WEST ON 66

by James H. Cobb

  Abso-friggin'-lutely fan-damn-tastic!

  I twisted back around and faced front again. "Pour it on! We have to outrun this guy!"

  Again the '57 cranked up and again we pulled away. But again the primer-red pickup only drifted back so far. Slowly it began creeping up on our rear bumper once more.

  Shit! That was a flathead back there! A mean one, but still a flathead! We had to be able to take him! I glanced down at the gauges. The stock Chevy speedometer had its needle buried at a hundred and ten, but on the tachometer we still had room under the red line.

  "Come on! Lean on it! Give her the gun!" "I can't!" There was no panic in the girl's voice, but she shook her head decisively. "I can't!"

  I understood then. Lisette had hit her own personal red line. It's a whole new deal the first time you take a car beyond a hundred miles an hour. The dashes of the center line hose at you like tracer bullets, and you can sense the aerodynamics lifting the frame off the suspension. Your sense of solid control fades until you're skating on stainless steel and you feel like the brush of a butterfly wing will tip you over the edge. Lisette was taking us as far as she could go.

  Unfortunately, Ira Claster could push it a little bit further. The red-primered Ford was creeping up on our hip once more. The shotgun barrel slid out of its passenger window like a pi­rate ship's cannon clearing its gun port.

  "Block him!"

  Obediently Lisette slid us over into the left lane, cutting him off. I could see Claster's lips move as he swore.

  I kept my cursing internal. Come on, you son of a bitch! We can play this game all day. Hurry up and get impatient. Try and pass us on the inside so I can stick this .45 in your ear.

  Claster refused to get stupid. Instead, the Ford lunged for­ward again and our bumpers kissed. Lisette cried out as we bucked under the impact. It was a square shot. He hadn't fig­ured out yet that an off-center impact might flip us off the road. It would only be a matter of time, though, before he did. Risk of a miss or not, I had to take him out. I leaned out the window again and tried to aim. However, before I could squeeze the trigger Lisette screamed my name.

  I whipped back around in the seat. The land had fooled us. It had looked as if we were thundering along on an empty straightaway across a level plain. But there had been a hidden swale out there, a depression large enough to hide something the size of a tractor-trailer truck.

  The big rig had surfaced out of the desert like a submarine blowing ballast. We were coming at him head on, in his lane, at a combined speed of close to two hundred miles an hour. We were all about one heartbeat away from starring in one of those "Don't let this happen to you" horror films they use in the driver's-ed classes.

  Lisette froze and I couldn't blame her. Claster swerved wildly back into the right lane, cutting us off. The diesel jockey couldn't do anything at all except aim a fast, "Hey, Chris! Save my ass!" prayer at the medallion hanging from his cab roof.

  And that left me.

  The only thing I could come up with was to grab the wheel and turn it... to the left. I didn't even bother to look. If we had a broad shoulder out on that side of the road, we were living. If we didn't, we weren't.

  We were living. We hit gravel with a roar like a thunderbolt. Lifting a roostertail of dust and thrown pebbles behind her, the '57 clung to the edge of the shoulder by the grace of God and Goodyear. If it weren't for her reinforced interceptor suspen­sion she would have shaken herself apart. It was a good thing I'd left her in her stock factory colors, too. The thickness of an extra coat of paint would have killed us.

  There was a gray steel and black rubber blur outside of my windows, a fragment of a second of stillness as we punched into the vacuum created by the truck's passage, and then, WHOMP! We blasted past and were battered by the turbu­lence of the wind wake.

  The '57 was beyond being steered by then. I could only hint to Car that she might be happier with her tires back on the pavement. Being the sweet lady that she is, she accepted my suggestion. We slithered back onto 66, caught traction with a puff of rubber smoke, and lunged forward once more.

  Only now, a few things had changed. The red Ford pickup was in front of us. Claster hadn't lost as much speed as we had out playing in the dirt. Now we were in the kill slot.

  Lisette's hands were back on the wheel. She was ghost-pale but with it again. We were also dipping across the swale, and we could see a long, empty stretch of road ahead of us. It was time to finish this.

  "Stand on it! Get around him!"

