WEST ON 66

by James H. Cobb

  I began buffing the past night's oil and the day's accumu­lation of grime off the automatic's frame using a dab of alcohol and a square of rag, studiously not paying attention to the girl. This wasn't the easiest thing in the world to do as she pulled herself up straighter in the bed, her shirttails playing a shadowy game of peekaboo.

  "Would you be interested in making some money on the way back out?"

  I could feel her gaze fixed intently on me.

  "I generally don't object to making money," I replied. "But then, a lot would depend on what I'd be doing and for how much."

  "I'd guess you could say you'd be acting as a bodyguard and chauffeur," she said quietly. "Your job would be to get me to a certain place and to get me away again. As for how much, I can't give you an exact figure, but your share should amount to somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars."

  The six figures just sort of hung in the air of the motel room like a smoke ring, and I stopped wiping down the Colt's slide. "A hundred grand is way too much for a simple bank job, Princess. You must be figuring on knocking off a federal mint."

  "You won't be involved in committing any crime. This money will be free and clear."

  "Hey, excuse me, but a chunk of change that size is never 'free and clear.' "

  She shrugged. "Then you can call it loose money. It isn't stolen, not in the way you might be thinking anyway. The police won't be looking for it. If you're careful about how you spend it and don't pull the tax people down on you, no one will ever ask where it came from."

  I swabbed out the barrel with a patch on the end of a short ramrod. "I'm asking."

  The girl nodded. "All right. Here's the story. The essentials, anyway."

  She sat up, bracing herself on one arm and tucking her legs under her.

  "Back on the road I told you that I was after an inheritance, and, in a way, I am. The money we're talking about was my father's, partially anyway. And just now I think that I have about as much right to it as anyone else."

  "But some other people disagree, like maybe these old busi­ness partners of your dad's?"

  She nodded again. "That's right. You see, my father wasn't a very nice man, except to my mother and me. Putting it bluntly, he was a criminal, a gangster, like those men who are after me now."

  I gave a low whistle. "Let me guess. He screwed over his partners. He ripped off his own gang."

  "He wanted out," she said defensively. "He wanted a dif­ferent kind of life for himself and for his family. But once you're in with the mob, getting out again isn't easy."

  It was okay to look straight at her now and to watch the far aways and long agos play in those midnight eyes.

  "Ten years ago, he tried to make the break," she continued. "He had a chance at a lot of money. Their money. He stole it and he ran with it. But he didn't make it. They hunted him down. They found him, and they killed him."

  All of a sudden, I knew where some of the hate in that scream had come from.

  "Spanno?"

  "Yes. I think he was the one who found Dad." One of the girl's elegant eyebrows lifted. "But he never found the money."

  "And Spanno is after you now because he thinks you know where it is."

  "That's right."

  "Do you?"

  Lisette hesitated, then shook her head, "No. Not yet. But with help I think I can find it."

  She went on swiftly. "Look; I've been working on this for a couple of years now. Talking to my mother. Talking to some of my father's friends from the old days. Going through news­paper files. Most important, there's something else, something that my father left me. Something that no one else knows about. I think it's the key to finding this money.

  "Here's the deal. You have a car, a gun, and some nerve. Right now, I need all three. I'm offering you a partnership, half-shares in everything we recover. Just help me get to where I need to go."

  Son ... of... a .. . bitch!

  It was a wild story, but the girl made it sound convincing. Lisette Kingman either was feeding me a straight line, or at least part of it anyway, or was a great liar. Unfortunately, work­ing as a deputy has taught me that there are a whole lot of really great liars in the world. I'd given up on being a good judge of character a long time ago.

  "That is one kooky yarn, Princess."

  The girl didn't flare up or look wounded at being doubted. She simply nodded. "It is. But it's the truth. I can't afford to lie to you."

  Maybe not. But I had to push. I couldn't seem like too easy a mark. I took the oilcan out of the cleaning kit and soaked down another cleaning patch. Offhand again, I started applying a new film of protection to the alloy of the snub-barreled au­tomatic.

