1957
SUPLEE WAS A weathered trio of adobe buildings on a sunbaked plain of sand and scrub brush 224 miles northeast of L.A. where a state road crossed US91. Two box houses sat on one side of the state road. Across that black snake was a truck stop cafe and gas station. My car was up on the rack in the garage and I was nursing a cup of coffee in the cafe, pretending to study the menu while I considered my next move, when she walked in.
We all turned to look: the beatnik couple at the next table, the trucker perched on a counter stool reading a newspaper, the waitress filling the trucker’s mug at the coffee urn, and the beefy man behind the cash register. She had wind-twisted long brown curls, wore an Air Corps leather jacket over a snap-buttoned cowboy shirt, khaki slacks, and battered black flats. Her purse was black and bulky and probably went to the prom. When she brushed the hair off her face she was maverick beautiful, with wide lips, a fine nose, and bright green eyes. The air around her was electric. She got her bearings, went to the counter, and drank the glass of water beside the trucker.
“Broke down,” she said, putting the empty glass on the counter, “about a mile back. You got a wrecker?”
“Thirsty?” cracked the waitress without a smile.
“Get Billy,” the man behind the cash register told the waitress. An open door connected the cafe to the garage bay. The wheels of my car were visible six feet off the cement. The waitress walked to that door and yelled at the kid in overalls.
“Mister,” Billy said to me as he walked in from the garage, “I pulled off two tires, but ain’t found . . . ”
Billy saw the girl, lost his voice. The calendar said they were about the same age, but the calendar lied.
“She needs a wrecker,” said the cash register man. “’Bout a mile back north. That right?”
“Yes,” said the girl. “My brothers are with the car.”
The trucker’s toothpick changed corners in his mouth.
“You mean you got two men in the car, ’n’ they let you walk it out?” he said.
“Sure.” She smiled at Billy. He blushed.
“What the hell kind of men are they?” said the trucker. “Letting a woman walk. This out here ain’t safe like the city.”
“Hank,” said Billy to the man behind the register, nodding toward me, “I ain’t figured what’s making noise in this guy’s car. He’s still up on the hoist.”
“Go ahead and pull them in,” I said, grateful for the luck. “I’m in no hurry.”
“Be right with you!” he told the girl.
“Go without me,” she said, and Billy’s face fell. “It’s the only broke-down car between here and there. The guys will take care of you.”
Billy left in the wrecker. The girl sat one stool away from the trucker, her back to the counter, watching the rest of us. The trucker ordered a hot roast beef sandwich. The beat couple whined about no club sandwiches on the menu, ordered hamburgers.
“What about you?” asked the waitress when she got to me.
“Steak sandwich,” I told her.
“What’s wrong with your car?” Her name tag read Anna.
“Ask Billy,” I said. “Many people live in this town?”
“Not enough to be a town,” Anna said and we laughed. “Me and Billy drive over from Baker.”
The girl took her purse and went into the bathroom.
“Who does live here?”
“Looking to move?” I smiled, and she said: “Just Hank, the owner, Sal, the cook, and a sheepherder and Hell, he’s a drunk.”
“Lot of people ’round here use the bus?” I asked, nodding to the Greyhound sign on the wall.
“Ain’t a lot of people around here. You gotta drive to get here, so if you got a car, why take the bus? How come you want to know?”
“No special reason.”
It was one of those high desert days when the thermometer says you should be in shirt-sleeves but the wind carries a dry chill and a thousand needles of sand. I’d drained my coffee and was considering taking off my suit coat when the girl came out of the bathroom. Billy would have blushed again. She’d combed her hair until it fell evenly to her shoulders, washed her face, and painted her lips dark red. She stared out the windows.
“That’s an awful lot of nothing out there,” she said.
“The map calls it the Devil’s Playground,” said Hank.
“He don’t need no special place,” she told the world.
“Know all about that, do you?” cracked Hank.
“Enough,” she answered. She nodded to the cooler behind the register. “You got any beer?”
“You got any I.D.?” Hank leered at her.
She pouted, gave him her back, and sat on a stool.
“The boys will want beer,” she told everyone and no one.
Out the front window I saw the wrecker turn off the highway, a red Dodge in tow. Billy backed the Dodge toward the empty bay. Two men jumped out the wrecker and headed to the cafe.