  The girl nodded. Gritting her teeth, she punched the gas pedal and made the '57 wail.

  Claster had lost us when we had cut around the far side of the truck. He was slowing and I saw his head frantically turning between his side and rearview mirrors, trying to see where we'd disappeared to. He didn't realize until too late that we were already riding in his blind spot. As the sound of our engine began to leak past his, he looked over his shoulder and right back into my eyes.

  He was unshaven and his black T-shirt was soaked with sweat. His face was still marked up from our previous set-to, and all in all, brother Ira didn't look too good. He was going to look worse presently, because we were screaming down on him like a Hellcat diving on a Zero. He saw the blue-steel glint of the automatic in my hand, and his face distorted with fear. I could have killed him. I had the justification and the setup. But what the hell, maybe the guy was just trying to cover for his brother. Besides, filling out the paperwork afterward is a pain in the ass. Aiming out of my window, I laid the sights of the Commander on the center of Claster's left front wheel and braced my shooting wrist with my free hand. As we swept past him, I emptied the .45's clip in a six-round burst.

  The ricocheting slugs tore the tire and tube clear off the rim in an explosion of rubber and cord. Suddenly there wasn't any­thing holding up one corner of the red Ford. Lisette stayed on the gas, and we clawed clear, leaving Ira plenty of room to have his wreck in.

  Even in the harsh noon sunlight, I could see the explosion of sparks as the ruined wheel gouged into the concrete. There was no way in hell Claster could control the wild left-handed skid that threw the pickup across both lanes of 66 and out into the desert. To even try would've put the vehicle into a death roll. Brother Ira was strictly along for the ride.

  Shedding parts and bucking like a berserk bronco, the truck tore out through the greasewood, angling away from the road. About fifty yards out, it must have encountered a little arroyo running parallel to the highway. The Ford vanished in a mas­sive burst of red dust, like a prop in the trick of some high plains magician.

  Lisette backed off on the loud pedal and we started to slow, the '57 grumbling a protest at being reined in. Sorry, Car, but the speed limit was going to look pretty good for a while.

  A couple of miles down the road we came on a Texas Highway Department maintenance turnout. Lisette pulled into it, parking us out of sight behind the massive gray heap of fill gravel. I reached over and switched off the ignition. The girl just sat be­hind the wheel, vibrating like she had a broken motor mount.

  To tell the truth, I was doing a little vibrating myself. It took a couple of tries before I could fit a fresh clip into the Commander's butt. I didn't even attempt to return the pistol to the Maqui loop on my belt. I just left it on the seat and went around to the trunk.

  En route, I checked out my busted car windows and the dings in my rear bumper. God damn it all to hell entirely and back again! I should have availed myself of the opportunity to blast Claster's malignant little pea brain right out of his skull. I could only hope that greasy-haired sociopath ended up hold­ing his friggin' perfect engine in his lap!

  There wasn't anything I could do about it for the moment, anyway. I popped the trunk lid and got out one of the water bags. After taking a long pull of the canvassy fluid, I splashed a couple of palmfuls into my face before taking it around to Lisette.

  She had the driver's door open by then and was sitting side­ways in the seat, trying to take advantage
of the occasional puff of hot Texas wind. We didn't say anything. I just held the water bag for her, pouring into her cupped hands so she could drink. Like me, she sluiced a little over herself, craving the soothing coolness.

  I capped the bag and knelt down in the open door. "You want a cigarette?"

  "Yes, I guess so."

  I got her purse from behind the seat and dug out her pack of Fatimas. Lisette's hands were still shaking, so I slipped the cork tip of the cigarette between her lips and struck a match for her. For several seconds she tried to mate the wavering end of her smoke with the flame. Then she reached up and tossed the cigarette away. "Oh, to hell with it. I only smoke the damn things for effect anyway."

  I don't think she meant it to be funny, but I laughed. A second or two later, she joined in. It was a foxhole laugh, a shared release of tension between two people who had looked over the edge into the dark together. Humor really isn't in­volved; you're just celebrating being alive.

  Lisette's usually immaculate plume of brown hair looked as if she'd had raccoons nesting in it. Her face was raw and wind-burned, and her blouse was mud-streaked where dust and water had mixed.

