WEST ON 66

by James H. Cobb

  Lisette and I swapped glances. "He didn't say what he wanted it for, did he?" she inquired.

  "I didn't ask and I don't recall him saying. We mostly han­dle bulk metal here, but every once in a while we get some fella coming through looking for some little bit of junk or an­other. Boss lets us sell 'em off out of the office here for coffee and doughnut money." The yard man nodded toward a mas­sive chrome coffee urn in the corner. "Just not too many of them drive Lincolns or wear suits."

  I swore I'd never play poker again. In finding this guy I think I might have used up my entire quota of good luck for the rest of my life. "Okay, did he pick up anything else while he was here?"

  Carby considered methodically. "Yeah, he did. We had an old shed out there then with a bunch of stuff in it. He looked around some and got a jar of some kind of old grease or some­thing. Axle grease, I guess. Got some of it on his shirt, but he didn't seem to give a damn. And I think an old bucket of red lead. Paid two dollars for the whole shootin' match. I wasn't going to argue."

  Things were coming together in my mind real fast now. I nodded to Lisette. We had what we needed. I flipped open my wallet and stuffed a couple of bills into the coin-loaded coffee mug beside the urn. "For you and the crew, okay? Thanks a lot. You've been a big help to us. You don't know how much." "No problem, son." And no more. The old gent had been born and bred in a country where excessive curiosity was con­sidered bad manners.

  We started to leave, but his voice caught us halfway to the

  door.

  "I just couldn't do it."

  Lisette bumped up against me as I looked back toward the desk. Carby was looking off toward the office wall reminis-cently. "He wanted me to just dump all that dirty junk into that Lincoln's trunk, but I just couldn't do it. I had to put down some newspapers first. Pretty damn thing!"

  We mounted up and I moved the '57 out of the yard's parking lot. But I pulled over at the first turnout along the road, think­ing hard.

  "Well?" Lisette demanded.

  "We know what we're looking for, Princess. And we know a lot more about where we should be looking."

  "You think so?" she asked excitedly, coming up to kneel on the car seat beside me.

  "I'm sure so. Look; we know what your dad must have been thinking when he hid the money. He was on the run, and that much cash is hard to run with. It's bulky, you run the risk of getting separated from it, and man, does it attract attention."

  "Uh-huh?"

  "So he caches it somewhere safe. That frees him up for run­ning. It also gives him a bargaining chip, just in case the law or his ex-partners ever nail him. And if things really screw up for him, maybe he can get word about it back to you and your mother."

  "That's all obvious. What does that have to do with a piece

  of old pipe?"

  I looked over into her face. "That's his strongbox, Princess. Durable, plenty of room to stow the dough in, and it won't attract a lot of attention even if somebody falls over it."

  Lisette nodded, thinking now just as hard as I was.

  "It's watertight, too," I went on. "That's what the axle grease was for, to seal the cap threads. He was planning to stash it out-of-doors or somewhere else exposed to the elements, probably somewhere near the highway where he could get at it fast."

  I swear to God, I saw it happen. Something clicked behind Lisette's eyes, and all of a sudden at least one person in this world knew where Johnny 32 had hidden his last big score.

  Very carefully she looked away from me and sat back into her seat. "That's good," she said after a moment. "At least we've got something to go on."

  "Yeah," I replied with equal care, popping the '57 back into gear.

  We both scrambled frantically back from the thin edge of excessive truth.

  There must have been something in the Rittenhouse guide, some clue that I must have just bumped over. But Lisette had made some kind of connection that made sense to her. And no, she wasn't going to tell me about it yet. I couldn't blame her much, either. She'd been playing with a junk hand for a long time. Now, at long damn last, she had a fighting card to call her own. She wasn't going to be casual about throwing that away.

  Like her dad, this girl was smart. And like her dad, she was going to hold on to the money's location, just in case she needed a bargaining chip, too.

  I wondered if, unlike her dad, it would do her any good.

