WEST ON 66

by James H. Cobb

  The key turned easily. I twisted the knob and flicked the door open, pulling back a couple of inches from the frame. The door squealed on its hinges and came up with a bang against the inside wall. It took me a couple of swallows to get enough moisture in my throat to speak.

  "They're dead, Spanno," I said. "All three of them: Temple, Bannerman, and Claster. I killed them. Your car's wrecked, too. You're alone out here and you've got no way out."

  "You!" He turned the word into an obscenity.

  "Yeah, it's me, man. And it gets worse. You've been set up. I'm a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff. We never forgot about Kingman, Spanno. We've been tracking you every inch of the way. I've already called it in, and every highway patrol­man and county cop in a hundred miles is converging on this place."

  "I should have left you dead back at the cafe." Cold, con­gealing venom dripped off Spanno's words.

  "Better be glad you didn't," I said. "Because I'm the only guy out on this desert tonight who's going to offer you a deal. And you'd better listen close and fast, because neither of us have much time."

  There was a second's hesitation. "What kind of deal?"

  "It's real simple and all in your favor, Spanno. I found the money. I knew where that was, too. All two hundred grand of it. It's in the trunk of my car right now, and the keys are in the ignition. You get the money, a fast car, and a head start. In exchange, you let Lisette go."

  No answer. No answer at all.

  "Come on!" I prodded. "This is the only chance you've got! When the rest of the law shows, you're going to be looking down the barrels of about twenty shotguns out here! Hostage or no, you're not getting out!"

  And then Spanno laughed. It didn't sound any better now then it did the first time I'd heard it.

  "Okay, boy," he said. "Okay. I like your deal. I like it. I'll take you up on it. But there's just one thing first."

  "What?"

  "You walk through that door."

  It was my turn to be silent.

  "Did you hear me, boy! You want me to let this girl go, then you walk through that door, now!"

  "What's that supposed to prove, Spanno?"

  "Why, it's going to prove that you really give a damn for Johnny's little girl here," he replied. "I mean you took her away. You've been putting your hands on her and screwing her every night! I bet you've been all the time telling her you loved her. Now you get to prove it! You prove it by walking through that door before I blow this filthy little slut's head off!"

  He meant it, too. He wasn't going to buy the package. Maybe he figured there was no percentage in trying to run. There was just Route 66 out there with a highway patrol station at both Needles and Bar stow. With the word already out and the roadblocks going up, he'd be a rat in a drainpipe with a cat waiting at either end.

  This was his dying night. He knew it. He'd known that from the moment he'd heard my voice. His only concern now was who-all was going with him to hell. My mind raced, trying to find some maneuvering room.

  I tried to pull my voice back under control, keeping it cool, keeping it low. "You don't want to do that, Spanno. That's your stepdaughter in there. That's Lisette. You don't want to kill her. Remember, she's your family. You said so. Why not giv£ her a break?"

  'Because she spit in my face!" Spanno's voice edged toward hysterical rage. "Even after what her bastard father did to me, I took her in! I gave her everything she could have wanted, just like her mother! All I asked back was due me! But all I ever got back was shit! No respect ... no thanks for what I tried to give. • • • Why shouldn't I kill the bitch?"

  ''Because you love her!" I found myself yelling it back. "Yeah, and I love her, too. Okay? Neither of us can help that! Neither of us wants her hurt! Neither of us wants her dead! You want to finish this between you and me? Fine! Let's get it clone. But let's let her walk away. She can't help what we

  feet"

  I thought I'd lost him. He went silent for almost a full min­ute- And when he spoke again, it wasn't to me. "I do love you. You never believed me all the times I said it, but I do love

  you."

  The big man's voice was gentle in a way I didn't believe possible, and I risked another look into the crack around the window blind. They were still back in the corner, but the arm Spanno had around Lisette was a little less a restraint and a little more an embrace. The .45's barrel was angling away from her head, and very, very gently the big man was nuzzling the softness of her hair, just as I had done so often.

  Up to this point, beyond that single small cry, Lisette had been silent. Now she spoke, her voice low and steady. "Mace . . . Father, if you want me to believe you, please let me go."

