by James Ellroy
It was midafternoon when we finally headed south on Pacific Coast Highway, me at the wheel, Davis and the extraditee in the backseat, Treadwell’s wrists cuffed behind his back, ankles manacled to the front-seat housing. The ragtop was down and sunlight and Seabreeze had me thinking that this wasn’t such a bad assignment after all. Behind me, the two Okies jawed, sparred, rattled each other’s cages.
“Who’s got the pink slip on the speedster, boy?”
“Who’s your haberdasher? I never seen so many divergent angles on a set of threads in my life.”
“I got Hollywood in me, boy.”
“Nigger blood more like it. Where you from in Oklahoma?”
“Outside Norman. You from Gila Bend?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s to do there?”
“Set dog’s tails on fire and watch flies fuck, drink, fight, and chase your sister.”
“I heard your brothers go for anything white and on the hoof.”
“Plain anything, boss. If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.”
“You think they’ll hurt the Viertel girl?”
“That girl can take care of herself, and I ain’t sayin’ my brothers got her.”
“How’d you find out about her?”
“Miller read the society page and fell in love.”
“I thought you said your brothers weren’t in on this.”
“I ain’t sayin’ they are, I ain’t sayin they isn’t.”
“Kidnappin’s Oklahoma stuff from way back. The Barkers, Pretty Boy. How you account for that?”
“Well…I think maybe fellas comin’ from hunger are real curious about the ante on loved ones. How high can you go before they say, ‘No sir, you keep the son of a bitch’?”
“Let’s get back to the Auburn, boy.”
“Let’s not. I need somethin’ to keep you tantalized with.”
“Tantalize me now.”
“How’s this: tan leather upholstery that Miller spilled liquor on, radio that picks up the San Dago stations real good, a little grind on the gearbox when you go into third. Hey!”
I saw it then, too: an overturned motorcycle on fire smack in the middle of the highway. No cops were at the scene, but a sawhorse detour sign had been placed in the middle lane, directing southbound traffic to a road running inland. Reflexively, I hung a hard left turn onto it, the flames lapping at the car’s rear bumper.
Davis whooped, “Whooo! Mother dog.” Harwell Treadwell laughed like a white-trash hyena. The two-lane blacktop took us up and over a series of short slopes, then down into a box canyon closed in by scrub-covered hills that pressed right up against the roadside. I cursed the hour or so the detour was going to cost us, then a loud “Ka-raaack” sounded, and the windshield exploded in front of me.
Glass shrapnel filled the air; I shut my eyes and felt slashes on my cheeks and my hands gripping the steering wheel. Davis screeched “MOTHERFUCK!” and started firing at the hill to the left of us. Opening my eyes and looking over, I saw nothing but greenery, then three more shots hit the side of the car, richocheting ding-ding-ding.
I floored the gas; Davis fired at the muzzle bursts on the hillside; Harwell Treadwell made strange noises—like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or weep. Head on the wheel, I kept one eye on the rearview, and through it I saw Davis haul Treadwell off the seat to use as a bulletproof vest, his .38 in Treadwell’s mouth as added insurance.
Ka-raack! Ka-raack! Ka-raack!
The last shot hit the radiator; steam covered my entire field of vision. I drove blind, picking up speed on a downslope, then there was another shot; the left front tire buckled, and the car fishtailed. I decelerated and aimed at the roadside shoulder away from the gunfire, sightless, trying to bank us in just right. Scrub bushes, green and huge, jumped out of nowhere, and then everything went topsy-turvy—and I was eating blacktop and steam.
More “ka-raacks” pulsated through me—and I didn’t know if they were gunshots or parts of my brains going blooey. Enveloped by dust and vapor fumes, I heard, “Legs! Legs, boy! Run!” I obeyed, stumble-running full-out.
The vapor dissipated, and I saw that I was sprinting toward a patch of furrowed farm dirt. Davis was running in front of me, half hauling, half shoving Harwell Treadwell, gun at his head. I caught up with them, realizing the shots had ended—and at the far side of the dirt patch I saw trees and buildings—maybe a sharecropper shanty-town.
