I dropped the phone in its cradle. The wave of almond odor flooded me again, and the sour smell of vomit. The little dead man sat silent in his chair, beyond fear, beyond change.
I left the office. Nothing moved in the dingy corridor. No pebbled glass door had light behind it. I went down the fire stairs to the second floor and from there looked down at the lighted roof of the elevator cage. I pressed the button. Slowly the car lurched into motion. I ran down the stairs again. The car was above me when I walked out of the building.
It was raining hard again. I walked into it with the heavy drops slapping my face. When one of them touched my tongue I knew that my mouth was open and the ache at the side of my jaws told me it was open wide and strained back, mimicking the rictus of death carved upon the face of Harry Jones.
27
“Give me the money.”
The motor of the gray Plymouth throbbed under her voice and the rain pounded above it. The violet light at the top of Bullock’s green-tinged tower was far above us, serene and withdrawn from the dark, dripping city. Her black-gloved hand reached out and I put the bills in it. She bent over to count them under the dim light of the dash. A bag clicked open, clicked shut. She let a spent breath die on her lips. She leaned towards me.
“I’m leaving, copper. I’m on my way. This is a getaway stake and God how I need it. What happened to Harry?”
“I told you he ran away. Canino got wise to him somehow. Forget Harry. I’ve paid and I want my information.”
“You’ll get it. Joe and I were out riding Foothill Boulevard Sunday before last. It was late and the lights coming up and the usual mess of cars. We passed a brown coupe and I saw the girl who was driving it. There was a man beside her, a dark short man. The girl was a blonde. I’d seen her before. She was Eddie Mars’ wife. The guy was Canino. You wouldn’t forget either of them, if you ever saw them. Joe tailed the coupe from in front. He was good at that. Canino, the watchdog, was taking her out for air. A mile or so east of Realito a road turns towards the foothills. That’s orange country to the south but to the north it’s as bare as hell’s back yard and smack up against the hills there’s a cyanide plant where they make the stuff for fumigation. Just off the highway there’s a small garage and paintshop run by a gee named Art Huck. Hot car drop, likely. There’s a frame house beyond this, and beyond the house nothing but the foothills and the bare stone outcrop and the cyanide plant a couple of miles on. That’s the place where she’s holed up. They turned off on this road and Joe swung around and went back and we saw the car turn off the road where the frame house was. We sat there half an hour looking through the cars going by. Nobody came back out. When it was quite dark Joe sneaked up there and took a look. He said there were lights in the house and a radio was going and just the one car out in front, the coupe. So we beat it.”
She stopped talking and I listened to the swish of tires on Wilshire. I said: “They might have shifted quarters since then but that’s what you have to sell—that’s what you have to sell. Sure you knew her?”
“If you ever see her, you won’t make a mistake the second time. Good-by, copper, and wish me luck. I got a raw deal.”
“Like hell you did,” I said, and walked away across the street to my own car.
The gray Plymouth moved forward, gathered speed, and darted around the corner on to Sunset Place. The sound of its motor died, and with it blonde Agnes wiped herself off the slate for good, so far as I was concerned. Three men dead, Geiger, Brody and Harry Jones, and the woman went riding off in the rain with my two hundred in her bag and not a mark on her. I kicked my starter and drove on downtown to eat. I ate a good dinner. Forty miles in the rain is a hike, and I hoped to make it a round trip.
I drove north across the river, on into Pasadena, through Pasadena and almost at once I was in orange groves. The tumbling rain was solid white spray in the headlights. The windshield wiper could hardly keep the glass clear enough to see through. But not even the drenched darkness could hide the flawless lines of the orange trees wheeling away like endless spokes into the night.
Cars passed with a tearing hiss and a wave of dirty spray. The highway jerked through a little town that was all packing houses and sheds, and railway sidings nuzzling them. The groves thinned out and dropped away to the south and the road climbed and it was cold and to the north the black foothills crouched closer and sent a bitter wind whipping down their flanks. Then faintly out of the dark two yellow vapor lights glowed high up in the air and a neon sign between them said: “Welcome to Realito.”