  ]For a second I wondered if it could be that simple. Whether there might not be just enough human left inside of Mace Spanno to respond to that quiet plea. But then I saw the big man straighten, the iron coming back into the arm that circled beneath Lisette's breasts. "No," he said in a grating whisper. "You never understood that, either. What's mine stays mine."

  Even unto death.

  The automatic ground into the side of Lisette's head again. "Did you hear me, boy! Get inhere! You've got thirty seconds more; then she's dead!"

  This was it! He was pushing the button! I could hear it in his voice, see it in his face. It vas all going to blow now, and I didn't have anything!

  Peering in, I could tell that Lisette knew that the bite was coming, too. She must have been able to feel the coiling tension in the big man's body as he geared himself up to shoot. But even with a gun at her temple, ] could see that she wasn't ready to yield.

  The Princess had come back again. The sound of my voice had returned her to life. The defeated slackness had gone out of her body, and her eyes glittered beneath lowered lashes. Even pinioned by Spanno's arm, she was holding herself ready to make a move. That valiant and gutsy spirit that had carried her this far on her quest for deliverance wasn't willing to lay it down yet. Not while there was even a small chance.

  What was it she had said to me that time? A little chance is better than no hope at all.

  I pressed back against the wall, feeling the knobby stones dig into my back. I wasn't the one who could save us out here tonight. Like it had been from the beginning, it all boiled down to a matter of trust.

  "All right, Spanno. You got it." I said his name, but he wasn't the person I was speaking to. "I'm coming in. I'm com­ing in . . . now!"

  And then I turned and stepped into the cabin. Spanno re­acted the way I knew he would. The moment I was outlined in the door, he whipped the Commander in line with my face and pulled the trigger.

  But the instant she felt the gun come away from her temple and extend out past her head, Lisette exploded. Screaming, she clawed and bit at the big man's arm, shoving the gun aside, diverting his aim so that his bullet shattered the door frame instead of my skull.

  He was strong. God, but he was strong. He threw Lisette off with a single convulsive sweep of his arm, flinging her across the room and onto the bed like a rag doll. And he was fast, the .45 coming up on me again in a blue-steel blur.

  He was almost fast enough.

  Almost.

  Holding the Iver Johnson's sight picture in the center of the big man's chest, I burned through the four rounds reimaining in the cylinder as rapidly as I could pull the trigger.

  He stood there for a second, hating. Hating himself because he didn't have the strength to lift his gun again. Haiting me because I was going to be walking out of here with Lisette and the money. Hating the universe because he was dying in a cheap motel room in the middle of Nowheresville, USA. Then he crumpled to the floor, his face turned to the wall as if he didn't want to look at us anymore.

  I tossed the empty .38 onto the scarred top of the dresser. It was over. All ten years and two thousand miles of it.

  Lisette got to her feet and came to me. She buried her face against my shoulder, and my arms closed around her in an embrace that I hoped would last for just about forever. We didn'
t bother with the ruined rags of her clothes. I wrapped her in a thin blanket stripped from the bed, and I carried her out to the '57. We waited there together for the first CHP cruiser to come howling in from the Mojave night.

  At ten o'clock the next morning, I sat sprawled in the squad room of the Barstow Highway Patrol Station, a telephone to my ear. It had been a long, black-coffee night. Telling the story. Then telling the story again and again and again and guiding people out to pick up the bodies after they didn't be­lieve me for the fourth time. Then came writing it all down in the duplicate and triplicate and I-don't-know-what-the-hellicate required so that the bureaucracy could comprehend the concept of death.

  "Yeah, Jack, I've finally got everything just about wrapped up on this end. We'll be heading into LA in a few minutes."

  "You might want to stay out in the boondocks, kid," my partner replied. "If you think it's been bad there, wait till you get back to the office. It's going to take us to the end of the month just to sort out the involved jurisdictions on this thing. The coroner's inquests alone are going to keep you busy till Thanksgiving. Hell, we might have to send you back to Chi­cago and have you do it all over again."

  "I think I'm going to need a little vacation first."

