The driver edged over to the side of the bank and shut his motor off. He lit a cigarette and draped an arm on the back seat.
He smiled at me. He had a nice smile — like an alligator. «We’ll have a drink on it,» Red-eyes said. «I wish I could make me a grand that easy. Just tyin’ my nose to my chin.»
«You ain’t got no chin,» Louie said, and went on smiling. Red-eyes put the Colt down on the seat and drew a flat halfpint out of his side pocket. It looked like good stuff, green stamp, bottled in bond. He unscrewed the top with his teeth, sniffed at the liquor and smacked his lips.
«No Crow McGee in this,» he said. «This is the company spread. Tilt her.»
He reached along the seat and gave me the bottle. I could have had his wrist, but there was Louie, and I was too far from my ankle.
I breathed shallowly from the top of my lungs and held the bottle near my lips, sniffed carefully. Behind the charred smell of the bourbon there was something else, very faint, a fruity odor that would have meant nothing to me in another place. Suddenly and for no reason at all I remembered something Larry Batzel had said, something like: «East of Realito, towards the mountains, near the old cyanide plant.» Cyanide. That was the word.
There was a swift tightness in my temples as I put the bottle to my mouth. I could feel my skin crawling, and the air was suddenly cold on it. I held the bottle high up around the liquor level and took a long gurgling drag at it. Very hearty and relaxing. About half a teaspoonful went into my mouth and none of that stayed there.
I coughed sharply and lurched forward gagging. Red-eyes laughed.
«Don’t say you’re sick from just one drink, pal.»
I dropped the bottle and sagged far down in the seat, gagging violently. My legs slid way to the left, the left one underneath. I sprawled down on top of them, my arms limp. I had the gun.
I shot him under my left arm, almost without looking. He never touched the Colt except to knock it off the seat. The one shot was enough. I heard him lurch. I snapped a shot upward towards where Louie would be.
Louie wasn’t there. He was down behind the front seat. He was silent. The whole car, the whole landscape was silent. Even the rain seemed for a moment to be utterly silent rain.
I still didn’t have time to look at Red-eyes, but he wasn’t doing anything. I dropped the Luger and yanked the tommy gun out from under the rug, got my left hand on the front grip, got it set against my shoulder low down. Louie hadn’t made a sound.
«Listen, Louie,» I said softly, «I’ve got the stutter gun. How’s about it?»
A shot came through the seat, a shot that Louie knew wasn’t going to do any good. It starred a frame of unbreakable glass. There was more silence. Louie said thickly: «I got a pineapple here. Want it?»
«Pull the pin and hold it,» I said. «It will take care of both of us.»
«Hell!» Louie said violently. «Is he croaked? I ain’t got no pineapple.»
I looked at Red-eyes then. He looked very comfortable in the corner of the seat, leaning back. He seemed to have three eyes, one of them redder even than the other two. For under-arm shooting that was something to be almost bashful about. It was too good.
«Yeah, Louie, he’s croaked,» I said. «How do we get together?»
I could hear his hard breathing now, and the rain had stopped being silent. «Get out of the heap,» he growled. «I’ll blow.»
«You get out, Louie. I’ll blow.»
«Jeeze, I can’t walk home from here, pal.»
«You won’t have to, Louie. I’ll send a car for you.»
«Jeeze, I ain’t done nothing. All I done was drive.»
«Then reckless driving will be the charge, Louie. You can fix that — you and your organization. Get out before I uncork this popgun.»
A door latch clicked and feet thumped on the running board, then on the roadway. I straightened up suddenly with the chopper. Louie was in the road in the rain, his hands empty and the alligator smile still on his face.
I got out past the dead man’s neatly shod feet, got my Colt and the Luger off the floor, laid the heavy twelve-pound tommy gun back on the car floor. I got handcuffs off my hip, motioned to Louie. He turned around sulkily and put his hands behind him.
«You got nothing on me,» he complained. «I got protection.»
I clicked the cuffs on him and went over him for guns, much more carefully than he had gone over me. He had one besides the one he had left in the car.
I dragged Red-eyes out of the car and let him arrange himself on the wet roadway. He began to bleed again, but he was quite dead. Louie eyed him bitterly.
«He was a smart guy,» he said. «Different. He liked tricks. Hello, smart guy.»
I got my handcuff key out and unlocked one cuff, dragged it down and locked it to the dead man’s lifted wrist.
Louie’s eyes got round and horrified and at last his smile went away.
«Jeeze,» he whined. «Holy — ! Jeeze. You ain’t going to leave me like this, pal?»
«Goodbye, Louie,» I said. «That was a friend of mine you cut down this morning.»
«Holy — !» Louie whined.
I got into the sedan and started it, drove on to a place where I could turn, drove back down the hill past him. He stood stiffly as a scorched tree, his face as white as snow, with the dead man at his feet, one linked hand reaching up to Louie’s hand. There was the horror of a thousand nightmares in his eyes.
I left him there in the rain.
It was getting dark early. I left the sedan a couple of blocks from my own car and locked it up, put the keys in the oil strainer. I walked back to my roadster and drove downtown.
I called the homicide detail from a phone booth, asked for a man named Grinnell, told him quickly what had happened and where to find Louie and the sedan. I told him I thought they were the thugs that machine-gunned Larry Batzel. I didn’t tell him anything about Dud O’Mara.
«Nice work,» Grinnell said in a queer voice. «But you better come in fast. There’s a tag out for you, account of what some milk driver phoned in an hour ago.»
«I’m all in,» I said. «I’ve got to eat. Keep me off the air and I’ll come in after a while.»
«You better come in, boy. I’m sorry, but you better.»
«Well, okay,» I said.
I hung up and left the neighborhood without hanging around. I had to break it now. I had to, or get broken myself.
I had a meal down near the Plaza and started for Realito.
SIX
At about eight o’clock two yellow vapor lamps glowed high up in the rain and a dim stencil sign strung across the highway read: «Welcome to Realito.»
Frame houses on the main street, a sudden knot of stores, the lights of the corner drugstore behind fogged glass, a flying cluster of cars in front of a tiny movie palace, and a dark bank on another corner, with a knot of men standing in front of it in the rain. That was Realito. I went on. Empty fields closed in again.
This was past the orange country; nothing but the empty fields and the crouched foothills, and the rain.
It was a smart mile, more like three, before I spotted a side road and a faint light on it, as if from behind drawn blinds in a house. Just at that moment my left front tire let go with an angry hiss. That was cute. Then the right rear let go the same way.
I stopped almost exactly at the intersection. Very cute indeed. I got out, turned my raincoat up a little higher, unshipped a flash, and looked at a flock of heavy galvanized tacks with heads as big as dimes. The flat shiny butt of one of them blinked at me from my tire.