They walked in like they owned the place. The leader wore a Levi jacket over a white tee-shirt, rolled cuffed blue jeans, and black engineer boots with heels designed to make him feel six feet tall. He was a pretty boy, with dirty blond hair greased up and combed back, pale skin, a wild grin, and dancing blue eyes. His companion wore an old-fashioned canvas duster that covered him past his knees. His face implied an I.Q. well into double digits. He walked with a gimpy left leg.
“How we doin’, Nora?” asked pretty boy. He stayed by the door. His eyes sized up the room. The gimp walked to the register, asked Hank for a beer. Hank opened the cooler.
“So you’re the two heroes who sent a girl for help,” said the trucker, spinning round on his stool to face pretty boy.
“We figured nobody would tell her no.” Pretty boy smiled.
“Maybe she should ride with more man behind the wheel.”
The girl named Nora cautioned: “Jesse.”
“She’s fine with what she’s got,” said pretty boy Jesse.
At the register, the gimp laughed.
The trucker shook his head with disgust, turned back to his meal and newspaper.
“How we all doing today?” Jesse asked us. The beatniks ignored him. I shrugged.
The door to the garage bays opened and Billy came in.
“Mister,” he said to Jesse, “I checked your engine and—”
“I told you not to mess with it.” Jesse’s voice was cold.
“Hey, fixin’ cars is what I do. Did you know you got a couple holes punched in your radiator?”
“No,” said Jesse.
“How in the hell couldn’t you know?” continued Billy. The gimp leaned against the window, watched Hank and Anna behind the counter. “Almost looks like somebody shot your car.”
The trucker stood, dropped a couple of bills on the counter beside his newspaper. He kept his eyes off Nora two stools away and walked toward the front door where Jesse stood.
“Where you going?” said Jesse.
“Back on the road.” The trucker’s voice was strained. “Gotta make Texas by midnight.”
“You got plenty of time,” said Jesse. “Sit a spell. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
The trucker swung hard from his hip. His fist smashed into Jesse’s jaw and the small man crashed to the floor. The trucker leapt over Jesse’s legs and grabbed the door handle, all while I was getting to my feet. Jesse rolled, came up with a revolver. The gun cracked three times. Two red circles popped up on the trucker’s back and a crimson line creased the side of his head. He fell half in, half out the door.
The gimp pulled a police riot gun from under his duster—now I knew why he’d limped. The shotgun swung from Hank to us and back again.
Nora sat on her stool, clutching her purse.
“You!” Jesse screamed at Billy, who stared at the fallen trucker, mouth open, face pale. “Drag him back in here!”
When Billy didn’t move, Jesse slapped him. Billy pulled the trucker inside the cafe.
The beatnik woman screamed.
“Shut up!” yelled Jesse. To Hank: “Who’s out back?”
“Just . . . just the Mex cook!”
“Scooter!”
The gimp motioned Hank and Anna from behind the counter, then ran into the kitchen.
The beatnik woman screamed again.
“Shut her up!” yelled Jesse. Her man pressed his hands over her mouth.
“All of you! Over there!”
They joined me by the wall.
“Take him with you.”
Billy and I pulled the trucker into our group. His head wound wasn’t deep, but he was unconscious.
“Is he dead?” asked Jesse.
“No,” I said. “So far it’s just assault.”
Jesse laughed. Scooter herded a curly black-haired man out of the kitchen and over to us: Sal, the cook. His skin was olive. Sal wore a long-sleeved white shirt.
“Who else is in this town?” Jesse asked Hank.
The cafe owner stammered, pointed to one of the two houses across the highway.
“J-just a rummy. Louis. He’s probably in there.”
“Invite him over, Scooter.”
Scooter ran out.
“Well, now,” said Jesse, the revolver dangling from his hand, “I bet this isn’t what any of you expected.”
“What do you want?” cried the woman. “Our money—”
“Good idea. Nora, get their wallets.”
Billy stood at my side; when Nora got to us, she whispered: “Be careful!”
Jesse swung a chair around cowboy-style, sat down. Nora brought him the wallets. He kept one eye on us and used his free hand to pull out the green. My luck held, and he didn’t flip my billfold open and find the special deputy’s badge.
Scooter pushed a disheveled man through the front door and into our group: Louis, the sheepherder, reeking of whiskey.
“This isn’t exactly what we planned,” said Jesse.