Frame houses were spaced far back from a wide main street, then a sudden knot of stores, the lights of a drugstore behind fogged glass, the fly-cluster of cars in front of the movie theater, a dark bank on a corner with a clock sticking out over the sidewalk and a group of people standing in the rain looking at its windows, as if they were some kind of a show. I went on. Empty fields closed in again.
Fate stage-managed the whole thing. Beyond Realito, just about a mile beyond, the highway took a curve and the rain fooled me and I went too close to the shoulder. My right front tire let go with an angry hiss. Before I could stop the right rear went with it. I jammed the car to a stop, half on the pavement, half on the shoulder, got out and flashed a spotlight around. I had two flats and one spare. The flat butt of a heavy galvanized tack stared at me from the front tire.
The edge of the pavement was littered with them. They had been swept off, but not far enough off.
I snapped the flash off and stood there breathing rain and looking up a side road at a yellow light. It seemed to come from a skylight. The skylight could belong to a garage, the garage could be run by a man named Art Huck, and there could be a frame house next door to it. I tucked my chin down in my collar and started towards it, then went back to unstrap the license holder from the steering post and put it in my pocket. I leaned lower under the wheel. Behind a weighted flap, directly under my right leg as I sat in the car, there was a hidden compartment. There were two guns in it. One belonged to Eddie Mars’ boy Lanny and one belonged to me. I took Lanny’s. It would have had more practice than mine. I stuck it nose down in an inside pocket and started up the side road.
The garage was a hundred yards from the highway. It showed the highway a blank side wall. I played the flash on it quickly. “Art Huck—Auto Repairs and Painting.” I chuckled, then Harry Jones’ face rose up in front of me, and I stopped chuckling. The garage doors were shut, but there was an edge of light under them and a thread of light where the halves met. I went on past. The frame house was there, light in two front windows, shades down. It was set well back from the road, behind a thin clump of trees. A car stood on the gravel drive in front. It was dark, indistinct, but it would be a brown coupe and it would belong to Mr. Canino. It squatted there peacefully in front of the narrow wooden porch.
He would let her take it out for a spin once in a while, and sit beside her, probably with a gun handy. The girl Rusty Regan ought to have married, that Eddie Mars couldn’t keep, the girl that hadn’t run away with Regan. Nice Mr. Canino.
I trudged back to the garage and banged on the wooden door with the butt of my flash. There was a hung instant of silence, as heavy as thunder. The light inside went out. I stood there grinning and licking the rain off my lip. I clicked the spot on the middle of the doors. I grinned at the circle of white. I was where I wanted to be.
A voice spoke through the door, a surly voice: “What you want?”
“Open up. I’ve got two flats back on the highway and only one spare. I need help.”
“Sorry, mister. We’re closed up. Realito’s a mile west. Better try there.”
I didn’t like that. I kicked the door hard. I kept on kicking it. Another voice made itself heard, a purring voice, like a small dynamo behind a wall. I liked this voice. It said: “A wise guy, huh? Open up, Art.”
A bolt squealed and half of the door bent inward. My flash burned briefly on a gaunt face. Then something that glittered swept down and knocked the flash out on my hand. A gun had peaked at me. I dropped low where the flash burned on the wet ground and picked it up.
The surly voice said: “Kill that spot, bo. Folks get hurt that way.”
I snapped the flash off and straightened. Light went on inside the garage, outlined a tall man in coveralls. He backed away from the open door and kept a gun leveled at me.
“Step inside and shut the door, stranger. We’ll see what we can do.”
I stepped inside, and shut the door behind my back. I looked at the gaunt man, but not at the other man who was shadowy over by a workbench, silent. The breath of the garage was sweet and sinister with the smell of hot pyroxylin paint.
“Ain’t you got no sense?” the gaunt man chided me. “A bank job was pulled at Realito this noon.”
“Pardon,” I said, remembering the people staring at the bank in the rain. “I didn’t pull it. I’m a stranger here.”
“Well, there was,” he said morosely. “Some say it was a couple of punk kids and they got ‘em cornered back here in the hills.”
“It’s a nice night for hiding,” I said. “I suppose they threw tacks out. I got some of them. I thought you just needed the business.”
“You didn’t ever get socked in the kisser, did you?” the gaunt man asked me briefly.
“Not by anybody your weight.”