  All in all, she looked pretty damn good.

  I really didn't plan it, but my hand curved around the back of her neck and I drew her face to mine. There was a moment's instinctive resistance, and then she yielded to the kiss, first just melting into it, then replying with a growing urgency of her own, her small, soft tongue darting.

  Our positioning was poor and the setting was far from ro­mantic, but as our lips parted I think we both had come to the same conclusion. That with a degree of practice and a little dedication on both our parts, we probably could get really good at this.

  "I'm bored," she murmured, nose to nose with me.

  "What?"

  She responded to my explosion with her laziest feminine "gotcha" smile. "With driving. You can take it for a while again."

  We hit Amarillo in time for lunch. Following Amarillo Boul­evard over San Jacinto Heights, we dropped down to West Sixth Street and pulled into an open and not too busy Chevrolet agency on the west side of town. I wanted to get those blown-out windows replaced. Not only would we have trouble in bad weather, but busted glass in a car can draw the attention of the local justice merchants.

  I also wanted a telephone and a little privacy. I was way past due checking in. Jack does not wait well, and by now he was probably chewing up his desk blotter. Lisette, on the other hand, would probably get real leery real fast if she caught me making cryptic calls to mysterious strangers. Take a note, Mr. Scientist. If you ever get a free moment in between inventing the better H-bomb and all those new, new, NEW and im­proved toothpastes, how about coming up with a phone a guy can carry around in his hip pocket?

  The repair work gave me my excuse, however. I got Lisette installed in a greasy spoon cafe across the street, and then I cut back over to the garage "to see how they're doing." They had a pay phone in their waiting room, and I did the long-distance deal.

  "Pulaski, you little prick! I ought to kick your ass!" "Hello, Jack. I love you, too, but I'm a little rushed for time here, so let's skip the fond pleasantries. All right?" "Where are you? And where were you last night?" "I'm in Amarillo now, and last night I was somewhere where I didn't have a goddamn telephone, okay? Now copy this down: Ira Claster, white adult male, age twenty-eight, height six-one, weight about one-seventy, black hair, brown eyes, dark complexion. Resident, Baxter Springs, Kansas. He has a local rap sheet as long as your arm, minor felony and heavy mis­demeanor. Last seen on Route 66 about seven miles west of Lark, Texas. Armed and dangerous." "Got it. Now what do I do with it?"

  "Get on the horn to the Texas Highway Patrol or the Texas Rangers or whoever the hell has jurisdiction out there and get this guy picked up on two counts of attempted first-degree homicide."

  "Were you one of these attempts, kid?"

  "Yeah, I was, but I don't have time to go into it now. Just have the locals pick this guy up. I'll file a report and officially swear out the warrants as soon as I break cover, but I need this guy off my back now."

  "You got it. Now, what else is going on?"

  "I have an update on Mace Spanno's location. As of last night, he was in Oklahoma City. An Oklahoma City patrol car might have filed a field event card on him. Black '57 Chrysler 300-C, Indiana license Able Charley Delta six three nine."

  "Got it."

  "Good. Now tell me that they've also got a nice juicy arrest warrant out for this guy."

  "No joy there," Jack replied regretfully. "We passed the word on Spanno back to the East Saint Louis police. They're looking for witnesses who can place him and his boys anywhere near the scene of the Reece killing at the time of the murder. So far, they don't have anything they can take to a judge."

  "Great." I let the air hiss out of my lungs and leaned against the waiting room wall. "Okay, Jack. There's one thing more you can do for me." "What's that, kid?"

  "Work the hell out of the Lisette Kingman angle. I need all the dope I can get on this girl. I need to know who she really is and what she's really about."

  "Shit, I can give you everything you need right now. We got the kickbacks in last night. I could have told you then if you'd just phoned the hell in like you were supposed to." "Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure! Whattaya got?" "Why we had trouble tracking her down before. Your girl­friend underwent a name change about nine years ago." "What are we talking about here, Jack?" "Well, it seems that about a year after her late husband's untimely demise the Widow Kingman remarried, an old family friend. Shortly thereafter, her new husband adopted little Lis­ette, formally bestowing his name upon her."

  I felt my jaw drop. My partner couldn't really be about to say what I thought he was.

