WEST ON 66

by James H. Cobb

  I slid into the booth beside Lisette. Her drawing pad was open on the table in front of her, but there wasn't any picture, just row after row of aimlessly spiraled loops. "Any change?" she asked.

  "Nope," I replied, ignoring the flat Coke in front of me. "They're still out there."

  "What are we going to do, Kev?"

  "I don't know, Princess. I plain don't know."

  The bitch was that I actually did know what I could do. I could walk over to the pay phone, call up the local state police barracks, and whisper the magic phrase. "Officer in need of assistance." Shazam! In about fifteen minutes I could have everything short of the New Mexico National Guard out here backing me up.

  But then what? The whole op would be blown to pieces and what would we get out of it? What the hell could I stick on Spanno as it was now? A weapons charge? Attempted kidnap­ping? A parole violation? Hell, I hadn't actually even seen a gun in his hand. I could hear his pet lawyers puking in court already. "My distraught client pursued his spoiled and erratic stepdaughter across the country because he believed she had fallen in with some young tough. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what loving parent could do less?"

  He'd walk. He'd be out on the street in no time, and where would that leave Lisette?

  Come to push the point, where would that leave Lisette and me? I found that I really wasn't looking forward to that mo­ment when I'd have to turn to her and say, "Excuse me, but I'm really a cop and I've just been stringing you along and screwing you over. Sorry about that."

  No. I was not looking forward to that at all.

  I guess Lisette mistook the reason for my grim expression.

  "Kev?" she said, rather carefully studying the tabletop.

  "Hm?"

  "I'm sorry."

  " 'Bout what?"

  "I'm sorry about not telling you that I'm Mace's stepdaugh­ter. It's not something I'm particularly proud of."

  I could only shrug. "Don't sweat it. I can see why you wouldn't want to talk it up too much. I would like to know just how in the hell your mother ever got tangled up with Spanno in the first place. Especially after what happened with your real dad."

  Lisette gave a bitter smile. "It's safe to say that love didn't have a whole lot to do with it. My mother was an only child, like me. Her family immigrated to the United States in the thirties, and her parents both died shortly after she married my father. Then Dad was killed and she was left alone with no family in this country. She was a young widow with a child. She had no means of support, no one she could turn to. You've seen her picture, Kev. She was a very beautiful woman. And in case you haven't noticed, Mace Spanno can be very, very forceful when it comes to getting what he wants. I can't blame her for any of this. She was never given a choice, or a chance."

  "No. I guess she wasn't." My eyes drifted out towards the cafe's front windows. The oncoming storm was killing the remnants of the day fast. The cars out on 66 had their lights on.

  Lights . . . lights . . .

  "Kev, I want you to know something else, too."

  "What's that, Princess?"

  "I never said yes to him. If you ever believe anything about me, believe that. I never said yes to Mace."

  I glanced over at her. Lisette was still keeping her eyes low­ered. There was the faintest tremor in her voice, like you might feel in an overloaded two-by-four just before it snaps. On the chance that it might give us a weapon against Spanno, I had to ask. I had to.

  "How did it happen?"

  Lisette shuddered for a moment; then she began the story. "I think Mom saw it coming. She had always been Mace's primary . . . target. But I think she noticed the way he was be­ginning to look at me. She tried to protect me. For the first time since we ran away when he was in jail, she stood up to Mace. She insisted I be allowed to go to college. She was trying to get me out of the house, to keep me out of sight."

  The girl shrugged. "In the end, after she'd paid the price for confronting him, Mace let me go. Why not? He knew that as long as he had a handle on one of us, he had control of the other as well. That was how he always worked it. That was why he adopted me formally. It gave him more control."

  Studying Lisette's pale, perfect features, I could see how this dark and convoluted relationship had come to be. Driven by rage instead of love, Mace Spanno had claimed the family of his traitorous partner as a prize of war. But then, as his part­ner's daughter had grown into the full beauty of her woman­hood, Spanno had found himself trapped as well. Love and hate became two sides of the same coin.

