona.” I didn’t add that the way things were going, I might not even make our regular Friday script meeting.
    “But they’ll have him in war paint by then!”
    An ambulance screamed by on the way to the hospital’s emergency entrance, drowning out her next sentence. When it pulled up to the doors and cut the siren, I said, “Repeat that. It sounded like you said something about war paint, but I probably heard wrong.”
    Another theatrical groan. “You heard me right. The new storyline calls for a ten-year-old Indian boy who solves crime by communicating with his long-dead ancestors. If Speerstra gets his way,
Desert Eagle
will take a sharp left turn toward Woo-Woo City.”
    I enjoyed my first laugh in days. “A baby shaman is going to be your new partner?”
    “It’s not funny, Lena. I’m supposed to be fighting crime, not spirits.”
    At her distress, I sobered. “There’s nothing I can do. The case I’m working, it’s a murdered child, possibly two.”
    “Oh.” Her tone changed. She might have been an actress, but she was also a mother. “Okay, I’ll try to stall Speerstra, but whatever happens, be here Friday, promise?”
    With reluctance, I promised. It was the third mistake I would make that day.
    We chatted for a few more minutes about Warren, the twins, the L.A. smog, the decaying freeways, the rising crime rate. She ended the conversation by saying that she was thinking about moving to Scottsdale after the
Desert Eagle
franchise died its natural death. At that pie-in-the-sky pronouncement, I reminded her that Scottsdale now enjoyed all the standard urban problems: smog, terrible traffic, and yes, a skyrocketing crime rate. Scottsdale husbands were killing their wives on a regular basis. The only difference was that Arizonans used guns, not knives.
    “Thanks for those bright words of cheer,” she said bitterly, then rang off.
    After talking to Angel, I needed a bit of cheer myself, so I pushed the rapid-dial button and within seconds connected with Warren.
    “I called earlier, but your voice mail picked up,” I told him, attempting to hide my tension. I knew he wouldn’t be comfortable with my involvement in the Precious Doe case. Or any murder case, as far as that went. Understanding how my childhood had wounded me, he believed the rougher side of P.I. work only added to my nightmares. Once, after a particularly bad night, he told me I needed forgetfulness, not reminders.
    Like Angel, Warren was only a couple of hundred miles away in L.A., but from the distance in his voice, he might have been on the moon. “Sorry, but I’ve been in and out. You know how it is.”
    “Sure do.”
    When only silence was forthcoming, I asked, “So what’s