  As in Baxter Springs, we'd finished up in Oklahoma City at the drag end of the day. We could still make some miles that evening, though, and that itchy feeling about this town was coming back. I treated the '57 to a load of gas and a quart of Pennzoil, and we cut back through town. Weaving through the tail end of the going-home traffic, we planned on grabbing a fast burger on the way west. "Kev, what's red lead?" Lisette asked. She lounged, frown­ing, with one arm over the passenger-side door. Obviously still doing a lot of thinking.

  "A kind of heavy-duty paint," I replied absently.

  "I wonder what he'd want paint for?"

  "Well, just as a guess, I'd say to paint something with."

  "That I could guess, goopy! But what?"

  "Probably to mark where he hid the money."

  Lisette rolled her eyes. "Oh, sure! I cart see the sign now: 'Two hundred thousand dollars buried here. Please keep off.' '

  "I'm serious, Princess." I flipped my right hand off the wheel for a second. "Out here in the West there are about ten million and one stories about the outlaws who knocked off a hot stagecoach and went to hide the loot somewhere. They stuck it in a cave or a hollow tree or some dlamn place, figuring on coming back later to divide it up, Only when they do try to go back they find that there's been a flood or a range fire or something and they never can find the spot again."

  "That's just Death Valley Days stuff, isn't it?"

  "No. It's happened out here. "We're getting on toward the high plains now, and that country can fool you. Given your dad had the brains God gave a groundhog, he'd have planned on marking his hiding spot in some way that wouldn't mean anything to anyone else but would stand out for him."

  Suddenly I realized that I'd lost my audience. Lisette had gone absolutely rigid in her seat, staring into the rearview mir­ror. Her expression was that of s someone who had felt a sting on her leg and looked down to find a coiled copperhead and a couple of bloody fang marks.

  "Oh my God," she whispered. "He's found us."

  I didn't fool with the mirror. I twisted around and looked back.

  There was a hearse black 30C9-C Chrysler riding our rear bumper like it was chained there.-

  "We're okay," I said.

  "He's found us!" There was a rising shrillness in her voice.

  "We are okay!" I reached out and grabbed her left wrist, giving her something outside her panic to anchor to. It worked. My grip broke the past's hold on her. She came back into her­self, scared but functioning.

  "How, Kev? How did he track us down?"

  "Damned if I know. They must have been following us down 66, and we stayed long enough in one place for them to catch up. To hell with that, however. We're going to have to bust loose from them again."

  "That won't be easy."

  Tell me about it, Princess. My eyes kept flicking to my rear-view mirror. I could make out Nate Temple and Randy Ban-nerman in front, Bannerman driving. Behind them, in the Chrysler's backseat, was a third, more massive silhouette.

  I knew what he was trying to do. Over the last couple of days I'd started to piece together a working image of Mace I Spanno. The man was a blunt object. Intimidation and threat were his stock-in-trade. A cagier character might have tried to trail us to an ambush site. Not Mr. Spanno, though. He moved straight on in, trying to bluff us into surrendering or panic us into doing something stupid. If we tried to run, he'd chase. If we stopped, he'd take us.

  Not today, buddy. Not today. "We're okay, Princess," I repeated.

  I refocused my attention on the road ahead. Route 66 was tone of the main drags through Oklahoma Ci
ty, and along the [magic mile road businesses fronted on the highway. Pallid neon (promotions for motels, bars, and restaurants were flicking on tin response to the fading day.

  Traffic was dropping off as well. However, there were still enough people on the streets and sidewalks to keep Spanno and company from trying anything too flagrant, like waving hard­ware around or forcing us into the curb. I wouldn't put a board-ting action past them, though, especially if we got pinned down at a light. I looked ahead for the next set of traffic signals.

  I spotted the next intersection, and I also spotted something else. It took only about half a block for the entire plan to come together and gel. Suddenly I was grinning like an idiot.

  "What's wrong?" Lisette asked.

  "Not a thing, Princess. You know, in a situation like this, there's only one thing for us to do."

  "What's that?"

  "Have dinner."

  I whipped the '57's wheel hard to the right without signaling. Our tires chirped in protest as we made the turn, wheeling into the driveway I'd targeted. Braking hard, I blocked the path in over the curb. Behind us, the Chrysler's rubber squawked as Spanno's wheelman instinctively slowed to avoid a collision. Horns blared behind them and the traffic flow shouldered the black coupe on past before its occupants could react.