  Another cluster of cars passed out on the highway, head­lights starring in the newborn darkness. Lights ... I found my­self splitting my attention between Lisette and what was going on out there in the night.

  The girl didn't notice. She was some distance away in a not very pleasant place.

  "Mom managed to keep him away from me for a while," she went on quietly. "But then Mom died. And after her fu­neral, Mace wouldn't let me go back to school. He made me move back in with him. And about a week later, after dinner one evening, he told me that it was time for me to assume the duties of the 'lady of the house.' And then he went on to de­scribe, in detail, just what those duties would involve. And then I tried to stab him to death with a pair of scissors."

  She laughed a little, soft and wild. "Obviously, I didn't suc­ceed. And then he beat me for the first time the way he'd beaten my mother. And he took me up to their bedroom and he took me . . . and took me . . . and took me . . ."

  I rested my hand on her shoulder. "God, Princess," I whis­pered. "Why didn't you go to the cops?"

  "It wouldn't have done any good. I talked to a lawyer, very discreetly, and he told me that cases of incest rape are among the most difficult to successfully prosecute. I didn't have any evidence. Hardly even any bruises. Mace is an expert when it comes to certain things. He can beat you to death with his bare hands and scarcely leave a mark. It would be my word against his. And even if it got to trial, I'd never live to see him con­victed."

  Her head sank down tiredly onto her crossed arms, as if the weight of my hand was too much for her to support. "That's when I knew that just getting away from Mace wasn't enough," she finished, her voice muffled. "That's when I knew that I had to destroy him. It's not just a matter of escape, Kev. For my mother and me, it's a matter of justice."

  "Yeah."

  For Lisette and me, though, it was a matter of escape. And suddenly something started to come together.

  "Princess, get the book out."

  "What?" She looked up, confused.

  "Get the damn guidebook out! I need to know something about the road west of here."

  She didn't ask further questions; she just dug the Ritten-house guide out of her purse.

  "What do you want to know?" Her voice was all business again.

  "Anything they have on this immediate stretch of highway." I kept my eyes fixed out the front windows of the cafe, watch­ing for more travelers out in the night.

  She riffled rapidly through the pages, looking for the little line maps.

  "Amarillo to Albuquerque . . . Tucumcari . . . Montoya, we passed there. . . . okay! West of Montoya the road winds and climbs through country which becomes more rugged, with rock ledges, mesquite, and stunted trees. Tourists with trailers often camp along here ..."

  "Okay, that's it! That's what I needed."

  "Do you have an idea, Kev?"

  "Yeah, I might." It was pitch-dark outside now. Perfect. I needed one more thing, just one more specific thing. Come on. Come on! They built better than a million and a half of them last year. There's got to be another one out there tonight!

  And there it was, flickering past on the road, its familiar shape outlined for an instant in the cafe's outside lights.

  "Okay," I said quietly. "Here's the deal. We're getting out of here in a second. When I say go, we're going to get up, go out, and get in the car. Move fast, but don't run. Got that? Don't run!"

  She didn't speak an answer. Sh
e just stowed away her sketch pad and looped the strap of her purse over her shoulder, alert and ready.

  "Let's go."

  We got up. I dug out my keys and tossed some money on the table. The eyes of the cafe crew followed us as we headed out the door. I suspect that we were going to be the prime topic of speculation around that place for some time to come.

  Since I'd parked her where I could keep an eye on her, I'd left the '57 unlocked and with the windows partially down. It took us only a second to slide into the front seat. I had the engine cranking before the doors slammed shut. Around on the side of the building, more car doors were hastily closing and another power plant was turning over. Our headlights blazed on and the Chrysler's did as well, matching us move for move.

  I backed away from the building, and I headed us out. But I didn't burn rubber. I swung the '57 around slowly through the fan of Spanno's headlights, giving him plenty of time to look us over. Then I pulled onto 66, heading west at the speed limit, as if I didn't give a damn in the world that he and his retinue would be following.

  I was banking hard on the psychology of the pursuer. It's like dealing with a mean dog. Run from it, and it chases you by instinct. Confront or ignore it, and frequently you'll confuse it. You aren't acting right, so it doesn't know what to do.

