WEST ON 66

by James H. Cobb

  A couple of scorpions skittered wildly out of my way as I flung aside ch.unks of the dense, jagged stone. I paid no more attention to them than I did to the way the edges and spikes of the lava abraded my hands. I was on the right track! Another man had stacked these rocks here. They didn't fit together nat­urally. And now I was through the layer of rock and I was digging down through the quartz sand like a dog. And then I tore a fingernail on something else hard.

  I swept aside the last of the sand. It was a piece of old red-painted drill pipe, a cap on either end, just about yay long.

  Panting through my teeth, I hauled the end of the pipe up and out of the hole and wrenched at the end cap. Trapped sand grated, but the thick layer of grease packed into the threads allowed it to turn. The cap spun off in my hand. There was a plug of something in the end of the pipe, and I had to shake it a couple of times to get it out.

  It was a solid roll of paper money, three inches across and tightly bound with brittle and aging rubber bands. I snapped the bands and the currency fanned out in my hand. They were all fifties and hundreds. More rolls of bills, identical to this one, packed the pipe solidly from end to end.

  This was it, the legacy of greed, death, and hope that Johnny 32 had left out here in the wastelands.

  Okay, Lisette, you can tell them now. Tell them where it is.

  Could I kill three men with only four bullets and a knife? Oh, yeah. Just let me get them out here in the night and the black rock and I could.

  Tell 'em, Princess. Bring them to me.

  I stuffed the opened wad of cash in my windcheater pocket and screwed the cap back on the pipe. Lugging it over my shoulder, I started for the car. As I scrambled over the lava, I kept shooting glances back down 66 to the east, watching for headlights out on the road.

  I'd have to get the car out of sight, and I'd have to set my ambush up near the pullout. I'd have to be close in; this damn cut-down belly gun wouldn't have any range at all. Whatever happened, the guy watching Lisette would have to be the first man dropped. As smart and quick as the Princess was, she'd evaporate the second I opened up, leaving me a clean field of fire. Two rounds for Spanno and one each for Temple and the wheelman? Or should it be two and two and let Bannerman run? We'd have to see how it played.

  Reaching the car, I unlocked the trunk and loaded the pipe, taking an extra instinctive minute to center its weight and wedge it into place so it wouldn't shift around. Finishing the job, I looked east again toward Needles. Still just a dark and empty road. Where was Spanno?

  It was about then that I heard the growing rumble of a pow­erful engine. I slammed the trunk lid and looked right into a glaring set of dual headlights.

  Jesus God! I was screwed! They'd come in from the west!

  They spotted the '57 parked at the side of the road, and they must have realized what its presence meant. Lithely the 300-C whipped around in a tight U-turn, and tore back up the highway in a swirl of dust.

  I don't know what kind of curse or denial I screamed as I threw myself behind the '57's wheel. We blasted off the shoul­der, riding twin jets of sprayed gravel and burning rubber, belly to the ground and breaking traction twice again as we accel­erated through the gears.

  By all rights it was an act of futility. They had all the num­bers: a small block against a big block, a 283 Turbofire against a 392 Hemi, a Chrysler 300-C against a Chevy 150. They had Lisette and the faster car, and they could just stroll away into the night and leave me behind. I had nothing going for me.

  Except maybe for the secret.

  Racing drivers know about the secret. So do fighter pilots and truck drivers and railroad engineers. And sailors have known about it for centuries. The secret is in the love and respect a man can have for a fine machine. It's in the sharing of the spirit with the steel and in the treating of it as a comrade instead of a slave. It's in the belief that there is something more there than just dead metal and a set of engineered specifications. And if this is something you can understand, then you can also understand that sometimes, just sometimes, when you are right up against it, you can reach out beyond the metal and the num­bers and something more will be there.

  "Now," I whispered my supplication. Then I put her to the wall, sending the tachometer needle sweeping past the red line and over to the peg at seven grand. Car's battle cry became a razor-edged banshee shriek that sliced open the night above Route 66. And she held together and we reached out toward those taillights glowing scarlet ahead of us and we grabbed that son of a bitch of a Chrysler by the ass and we reeled it in.