  Phase one complete.

  "Kev, what are we doing?" Lisette demanded.

  "We are going to drive ol' Mace totally screaming out of his mind," I replied, rolling us into the drive-in restaurant that was going to be our bomb shelter.

  It was a warm summer's evening and a Friday at that. And the joint, as the saying goes, was jumping. It was a nice place, an art deco classic belonging to the old Texas Pig Stand chain, its name climbing a tower above the central restaurant. A whole horde of vehicles were trying to squeeze in beneath the alu­minum sunshades that radiated out from the circular building.

  I got lucky and a slot opened up just as I circled through the parking area. I swung the '57 into it, easing her into place between a sleek Lincoln green Rebel Cruiser and a veteran Dodge pickup truck that carried more rust on its fenders than paint.

  "Kevin, you're the one who's gone out of his mind!" Lisette managed to scream in a whisper, an interesting effect. "Mace has found us!"

  "I know he has. And that's why we're stopping here." I lifted my hands off the steering wheel and killed the engine. "Just cool your jets and look around. What's he gonna do?"

  She picked up on it then. There might be a busier spot in Oklahoma City, but you'd have a hard time naming what it might be. Every parking slot in the lot had a car in it. There were a few youthful families treating the children to a night on the town, but mostly it was the high school crowd. The town and country kids were gearing up for the weekend. A steady stream of cruisers circled through the lot, making the scene before going out to drag Main. More kids jammed the inside booths or sat at the white-painted picnic tables lined up on the center strip beneath the sunshades. All local, happy, and young.

  "Get it? What's he gonna do? He and his goon squad would stand out in this crowd like nuns in a nudist camp. He'd have an easier time snatching you off the stage of the Hollywood Bowl during a Liberace concert."

  Lisette's tension eased as she realized that, yeah, we were okay, its release taking the form of a short, quasi-hysterical giggle. "I guess you're right."

  "Damn right I'm right. We'll just fort up here for a while." I dialed in to the local Top 40s station, merging our speakers in with the ad-hoc open-air stereo of ranked car radios. "So Rare," Jimmy Dorsey and his last-gasp salute to the big bands. "Now, sit back, relax, and look cool. We got this wired."

  The drive-in had one of those newfangled intercom ordering systems, and I reached out and punched the button.

  "Whachaunt?" a filtered Oklatexan drawl inquired back.

  I remembered my Southron cuisine from the days when Dad had been working down at this end of the GM&O line. "A couple of pig sandwiches, shoestrings, and a couple of Wacos."

  "Y'all got it, partner."

  "What in the world did you just order?" Lisette asked, cu­riosity overwhelming her edginess.

  "Barbecued pork sandwiches, French fries, and a couple of Dr. Peppers. It's a regional institution down here. You'll love it."

  You know something funny? I felt pretty good. Oh yeah, I did have a pack of proven killers sitting out there on my tail, but I still felt pretty good. I suspected strongly that we, or at least Lisette, now had the tip that could lead us to the money. I wasn't quite sure when she might be willing to share the word on that, but at least she'd keep us aimed in the right direction. And as for Mr. Spanno, well, like I said, I had a plan. A minute later the Chrysler reappeared, looping back around the block to pick us up again, a black steel barracuda swimming past in the street. Nate Temple, Spanno's lieutenant, rode shot­gun in the front seat, his head turning continuously, watching for trouble. The big man himself was at the coupe's rear win­dow, those cold, cold eyes tracking us as they drove past. God, how it must have galled him to be rendered so impotent by a bunch of cheerleaders and farm boys.

  I saw Lisette shiver under that gaze. Very deliberately, I extended my arm along the seat back and slipped it around her shoulders, gathering her close. It was a move for her and for him. I was throwing it right back in Spanno's face. Yeah, you asshole. I got her, and what are you going to do about it?

  A childish gesture? I guess it was. But then a lot of the moves people make in this world seem kind of childish at times. Why should I be any different?

