by Gil Meynier
When Joe made his turn on Fort Lowell road he almost skidded into the concrete guard of the culvert. Maybe, heading east now, he’d get out of the storm. But distant lightning, not immediately followed by thunder, showed him that the whole countryside was getting it. The roof of the car started to leak and Joe squirmed when water fell on his neck. He shifted himself on the seat, but the dripping water seemed to follow him and still fell on his neck, feeding his anger.
“Some day I’ll have me a good car.”
He pressed his foot down to the floorboard and the car shuddered. Now the front was leaking and water was dripping on his feet. Even dumb things like rain managed to get at him and annoy him. You see! And it’s when you’re annoyed at little things like that that you want to break everything and tear up everything so that everything will stop. So that everything will stop annoying you and prodding you and mocking you. That’s when you don’t care if the whole world keeps or not. What’s in it, anyway, but three, four people and a bunch of unknowns who don’t care whether you exist or not? Who cares if you are all alone on a lousy road in a lousy car shivering under the cold dripping drops because three guys in a sedan are making you be out here? Who even knows about it?
Just think, he could be inside, talking to Mrs. Fred...but for all those things that had happened. I didn’t make them happen, thought Joe. They happened to me. Nobody can say I did it. Nobody knows enough to say anything about me...
He was almost there. He slowed down and pulled up by the side of the closed store with the gas pumps at the corner of Fort Lowell and Campbell. He wondered if anybody inside would notice him, parked there with his motor running. If he dared he would park alongside the pumps, headed toward River road, so that when they came along...but Mac might recognize his car. Sure he’d recognize it. He wondered if they had gone by already.
Maybe, if he talked to them, he could talk himself back in. Maybe they’d say: “Sure, you’re a good guy, you can be the...”
Sure, they take his racket away from him and then they say: “Sure, you’re a good guy; you can be the...” whatever it is, and he ends up like the sloppy old guy who opens the door. How do you like that! Stringer had the girl already, now he wanted the racket. And that cheap little crook Mac, riding in a big black sedan, smoking a big cigar. “Take my car to the hotel and leave it there. Just leave it there.” Well, Joe doesn’t like it, you understand, and that’s not the way it’s going to be.
He waited, with his lights off, at the side of the little store. It was cold in the car and the car was beginning to smell like a wet dog. All the upholstery and rags and crap in the car giving off like a wet dog.
There was plenty of turmoil in the sky, lightning flashing every which way, thunder rolling on and on, clapping and booming and rolling, and rain, my gosh, the rain...the same as that morning, in the yard, at dawn. Joe shivered because he was cold and wet. Funny about storms, he thought; they make you feel small because you can’t do anything about them, and then, a moment later, they make you feel big because with all their noise and flashes and power they are not doing anything to you. And you can sit there and feel excitement coming up in you. People are all huddled up in houses, but you are here, outside, waiting to move; you don’t know what your move is going to be beyond taking after that car when it comes by, but does the storm know what it is doing?
Like when you hear a band you want to tap your foot, when you hear the noise of the storm you want to shout. People might think I’m crazy, thought Joe, sitting here wanting to shout in the storm, but I’m not, I’m not. I’m a big guy with all my power stored up and when I hit...
He pushed his back against the cushions, poised his right foot over the accelerator; he hunched over the wheel, his left foot ready to dart at the clutch pedal...Lights were coming down the road, not fast, but steadily increasing in intensity. You could really see the rain coming down over the intersection. When he was beginning to wonder how long it would be before the car passed the corner, it suddenly appeared, the black sedan, pushing its headlights through the rain. Joe had imagined that it would zip by and he would immediately dash after it, but the timing was off. He had to wait and there was a moment of indecision...What the hell were they doing going that slow? Talking, probably...
Talking about Joe, probably, or anyway about things that affected him. The thought infuriated him. He slammed the car into gear and turned on Campbell after them. They weren’t going to talk about him and get away with it.
They must have slowed down for the intersection because now they were speeding up and Joe couldn’t keep up with them. He saw the two red dots of the sedan’s taillights pull away from him, gliding smoothly on the wet road, hazy in the splashing water. He cursed at Mac’s car and pumped the accelerator and damned if it didn’t sputter and buck and strain; then he saw that the choke was pulled out. He couldn’t remember pulling it out; then he cursed himself when he did remember that he had pulled it out, back there by the store, thinking that it would give him faster pickup. Why he had thought that, he didn’t know. By the time he pushed the damned thing back and the car settled to normal, the sedan had crossed the bridge and turned right on River road. Joe had to hurry. If he let them get too far ahead and they turned on one of the dirt roads, he’d lose them for sure. And he groaned because he did not know what he would lose if he lost them or what he would gain if he didn’t. It was as if the only thing in the world that counted was to stick on their tail.
As he crossed the bridge he noticed car lights coming down from the foothills, toward the bridge. He made the turn on River road and he was quite a way along, picking up speed when he saw the lights turn and light up the road behind him. So there was a car behind him, so what did he care!
