SONOMA COUNTY PARALLELS THE Pacific and lies north of San Francisco. By eleven thirty that night Easy had passed through Santa Rosa and was driving his Volkswagen farther inland toward San Montroni. The rain was falling heavy now, a strong wind slapping it against the windshield. Easy hunched slightly, rubbing moisture off the inside of the window with the heel of his hand.
He’d tried the car radio the first few miles of the drive. After a half-dozen newscaster eulogies of Senator Nordlin he clicked it off.
He swung out and passed a giant grunting diesel truck and had the late night highway to himself for a while. The first time Easy saw the Dodge Colt he gave it only peripheral attention. The two-door compact was a silver-grey color and blended quickly with the rainy night as it passed Easy doing seventy-five.
Easy’s VW jogged on at a steady sixty, quivering slightly, swaying now and then in a gust of wet wind. He wiped the windshield again, spotted the junction road which led to San Montroni and turned off the highway. A black and white sign told him he still had fifteen miles to go.
The ground on all sides of him was level, dark field after dark field. A tan jackrabbit popped up suddenly, frightened, in the bright thrust of his headlights. Easy’s foot touched the brake and he guided the car to the left. The jackrabbit hopped away into the darkness.
This was Easy’s last encounter with anything until he reached the silver bridge. The bridge was only a few hundred feet long, humped fifty feet above a small dirty river.
When he hit the bridge his tires made a ratcheting sound on the fretted metal. Easy didn’t hear the first rifle shot at all and he more felt than heard his left front tire explode. He was midway across the span.
The car began trying to take itself away from him. The rear end fought to swing around to the front.
Easy kept his foot off the brake, trying to gently steer the wildly gliding car off the bridge. He couldn’t do it at first.
The VW turned around, its rear slamming into the far side of the metal bridge. Then it half-spun, seeming to skid sideways.
Finally Easy felt the car back under his control and he guided it the rest of the way across the bridge.
He would have made it safely off the bridge and back on the road if another rifle shot hadn’t come. This one smacked the windshield, turning it to rock candy.
Inadvertently Easy flinched, allowing the VW to get away from him for a few seconds.
His small black car slammed against the bridge again, scraped harshly alongside a concrete piling and then jumped from the bridge to the roadside. The VW swayed over the road, then skittered off to the left.
It skidded through weedy grass, tore through a barbed-wire fence and smashed, with a crumpling splash, into a narrow irrigation ditch.
Easy unbuckled his seatbelt, hit the door and rolled free of his VW nosed down into the muddy water. He worked himself quickly away from the car, moving back toward the silver bridge.
Easy was twenty feet along the ditch when the car exploded with a great whomping sound. It began to crackle and burn, sizzling in the hard rain.
“That ought to distract him,” thought Easy. For an instant, as he’d spun off the road, he’d seen the man with the rifle. A big man crouched in the scrub brush on the other side of the road, illuminated for a second by the splash of light from Easy’s car.
The heavy-falling rain washed the ditch mud off Easy as he approached the bridge. Crouched low, he edged under the silver span into the shadows along the riverbank. Among the rocks and gritty brown earth were scattered aluminum Lucky Lager beer cans, lost hub caps, and a ruined baby carriage lying on its back with its wheels in the air.
Easy saw the Dodge Colt again. It was parked off the road, at the other side of the bridge, near the brush where the big man with the rifle knelt. The car was empty, meaning the guy with the rifle was probably alone.
The man was cautiously rising up, watching Easy’s VW burning orange in the night across the road from him.
Easy recognized the man. It was one of Cullen Montez’s big sidekicks, the polite one named Neil. They must all be heading for the Nordlin hideaway, too. With Neil, maybe, bringing up the rear. Neil had identified Easy’s unkempt Volkswagen when he passed him back on the highway. He’d decided apparently to wait on the San Montroni road to devote some further time to taking Easy off the case.
Easy, bent low, made his way up beyond the silver bridge and the silver-grey car. He stalked along behind roadside scrub, slipping his .38 revolver from his shoulder holster.
Neil was standing full up now, his rifle tipped down, his left hand shielding his eyes. The hard rain had taken the curl out of his hair and peaked it down over his broad forehead.
“Drop the rifle, Neil,” shouted Easy. He was ten feet from Montez’s man, standing upright himself, his .38 pointed.
Pausing barely a second, Neil turned and fired the rifle straight at Easy.
Easy was not there. He threw himself flat out on the ground. He got off two shots.
“Shit,” said the polite Neil. A spot of red blossomed on his right sleeve, was washed away by rain, formed again. He’d dropped the rifle when Easy’s shot hit him. He took off on the run, away from the road and Easy, cutting across the recently harvested field.
Easy, spread with mud and straw, rose up. He watched Neil run. The rolling hills beyond the field were thick with oaks and pines. “I know he’s got a hand gun,” said Easy. “He can tell me where the hideaway is, but it may take me an hour to outfox him in those trees.”
The big Neil, running in zigzags, was nearly to the dark woods.
Easy stood by the road a moment, letting the rain work on his mud. He collected the dropped rifle, a big-bore Winchester with a telescopic sight. Then he went to Neil’s car. The key was in the ignition, with a gold Spanish coin hanging from the ring.
Easy opened the door, slid into the driver’s seat. It made a mess on the cream-colored upholstery.