We ran toward it—two cops and the kidnapper in handcuffs who was our bulletproof vest, life insurance and hole card, kicking dried-up cabbages and carrots and bean stalks out of the ground as we speedballed for sanctuary. Nearing the town, I saw that it was composed of one street with ramshackle wood structures on either side, a packed dirt road the only throughway. Slowing to a trot, I grabbed Davis’s arm and gasped, “We can’t risk taking a car out. We’ve gotta call the Ventura bulls.”
Davis jerked Treadwell’s bracelet chain, sending him face first to the ground. Catching his breath, he kicked him hard in the ass. “That’s for my car and in case I die.” Wiping dusty sweat off his brow, he pointed his .38 at the hick-town main street like he was imploring me to feast my eyes. I did, and a second later I saw what he was getting at: the phone lines were crumpled in a heap beside the base of the terminal pole that stood just inside the edge of the town proper.
I looked back at hardscrabble land and the roadway that held the remains of my partner’s car; I looked ahead at Tobacco Road, California style. “Let’s go.”
We entered the town, and I gave it a long eyeballing while Davis walked in a side-by-side drape with Harwell Treadwell, .38 snub dangling by a thumb and forefinger, business end aimed at his cojones. The left-hand side of the street featured a grain store, a market, the front window filled with stacks of Tokay and muscatel short dogs, and a clapboard farm-machinery repair shop with rusted parts strewn in front of it. On the right, the facades were all boarded up, with a string of prewar jalopies parked up against them, including a strange looking Model T hybrid that seemed made out of mismatched parts. The only strollers about were a couple of grizzled men dressed in sun-faded War Relocation Authority khakis—and they shot us a cursory fish-eye and kept on walking.
When we reached the end of the street, Davis spotted a flimsy-looking unboarded door, kicked it in, and shoved Treadwell inside. Turning to face me, he said, “We got what them boys want. You run into them you tell them Harwell is chewing on the end of my .38, and the first shot I hear he gets a hot lead cocktail. And you get us a car, boy.”
I nodded, then backtracked to the stand of heaps, looking for a likely one to commandeer. All six of them had at least one dead tire, and I started wondering about the lack of people, and why the two I’d seen so far didn’t seem alarmed at raggedy-assed armed strangers in their midst. Noticing a bolted-on fire ladder attached to the grain building across the street, I made for it, hoisting myself up the rungs.
At the top, I had a good view of the surrounding area. Shacks were nestled in little green pockets bordered by fenced-off crop acreage, with dirt access roads connecting them to each other and the town. No one seemed to be working in the fields, but there were a few people taking the breeze in front of their cribs, which struck me as eerie.
I descended the ladder, and when I was halfway down, saw an old man on one of the roads staring at me. I pretended not to notice, and he turned his back and ran—flat out—to the biggest shack in the community, a corrugated metal job with a white wood barn attached.
I hopped off the ladder and pursued, taking foot roads out of town and over an eighth of a mile or so to a stand of sycamore trees that formed a perimeter a few yards from the barn. The man was nowhere in sight, but the sliding barn door was open just a crack. I drew my .38 and sprinted over and in.
Sunlight through a side window illuminated a big empty space, and the smell of hay plus something medic
inal hit my nostrils. In the center of the barn, the acid stench got stronger, and somehow familiar. I noticed a table covered with a tarpaulin wedged into a corner near the connecting door to the shack and saw dry ice hissing out of rips in the canvas. The shape underneath took form, and I pulled the tarp off.
A buck-naked dead man was lying on top of dry ice blocks, sachets oozing formaldehyde placed strategically on his body. He was a stone ringer for Harwell Treadwell, and you didn’t have to be a medical examiner to figure the cause of death—his crotch was blown to bits, torn, blooded flesh laced with buckshot all that remained.
I redraped the stiff, then eased the connecting door into a test jiggle. It gave, and I very slowly pulled it open, just a tiny fraction of an inch, in order to look in. Then it flew open all the way, and a big double-barreled shotgun was sighting down, and I shoved both my hands at midpoint on the stock and pushed up.