  "Jack, what are we talking about here?" "Lisette Kingman's legal name is Lisette Spanno. She's Mace Spanno's stepdaughter."

  NEW MEXICO

  Since the region is often very arid, it is wise to carry a spare container of water for your car and drinking water would come in handy too. Don't turn off on any side roads without inquiring locally as to road conditions . . .

  Oh, shit! In no uncertain terms.

  I should have known. I'd been given the tip-off all the way back in Illinois, on that first night in the parking lot of the Dixie Trucker's Home. "This is a family affair," Spanno had said. "My family."

  He'd meant it. And it made sense in a weird kind of way This was the connection that brought a whole lot of stuff to­gether. The dominating role Spanno had played in Lisette's life. The way she'd been held so deeply inside of his world. The way she'd known so much about that world. The hate.

  That was why Lisette was so terrified of the man. She wasn't afraid of dying at Spanno's hand; she was afraid of having to live with him.

  And as for Mr. Spanno himself, my partner, Jack, had said it: "Mr. Spanno is kind of possessive."

  Layers upon layers of motivation were working here. Beyond greed. Beyond fear. Beyond hate. Hell, Johnny 32's lost money was the least of it.

  That past Lisette wanted to destroy along with Spanno. Those things she'd refused to talk about last night. I sensed I was brushing close to something big and ugly and unclean.

  Lisette was still waiting over in the diner. She looked at me funny as I came in, and I guess I looked a little funny, too.

  "You okay, Kev?" she inquired.

  "Yeah, sure," I replied offhandedly. "Have you ordered yet?"

  "Just coffee. This place doesn't exactly inspire my appetite."

  "I'm not all that hungry, either. They'll have the car ready pretty soon, so let's skip the lunch for now and make some more miles. We still have a long way to go."

  I felt her eyes follow me as we walked back to the garage.

  Out on the highway that afternoon the wind through the win­dows didn't cool; it just circulated the heat so you were baked by it from all angles. Route 66 was a wavering stream of molten silver flowing across the desert, exploded truck tires curli
ng along its shoulders like overcooked strips of bacon charring in the pan. The only things that moved in the sun shimmer were the patiently patrolling flocks of road crows, waiting for some­thing to be a little slow in crossing the pavement.

  There was the engine and the slipstream; that was all. We didn't talk. We didn't listen to the radio. We just existed while the '57 doggedly assaulted the forever of the road.

  Bushland . . . Wildorado . . . Vega . . . smaller, rougher, far­ther apart. I started riding the dashboard gauges: engine tem­perature, oil pressure, fuel level. Water and gas wasn't something that was just down the road anymore. I mentally plugged into the sound of the engine, trying to separate any real aberrations from the imaginary taps, rattles, and vibrations the gremlins produce whenever you're driving across the big empty places.

  The little town of Adrian, Texas, was outstanding for one thing. It's the exact halfway point of Route 66, the halfway point of our journey. The milestone rolled past unmentioned.

  As the afternoon passed, the blue of the sky began to pale into a hot milky hue. There wasn't enough wind to stir the cheat grass, and an oppression began to build beyond the heat.

  Glenrio and the Texas-New Mexico border. The edge of the Llano shattered, and we dropped off the great plain into a growing jumble of caprock and tableland. Endee . . . San Jon . . . Tucumcari. By that time, I was so sick of those TUCUM-CARI TONIGHT signs that I wouldn't have taken one of their two thousand damn rooms if Mamie Van Doren and Bettie Page both were waiting in it for me along with a roll of com­plimentary quarters for the Magic Fingers massage bed. I kept the hammer down, and we burned through, heading west, chas­ing the retreating sun.

  Eventually Lisette cleared her throat delicately. "Excuse me, but I think I'm ready for lunch now."

  I glanced down at the dash clock. Five thirty-seven.

  "Oh, Jesus! I'm sorry; I've been thinking about some stuff, and I didn't realize that it was getting on like this."

  "I know," she replied. She was curled up over in her corner of the seat, studying me, her shadowy eyes the only cool things in this part of the world. "You've been scowling about some­thing all afternoon, and I haven't wanted to interrupt. What's wrong?"