  As we came up behind the 300-C, I kicked up my high beams, pouring them in through the rear window and striking white fire off their rearview mirrors. Two faces looked back in the glare of my headlights. Just two. Temple and Bannerman were in the Chrysler's front seat. The backseat was empty. Spanno and Lisette weren't with them.

  That made it easier. I was beyond playing it safe tonight. Beyond playing it smart or even sane. The '57 and I rode up on them, and I drove the reinforced push bars on her front bumper into the back of the big black car.

  Wham! The Chrysler bobbled, Bannerman wildly fighting the wheel. I felt something that might have been a smile twist my lips. Yeah!

  Wham! You assholes have chased me for two thousand miles. How do you like it for a change?

  Wham! Okay, Bannerman, if you like to drive so goddamn much, then drive!

  Wham! And remember, Temple, this is all just friggin' busi­ness!

  I wouldn't let them slow down. Out here, on the two-lane, we were playing in my ballpark. And here was where I was finishing the game. I climbed on their crumpled rear bumper, and I whipped them down the road ahead of me.

  I saw Temple roll down the passenger-side window. Gun in hand, he leaned out into the night, aiming back into my lights with narrowed eyes, trying to shoot me off their tail. No way. I weaved the '57 to the left, dancing sideways out of his field of fire, letting him waste a couple of bullets on the night.

  C'mon, man! I'm right over here. Do something else stupid for me.

  I faintly heard the crack of another shot over the raving of the engines. A single small hole appeared in the Chrysler's rear window, the rest of the safety glass exploding into a glittering radial pattern of cracks.

  Yeah! That's why you don't shoot through a car window, you moron! I tapped the side of my bumped against the Chrys­ler's rear fender.

  Wham! Hey, man! I'm still back here. What else you got?

  I dropped back into the six o'clock slot behind the Chrysler just in time to see an arm hook over the car roof from the passenger side. With his hair whipping wildly in the slipstream and his face distorted in a snarl, Temple was Pulling himself up and out of his window. He was going for a ride, Chicago sidesaddle. Sitting in the window with his legs in the Passenger compartment and his torso outside would give him a clear field of fire over the car's roof in almost all directions. Or at least in any direction I could dodge.

  Bracing an elbow against the slick black car top, Temple sighted back into my face. I think he was grinning.

  Sorry, man. I know about that one, too-

  I angled the '57 across the back end of the 300-C. hooking a push bar over the bumper bomb at the base of the coupe's left tail fin. Giving the steering wheel another sharp flick to the left, I yanked the Chrysler right out from under the Aceman.

  As the big car swerved wildly, Temple's face distorted from snarl to scream. He dropped his revolver and scrabbled at the roof for a hold that wasn't there. Then he tapped backward out of the window and smashed into the concrete at a hundred miles per.

  You bounce at that speed. In the sidelobe of my headlights I was aware for an instant of a flailing mass of arms and legs and shredding clothing. It seemed to chase' the Chrysler down the road in a wild cartwheel that grew progressively wilder as bones shattered and tissue tore. Then temple was gone, sprayed out over the pavement like a sack of trash thrown out by a litterbug.

  Two down.

  The
loss of his tailgunner flipped Bannerman out com­pletely. He didn't have Big Brother around to keep the bullies away anymore. Smoke jetted from the Chrysler's exhausts as the kid wheelman pushed his mill up into never-never land in a frenzied effort to pull away.

  Let him run.

  It was just the two of us out here now, thundering through the dark. I faded back a little, husbanding my engine and my fuel but still staying on his tail. I figured Bannerman had two alternatives. With one, he'd run straight home to Daddy, lead­ing me right to the big man. With the other, he'd just run, pushing his wheels until he puked a Johnson rod or ran out of gas. Then I'd have him and we'd have a little chat about where Spanno had taken Lisette.

  Remember that old saying about best-laid plans?