  To another blare of horns, the Chrysler whipped into a U-turn. It parked at the curb across the intersection from us, po­sitioned so that its passengers could keep both of the drive-in's exits under observation. They were going to wait us out.

  "I hate him," Lisette whispered. "Oh, how I hate him!"

  Her soft words were a weird contrast to the laughter and light music that saturated the dusky evening around us. It seemed to wall us away in a cool little room inside the '57.

  "Do you know for sure he's the guy who killed your dad?" I asked.

  I was already sure of it myself, but it seemed like a good lead-in for another probe into her past.

  "In my heart I am. Mace never said so, never in so many words. But I could feel it. And beyond that, he gave us so many other reasons to hate him."

  "Us?"

  "My mother and I. But she started to hate too late. She could never do anything with it."

  Despite the warmth of the evening, Lisette nestled into me slightly, as if she was cold. I've done enough interrogation work to sense the door opening. She was all the way back in her past: open, vulnerable. I could take advantage of that now and make a note to feel shitty about it later.

  "What happened to your mom, Princess? You told me once that she was dead."

  The girl nodded, not taking her eyes off the parked Chrysler. "She is. They were polite about it and they didn't call it suicide, just an 'accidental death.' Too many sleeping pills and too much alcohol.

  "And they were right. She wouldn't have left me alone. She knew what would happen. Mom just wanted to get away from the hurt and the hopelessness for a while, and she went too far and couldn't get back. It wasn't her fault. It was mine. I wasn't fast enough. I didn't get this set up in time."

  That dumb-ass pat phrase, "it wasn't your fault," was at the back of my throat, and I choked it back down. "What are you talking about? You mean about tracking down the money?"

  "Yes. I was going to use it to get us away. We'd managed it once before when Mace was sent to prison for a while. Mom and I got as far as Cleveland. It wasn't easy. We didn't have much money, but we managed." A little ghost of a sad smile touched Lisette's face. "Mom found a job in a restaurant, and I went to a regular high school. We were almost like real peo­ple."

  She took a deep shuddering breath. "But Mace got out and found us. That's when I got serious about trying to learn about the money my father had taken. With it we could have run so far a
nd so fast that he never could have found us again."

  All of a sudden a pretty blonde carhop bustled up with a loaded tray, popping the bubble of isolation that had formed around us. Lisette and I both jumped a little, and I had to fumble with my wallet. The hop's eyes widened as I tossed her a five spot and told her to keep the change. To hell with that now; I wanted to get back to Lisette and her story.

  It was too late. The moment of vulnerability was gone. I was a little surprised when the Princess accepted the sandwich and drink I passed her. Then I saw the anger in her eyes. She was back in full possession of herself, refusing to let the man in the black car deny her even her own appetite.

  "That's why this money's so important," I said, trying to start the talk cycle again. "It'll let you get a life away from Spanno."

  She shook her head. "No. That was the plan when my mother was alive."

  "So what's the plan now?"

  "I'm going to have him killed," she replied matter-of-factly.

  I was the one who suddenly lost my interest in food. "You are shitting me, right?"

  Lisette shrugged and shook her head again. "Not at all. I tried doing it myself once, but it was no good. Mace is fast and tough and smart. It will take a pro to do the job. Besides, I like the idea of his own stinking pack turning on him and tearing him to pieces. That will be justice." There was a cold satisfac­tion in her voice as she savored the thought.

  "Do you know how to set it up?"

  She arched her eyebrow at me and took a bite out of her sandwich. "I'm the daughter of a Chicago gangster," she re­plied after a moment. "I've lived in their world all of my life, and I've learned a few things. I know who I need to contact, and I know how I want to arrange it."

  Again that cold satisfaction crept into her voice. "A ninety-thousand-dollar open contract on the head of Mace Spanno. And a ten-thousand-dollar bonus if you can prove to me that he died screaming." She took another deliberate bite of her sandwich.

  We have a whole new ball game here, sports fans. I stared across at the faces in the black Chrysler, who were busy staring back at us. If she got hold of that 100 Gs, Spanno was going to find some of the best hit men in the world lining up in his back alley, matching nickels to see who got the first shot.