  "I don't suppose you can back any of this up?"

  "You saw how Mace . . . how my father's partners were after me back at the truck stop. That should prove something."

  "Maybe. If they are the hoods you say they are."

  "Who else could they be?" The girl nestled back against the pillows, her sleek legs unfolding out ahead of her again, a small, negligent hand caressing the shirt back into place.

  "Maybe three private dicks trying to bring back the runaway spoiled brat of some millionaire. It Happened One Night for real. Or a jealous boyfriend and a couple of buddies out to spoil the good time of his cheating girlfriend. Or maybe even a trio of psycho-ward commandos trying to throw a butterfly net over their prize pistachio. Hell, I can think of all sorts of stories just as good as yours."

  Again Lisette just nodded, refusing to get angry. "That's right," she said soberly. "I can't prove a word of it. You'll have to accept my story entirely on speculation. You're going to have to gamble that I'm telling you the truth. You're going to have to gamble again that we can actually find the money. And you're going to have to gamble that we can do it without Mace Spanno killing you. Because I'm definitely not making that up. If you get involved, he's going to try. I've already seen him destroy everything and everyone else in the world close to me. If you help me, he'll try and do the same thing to you."

  "You've got an interesting way of selling a proposal, Prin­cess."

  "I have to tell you the truth. If I lead you into this deal without letting you know where you really stand, I'd as good as be murdering you myself."

  She settled back deeper, regarding me levelly. One hand went up to the top closed button of the shirt she wore. "You have all the choices here," she said. "You can walk away from this right now. I can't. I have two dollars and twenty-seven cents in my purse, that pile of clothes on the chair over there, and this one chance. I have no place to go and nothing else I can do.

  "I can't show you any proofs, I can't make any guarantees, and I can't give you any promises. I don't have any front money to give you in return for your help, and I don't have any collateral to offer in exchange . . . except for myself."

  Her fingers moved, opening the button and deepening the shadowy rift down the front of her solitary garment. "And if you want that as part of the deal, I'll agree."

  Beyond the release of that single button, she made no at­tempt to play the sultry seduction scene. She didn't need to. We both were very aware of the quality of the goods she was putting on the table. Lisette Kingman might be down to her last chip, but it was a blue one in any man's game.

  I found myself wondering what answer I would give if it were just me sitting here without a badge in my pocket.

  I socked the clip back into the Commander, giving the mag­azine base an extra tap to make sure it was fully seated. I stood and crossed between the beds, setting the cleaned automatic down on the lamp table. The girl lay back, letting the shirt gap open. She watched me somberly, waiting.

  Sinking down on the outside bed, I reached over and switched off the reading light, leaving only the faint outside glow that filtered in through the room's curtains. After a few seconds, I spoke to the pale outline in the darkness.

  "Awhile back, I learned never to make any big commitments when you're either drunk or tired. That's how I e
nded up throwing myself out of perfectly good airplanes in the army. Let's sleep on it, Princess. We'll talk about it some more in the morning. Okay?" "Okay"

  I tugged open the Hollywood zips on my jump boots. Kick­ing them off, I stretched out on the outside bed. A few feet away, I heard a slithering rustle as Lisette slipped under the

  covers.

  God, being noble can be a pain in the ass sometimes.

  "Hey, Princess."

  "Yes?"

  "Mind answering me one thing now, though?"

  "What?

  "Back at the Dixie, why was I the guy you hit on first for a

  lift?"

  A soft chuckle came back. "Simple. Because you were the

  guy I most hoped would say yes."

  I swore under my breath again, turned over, and concen­trated very hard on getting to sleep.

  I opened my eyes. Something was wrong. The angle of the bright morning light slatting through the window blinds indi­cated that it was still way too early for any sane human being to be awake and functional. My ribs ached dully, the sucker punch of the night before having finally caught up with me. My beard rasped on the percale pillowcase, and I suffered from that chafed and sweaty sensation unique to a man who has slept in his pants. This felt way too close to a hangover when you consider that I hadn't taken a drink the night before.