“What plan?” snapped Nora.
“You ain’t got no complaints so far,” said Jesse. She frowned, stared at her shoes.
Scooter whined: “When we gonna get out of here?”
Jesse smiled. “We just got here.”
“There’ll be troopers.”
“Maybe there will, maybe there won’t.”
“They’ll see that one in the ditch, find his car.”
“These are lonesome roads,” said Jesse. “You never know who you’re going to find. Or when.”
The wind rattled the screen door.
“You hungry?” asked Jesse. Scooter nodded. Jesse wagged his pistol at the owner. “Fix us some burgers, man.”
“I ain’t the cook,” said Hank. He nodded to the curly-haired man. “Sal is.”
“You hire him ’cause he cooks good?” asked Jesse.
“I hired him ’cause he came along. He does the cooking’ and I do the bossin’.”
“Bet you’re a fair man, too, ain’t ya?” Jesse smiled.
“Damn right!” insisted Hank. For a moment, he forgot about the guns. “I ain’t like some. I work ’em all fair, colored or Mex, long as they know their place.”
“You’re a good man,” said Jesse. “Ain’t he, Sal?”
“I’ve known worse,” answered the cook. He had a thick accent, more guttural than most Mexicans.
“Maybe we should get him to give you a raise,” Jesse said.
“I just want to be left alone,” Sal replied.
“Can’t oblige you, amigo,” said Jesse. “Scooter, take Sal back to the kitchen, have him fry us some burgers. On your way, get the green in the till. And check around there real good.”
“We gotta get going,” whined Scooter, but he waved the shotgun at Sal.
“You be good now,” Jesse told the cook. “Follow orders.”
“I know how to do that.” Sal walked toward the kitchen. Scooter called him up short while he cleaned out the till. Scooter smiled, reached beneath the counter, and came up with a Winchester .30-.30 lever-action saddle rifle.
“Expecting Indians?” said Jesse. Scooter laughed. Shotgun in one hand, Winchester in the other, he marched Sal back into the kitchen. “Any more iron around?”
The owner shook his head.
“Mister,” said Anna, the waitress, “I’m going to get the first-aid kit under the counter and tend to this man.”
“Knock yourself out, sister.”
The trucker lay on his back, pale, his chest slowly moving. I rolled him over, tore away his shirt. There should have been more blood coming out of the two holes in his back.
Jesse waved his .22 revolver. “He’s lucky I wasn’t packing more gun.
“Oh, he’s real lucky,” I said as Anna came over with the tin first-aid box.
“I’ll help,” said Nora. Jesse frowned as she left his side to stand next to me. “I’ve never seen a man shot before.”
“Sure you have,” I whispered. If Jesse heard me, he made no sign. Nora blushed. “How many have you guys gunned so far?”
“Hush,” she whispered back. “He’ll hear us.”
Anna and I stuck compress bandages over the holes in the trucker’s back, put some tape over the crease on his skull. Nora watched us for a few moments, then drifted to the kitchen.
“Give me a hand,” I said to the beatnik man. He wore a green corduroy jacket, khaki pants, a black turtleneck to match the one worn by his pale blonde woman friend. He had a beard, shaggy hair, and thin wrists. The trucker gurgled when we lifted him, and the beatnik woman began to cry. From the kitchen came the spatter and crackle of frying meat.
“Holy cow!” whispered Billy, color returning to his face.
We laid the trucker across tables Billy pushed together.
“Who are you people?” said the beatnik woman. “What do you want?”
“Lady,” said Jesse, “we are whoever we want to be.”
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered. “We’re just on our way to San Francisco—”
“Why?” Jesse spread his arms wide. “Because we can.”
“Mister,” said Billy, “you’re in real trouble with the police.”
Jesse laughed, held his forehead to keep from crying.
“That’s probably what it says in the newspapers,” I said, nodding to the folded journal the trucker had left beside his plate.
Those blue eyes raised up from Jesse’s hand; he walked backward to the counter and picked up the paper.
“So that’s what put a burr under his saddle!” Jesse read the paper to us: “’Police in five Western states are searching for three young murder suspects believed headed for California.’