A huge “Ka-boom!” went off; the tin roof lurched under the force of the blast; pellets ricocheted. I threw myself at the shotgun wielder just as he tried to slam me with the butt of his weapon, wrestled it away from him, then chopped down at his head with the flat side of my .38—one blow, two blows, three. Finally the man went limp. I kicked the shotgun out of harm’s way, then weaved on shaky, shaky legs.
It was the old man who’d rabbited when he saw me on the ladder. I looked around the room, saw a pail of water on the cracked wood floor by the front door, picked it up, and dumped it on my assailant. He stirred, then started sputtering, and I knelt down and placed my gun on his nose so he could get the picture up close. “You admit you killed that man back there or you convince me somebody else did, and you live. You tell me where the other Treadwell brother is and I don’t arrest you for assault on a police officer. You dick me around, you die.”
The geezer took it all in, his eyes getting clearer by the second, exhibiting the remarkable recuperative powers of the seasoned shat-upon. When he curled his lips to spit invective, I said, “No banter, no wisecracks, no shit,” and cocked the hammer.
Now pops got the whole picture, in Technicolor. “I ain’t no killer,” he said with a midwestern twang. “I’m a truck farmer likes to dabble in the medical arts, but I sure ain’t no killer.”
“I am. So you keep going and keep my interest, because I get bored easy, and when I get bored I get mad.”
Pops gulped, then spoke rapid-fire. “People here put up Miller and Leroy, ’long with the girl, when they had that trouble up in Ventura. They—”
I interrupted. “Did they pay you for it?”
Pops cackled. “Where you think everbody is? Miller and Leroy got cousins up the wazoo here, they spread the money around, everbody went up to Oxnard and Big V to spend it. Like to put Miller and Leroy broke they spent so—”
“What?”
“ ‘Fore he died, Leroy told me they spent eight, nine thousand dollars, said this town of ours had hospitality like Hot Springs in the old days.”
I said, “Mister, the ransom money came to a hundred thousand.”
Pops snorted. “Big commotion back where it went bad. Police got most of it, Miller and Leroy got the dregs.”
My first thought was of the Ventura sheriffs holding back big. “Keep going.”
“Well, everybody got happy here, and Miller and Leroy and the cooze holed up, and Miller and Leroy started schemin’ another trade, and they started arguin’ and feudin’ over the girl, and she took to Miller ’cause Leroy was so nasty to her. Then Leroy tried to do her what you might call against her will, and she talked Miller into payin’ back her virtue.”
“Miller killed his own brother?”
“That’s right. And he felt so bad about it he paid me just about his last two hundred dollars to fix that boy up for burial, then put him in the ground when all the cousins got back after spendin’ their money.”
“Then Miller and the girl took off?”
“That’s right. Headed south, brand new black paint on that pretty car of Harwell’s.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. ‘Bout noon.”
“Did they cut the phone lines before they went?”
Pops shrugged. “Don’t think so. Seems to me they was up this mornin’.”
I got the pins and needles tingling up the spine I always got when something was real wrong. Stensland the fed had said that there was “twenty-one hundred something” locked up as evidence, and Miller and Leroy dished out “eight or nine” grand for shelter. That left almost ninety thousand missing. Figure a few thousand blown away during the Mexican standoff—and the rest sucked up—probably by the feds and/or the Ventura sheriffs. And the scary part: if Miller Treadwell took off with Jane Viertel yesterday, it was the law that ambushed us—to make sure Harwell Treadwell didn’t squawk about his brother’s whereabouts—so they couldn’t tell us about their paltry take of the ransom pie.
I put my gun away, said “Bury the degenerate bastard,” and walked out the front door mad—like I’d been sucker punched.
* * *
—
When I got back to the dump where I’d left Davis and our prisoner, they were gone. A fresh wave of panic hit me; then I heard grunts and metal on metal noises coming from the other side of the building. I walked around, and there was Harwell Treadwell chained to a fence and my forty-six-year-old partner embarking on a new career as a hot-rod engineer.