  "This was your vacation, you knothead!"

  "Ah, hell." I rubbed the back of my neck. "How's the cap­tain taking it?"

  "He's pissed off at you for the way you handled this, and he's pissed off at me for covering for you. But he's really pissed off because he can't get more pissed off because for the mo­ment, you're the shining jewel in the crown of the department."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The crime reporters over in the pressroom got a hold of the story last night as it came off the Teletype from Barstow. They don't know what all they're talking about yet, but that's not slowing 'em down any. You ought to see the front page of the Los Angeles Examiner this morning."

  I heard a newspaper rustle in the earphone. " 'Chicago Crimelord Dies in Desert Shootout with Undercover Deputy. Sheriff's Department Cracks Decade-old Killing and Recovers Lost Gangland Hoard.' "

  "I never did get solid proof that Spanno killed Johnny 32," I mused. "And he operated out of Gary, not Chicago."

  "Gary don't sell papers, kid," quoth the Bear, sticking as good an epitaph as any on Mason Spanno's life.

  "I guess not. . . . Hey, Jack, thanks for sticking with me. And thanks for putting up with all the static I handed you."

  "Ah, nuts! I've been dealing with a goddamn Polish Rebel without a Cause for three years now. I should be used to the aggravation."

  "I still owe you a big one."

  "Skip it. The good guys won; the bad guys lost. Once you cut through of the bullshit, that's all that counts. But tell the truth, kid. You were in way over your head on this job."

  "Hey, that's what I got gills for, man."

  "Jesus!" Le Baer's laughter rumbled out of the phone. "You are a case! See you in the office tomorrow, kid." There was the click of the connection breaking.

  "See you tomorrow, partner," I replied to the buzz of the dead line.

  Lisette was waiting for me out in the front office. Our be­longings had been recovered from the auto court in Needles, and she was back in her sweater and skirt. She looked just as she had that night back at the Dixie Trucker's Home, a little worn, a little tired, but again the Princess through to her soul. She gave me one of her patented wry looks as I held my hand out to her.

  "A deputy sheriff, huh?"

  "A stepdaughter, huh?"

  She took my hand and I led her out to where the '57 waited.

  There wasn't far to go now. Barstow to Victorville and Victor-ville to the pass at El Cajon. El Cajon isn't a true mountain pass, really. More it's the lip of the high desert. Route 66 tips over the edge here and snakes down through a gap in the San Gabriel range, running through fields of yucca to San Bernar­dino. And there, smeared across the sky at the base of the canyon, was the familiar brown smudge of LA's smog layer, welcoming me back.

  From San Berdo, 66 turns west across the coastal plains, passing through that long row of small towns that aren't so small anymore. Rialto . . . Fontana . . . Rancho Cucamonga . . . the places where the orange groves and strawberry fields are losing out to the tract houses.

  Glendora. . . . Azusa . . . the quiet residential streets of mel­low little Monrovia and the palm-lined avenues of Pasadena.

  Around Covina, a couple of my fellow LA deputies in a black-and-white car lifted their hands to me as they blew past, heading up-canyon. And on Colorado Boulevard, Skeetch Da­vis strafed me in his '32 three-window. The prodigal had re­turned and my integration back into the day-to-day had begun.

  From Pasadena we took the Arroyo Seco Parkway down­town. Lately, Ike's had a real bug in his ear about building a whole lot more of these freeways, as they're calling them. They're planning on running them all over the country, and it's supposed to be quite a deal.

  I wonder. I can't help thinking about Peerless and about all the other little towns strung out along old 66 and the other two-lanes. What happens to them when the superslabs cut them off and their mother roads die? If the Russians were to destroy a couple of hundred American communities, we'd call it an act of war. If we do it to ourselves, we call it progress.

  Downtown, in LA proper, we passed City Hall, Parker Cen­ter, and the Hall of Justice. Jack was up there now, grumbling and growling through the mountain of paperwork his punk partner had generated for him. I lifted a couple of fingers in a silent salute to a helluva good cop and friend.