“Ain’t everybody headed to California?” He grinned, continued: “ ‘Police in Riverton, Wyoming, say Jesse Edwards shot and killed Harley Benson, the stepfather of his girlfriend, Nora Benson, two days ago. Authorities say the girl may be a victim’ . . . Hah! . . . ‘a victim Edwards kidnapped. Before fleeing in a stolen car, Edwards stopped at the city jail, where his reform school roommate, Eugene Pandono, also known as Scooter, was in custody for burglary. Edwards shot and killed the jailer, and fled with Pandono. The stolen car was abandoned in Idaho, where police found the body of a salesman but not his car.’
“Hear that, folks? We’re famous! Hey, babe!” he called out to the kitchen. “We’re really going places now!”
“Where?” I asked.
“America, you know?” Jesse smiled. “It’s a big place.”
Sal and Nora walked out of the kitchen, carrying plates of hamburgers, french fries. Scooter came behind them carrying artillery. He left the Winchester on the counter, grabbed three beers from the cooler, and walked to the food table. They sent Sal to join us. Scooter and Jesse sat with their eyes our way.
“Hey, man,” whined Scooter. “Let’s go, huh?”
“It’s lunchtime!” Jesse nodded to Hank. “You got a jukebox in here?”
“There’s a radio by the coffee urn,” said waitress Anna.
“Well, sister,” Jesse told her, “let’s have some tunes.”
Anna slowly walked past the seated trio, behind the counter. She turned on the radio, got the news: Joe McCarthy was dead, the Teamsters were being thrown out of the AFL-CIO for being run by crooks, there was trouble in the Middle East.
“Did you hear England’s got the bomb?” Jesse asked us over the commercial for life insurance. He grinned. “It’s 1957: now everybody can die.”
Anna glanced at the rifle lying on the counter.
Without looking at her, Jesse said: “Forget it, sister.”
Anna turned the radio louder and came back to my side.
“You people spread out in a line so I can see all of you,” said Jesse, and we complied. “You can sit down.”
I pulled a chair next to Anna’s. If we whispered, I didn’t think they could hear us over the radio.
“You did the smart thing,” I told her.
“Somebody ought to shoot that bastard,” she said.
“Somebody will. Are there any more guns in here?”
She shook her head.
“How long you known these guys? Not them,” I added, ruling out the trio. “Hank. The sheepherder Louis. The Mexican cook.”
“Sal maybe ain’t Mex. Anybody who ain’t white, black, or Indian is Mex to Hank. What the hell do you care?”
“Just curious,” I lied.
“I just came to these parts five years ago,” she said. “I should’ve stayed in Butte.”
Billy sat next to me, his hand thrust in his overalls. “Hank’s been here since I was born. He should have kept a pistol under there. Maybe they’d’ve missed it. Maybe I . . . ”
“You stay smart, too,” I said. The trio were intent on their lunch. Through the side door to the garage I saw my car up on the hoist. “Where’s the switch to drop the hoist?”
“Mister, you got no tires on . . . ” My glare cut him short. “The operating switch is by the bay door. There’s a master hydraulic switch right around the corner there. You could flip it standing in here and it’d drop like a giant snowflake, but . . . ”
“I know where it is,” said Anna.
“It won’t make any sound coming down,” I said. “If either of you can, when they aren’t watching, drop my car.”
“Who are you, mister?” said Billy.
“Come on, Jesse!” Scooter, whining again. “Let’s grab one of their cars and go!”
The radio played “Seventy-Six Trombones.”
“Scooter,” said Jesse, leaning back in his chair, “you gotta think more. That’s why you always end up in trouble.”
I stood, and Scooter’s shotgun swung my way.
“Mind if we walk around a little back here?” I nodded to the trucker stretched out on the tables. “Check him out?”
“Move slow,” said Jesse, “or you’ll end up beside him.”
“Let me help,” said Nora. She brought her purse and met me beside the trucker. Her green eyes walked up and down my frame.
The trucker was cool and dry. His ribs were still and I felt no heartbeat. Nora watched me.
“He’s okay,” I told Jesse. “Out, but he’ll make it.”
And Nora knew I’d lied.
“You’re real smart,” she whispered to me. “I need a real smart man to get me out of this.”
“You got Jesse,” I told her.
“It isn’t like it looks,” she said. Bit her lip.
Sal the cook and the grizzled sheepherder were sitting at a table apart from the others. I sat down between them.