He was working on the jerry-built heap I’d noticed earlier, which now resembled a cross between Buck Rogers’s spaceship and a collection of spare parts some trashcan dog dragged in. It was a Model T chassis with two motorcycle tires on the front, two tractor tires on the back, what looked like a half-dozen hooked-together lawnmower engines, and an undercarriage made up of chicken wire and friction tape. The man himself was on the ground toiling on the drive shaft, and when I reached into the driver’s seat and beeped the horn, he came up gun first, laughing when he saw who it was.
“Woooo, boy! You almost died!”
I walked over and whispered in Davis’s ear. “Miller killed Leroy and took off with the girl in the Auburn yesterday. The Ventura bulls are holding back on the ransom money, and I think it was them shooting at us. Let’s roll now. On foot if this thing won’t go.”
Davis smiled. “She’s got a name, boy. ‘Li’l Assdragger.’ And she’ll fly.”
I heard engines in the distance and stood on the contraption’s running board to grab a look. A three-vehicle caravan was thumping across the hardscrabble that bordered the town, sending up clouds of dust. Squinting hard, I saw black-and-white paint on one car, cherry lights on another.
Davis said, “Them?” I nodded. Suddenly he was a nut-tightening, screw-fastening, wire-connecting dervish, and Harwell Treadwell was shouting, “Come to big brother! Home cookin’ tonight! Come and get me!”
I ran over and fumbled at Treadwell’s bracelets with my handcuff key. I’d just gotten the left one off when he shot me a short right uppercut. Stunned, I started to duck into a crouch; then the free cuff lashed my face, the open ratchet ripping loose a chunk of my brows, blood in my eyes blinding me.
The black-and-white noise drew closer; I heard Davis frantically trying to start Li’l Assdragger. I wiped the blood from my eyes and got my balance just in time to see Harwell Treadwell hotfoot it around the edge of the building. I started to run after him, then the Okie jalopy lurched forward, cutting me off. Davis yelled, “I can’t brake too good. Jump in!”
I did. Davis popped the two foot pedals simultaneously, and the thing crept forward. I shouted “Treadwell!” above the engine noise. Davis shouted “He’ll pay!” twice as loud. On the street, I turned around and looked back, and there was our extraditee running headlong into the three-car dust storm, whooping and waving his arms. A second later I heard shotgun blasts and machine-gun fire, and parts of Treadwell flew in all directions before the storm clouds ate him up. Then I just held on
.
We lurched, we bumped, we hit potholes and jumped three feet off the ground. We brodied through dirt and skidded over the connecting roads that led out of town. We fishtailed when we hit gravel, and we turned doughnuts when we hit wet spots. Davis leadfooted, double and triple clutched, honked stray dogs out of our way, and did everything else but hit the brakes. Dusk started coming on, and then we were on the big, broad Ridge Road southbound, blacktop under our mismatched wheels, a skinny yellow line separating us from collisions with real, live, normal cars. Davis hooted, “Ain’t got no lights!” and a moment later I saw the Wayside Honor Rancho turnoff sign. Davis saw it too, decelerated, pumped the floorboard and hooted “Ain’t got no brakes!” I shut my eyes and felt Li’l Assdragger shimmy. Then it was a triple fishtail-doughnut combo, and we were stone-cold still in the northbound lane, staring down the headlights of death.
We got out and ran. Tire screeches and thud-crunch-cracks behind us told me that Li’l Assdragger was fond recent history. Hugging the shoulder, we trudged over to the turnoff and up a road to the barbed-wire-enclosed guard hut that separated square-john citizens from county inmates. A light flashed on as we approached; I had my badge out and the word Peace on my lips. Then my legs turned to Jell-o, and I passed out thinking I should have more wind than a fat Okie fifteen years my senior.
* * *
—
I woke up to see that fat Okie standing over me in a clean white shirt and sedate print necktie. My first thought was that we had to be dead—Davis Evans would never dress that square unless God himself forced him to.