“I hadda babe like her once,” Clancy observed. “She useta follow me around while I shot pix — she thought it was romantic. But I got rid of her.”
“And how did you do that, little man?” said Tony.
“I married her and she got sick of looking at me and six weeks later ran away with a Marine. I think her name was Gladys.”
O’Hara climbed under the wheel and Clancy climbed in at the other side of Tony Ames. O’Hara tooled the coupe out of the garage. He drove three blocks north and six blocks west and stopped in front of an apartment building.
He said: “Here’s your hacienda, hon. Help the lady out, Clancy.”
“I don’t think I like you, O’Hara,” said Tony. “You do this to me after all the stories we’ve worked on together.”
O’Hara patted her hand. “This time it’s different, Tony. You’re working for Braddock. If you go out on this with me and don’t report in, he’ll fire you. If you do report in, you violate my confidence. Your place tonight is by your own fireside.”
Tony gave in. When she was on the sidewalk she said: “I’ll bet you’ll be sorry. I’ll bet before it’s over you’ll be wishing you had my help.”
Clancy said: “Don’t worry, babe. I’ll take care of O’Hara.”
“Sure,” said Tony. “But who’ll take care of you?”
Chapter Three
Desert Party
They made two more stops in the city — one at Clancy’s apartment to pick up his spare equipment and the other at Mike’s Grill where O’Hara left the sealed envelope with Mike — and at midnight the coupe jogged along the desert highway under high, sharp and very quiet stars. For the last hundred miles O’Hara had pulled into every open filling station, of which there hadn’t been very many, to check for a trace of the pale-green Cad. The Cad had been unreported by one and all.
O’Hara and Clancy hadn’t talked for a long time. Now O’Hara broke the silence. He said reflectively: “Sometimes I think I’m nuts, Clancy.”
“Don’t worry about it, kid. The nicest guy I ever knew was a cop that cut his wife’s throat.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Well, this guy had known for ten years he was loony but he was smart enough to fool everybody. Then one night his wife and him have a little argument and she says like a wife does, ‘Oh, Albert, you’re crazy’ and he hops up and yells, ‘You been peeking’, and cuts her from ear to ear. He was a swell guy, everybody liked him.”
“If I had sense,” O’Hara said, “I’d have shoved that picture and as much information as I had down Braddock’s throat and the cops could now be doing this job and I could be getting some sleep. But, no, I have to get sore.”
“Uh-huh.”
They drove on another mile. O’Hara demanded: “Well, I had a right to get sore, didn’t I?”
“Sure, kid.”
“Anyway, if I’d handed the picture to Braddock, he’d have printed it and that would have tipped off these guys that they’re jammed. And if I’d given it to Lenroot first, it would have cost me the scoop I need to hang on Braddock.”
Clancy yawned and settled down in the corner of the coupe. He said: “Whichever one of your personalities wins the argument, Kenny, wake me up and leave me know.”
Presently they pulled into Alkali Center, roused a hotel proprietor and he yawned them to a cabin. At six in the morning O’Hara hauled Clancy out of the blankets into the chill morning air. Clancy complained that it was practically the middle of the night.
“Besides, Kenny, this desert ain’t like I hear about deserts. It’s an ice-box. I’m freezing.”
“You’ll warm up.”
By nine o’clock O’Hara had covered the filling stations, garages, auto courts and restaurants of Alkali City without digging up any information about the pale-green Cad or its occupants. It was beginning to warm up as he and Clancy started out to cover the skein of desert roads radiating from the town.
When noon came O’Hara was at his tenth stop. He came out of a ’dobe shack beside an oldster who looked as though he had died, been dehydrated and then set in motion by springs and wheels inside his leathery skin. A sign above the shack said, Jawbone Flats Super-Service. One decrepit gas pump stood in front of the place.
The oldster said: “No, sir, I been on this spot twenty years and ain’t seen such a Cadillac pass in all that time. Nor I ain’t seen any of those hombres in that picture you showed me.”
O’Hara patted sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief that was a damp ball. He said: “Thanks, Dad.”
By now the desert was a huge hot mirror, reflecting the sunlight with a dazzling violence that assaulted the eyes and fried the brain. A mile away to the east there was a round cool-looking lake which O’Hara knew wasn’t there because they had just come that way through a blistering desolation of rock, sand and greasewood. Beyond the nonexistent lake rose a range of barren, chocolate-brown mountains.
O’Hara climbed under the wheel and the dusty washboard of desert road began to flow toward them hotly. He said gloomily: “Hell, this could be a wild goose chase, Clancy. Those guys might be five hundred miles from here.”
Clancy came feebly to life and muttered: “Yeah.” He mopped sweat. “If I was running this desert, I would put in a saloon every quarter mile. With plenty cold beer, maybe a guy could stand it.”
“Want to call it off.”
“Nah — I still got a pint of blood to be dehydrated.”
An hour later they were back in Alkali Center, pulling up before a green-fronted restaurant with a sign that said: Hot Meals — Cold Drinks — Air Conditioning.
Clancy climbed out, staggered around the sidewalk on rubber legs for a moment. He said: “If that sign don’t tell the truth I’ll sue.”
Inside they chose a booth and Clancy expanded in the chilled air. A waitress came over and he said: “Just gimme some ice, sister — and pour bourbon around it.”
O’Hara ordered beer and they both ordered steaks. While the drinks and the steaks were coming, Clancy said: “Kenny, it ain’t like me to be curious but I been kinda wondering. Whatta we do if we catch up with these guys?”
“The first thing is to locate them if possible. Then we call in some desert law for a round-up. After that we try to dig out of them the who and the why of the hotel killing and just where the boy prosecutor stands in the whole business. If he stands where I suspect, it’s a story that’s going to shake some underpinnings back in Midland City.”
“Do we run in circles out in this subdivision of hell until we find them?”
O’Hara shook his head moodily. “If we haven’t cut their trail by evening, I’ll have to crack loose with the picture and what information I have.”
By the time they had finished the steaks the air-conditioning had Clancy’s teeth chattering. He said: “Leave us get out where I can defrost.”
They went out and sat in the coupe while O’Hara checked maps. All up and down the street they were the only humans who were foolish enough to be outside braving the heat. A liver-colored dog came around the corner, folded up in the shadow of the car and began to pant, a pink tongue lolling out at a mouth corner. The dog was too much for Clancy.
He panted like the dog and said: “I gotta go back in there and get a cold drink even if the air-conditioning freezes me stiff. Yell for me when you’re ready.”
He weaved back into the restaurant and O’Hara concentrated on the map. He didn’t seem to mind the heat so much any longer; he thought that probably his nerve ends had been destroyed by it. He was putting the maps back in their case when movement attracted his eyes.