“Ain’t never seen nothin’ like this,” said Louis the sheepherder. His hands shook as he tried to roll a cigarette. Tobacco rained on the floor. Nora stared at me, then sat in a chair between her friends and the rest of us. “Ain’t never.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“So how we going to get out of here?” whined Scooter.
“Saw a boy cut up in a bar in ’Bama,” Louis told me. He succeeded in filling the papers with tobacco. Used both hands to hold the papers to his lips, licked them shut. “Saw a bear rip up a herder on the mesa in forty-two, but I ain’t never seen no one shot.”
I settled in my chair.
“Scooter,” said Jesse, “you’re right. There’ll be cops, sooner or later. Probably roadblocks.” Jesse’s eyes roamed over us, over the cafe walls. He saw the Greyhound sign. Smiled.
“They’ll be stoppin’ every car,” Jesse nodded to the trucker, “every truck. We take one of their heaps, we’re no better off’n now. This piss ant place is a bus stop, ain’t it?”
Hank nodded.
“When’s the next bus?” said Jesse.
“The four-oh-two,” answered Hank. “Goes to Los Angeles.”
“Hey, baby!” Jesse called to Nora. She looked at him impassively. “Hollywood! You always wanted to be a star!”
Sal, the cook, sat to my left. His white shirt-sleeves were buttoned on his wrists, and his hands were crossed in his lap. I’ve smelled a lot of fear on a lot of men, in my own sweat, but nothing like that came off of Sal. He sat there like a curly-haired doll. Waiting without much wonder for whatever would happen.
“Sal’s a funny name for a Mexican,” I whispered.
“It’s good enough for Hank.” His accent was soft, and like no Mexican I ever heard. “Somebody must stop them.”
“Somebody will,” I told him. “It’s not always easy to know what to do.”
“That’s a lie,” he said. “A lie we tell ourselves so we don’t have to face the truth. We know what to do, but we pretend we don’t so we don’t have to do anything.”
“We’ll just get on that bus,” Jesse told his companions, “and ride it through the roadblocks and into the bigtime.”
“We ain’t got no tickets,” said Scooter seriously.
Jesse laughed. He lifted Scooter’s shotgun barrel.
“Sure we do,” he said.
“It’s only one-thirty,” said Scooter. “What are we going to do till then?”
“Till then?” Jesse smiled at us, like a cobra at a rabbit. “Till then, we’ll just have to keep ourselves amused.”
“What if you do the wrong thing?” I whispered to Sal.
“Then you carry it through life,” he said. “If you’re lucky, you die so people can forget you, get on with their lives.”
“What’s going to happen to us?” the beatnik man asked Jesse.
“Nothing,” I quickly and loudly said. Jesse’s eyes locked on me. “Nothing at all. Because they’re smart. Whatever’s behind them is behind them. They’re running, and they don’t want to make the law dogs any madder, any hungrier for ’em than they already are. Hell, here they just shot up a guy a little. No big deal. Nothing to change their hand.”
Beside me, I heard Sal sigh in disgust.
“You’re pretty smart,” said Jesse. “You don’t look like no salesman or tourist. What’s your name?”
“Marlowe. Philip Marlowe.”
“Honey,” he told Nora, “dig through those wallets and find me Mr. Philip Marlowe.”
She did. He flipped it open. Found the badge. When he held it out for all to see, Scooter swung his shotgun at me.
“Keep looking,” I said. “That tin is only for suckers.”
“Well, well, well,” said Jesse, pulling my photostat from the wallet. “You’re a private detective.
“Hey, honey!” he yelled to Nora, who’d moved back between us, her green eyes staring at me. Her red lips were open. “He’s a private eye! Like, we’re in the movies!
“And he might be packing a gun. Check him out, sugar.”
Nora walked over to me as I stood, pulled my jacket wide. She came close. Her hands slid over my chest, down along my sides. When they reached my belt, she slid them around to my back. Her breasts brushed my shirt. Her hair was thick and musty below my chin. She wore dime-store lilac perfume and nothing before or since has ever smelled so sweet. Jesse’s eyes burned.
She stepped back, whispered, “Help me.”
To Jesse, she said, “He doesn’t have a gun.”
She walked away from me slow and easy, her pants tight across her round hips. She looked back over her shoulder. The red lips smiled.
“So, Marlowe,” said Jesse, “what’s a big-time L.A. dick like you doing in a nowhere town like this?”