  We'd been roaring along on a pool-cue straightaway across the desert for miles, and now, with no warning, a tight left-hand turn lashed at us out of the night. I'd been looking far ahead, driving by Bannerman's headlights, and I saw the line of reflectors materialize across the road. I barely had time to drop the flaps and throw out the anchor. The wheelman in the Chrysler must have been looking back over his shoulder at the wrong moment. He was into the curve before he knew it.

  He might have been able to make it. He might have been able to save himself. He could have tried to drift the turn, using the awesome power of the 300-C's engine to hold him on the road. Or he could have played it safe and just aimed straight into the desert. He would have ended up about a hundred yards out in the cactus, but he probably would have been upright and alive.

  Instead, as he howled into the curve and felt the back end of the Chrysler break loose in a wild skid, he made the worst possible choice. He went grandma and grabbed for his brakes.

  The 300-C went off the road sideways, popping high in the air. Impacting, it went into a wild death roll, tumbling half a dozen times out across the lava pans, spraying shredded metal and wrapping itself in the blazing shroud of its own gasoline. A beautiful and deadly creature tearing itself apart.

  Lacking the momentum to finish the seventh roll, it sank back on its smashed roof with a final crunch of crumpling steel. I was already out of the '57 and running for the burning wreck. But after my first three strides I stopped. Flame curled out of what was left of the passenger compartment, and the night breeze was tainted with something more than burning oil and rubber.

  Bannerman had found out that calling chicken doesn't nec­essarily mean you get to walk away.

  I probably could have lived real well without Randy Ban­nerman, except for the fact that he was the only person who could have told me where Spanno had taken Lisette.

  I stumbled back to the '57 and leaned against the warm hood, the vibration of the idling engine rippling up my braced arms. Okay, Mr. Hotshot Deputy, let's do some of this detec­tive shit. Let's work it out. Spanno and company had to have headed west from Needles on Route 66. It's the only highway that goes from anywhere, past Pisgah Crater, to anywhere. But Temple and Bannerman had come in from the west. Spanno must have driven right past the burial site of the money, gotten himself and Lisette established someplace, and then sent his lieutenant and wheelman back to look for the loot.

  Question: Why? Why not look for the money on the first pass? Why put temptation in the way of even a trusted sub­ordinate?

  Answer: Spanno must really be anxious for some time alone with his stepdaughter, planning a little family reunion no doubt.

  Damn, it was getting cold out here all of a sudden.

  Okay now, okay, so they're set up somewhere west of Johnny 32's hiding place and I don't think they had time to get all the way over to Barstow and back. It had to be somewhere fairly close. And they aren't that many somewheres out here. I straightened and looked around. Out across the flats, far be­yond the burning wreck of the Chrysler, a single spark of light glimmered.

  It was a place too small to have a name. The sand-scoured signs read: GAS and CABINS, and there was nothing else that you needed to know. I cut the '57's engine and lights well up the road and coasted in, a shadow slinking through the shad­ows.

  There was a gas station with a short row of four small cabins behind it. Lights glowed in the back of the station building and behind the drawn blinds of the farthest cabin over. An arc lamp burned over the station pumps, and I stayed clear of it as I pulled into the turnoff. I didn't let the car door slam as I got out and ran light-footed across the gravel to the door of the station office.

  There was a night service bell beside the door, and I leaned on it. A couple of years later, the lights went on behind the grimy windows of the office and a balding barefoot individual in a stained T-shirt and Levi's lumbered out and unlocked the door.

  "What y'aunt? Gas or a cabin?" he mumbled.

  "Neither. I need to know if you rented a cabin to some people tonight. A party of four, three men and a girl in a late-model black Chrysler coupe. Two of the men left in the car. One man and the girl would have stayed. How about it?"

  The station owner got a little more awake and eyed me un­easily. I guess I was looking a little bit scary about then, be­tween my battered face and the bloodstains on my jacket. "I don't want no trouble here," he said and tried to push the door shut in my face.

  I kicked the door open and bulldozed the man back against the office counter. Grabbing a handful of his shirt collar, I took a reef in it and turned off his oxygen. "Yes or no!"

  I think I was feeling just a little bit scary about then, too.

  "Jeez God! Yes, sir! The man and the girl, they're in number four!"