  Spanno and his boys were our mean dogs. We'd kept them out there for a couple of hours, wired up and waiting for us to make our break. But when we finally did make our move, we didn't bolt; we ambled.

  They followed, of course, pulling out on the highway behind us. But they hung back about a quarter-mile, looking us over, trying to figure out what the deal was. They wouldn't stay back there for long. But maybe long enough for me to stage another disappearing act.

  This one wasn't going to be easy. Route 66 was almost the only game in town out here. A single narrow strip of concrete heading into the wild. No towns. Few side roads. No second chances.

  We were in mesa country. The intermittent bursts of heat lightning that played around the horizon outlined slab-sided rimrock and scattered gnarled patches of mesquite and desert cedar. An occasional wind gust shoved impatiently at the side of the car, and tumbleweeds skittered across the road.

  If I was going to pull this off, I was going to have to bring a number of different factors together at the same time. My eyes flicked from the headlights in my rearview mirror to the darkened road ahead. Carefully I eased my speed up another ten miles per hour. You see, I was chasing someone, too.

  Lisette sat curled in her corner of the seat, her eyes large in the dashboard glow.

  "Okay," I said. "Dig my spare box of shells out of the side pocket of my suitcase. Stick it in the crack between the seat backs so it won't drift around, but where I can get at it in a hurry."

  She didn't waste words; she just obeyed, procuring the ammo.

  "What's up?" she inquired.

  "Just doing some contingency planning in case I'm not as smart as I think I am," I replied. "Look, if I bitch this move and we end up in a fight with Spanno, you run. Don't argue. Don't try and be brave. Don't look back. You just get your little tail somewhere else as fast as you can. Head east. Stay under cover. Don't walk on the highway, but keep it in sight. Keep moving. You listening to this?"

  "Kev . . . yeah, I am," she replied in a dry-throated rasp.

  "I wish I could have gotten you a water bag from out of the back, but it's too late to worry about that now. If you don't come to a ranch or something by morning, go out to the road and flag down a car. Get to a phone. Call the state police. Then call a guy named Jack Le Baer out in LA, L-e-B-a-e-r. He's in the book. He's a friend of mine, and he'll take care of you. Got it?"

  "Le Baer. Got it."

  I just hoped she wouldn't need it.

  Suddenly, as we came around a curve, we caught up with the first part of my plan. There was a twinned flash of red ahead of us, the taillights of another car. Specifically, they were the lights of the 1957 Chevy Nomad station wagon that I'd seen roll past the cafe a few minutes before, two distinctive vertical crescents glowing scarlet in the darkness.

  Identical to the taillights of my own car.

  I pulled in tight behind the station wagon, probably earning me a dirty thought from the Nomad's driver, but also masking it from the occupants of the Chrysler that trailed us a couple of hundred yards back.

  Now I just needed the terrain to cooperate a little.

  "Make sure you pull that seat belt tight, Princess. We're going to be doing something kind of wild here in a minute."

  The '57 gave me the first warning, lagging down a little as she started to climb. Then I could feel the grade, too. We were going up a shallow hill, just the kind I needed. Now if only the eastbound lane would be clear.

  "Grab a good hold!"

  We crested the hilltop and started down the other side. The lights of the Chrysler disappeared from my mirrors as we broke line of sight.

  "This is it! Hang on!"

  I stood on the brake pedal and spun the wheel hard over to the left. In the vernacular, it's called a bootlegger turn, so named after the gentlemen of the hills who developed it as an escape from Revenuer roadblocks. You can turn a fast-moving car around 180 degrees within its own length. There are side effects, however; rubber smokes, tires scream, and gravity tem­porarily turns sideways.

  Lisette gave a startled yip as the '57's tail lashed around. One second we were headed west and downhill in the right lane; the next we were going east and upslope in the left. I grabbed the floor shift, dropped down a gear, and floored the accelerator, bringing us back up to highway speed. Then I kicked my headlight beams up high.

  Another set of headlights glowed just beyond the rise. I backed off on the gas so the roar of our unmuffled engine wouldn't give us away. Almost exactly at the crest of the hill, we flashed past Spanno's car, heading in the opposite direction.