“I’m looking for a man,” I said.
“You lookin’ for me?” Jesse tapped his chest.
“You’re not my business,” I told him.
“So you’re lucky. Who you looking for?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
Jesse flipped open the cylinder on his .22 revolver. He flicked out the three spent shells from the trucker, fished three fresh bullets from his jacket pocket, reloaded the cylinder, snapped it shut. The gun stared at me.
“You better know,” he told me. “And you better come across with it. I don’t like dicks doing what I don’t know.”
“My client is the wife of a movie producer—”
“See, babe?” said Jesse. “I told you you’d be a star.”
“She’s from Germany,” I said. “Jewish. When she was a girl, her father sent her, her mother, brothers and sisters, and cousins to America. Get away from the Nazis. Her father stayed behind. Her uncle, his older brother, ran the family business. The uncle figured it would be just another pogrom, rough but survivable. He convinced the father to stay behind, too, and help mind the family store.”
“That wasn’t so smart,” said Jesse.
“No,” I agreed. “They rode the train to Auschwitz.”
“Your client hire you to kill Nazis? Here?”
“Two weeks ago, a man came into the big synagogue in L.A. He bought two Yahrzeit candles. One for her father, Abraham Muller. One for her uncle, Saul Muller. My client hired me to find out who’s lighting candles for her dead kin.”
“Why light candles for the dead?” said Nora softly. “It’s the living who need them.”
“Why look for that guy here?” asked Jesse.
“All the rabbi got out of him was that he had a four hour and twenty minute bus ride from L.A. to where he was going. This is the third bus stop about four hours and twenty minutes from L.A.”
Jesse shook his head. He stood.
“Marlowe, you ain’t so big-time after all. Come on,” he waved his pistol. “Let’s you and me look outside. Maybe we’ll find your candle lighter.”
He made me lead the way. Outside, by the gas pumps, he told me to turn around. He kept three long steps away.
“Kind of dumb thing to do,” he said.
The wind blew bullets of sand in our faces, but none closed his eyes. We squinted at each other.
“What?” I asked him.
“Take your pick,” he said. “Playin’ with the Nazis. Hunting somebody who lights candles for ghosts.”
“Killing a trooper,” I said.
Jesse shrugged. “He shouldn’t have caught us.”
“What about the others?”
“The paper didn’t mention I stole a car from some folks who were nice to us. They walked.”
“I get the idea.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t. I seen you looking at Nora.”
“I couldn’t help it. You sent her to me.”
“Man, nobody sends her nowhere. She goes where she wants. You best remember that. You also better remember what all I done for her. Her old man, always hasselin’ me. Stepfather, and he didn’t want no man around her. Specially me. ’Tween you and me . . . I think he had the taste for her himself.”
“She could give it to anybody.”
“Yeah,” he shook his head. “He come down to my shack. Shouldn’t ever bother a man at his place.”
“No,” I agreed, “you shouldn’t.”
“What you said back there. About the law dogs. They catch us, you think maybe we can walk? Couple years, sure, but . . . ”
“You killed some badges, a salesman, her old man.” I shrugged while I racked my mind for an answer he’d believe. “If that stops now, if they catch you alive or you surrender . . . you got a chance to cop a crazy plea.”
He laughed into the wind.
“Crazy? Man, all I been is sane. The world’s crazy! People always messing with me, never letting me have what I want, thinking they’s better. Nora, she knew me, knew I’d get her old man off her back and her out of that two-bit town, but no, they had to go messin’ with me. And Scooter, lockin’ him up. Jesse don’t forget his friends. Or his enemies. Crazy? Hell, no, I ain’t crazy!”
“When they catch you,” I said, “it’s worth a shot.”
“If they catch me, Marlowe. And there’s only one kind of shot makes any sense.”
“Can we go back inside?”
“Sure,” he said. “I figured you for a wiseguy, but you don’t know nothing I don’t know.”
As we walked toward the cafe, I said, “Does Nora know how deep in trouble you got her?”
“I warned you about her.” Jesse laughed. “Does Nora know? Just ’cause she looks that good don’t mean she’s stupid. An’ she knows she travels with me till I say no.”
As my hand touched the cafe screen door, Jesse said: “Hey, Marlowe. You go getting sweet on her, remember: she called her old man and told him where we were.”