  "Okay." I turned him loose. "Now listen! I'm a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff. When I leave here, I want you to call the highway patrol and report an officer in need of assistance.

  Got that? An officer in need of assistance! Do you have a spare key to number four?"

  "B-behind the counter."

  "Get it."

  As he fumbled, I grabbed a pencil and some kind of waybill out of the junk stacked on the office counter and printed Mace Spanno's name and the license number of the '57. I'd retrieved the wallet hiding my badge and ID card from their hiding place in the car's trunk. I slapped it down on top of the paper as the station man came up with the cabin key.

  "Right. If I'm dead when the patrol shows up, this is who I was, this is the man who killed me, and this is the car he'll probably be driving. Got it?"

  "Oh, jeez God! Yes, sir!" The eyes goggling at me were about the size of tennis balls.

  "Get on the phone. Then lock your doors and stay out of sight till the CHP gets here."

  He had the receiver in his hand as I went back out into the night.

  I hated every pebble of the gravel covering the parking area as I approached the shabby tourist cabin. It forced me to move slowly, easing every football to the ground, when I so urgently wanted to move quickly.

  There wasn't much to it. A small box of a building made out of cemented desert stone with a small wooden porch in front. A dim porch light glowed over the door, luring in a flitting cadre of insects and forcing me to swing wide and come in from the flank. There were three small windows, one on either side of the cabin as a gesture toward cross-ventilation and a third in front beside the door. All three were open a crack.

  I reached the corner of the cabin and pressed back against the wall. Inside, I heard the low, urgent murmur of a masculine voice. Spanno, just as he had sounded back in the motel in Needles. I eased up onto the porch, not daring to breathe, the .38 ready in my fist. The little Iver Johnson five-shooter had felt like a howitzer when it had been jammed in my ribs. Now that I was depending on it, it didn't seem nearly as impressive. There was a gap around the cracked roller blind on the front window, and I peered in.

  They were there.

  Lisette was on the bed. He'd stripped her naked, even tear­ing the clip from her hair, leaving her nothing. Her dress and underwear lay on the floor in a shredded tangle, along with the smashed and flattened barrette. Everything I had given her had been systematically destro
yed.

  I couldn't see if she had been physically injured, but the breaking process was already under way. The square-shouldered pride and regal bearing that had made her the Prin­cess were gone. She was becoming someone else now as she stared into Mace Spanno's face, her eyes dull and empty as her soul drained out onto the grimy linoleum.

  Spanno leaned over her with one knee on the bed, his tie pulled off and his shirt open. One massive hand pinned Li­sette's wrist to the mattress. The other was closed around her face, his thumb hooking around her jaw, the fingertips sinking pain-deep into her flesh. Holding her immobile, he forced his gaze into hers in a visual rape.

  And God, that gaze. The dam had broken and he was look­ing at Lisette now with all of the lust and warped desire of a hype staring at a loaded spile. And the words that slipped from his lips in a steady flow—words of love, words of hate, and words of need intermixed with the vilest epithets devised by the human tongue.

  If it hadn't been for the fear of hitting Lisette, I'd have gunned him down there a.nd then. Carefully, so carefully, I flowed past the window and over to the door, getting myself set to kick it in.

  Suddenly Spanno's voice cut off inside the cabin. There was a second of total silence, and then the bed frame creaked and Lisette cried out. Ah, Jesu s, now what? I risked another look through the crack of light around the front window.

  I could have sworn that I hadn't made a sound, but somehow I'd blown it! Spanno had backed into the far corner of the room like an ambushed rat. His left arm circled Lisette, holding her in front of him as a shield. There was an automatic in the big man's right hand, the muzzle jammed hard against the side of Lisette's head. A Colt Commander .45, my gun. Those dead oyster eyes glinted, watching, waiting.

  I took a fast step and got my back against the strip of wall between the window and door. Reaching up, I swiped the barrel of the .38 through the bulb of the porch light, extinguishing it. Then I dug the door key out of my pocket and slipped it into the lock left-handed, keeping most of me behind the shelter of the stonework.