  A hunk of the Sunset Strip. Then Santa Monica Boulevard and the big HOLLYWOOD sign up on the hill, looking down on so much that's put-on and cheap flash and phony glamour and that little, little bit that's still real magic.

  Route 66 made its final big curve and started down that last long row of stoplights. I live out here, on the cheap side of Santa Monica, but I didn't turn off yet. I'd started this on the water, and it seemed right to finish it the same way.

  And finally there was Ocean Avenue, a double-headed arrow marked 101 offering up a new journey and an eternity's worth of waves marching in from the horizon.

  We parked the '57 where she could look out over the sea, both of us giving her a pat on the hood for being a good and faithful friend. Car had saved us more than once out there on the lonely road. She looked a little tired and battered now, and she'd picked up a nasty rattle in her valve train that I didn't like. However, I'd already promised her a touch-up job and an engine rebuild out at Uncle Don's. It was going to mean win­tering on macaroni and cheese again, but so be it.

  Lisette and I walked out onto the Santa Monica Pier, neither one of us wanting the journey to be over until we had paced off every last inch we had left. At last, the only thing left be­tween us and Japan was a two-by-four railing and the Pacific Ocean.

  We leaned against the rail for a while, sharing the last Fat-ima out of Lisette's purse and watching a couple of guys trying to drown themselves doing some of that Hawaiian surf-riding stuff.

  "What now?" I asked.

  "I don't know," she replied. "For so long, all I've lived with is hate. That's not a good way to live, but at least it gives you a purpose. Now, I truly don't know. I guess I start putting together a real life."

  "Back in Gary?" I asked the question with a lot more ca-sualness than I felt.

  "No." Lisette shook her head decisively. "I'm never going back there. That would be returning to the hate." She gave me a sideways glance, the corner of her mouth crooking up. "I've heard that Los Angeles is a good place for a fresh start. What do you think?"

  "It worked for me. But won't you have some affairs to settle back east?"

  "Not all that many," she sighed. "People like Mace use things; they don't own them. We lived in a leased town house. And while Mace had plenty of money, the feds and the Indiana attorney general will probably have it all locked up. I'll have my clothes and some of my mother's jewelry and that will pretty much be it.
"

  She shrugged her slim shoulders and let a little ironic humor creep into her voice. "I wonder what kind of money a carhop makes out here?"

  "Oh, yeah, speaking of money, that reminds me."

  I dug in the pocket of my windcheater, and Lisette's eyes widened as I pulled out a massive, musty wad of big bills.

  "I think there's a little over ten thousand dollars here," I said, handing it to her. "I got it out of the pipe last night when I was checking things out. What with one thing and another, I kind of forgot I had it on me. Turning it in now would just screw up everybody's bookkeeping, so you might as well hang on to it."

  Lisette studied the money in her hands for a long moment. Then she neatly divided the stack of bills in two and held out half to me. "Here," she said. "This is yours. That was our deal. A fifty-fifty split on all profits recovered."

  I shook my head. "That contract is null and void. I came into it under false pretenses. Anyhow, with that ten grand you can get set in a place of your own. You can go back to college if you want and get a start on that new life of yours. I'd like to see that."

  She drew her hand back doubtfully. "Are you sure, Kev?"

  I reached up and gently stroked her cheek with my finger­tips, trying to brush away the bruises Mace Spanno had left there. "I'm sure. I want you to have that life, Princess. And I hope I can be a part of it."

  She bit her lip and she looked away quickly, taking a fum­bling second to stow the money away in her shoulder bag. When she looked back, there weren't any tears in those lovely dark eyes, just something deep and elementally female.

  "Did you really mean it?" she asked somberly. "Did you mean what you said back there when we were with Mace? Just before—"

  "When I say something, I generally mean it."

  She burrowed into my arms, tucking her head in under my chin in that right place so I could feel the cool softness of her hair, and there wasn't any sound except for the breaking hiss of the waves around the pier pilings.

  "You're going to have to be patient," she whispered even­tually. "It's going to be quite a while before I can let any man own a piece of me again. There are a lot of things I have to work out about myself and a lot of questions I have to get answers for."