«Coco-Cola, cigarettes, candy?» asked the girl taking the note Bond handed her.
«No, thanks,» said Bond.
«You’re welcome,» said the girl and sauntered off towards the other late arrivals.
«Mister, for Chrissake willya switch off that crap?» pleaded Ernie Cureo through his teeth. «And keep watching. We’ll give ’em a whiles more. Then get me to a doc. Dig out the slug.» His voice was weak and now that the girl had gone he was half-lying with his head against the door.
«Won’t be long, Ernie. Try and stick it.» Bond fiddled with the speaker, found the switch and silenced the wrangling voices. The huge man on the screen looked as if he was going to hit the woman and her mouth gaped in a noiseless scream.
Bond turned and strained his eyes across the dark expanse behind them. Still nothing. He glanced at the neighbouring cars. Two faces glued together. A shapeless huddle on a back seat. Two prim, rapt, elderly faces staring upwards. The glint of light on an upturned bottle.
And then a wave of musky after-shave lotion came up to his nose and a dark figure rose up from the ground and a gun was in his face, and a voice on the other side of the car beside Ernie Cureo whispered softly, «Okay, fellers. Take it easy.»
Bond looked into the suety face beside him. The eyes were smiling and cold. The wet lips parted and whispered «Out, Limey, or your pal’s cold turkey. My friend has a silencer. You and we’re goin’ for a ride.»
Bond turned his head and saw the black sausage of metal against the back of Ernie Cureo’s neck. He made up his mind. «Okay, Ernie,» he said, «better one than two. I’ll go with them. I’ll soon be back to get you to the doc. Take care of yourself.»
«Funny guy,» said suet-face. He opened the door, keeping his gun trained on Bond’s face.
«Sorry, friend,» said Ernie Cureo in a tired voice. «I guess…» but then there was a sharp thud as the gun hit him behind the ear and he slumped forward and was silent.
Bond gritted his teeth and his muscles lumped under his coat. He wondered if he could reach the Beretta. He glanced from one gun to the other, measuring, adding up odds. The four eyes above the two guns were greedy, longing for an excuse to kill him. The two mouths were smiling, wanting him to try something. He felt his blood cooling. He gave it another minute and then, with his hands in sight, he stepped slowly out of the car with murder tucked away in the back of his mind.
«Go ahead to the gate,» said suet-face softly. «Look natural. I got you covered.» His gun had disappeared, but his hand was in his pocket. The other man joined them and his right hand was at the waist-band of his trousers. He ranged himself on Bond’s other side.
The three men walked swiftly towards the entrance and the moon rising over the mountains straddled their long shadows in front of them across the white sandy floor.
19. SPECTREVILLE
THE red Jaguar was outside the entrance, up against the wall of the enclosure. Bond let them take his gun and climbed in beside the driver.
«No funny tricks if you want to keep your head on straight,» said suet-face, climbing into the rumble seat beside the golf clubs. «There’s a gun on you.»
«Nice little car you once had,» said Bond. The shattered windshield had been lowered flat and a piece of chrome from the radiator stuck up like a pennant between the two wingless front tyres. «Where are we going in the remains?»
«You’ll see,» said the driver, a bony man with a cruel mouth and sideburns. He swung the car out on to the road and accelerated back towards the town, and they were soon in amongst the jungle of neon and then through it and going fast down a two-lane highway that ribboned away across the moonlit desert towards the mountains.
There was a big sign which said ‘95’ and Bond remembered what Ernie Cureo had told him and knew that he was on his way to Spectreville. He hunched down in his seat to protect his eyes from the dust and flies and thought about the immediate future and how to revenge his friend.
So these men and the other two in the Chevrolet had been sent to bring him to Mr Spang. Why had four men been necessary? Surely they were a rather heavyweight answer to Bond’s defiance of his orders in the Casino?
The car lapped up the dead-straight road with the needle of the speedometer wavering around eighty. The telegraph poles shifted by with the click of a metronome.
Bond suddenly felt that he didn’t know quite enough of the answers.
Was he completely exposed as an enemy of the Spangled Mob? He could argue himself out of the game of roulette on the grounds that he hadn’t understood his orders, and if he had been a bit troublesome when the four men came for him, he could at least pretend that he had thought it was a tail from a rival mob. «If you wanted me, why didn’t you just call me in my room?» Bond could hear himself saying in an injured tone of voice.
At least he had shown that he was tough enough for any job Mr Spang might offer him. And in any case, Bond reassured himself, he was just about to achieve his main objective — to get to the end of the pipeline and somehow link Seraffimo Spang with his brother in London.
Bond crouched, his eyes on the luminous dials in front of him, and concentrated on the interview ahead and on wondering how much useful evidence about the pipeline he could possibly extract from it. Later, he thought about Ernie Cureo and the revenge he owed him.
It was not in his make-up to worry about how he himself was going to get away once he had achieved these two objectives. His own safety gave him no concern. He still had no respect for these people. Only contempt and dislike.
Bond was still rehearsing imaginary conversations with Mr Spang when, after two hours’ driving, he felt the speed of the car coming down. He lifted his head above the dashboard. They were coasting up to a section of high wire fence with a gate in it and a big notice lit up by their single spotlight. It said: SPECTREVILLE. CITY LIMITS. DO NOT ENTER. DANGEROUS DOGS. The Car drew up below the notice and beside an iron post embedded in concrete. On the post there was a bellpush and a small iron grill and, written in red: RING AND STATE YOUR BUSINESS.
Without leaving the wheel, sideburns reached out and pressed the button. There was a pause and then a metallic voice said «Yes?»
«Frasso and McGonigle,» said the driver, loudly.
«Okay,» said the voice. There was a sharp click. The high wire gate slowly opened. They drove through and over an iron strip in the narrow dirt road beyond. Bond looked back over his shoulder and saw the gate close behind them. He also noticed with pleasure that the face of, presumably, McGonigle, was plastered with dust and the blood of dead flies.
The dirt road continued for about a mile across the brutal, stony surface of the desert in which an occasional clump of gesticulating cactus was the only vegetation. Then there was a glow ahead and they rounded a spur of mountain and went down a hill and into a brightly lit straggling assembly of about twenty buildings. Beyond, the moon glinted on a single railway track which lanced off, straight as a die, towards the distant horizon.
They drew up among the grey clapboard houses and shops marked DRUGS, BARBER, FARMERS BANK and WELLS FARGO, under a hissing gaslight outside a two-storey building which said in faded gold, PINK. GARTER SALOON, and underneath, Beers and Wines.
From behind the traditional sawn-off swing-doors, yellow light streamed out on to the street and on to the sleek black and silver of a 1920 Stutz Bearcat roadster at the kerb. There was the sweet nasal twang of a honkey-tonk piano playing I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, slightly flat. The music reminded Bond of sawdust floors, nursed drinks and girls’ legs in the widest mesh stockings. The whole scene was like something out of an exceptionally well-mounted ‘Western’.