Nothing much on this road. A stable, a little school building, funny lamp-posts on the low wall in front of it, then just hills and curves and loose gravel and little roads branching off. He had to hurry. The sedan was nowhere in sight, this was his last chance, if he lost them now...it would be like Mac said...”Just leave it there.” Just leave it there and get the hell out; we don’t need you any more. It would be like Mac said...
Joe swerved around the curves. The car behind him was far behind. Suddenly, rounding a curve on a rise he saw the sedan’s lights, just ahead. With all the rain coming down he couldn’t tell whether it was moving or not.
18
IT was four o’clock in the morning. The deputy sheriff sat at his desk. He was tired but he was not thinking of his weariness. When somebody on the force gets sick, someone else takes an extra turn at night duty, and that is that. The cells upstairs were quiet, although the storm must have awakened the lodgers. But he didn’t have to worry about that. What he had to do was to listen to the reports radioed in by the cars and do his best at handling the night’s business.
The equipment of the sheriff’s two-way radio station, in the next room, was crackling and whining and, without seeing them, one could count the flashes of lightning as they peppered the room with static. Storm nights are never quiet nights for the cars on the road, or for the fellows in the office, for that matter. You sit there and picture who is where and what kind of trouble they might run into.
Right now there was that hit-and-run on River road, reported about fifteen minutes ago.
The deputy leaned back in his chair and checked it over in his mind. Car 12 was coming back from a prowler-call n the hills—Car 12, that was old Will and the new fellow. Willie liked to have new men so he could have them do all the driving—Car 12 was coming down from the hills. They saw a car turn east on River road at a high rate of speed and decided to give it a chase, more to see that the fellow didn’t get into trouble than anything else. On nights like this you can understand a fellow being in a hurry to get home, but sometimes you have to pull them out of the ditch; sometimes they stall right in the middle of a water-filled dip when the heavy rains make torrents across the road. Sometimes you have to get the heavy road-grading equipment out to pull the cars ou
t of or over the wet spots. Well, anyway. About three miles down the road they came across a black sedan, its right rear wheel ditched hub-high, as it was turning off River road onto the mile-and-a-half ranch road of the Bar-O. Two men, Italians—he had the names—were standing there in the rain; the third occupant of the car was stretched out on the road. They had gotten out to see how badly they were bogged and this fellow that Will and the new man were following had come by like a bat out of hell and had caught the injured man with his fender. And he’d done a good job on him.
The injured man was a fellow named Mac, a dealer who worked at that joint on the Nogales road. They didn’t know what his last name was. They’d get the name at the hospital, if he lived.
Now the deputy was waiting to see what developed. When the ambulance got there, Will, in Car 12, was to follow along River road to which it ran into Wilmot. Unless he holed up somewhere the fellow who was driving the hit-and-run car would have to turn on Wilmot and head back for town either on Speedway or farther south on Broadway. Unless he headed for the country that stretched to the foot of the mountains, way back there in the east corner twenty miles away. Car 5, cruising on Broadway, had been told to go to Wilmot. Maybe 12 and 5 would have the fellow right there, between them.
The deputy sheriff frowned. An idea had popped into his head and was stirring up a lot of other ideas. He wanted to slow down a bit and go over those ideas from the beginning.
Let me see, he thought. That’s the second early-morning hit-and-run in three days. The one at the golf course and this one. There was the farmer crowded off the road, River road, two nights ago. Then there was that nervous lad he had talked to at the car lot. Hadn’t been too straight about what he was doing on River road. Said he didn’t know any of the Bar-O gang. Yet he was driving around with one of them the next day.
It doesn’t do to jump at conclusions. But sometimes conclusions are rather inviting.
The lad had said that he had stopped at the gambling joint. Must have known the injured dealer. Knew the Italians. Drove at night.
Something was looming rather big in the deputy’s mind. Wasn’t he the same lad, at the inquest, who lived in the house where the old man had been killed by the falling timber? It might not mean anything, but it sure looked that a lot of things were happening in that lad’s neighborhood. Maybe a coincidence.
The radio operator leaned over on his chair, pushed his earphones back and called through the open doorway:
“The car that hit that Mac guy was his own car driven by somebody else. Will’s on his way east on River road.”
The deputy nodded.
After a moment he said to the radio man:
“Tell ‘em it’s a tan sedan, four-door. About a ‘36 or ‘37 Chewy. Tell 5 to wait for Will at the corner of River and Wilmot...if they don’t pick up the guy before that.”
Hell, you live in a small town and you get to know who drives what and where. Many a time he had seen the dealer come home from work, two or three o’clock in the morning. Drove a tan sedan, a Chewy. Lived at a hotel on Broadway. Quiet fellow.
A call came from Number 5. They were at River and Wilmot, waiting for Will. Hadn’t seen anybody, so far.
The deputy didn’t have to look at the map of the county roads under the cracked, blurred glass top of his desk. Hell, he knew the roads blindfolded. But looking at it helped him think.
