Chapter 28

Just as Morrie Goldstrohm was trying to tell if there was any life left in his boss, Emerson Waldie, Giuseppe Lambozza stood on the side of a hot, dusty road trying to tell if there was any life left in Izelda, his 1912 Model T Pickup. The ancient vehicle had stalled on him near the Rancho San Vincente Y Santa Monica which covered everything from Hollywood on the east to Topanga Canyon on the West.

Pounding the old car’s hood with a huge, meaty fist, Giuseppe heard the engine suddenly cough and turn over. Without waiting to see how long this would continue, he jumped into the car and got it rolling again.

The car backfired like crazy but didn’t stall, and then moved slowly along Sunset Boulevard going northeast away from Santa Monica Bay. On Giuseppe’s lips were the words to one of his favorite Italian songs, the one he sang as a small boy in Naples where he was born, some 62 years before.

The Model T was doing better now that the road was leveling off. Giuseppe waved at the attendant of a one-pump gas station whose sign advertised last chance gas for people traveling along the sea toward Malibu Judicial Township as it was called. He maneuvered a rickety turn into the station and pulled Izelda up to the lone pump that was attended by Doc. Doc owned the place as well as the diner next to it.

“Howdy, Gus,” Doc said. “Ain’t seen you down here in a long time.”

“That’s because I ain’t been down here in a long time,” Giuseppe explained with more than a noticeable trace of irritation in his accent. “Hey, Fill her up, eh?”

After collecting a few monosyllabic answers to his questions, Doc collected a dollar and seven cents and the corresponding amount in gas-rationing stamps from Giuseppe. The Model T rattled back onto the road again. It painfully climbed a hill and then, reaching the top, coasted down the other side.

Doc watched the Model T’s progress and wondered just how much longer old Giuseppe would be able to hold onto it before it gave out forever. The car had to be at least thirty years old. That was almost as long as Doc had known Giuseppe.

He, in fact, remembered when Giuseppe and his young, Neapolitan bride, Rosa, arrived here in sunny California, straight from Italy. It had been in 1910 or 1911 or sometime around then.

The young couple had at first labored on the Rancho Topanga, Malibu Y Sequit, known simply as Rancho Malibu, living in a house owned by the rancho. In those days everything as far as the eye could see was owned by the rancho. But the rancho was no longer intact, having been forced by the government to parcel out its land. And as everybody knew, once this war was over, the place would be overrun with architects and contractors transforming everything they touched.

Doc had also been a field worker at the rancho. Twenty-seven years. But he’d saved to buy the gas station and, later on, to add the little diner. He felt a certain kinship with Giuseppe in terms of something they both shared: an unbreakable will to survive in this still-undeveloped terrain of endless gullies and canyons

The Model T disappeared over the hill and Doc went back to his little sun shelter where he would wait for the next car to come along. These days there weren’t too many civilians out on the road. Mostly, it was the military and the like.

Meanwhile, Giuseppe drove along and saw, or thought he saw, someone in the distance walking toward him. Another twenty yards and Giuseppe saw that the person was female. A beautiful female at that. Her clothes were torn and she was bruised.

He slowed down the Model T and brought it to a noisy halt just a few yards from the woman. But even with all the racket the car was making, she didn’t seem to hear.

“Hey you, Miss,” he called to her. “You in trouble or something?”

“Boy, am I glad to see you,” Maggie Graym said, suddenly coming out of her daze. “Some nut ran me off the road...”

“No!” Giuseppe said, his expression one of shocked disbelief. “You mean somebody came along and ran you off the road and then he just kept going?”

“That’s exacdy what I mean,” Maggie said, rubbing her bruised shoulder. “I was driving along not far from here and this guy pulled up right next to me. The sun was in my eyes so I couldn’t really see his face or anything but I could tell he was looking over at me and I thought he was just a wolf, you know, a guy getting fresh, but then he started edging me closer and closer to the side of the road. And then I found I was going straight over the edge. The whole thing happened so fast that I honestly didn’t know what was happening, except that somebody was trying to kill me.”

“You’re lucky you’re alive,” Giuseppe said in a warm, fatherly tone.

“You’re telling me,” Maggie replied. “My car was completely destroyed and I was thrown clear, into a clump of bushes. I’ve been climbing out of them ever since. Say, do you think you could drive me to the nearest telephone?”

Giuseppe answered that he could do much better than that. “I’m gonna take you back to the house where my wife, Rosa, can take good care of you, put some iodine and bandages on those cuts you got. She’s a good woman, my Rosa; you’ll like her.”

“No, really, that’s very kind of you, but what I need is a telephone,” Maggie said, protesting this man’s obvious concern for her. The thing she wanted most right now was to get in touch with Tom before he left the studio. Otherwise, he’d get to her place in Malibu and, not finding her, think that she’d chickened out.

Not only did she want to avoid him thinking this, but far more importantly, she didn’t want to leave this young kid, Douglas Tanaka, stranded.

“I’ll get you to a telephone,” Giuseppe said, “and some hot minestrone soup, Rosa’s special minestrone. People come from miles around for Rosa’s minestrone.”

“I don’t want to put you or your wife to any trouble,” Maggie said, climbing into the Model T. “I can make all the arrangements for help with just a call or two. Honest...”

“No trouble, no trouble,” Giuseppe insisted, turning the car around heading south. “You rest a little while and let Rosa take care of you.

“Okay,” Maggie said. “Maybe that would be the best idea. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t mind making the phone call first. Look, there’s a gas station over there. Maybe they have a phone.”

But Giuseppe drove past Doc’s without stopping. In fact, it seemed to Maggie that he sped up as they passed the place.

“You come back to the house,” Giuseppe said. “Rosa, she’ll fix you up good.”