The purring voice from over in the shadows said: “Cut out the heavy menace, Art. This guy’s in a jam. You run a garage, don’t you?”
“Thanks,” I said, and didn’t look at him even then.
“Okey, okey,” the man in the coveralls grumbled. He tucked his gun through a flap in his clothes and bit a knuckle, staring at me moodily over it. The smell of the pyroxylin paint was as sickening as ether. Over in the corner, under a drop light, there was a big new looking sedan with a paint gun lying on its fender.
I looked at the man by the workbench now. He was short and thick-bodied with strong shoulders. He had a cool face and cool dark eyes. He wore a belted brown suede raincoat that was heavily spotted with rain. His brown hat was tilted rakishly. He leaned his back against the workbench and looked me over without haste, without interest, as if he was looking at a slab of cold meat. Perhaps he thought of people that way.
He moved his dark eyes up and down slowly and then glanced at his fingernails one by one, holding them up against the light and studying them with care, as Hollywood has taught it should be done. He spoke around a cigarette.
“Got two flats, huh? That’s tough. They swept them tacks, I thought.”
“I skidded a little on the curve.”
“Stranger in town you said?”
“Traveling through. On the way to L.A. How far is it?”
“Forty miles. Seems longer this weather. Where from, stranger?”
“Santa Rosa.”
“Come the long way, eh? Tahoe and Lone Pine?”
“Not Tahoe. Reno and Carson City.”
“Still the long way.” A fleeting smile curved his lips.
“Any law against it?” I asked him.
“Huh? No, sure not. Guess you think we’re nosey. Just on account of that heist back there. Take a jack and get his flats, Art.”
“I’m busy,” the gaunt man growled. “I’ve got work to do. I got this spray job. And it’s raining, you might have noticed.”
The man in brown said pleasantly: “Too damp for a good spray job, Art. Get moving.”
I said: “They’re front and rear, on the right side. You could use the spare for one spot, if you’re busy.”
“Take two jacks, Art,” the brown man said.
“Now, listen—” Art began to bluster.
The brown man moved his eyes, looked at Art with a soft quiet-eyed stare, lowered them again almost shyly. He didn’t speak. Art rocked as if a gust of wind had hit him. He stamped over to the corner and put a rubber coat over his coveralls, a sou’wester on his head. He grabbed a socket wrench and a hand jack and wheeled a dolly jack over to the doors.
He went out silently, leaving the door yawning. The rain blustered in. The man in brown strolled over and shut it and strolled back to the workbench and put his hips exactly where they had been before. I could have taken him then. We were alone. He didn’t know who I was. He looked at me lightly and threw his cigarette on the cement floor and stamped on it without looking down.
“I bet you could use a drink,” he said. “Wet the inside and even up.” He reached a bottle from the workbench behind him and set it on the edge and set two glasses beside it. He poured a stiff jolt into each and held one out.
Walking like a dummy I went over and took it. The memory of the rain was still cold on my face. The smell of hot paint drugged the close air of the garage.
“That Art,” the brown man said. “He’s like all mechanics. Always got his face in a job he ought to have done last week. Business trip?”
I sniffed my drink delicately. It had the right smell. I watched him drink some of his before I swallowed mine. I rolled it around on my tongue. There was no cyanide in it. I emptied the little glass and put it down beside him and moved away.
“Partly,” I said. I walked over to the half-painted sedan with the big metal paint gun lying along its fender. The rain hit the flat roof hard. Art was out in it, cursing.
The brown man looked at the big car. “Just a panel job, to start with,” he said casually, his purring voice still softer from the drink. “But the guy had dough and his driver needed a few bucks. You know the racket.”
I said: “There’s only one that’s older.” My lips felt dry. I didn’t want to talk. I lit a cigarette. I wanted my tires fixed. The minutes passed on tiptoe. The brown man and I were two strangers chance-met, looking at each other across a little dead man named Harry Jones. Only the brown man didn’t know that yet.
Feet crunched outside and the door was pushed open. The light hit pencils of rain and made silver wires of them. Art trundled two muddy flats in sullenly, kicked the door shut, let one of the flats fall over on its side. He looked at me savagely.
“You sure pick spots for a jack to stand on,” he snarled.