During the thirty-five minute flight from Los Angeles the lone woman huddled across the aisle aroused his melancholy contempt. She wore a cheap brown hat and had an old straw purse on the seat next to her. Updrafts over the rim of the desert made her tight fists whiten with strain and her eyes burn with fear. She was disgusting: he knew dying was swift and easy.
A slight sandy-haired man took his arm as he left the plane at Palm Springs and said: “Did Mr. David send you down?” His voice was soft and intimate and he wore a red and green sports shirt, khaki pants, and open sandals.
Looking him over, Falkoner nodded coolly. Little men who did not deal in the two great realities of life and death held scant interest for him.
“Fine. I’m Langly. My car’s over here in the lot.”
It was a blue and white 1957 Chrysler. On the blacktop road beyond the airport the sun was warm but the air dry and fresh; scraggly clumps of dusty green vegetation spotted the flat desert like regimented billiard balls on a giant yellow table. They passed a man and woman on horseback, wearing riding breeches, who waved gaily. A Cadillac Eldorado roared by like an escaped rocket, manned by two bleached blondes goggled with bright-rimmed sun glasses.
“Where’s the woman?” asked Falkoner.
“She’s got a shack in a date grove near Rancho Mirage — it’s a new section this side of Palm Desert.”
“Works?”
“Mex place in Palm Desert. She tells fortunes, goes to work at five — she’ll be home now.” Langly’s voice tingled and his bright eyes sparkled ripely. “I guess Mr. David wants her pretty bad, huh? I just notified Los Angeles last night, and you’re here from ’Frisco today to—”
“Let’s go out to her place.”
Langly drove swiftly as if stung by Falkoner’s abruptness. They passed the plush Thunderbird Club and turned left on to a dirt road before the Shadow Mountain Club. Dry clouds of tan dust swirled out behind them.
“When word came she’d left Scottsdale I thought she might try it here — the country’s a lot the same. Then I spotted her at the Mex place from her photo and—”
“Are we close?”
Langly drove across an old wash beyond which the date groves started.
“Next road to the right, first house on the left,” he said. His voice was sharp and piqued. “Only house.”
“Okay. Drive past.”
Down the narrow roadway Falkoner saw the tail of a black Mercury station wagon protruding from behind a palm tree. The shack was hidden by trees.
“That her Merc?”
“Yes. A ’55 Monterey with wood panelling. A beauty.”
After a moment of thought Falkoner said: “Turn around up here and let me off at the roadway. Then you go back to town.”
As he followed directions the other’s actions had a slightly feminine quality. Falkoner got out, walked around the car, and dropped a sealed envelope through the window into Langly’s lap. The envelope crinkled.
“What sort of work do you do?” Falkoner asked.
“I’ve been parking cars at one of the clubs.” Then the voice got malicious; excitement made it almost lisp. “But I did good work on this and I’m going to make sure Mr. David knows about it and about how you’ve treated me.”
“Stick to parking cars, nance,” Falkoner replied. Leaning very close he added confidentially: “You’ve got a leaky face.”
In his steady eyes Langly saw death’s cold scrutiny. He rammed the drive button hurriedly and the Chrysler swept him away down the dusty road.
Palm fronds tickled the roof drily and something gnawed with cautious haste under the sagging wooden porch. Falkoner’s shoes made cat-sounds as he crossed to the screen door. After knocking on the frame he cupped his eyes to peer into the living room. The linoleum was so old it was worn almost white. Across the room sagged a beaten-down green couch, in one corner a red easy chair that looked almost new. There were three straight-backed chairs and one leg of the wooden table in the center of the floor had been cracked and stapled. A plaque reading GOD BLESS OUR HOME decorated one wall.
Before he could call, Genevieve came through the inner doorway. She was as tall as he, nearly six feet, her face fine-featured: straight nose, high cheekbones, thin hungry lips. A red silk scarf was knotted loosely around her neck and her striking figure was displayed by a tight black dress. There were three hairpins in her mouth and her hands were smoothing her hair.
“Yes?” Her voice was husky.
The screen door was unlocked so Falkoner stepped in. When the light touched his features she went stark white and her mouth dropped the hairpins. She ran against him, slanted dark eyes smoky with terror, but he pushed her back.
“Rather a come-down, Genevieve,” he said.
He went through the inner doorway to see a small dirty kitchen with dishes piled in the sink, and a bedroom with a double bed that looked as if two large animals had been fighting on it. The room had a close, intimate smell. As he donned a pair of thin grey gloves he let Genevieve’s voice draw him back to the front room.
“What does he want with me? He... whoever killed Max... I didn’t see who killed Max.”
“If you hadn’t left Arizona he might have believed you.”
“I got tired of the stinking desert and the stinking men with only one thing on their stinking minds.”
Falkoner raised his eyebrows. “The men at the Mex place are different? The desert here is different?”
“I had to eat.” Her mouth made the next word a curse. “Men. You and Mr. David and all the rest. Money and power and women, that’s all you want.” Then the strength left her and her hands crawled up the black dress like broad white spiders to her bosom.
“Isn’t he ever going to let me live in peace?” she whispered.
Falkoner asked: “Did you really think he could let you live at all?” His quick hands closed around her throat like an act of love.
She scrabbled wildly at the iron-hard forearms, reached for his eyes, tried to kick him. She was strong, but the piano-player fingers possessed all the immeasurable strength of evil. A chair was overturned. They went around the table in a slow grotesque dance like cranes mating. He drove her down on the couch and kneed her viciously. The thrashing body, the smell of sweat and perfume aroused him: it was a pity there was no time to have her before she died. A great pity.
Her face darkened, her movements became erratic, lost volition, ceased. Finally her tongue, pink as a baby’s thumb, came out of one corner of her mouth and spittle ran down her cheek. There was a muted sound like cloth tearing. She sprawled under him in a lewd doll-pose of surrender, eyes staring beyond him into the infinite horror of death.
From the pay phone at a gas station on South Palm Drive, Falkoner reversed the charges to a Tuxedo exchange number in San Francisco. While awaiting his connection he placidly smoked a cigarette. The operator said:
“I have a collect call for anyone from a Mr. Simmons in Palm Springs. Will you accept the charges?”
A flat voice answered: “Put him on.”
Falkoner ground out his cigarette against the window of the booth and said “Yes” into the receiver. There was no response so he hung up, paid for his gas, and left Palm Springs, driving west across the desert on U.S. 101. At U.S. 99 he went north to Colton, cut across to U.S. 66 on a dirt road, and again pointed the Mercury at the far thin glow of Los Angeles. He counted bugs as they squashed against the windshield, and at nine o’clock ate Mexican food in a small adobe diner. It had been a clean hit: her body, wrapped in a blanket, was stuffed in the spare tire well under the floor section of the Mercury, and a suitcase full of her personal things rode beside him. Yet he lacked the usual drained empty peace. Around midnight some instinct made him pull in at a motel near Glendora, two hours from the city.