“Jesse,” said Scooter when we walked through the door, “what are we going to do? It’s two hours till the bus comes!”
“You got T.V. here?” asked Jesse.
“Not yet,” said Hank, shaking his head. I sat next to Sal, the cook.
“Hell, Scooter! We got beer, we got a radio.” He grinned at Nora. Her stare back was cold and hard. “We’ll have us a party.”
The radio played “Young Love.”
“Hey, babe!” Jesse shuffled across the cafe floor to where Nora sat. “They’re playing our song!”
He tucked his pistol in his belt and pulled Nora to her feet. Whirled her into his arms. The song had a tangled rhythm for dancing, but they didn’t seem to mind. He was wild smiles and flashing eyes. She leaned back into his arms, swung her hair.
“What will they do to us?” the beatnik woman whispered to her man.
“They’ll let us go. We’ll be okay,” he replied. “We just have to do what they say.”
“Follow orders?” It was Sal, the cook. Whispering to no one in particular as we watched the mad dance. “Trust them?”
“We don’t have much choice,” I said. “Not yet. If we can make a better chance . . . ”
“What chance? You wait like sheep and you die or go on living and be better off dead, better dead to the world.”
“Bide your time,” I hissed to him. “We’ll make it.”
The song ended. Nora left Jesse in the middle of the dance floor. She shot me a glance all we prisoners saw, a plea.
“What about me?” whined Scooter.
I glanced to my right. Billy and Anna the waitress sat closest to the door to the garage. They saw my look.
“You? Hell, Scooter! Grab yourself a girl!” Jesse looked us over, said, “Ain’t nobody here gonna complain.”
And I went cold. Knew.
Scooter put his shotgun on the table by Jesse. Licked his lips, ran his hand through his greasy black hair. The radio played a commercial for laundry soap. Scooter walked over to Anna.
“You’ll have to shoot me first.” She stood up, put her back against the wall. Ten feet from the side door.
“You’re too old and skinny anyway,” he said.
Scooter swung his beady eyes to the beatnik woman. She had heavy breasts beneath her black sweater. Scooter held out his hand. She started to cry.
“No,” she moaned softly. “Please. No.”
“Just a dance,” yelled Jesse. He lifted Scooter’s shotgun off the table. “Hey, Scooter—you need this big long thing?”
The beatnik woman looked at her man. He stared at the floor.
Scooter jerked her out of her chair. The radio played “Love Letters in the Sand.”
She was taller than Scooter. He ground his hips into her, dug his chin into her shoulder, her right hand twisted down and trapped in his. Over the music, we could hear her sobbing.
In the reflection of the windows, I saw Anna reach through the side door. Jesse was laughing, watching his buddy paw the beatnik woman. My car slowly, silently slid down the hoist.
The song ended. The woman tried to break away, but Scooter pulled her with him. Headed outside, toward the houses across the highway. She cried, dragged her feet. Pleaded, “No!”
“All this stops!” yelled Sal. He stood. “Let her go! Get out of here!”
“Sit down!” yelled Jesse. His hand rested on his pistol. “Mind your own business or—”
Anna moved from the door. I stood, turned my back to Jesse, and tried to push Sal down in his chair. He shrugged me off, moved me aside—moved me closer to the door. I kept my feet, backed toward the wall as if I was distancing myself from the cook.
“Or what?” shouted Sal. “Your bullets can’t kill me. Now let her go and get out!”
Sal walked toward Jesse, toward the beatnik woman and Scooter. Nora moved out of the way.
“You ain’t very smart for a Mexican,” snapped Jesse.
Sal lunged toward Jesse.
The beatnik woman broke free from Scooter.
Jesse was on his feet, backpedaling. He shot at Sal’s chest. Fired again. By the time he fired the third round I was at the door. Jesse yelled: “Get Marlowe!” and fired again. Sal draped his body on the gun that Jesse emptied into him. I ran into the garage. The beatnik woman screamed as I jerked open my car door, dove across the seat, opened the glove compartment, found the Luger I hadn’t needed to carry on a simple ghost hunt. Behind me in the cafe I heard a crash: Billy jumped Scooter, got knocked down by the shotgun butt. Billy bought the seconds I needed. I’d rolled to my back, was sitting up when Scooter and his shotgun filled the doorway. I shot him and shot him and shot him, and he fell.