From the corner where Number 5 was there was only one road going east, and the hit-and-run car was on it. He’d probably stay on the pavement. If he knew anything at all he wouldn’t make the turn on the dead-end canyon road. Might, though. As long as 5 had not met him coming toward town, they might as well push on.
“Tell 5 not to wait for Will. Tell ‘em to take a look down Sabino Canyon road. If they don’t find anything, tell ‘em to come back and wait for Will at the turn.”
While the message was being sent, the deputy got up and walked around the office and looked out the window at the storm. What a night! It was either Sabino Canyon road, or the next road, that went up to Mount Lemmon. There was no sense in hurrying. The fellow was trapped. You can’t get off the Mount Lemmon road, unless you jump off. The only other possibility was that he would stay on the same road, past the Sabino and Lemmon turn-offs and keep going toward Redington.
The deputy shook his head. The damn fool, he thought, he can’t get off the Redington road. It winds straight up the mountainside and over into the next valley, and with the San Pedro River running, with all that rain, he’d have to turn back.
That San Pedro River! A wide, dry river-bed. The road ran right across it when it was dry. But when it rained, the Pedro looked like the Mississippi. Well, not quite. But you sure couldn’t get across.
The deputy waited.
The radio sputtered. Nothing on the Sabino Canyon Road, said Number 5. Except plenty of water in the dips.
Now 5 and 12 were pushing toward the Mount Lemmon turn-off. Hell, in good weather you could see a car miles away on that road.
“Ask them what the weather is like down there.”
It was lousy.
“Tell them to take it easy. No rush.”
There was no sense in getting the sheriff department’s cars mixed up in washouts and landslides on the mountain roads.
“Get hold of the state highway patrol and have them tell their cars what we’ve got on this,” said the deputy.
A member of the force who had been sitting quietly at the other end of the office promptly got up and got busy.
The state boys could work the other side of the San Pedro, if he ever got across.
If that new fellow from the newspaper had hung around he would have had something. But who wants to hang around on a night like this!
The deputy yawned and stretched. He wasn’t making any wild guesses, but he wouldn’t be surprised, when they got the fellow, if he turned out...but why guess at all? All this organization wasn’t set up with any one, particular individual in mind. It was set up to catch anybody, anybody at all that wanted catching. You never know, in this business who your next customer is going to be. You’d be surprised. Just as surprised as they are when you drive up and they hear you say: “Just a minute, bud.”
If you were going to feel sorry for anyone, thought the deputy, you’d feel sorry for this fellow out on the Redington road. Didn’t have a chance out there on the mountain. Jumping at conclusions again. Did it have to be a fellow? Might be a woman. Didn’t make much difference. The set-up was organized to catch anybody, anybody at all.
He yawned. The radio crackled and whistled. He waited.
The Redington road winds and backtracks and climbs to six thousand feet, clinging narrowly to what, from a distance, in the daytime, looks like a fairly vertical wall of mountainside. It is not a much-traveled road. Occasionally, on a nice bright hot day, people who don’t believe it when they are told that there is nothing there go and take a look. If they have an old car they stop halfway up and wish to hell they had some water, and burn their fingers on the boiling radiator. It’s nice scenery, if you like rocks and gravel and winding roads or if you think to look back at the desert, far below you. In bad weather you may not see anyone on it for a week.
Rain cut deep channels in the road as it gathered in the wrinkles of the mountain and cascaded toward the foothills. Narrow gorges echoed the claps of thunder, and the intermittent flashes of lighting exposed bits of winding road and the desolation of the rocky mountainside. Then darkness, filled with the turbulence of wind and driven rain settled over the mountain, to be torn again by angry bolts of lightning.
Not a nice road to be on.
Joe clenched his teeth and drove on. A rattling cattle-guard across the road nearly sent him over the side. He groaned at all the misery that was closing in on him. “I didn’t do it,” he repeated to himself. “That was an accident.” The black sedan being there, its rear end sticking out on the road and those three fellows standing there, in the rain. He had been going too fast to do anything abo
ut it. The littlest of the three...that was Mac...he got hit. He couldn’t have done anything about it. Coming around the curve, fast, he didn’t see them. It was their fault. He came around the curve and hit him. He had hit another fellow before, but this time it was worse, much worse than that. And he’d had to keep going to straighten out the car that was swerving like mad after he tried not to hit Mac. Then he’d had to keep going because they would have killed him if he had stopped. But he did stop. He’d never forget getting out of the car and walking back to the last curve and looking. There was another car, stopped by the sedan, and it had two big spotlights, and there were two more men, and they were bending over Mac, and from the spotlights on the car and the way the men stood up and seemed to be talking, and the antenna on the car, it was a sheriff’s car. So he had run back to Mac’s car, soaking wet now, and gotten the hell out of there as fast as he could. Then, when he reached the pavement, on that last paved road that runs toward the east, he saw lights. Well, he didn’t see the lights but he saw streaks of headlights, coming from town, wobbling in the sky as the other car probably crawled out of a dip; anyway, it scared him, so he kept on going east instead of going back to town.