  It depended on a number of things now. Did they figure on our being able to turn around in the few seconds we were out of sight? Did the glare of our high beams dazzle them enough so that they didn't recognize our car as we went by? Would they stay focused on that other set of '57 taillights that still beckoned out there ahead of them?

  We'd know in a second. That big 300-C would come swarming back over that hillcrest, and the chase would be on.

  The rear views stayed dark.

  I gave Lisette a thumbs-up. She smiled at me. We resumed breathing.

  This respite wouldn't last, though. Pretty soon, Spanno would order his wheelman to make a run on the car ahead of them and they'd discover that the hardtop they'd been chasing had magically turned into a station wagon. After blowing a few gaskets, Mace and his merry men would be after us again, this time breathing fire. Before that happened, Lisette and I had to find a nice deep hole to crawl into.

  The weather was working for us, anyway. The parched night wind was rising, carrying streamers of dust and cutting down visibility. On the run out from the cafe I'd been mentally checking off the turnoffs along this stretch of 66. I bypassed one pretty good gravel road and a couple of what looked like ranch accesses. Then we came to a dilapidated highway-side cattle guard and a couple of ruts that led south through a scat­tering of scrub cedar.

  That was the hole I'd chosen. No lights were in sight in either direction as we got off the highway and headed back into the trees.

  It was slow going for a road car. I had to watch for potholes and for high centering. The only cheerful thought was that Spanno's vehicle was slung even lower than mine. I doubted he'd be able to make this road without leaving his oil pan draped on a boulder.

  The track ran south for more than a mile and then swung west, paralleling the base of a looming cliff side. When it threatened to become totally impassable, I eased the '57 over into a rocky little turnout and shut her down.

  The night wind smelled of dust and cedar and ozone. It rocked the car lightly on its springs and whined around the coachwork like a hungry animal. I put my arm out and gathered Lisette to
me, and we let exhaustion catch up with us. We'd come a hell of a long way from that Oklahoma riverside.

  Jesus God! Had that just been this morning?

  I rested my cheek against Lisette's silky hair and tried to remember how she had looked playing in the stream.

  "Kev." Her voice was muffled against my shoulder. "Can I ask you something? And will you tell me the truth?"

  "Sure, Princess. And I'll try."

  "Does it make much difference, those things you learned back there at the cafe?"

  "You mean about Spanno being a shit-eating son of a bitch?" I replied. "No, not really. I'd pretty much figured that out on my own."

  "No. I mean about Mace and me?"

  "Like I said, Mace Spanno is a shit-eating son of a bitch, and that's about all that needs to be said on that subject."

  I guess Lisette agreed, because she didn't speak again; she just nestled closer.

  After a while, I scraped together enough energy to start mov­ing again. It would be another night in the car. Out on that highway in the dark, there'd be too much chance of running into an ambush. Let Mace and his boys burn themselves out looking for us.

  I dug the water bag out of the trunk, and we each took a nightcap swig. Then I got Lisette bedded down, lying on the sleeping bag in the front seat. It was still way too hot for her to think about getting into it.

  I assumed my station in back. By the glow of the flashlight I took a minute to look over the Commander. I didn't dare take the pistol down completely for a full cleaning, but I checked the action and the magazines and ran a lightly oiled cloth over her. The Colt had served me well twice that day, and it would be bad joss to reward that service with a lack of attention.

  Shutting off the flash, I set the pistol up on the rear deck and stretched out as well as I could.

  Boy, it was a truly lousy night out there. The rising wind made the scrub trees surrounding us writhe and lash and in a couple of instances, I suspect, even get up and walk around.

  Intermittently a few pinpoint spatters of rain fell on the roof, but never enough to quench the thirst of the night and bring the cool. With the windows down, the dust swirled in. With the windows up, the skyrocketing temperature pulled the sweat out of us like a magnet. I didn't think the sky was sucking quite enough air for there to be a tornado funnel in the im­mediate neighborhood, but we were sure in the middle of a classic high plains summer storm.