Screams echoed inside the cafe as I squirmed out of my car. I sent a round high through the door to keep them inside and scurried out the garage to the front of the building, ducking low behind the beatniks’ car and circling toward the cafe windows.
When I stuck my head up and looked through the window I saw Jesse. He had the Winchester aimed at the side door to the garage. I zeroed him, squeezed the trigger.
The window shattered—but the thick glass deflected my bullet. Jesse whirled. The Winchester roared my way. The slug screeched across the hood of the car and crashed into a gas pump.
A sane man would have stayed inside the cafe and picked me off with the rifle. But Jesse was wrong, he must have been crazy. He kicked open the cafe door and sent another bullet my way. It missed the car, but it, too, hit a fuel pump. Gas fumes filled the air. Jesse swore. Huddled behind the car, I knew he was coming toward me, rifle raised, waiting for his shot. The closer he got the more likely it became that even if I shot him, he’d put one in me. Another rifle bullet slammed into the car metal between us. I tried to remember how many rounds a Winchester held.
When he was maybe ten feet away, he fired again, trying to angle the bullet down over the hood. The slug ricocheted on the concrete apron, sparked off the metal handle of the gas hose.
An explosion of heat knocked me against the car and turned the world orange. Where the gas pump had been was now a roaring flame twenty feet high. Acrid black smoke swirled around me. The heat seared my face and hands, my eyes were tearing, and I had no choice. I stuck the Luger over the hood of the car, squeezed off a blind round and ran toward the highway. My feet hit the pavement. The two houses were ahead. I looked back toward the cafe.
Saw Jesse zeroing me with the rifle. I ducked. He fired. The rifle bullet ripped a line across my shoulders and flipped me off the road. I hit the ditch on my back. My wind blew out, the Luger spun from my hand.
Ten, twenty seconds of agony. The air I sucked into my lungs stank of burning gasoline and sand. I rolled to my stomach. Jesse walked toward me, rifle in hand. Behind him hurried a girl clutching a purse. A pillar of flame rose into the sky.
Jesse stopped in the center of the highway, raised the rifle to his shoulder.
“Later, Marlowe,” he said.
Nora was six feet behind him. From her black purse that had gone to the prom she pulled out the revolver they’d taken off the trooper they killed. She shot Jesse in the back. He staggered forward a few steps, sagged to his knees, fell dead on the road.
It took a week for me to get to my feet. Nora held the revolver at her side. Billy ran toward us from the cafe, Scooter’s shotgun in his hands.
“I saved your life,” she told me as I took the gun from her. “Remember that. Tell them that.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Marlowe!” She reached for me, but I knocked her hand away. “You owe me! I saved you!”
She got twenty-five years. She should have hung.
A line of fire burned across my back. My shirt was sticky. I was wobbly, nauseous. I left her standing there for Billy to guard, shuffled past the giant flame to the cafe. The living had fled into the desert. The dead trucker waited inside. Scooter. And a man called Sal. He lay on his back, his white shirt soaked red. I rolled up his left sleeve, found the tattooed numbers. My client believed me when I told her I found nobody and that she should forget and leave the dead to their own heaven or hell.
Raymond Chandler made journeys to the dark alleys of America legitimate for American literature in general and for me in particular.
Chandler’s keen eye, cool prose, and timeless popularity beat the critics into accepting him as a “legitimate” author in the 1950’s, when I was a boy in Montana dreaming of being a writer. For me, being a writer meant—and means—telling stories that say something about good and evil, stories that show some small truths of how we live and that take a stand in a world of violent moral and physical chaos. When I was growing up, the stories of Chandler—and of Dashiell Hammett and others—did that for me. They did it without sacrificing entertainment, without preaching. When I setforth to write my first novel, I chose to travel those dark and fruitful alleys they’d shown me, and wrote Six Days of the Condor.
But I worried, felt embarrassed that I had not penned an East of Eden. My book was good, the best I could then do, but was it enough?
In the months before Condor came out, I worked as an aide for U.S. Senator Lee Metcalf. One cold and dreary February afternoon in 1974, I muttered about the lack of “weight” of my first novel to the senator’s legislative assistant. She was tough, smart, and broked no nonsense. With a cigarette dangling from her lips, she said: “Kid, if you can ever write something half as good and important as ‘Killer in the Rain,’ you’re all right.”
And I still believe her.
James Grady