  Lisette sat at the writing desk, half-turned toward me and sipping a cup of coffee from the room's little complimentary hot plate. She'd redonned her air of cool regality along with her clothes, and she was trying to hide just a little bit of a smile.

  Another cup of coffee sat on the lamp table beside my head. Sitting up, I reached for it. It was that instant powdered crap that always reminds me of K rations, but it was hot and there had to be some caffeine in there somewhere.

  "You meant it all last night, right?" I croaked. "It's real? The whole thing? Your dad, the hoods, the money?"

  "Cross my heart and hope to die . . . literally."

  Great, she had a sense of humor on top of everything else. I pretended to think for one more gulp of coffee. "Then you've got a deal. Let's go hunt for your buried treasure."

  I retired to the bathroom and dealt with the three S's, re­storing myself into something that resembled a human being. When I came out, I found Lisette brooding over an open Saint Louis telephone book.

  "Okay, Princess, what do we have?"

  "What we have is this," she replied, handing a second, smaller book back over her shoulder.

  It was a palm-sized paperback, bartered and broken-spined. A sketchy desert scene featuring an old-time western stage­coach shared the tan buckram cover with the book's title:

  A Guide Book to Highway 66 By Jack D. Rittenhouse

  "That's our treasure map," she said. "It came out in 1946, and my father used it on the road trips he made out to the coast, including the last one."

  I suddenly recognized it. A revised edition had been for sale in gas stations and restaurants all the way out from the coast along Route 66. It was a tourist guide, listing the eating and sleeping places, gas stations, and historical sites all along the old highway from Chicago to Los Angeles.

  This one had seen a lot of use. Its pages were grimy, age-darkened, and scribbled-on. Mileage numbers written in pen and pencil, check marks, underlinings, cryptic words, and no­tations in a man's hasty handwriting.

  "He had this with him when he was killed?"

  "Yes."

  "How'd you get it?"

  "That's a long story," she replied, turning away from the desk to face me. "During that last year, when he was home between trips, my father and I would sometimes play what we called the road game. We'd sit together and he'd show me this little guidebook and we'd pretend to take the trip out to Cali­fornia. You see, he promised me that one day soon our family would be doing it for real. We'd go through the pages, and he'd tell me what the country was like and what we'd see ..."

  "And?"

  "And we never did get to make the trip. A couple of months after my father was killed, the Los Angeles coroner's office returned some of his personal belongings to us. That book was with his things."

  "And nobody thought that this might have been important," I asked, propping one hip against the writing desk, "especially with a couple of hundred grand drifting around loose?"

  Lisette shrugged her slim shoulders. "Apparently no one did. I have a hunch that somebody made a mistake and that the book was sent back to us by accident. I remember that when Mother told Mace about Dad's things arriving he came over and tore everything apart, even ripping out the suit linings and splitting the seams. But by then it was too late."

  "It was?"

  "Yes," she said defiantly. "I'd already sneaked the guide book out of the box and hidden it away. It was mine! It had belonged to Dad and me. It was my part of him.

  "Mace never even knew the book existed. I never let him know about it. It wasn't until years later that I began to realize just what it could mean."

  I ruffled through the pages again, not seeing a damn thing that said $200,000.

  "Okay, boss, where do we start?"

  "Here." She reclaimed the book and flipped it to page 20 and the Saint Louis heading.

  Something had been scribbled along the page margin in blue ink: a set of initials, C. R., and a street address.

  "I don't recall seeing that notation before Dad made his last run to the coast," Lisette explained. "I made a few inquiries in certain places, and I learned that Dad had dealings with a man called Calvin Reece here in Saint Louis. For some reason, Dad must have looked this Reece up on that last trip. Maybe Dad told him something about his plans. He and Reese were supposed to have been friends."

  "Your dad could also have just been paying back an old pinochle debt."

  "Maybe, but it's still a start."

  I guess it was.

  It looked like a hot day, so I swapped my leather jacket for a red nylon windcheater that would do for concealing the Com­mander. I also supplemented the Colt with both of my spare clips and a little something left over from my days in the Air­borne. The U.S. Army and I refer to it as a paratrooper's knife. The uninitiated and the sensationally minded would call it a switchblade, a four-inch fang of folding steel with two spring-loaded buttons. One deployed the fighting edge; the second snapped out a hook-shaped shroud line cutter.

  I zipped the little knife inside my right-hand boot, adjusting the laces so it would ride comfortably in concealment. It's got­ten me out of serious jams twice already, once when I had a bad water landing in a swamp near Fort Bragg and then again when . . . Well, never mind. The Yokohama police never re­ported finding a body, so I guess that one doesn't officially count.

  Most cities have a wrong side of the tracks. Saint Louis has a wrong side of the river: East Saint Louis, the tougher town back over on the Illinois bank. That's where we were headed. We cut through the heart of the Missouri side, past Checkerboard Square, and on toward the Old McKinley Bridge. Up to that point, you were driving through classic Middle America, solid, middle-class, and just starting to crumble a little around the edges as the city began to come down from its World War II boom. But get across the bridge, beyond the big river port and the bigger rail yard, and you started picking up the hard places.

  Soon we were bouncing along a pothole-studded residential street lined with houses one evolutionary step above shack. The '57's gleaming chrome and glossy paint were out of place here. The cars usually found in such neighborhoods either just barely ran or were listed on a police hot sheet.

  It took awhile. Street signs had a poor survival rate over here, and a lot of people didn't bother with house numbers. How­ever, eventually we found the address listed in the guidebook.

  Unfortunately, the listing was a little out-of-date, like since about the start of Truman's second term. Once it had been some kind of two-story rooming house. Now it was just an abandoned building, partially burned and boarded up. No one had been living here for a long
time.

  We'd hit a dry hole first shot out of the box.

  "I don't suppose it would do any good to ask around?" Lis­ette asked glumly over the rumble of the engine.

  "No. No, it probably wouldn't. We've already got enough people out there with a valid reason to kill us. There's no sense in getting ourselves murdered incidentally."

  A group of Faulkner novel rejects were already eyeing us from a porch across the street. I popped the '57 back into gear and headed back toward civilization.

  "It was an outside shot at best, Princess," I went on. "It's been ten years. A guy in the rackets wouldn't likely have stayed put for that long."

  "I know. I've already checked the phone book and Saint Louis information. There isn't a Calvin Reece listed anywhere. I just . . . hoped."

  "A better bet would be to check the state pen or the county coroner. This guy Reece might have run out of luck a long time ago."

  She slouched low on her side of the seat and stared out at the gray-faced building fronts we passed.

  We returned to the more prosperous corridor along St. Clair Avenue and were en route back to the Mississippi bridges when suddenly I whipped the '57 around in a U-turn in mid street.

  Lisette pulled herself upright. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. I just thought of something," I replied, sliding the car into a curbside parking slot. "Stay put. I'll be back in a second."

  Getting out of the car, I strode down the block toward a corner cafe.

  It wasn't so much what I'd thought of as it was what I'd seen when we'd passed the last cross street. A pair of East Saint Louis Police cruisers were drawn up close to the far side en­trance to the greasy spoon.

  I'd hit the jackpot on this one. Not only were there a trio of street cops coffeeing up in one of the booths, but one of them was a gray-haired patrol sergeant.

  The three looked up with suspicion as a Levi's-clad civilian approached their table. But then 1 flashed my star and ID and suddenly I was a member of the family.

  "Pulaski, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Okay if I sit down?"

  "Sure. I'm Kinney. That's Thomson and Beltrain over there." The sergeant indicated the two patrolmen on the far side of the booth and then gestured me down beside him. "Je­sus, LA; you're a long way from home.